surf taco rockout karaoke second date.

Heather
In the course of an evening, BeerBurpDouche turned into Alex. Simply, and a bit endearingly: Alex. He has a twin brother and no pack, he reads a lot and plays the drums, and he actually cooks a meal when he makes ramen. She knows things about him. She thinks this humanizes him, then catches herself and remembers that no, he's not human. It reminds her that she isn't, either.

That's an odd course of thought to have on Thanksgiving Day, helping set the table for a group of about eight people who all met in college or through college friends. None of them know what she is. She is not human, and they all are. It isn't the first time she thinks of it in the time between ramen and the holiday weekend, either. When she got home and her roommates were filled with questions about how it went, she wondered how they would take the news that she was playing Xbox with a lonely werewolf.

Not that she'd tell them. Secrecy was pretty well explained and ordered when she visited 'headquarters'. She goes to work, she does the dishes, she walks her dog, she jogs her usual circuit, and she doesn't tell anyone that she's kin to werewolves.

Are you going to see him again? Julie asked, after Heather avoided mentioning what he was wearing or what his apartment was like or that dinner was ramen or that they played Xbox, which are all unimportant details anyway.

Yeah... she said, brushing Bubby on the floor, his sides moving as he pants with happiness. He mentioned seeing a movie or something after he gets back from Florida.

She smiled a little, even though she really doesn't want to go sit in a movie theater for two hours when she's trying to get to know him, even though her usual idea of a date that involves a movie theater is one with lots of muffled gasping and ignoring the movie anyway. After how awkward things got when she kissed him last time, that's not really on the table in her mind. But still: yeah. She'll see him again. And it makes her smile a little to think of it.

He gets back after the weekend, and he does let her know he's back in town, but then it's just one thing after another for the rest of the week. She ends up having to stay late at work. Then there's Melissa's birthday. And Alex gets into some kind of scrape, but he's fine, he just needs like... a couple of days, and he's really vague about what is so wrong that it's going to take him that long to heal, and it bothers her a little as she hangs up the phone after that conversation that this is something she's thinking about like it's normal. Shakes it off and feeds her dog.

Finally they're coming up on the first weekend of December and it's Friday night, it's America's Official Date Night, and last night he texted to ask if she was actually free tonight, and there was a ! at the end of her Yes, a sort of quick excitement that translated even through a very little bit of text. So they'll go out. And get some dinner, maybe catch a movie afterward, just sort of... see how the night goes. She'll be at his place at 7.

And she is, driving up that little red car of hers with its suprising array of features and getting out, heading up his stairs and down to his door, giving it a quick flurry of hey hey I'm here knocks. When he answers, he discovers that no, she doesn't always wear skirts or Fancy Clothes, as his mind might categorize it. Heather is wearing a pair of dark, slightly bootcut jeans that only seem to accentuate how narrow her hips are, how unbelievably long her legs are. Her shoes -- which, truthfully, he probably doesn't notice anyway -- have a subtle two-inch heel, so she's not quite as tall as he is. They are also quite adorable, which he also probably doesn't notice, all t-strapped and two-toned and a little retro.

Heather grins when she sees him, and really, what matters most to his eyes right now is probably all from the waist up anyway. Underneath a trim gunmetal-colored leather jacket she's wearing a lightly patterned (though mostly blue and white) top with -- again -- a v-neck, but this one has some nifty ruffling down her body, front and center. Her belt is black. So is the bracelet that is a single narrow strip of leather wound multiple times around her wrist. That long hair of hers is pulled over one shoulder, loosely braided. She's got a lot of freckles. Her clutch is white suede.

"Hey," she says. "You ready to go?"

Alex
When Alex answers the door, he's actually dressed up for the occasion. Unfortunately, lacking anything approaching first real date attire, and also distinctly lacking any real fashion sense of his own, he's obviously appealed to one of the Bros at the Caern for help. So it is that Alex shows up looking somewhat awkward and uncomfortable in jeans and a salmon-colored polo shirt with a popped collar.

"Hey," he says. "Yeah, totally."

He's stuffing his wallet in his back pocket, grabbing his keys off a hook just inside the door and - last but certainly not least - grabbing a red motorcycle jacket off a hook on the back of the door. There are hooks everywhere in his little apartment; hooks and cubbies and other little stash-spaces that he needs to keep random paraphernalia from simply swelling up and swallowing him whole.

"You like Mexican?" It's not really that cold outside; not cold enough for a tanned, ripped, heat-shedding furnace like him to need a jacket. He pulls the bike jacket on anyway, seems a lot more comfortable when it covers up that awful shirt. "There's a great little joint just down the street. Killer burrito bowls."

Heather
He doesn't have enough hair to slick into a faux-hawk, which frustrated that Bro at the Caern considerably. Still, he insisted that this would totally drop panties, etcetera, and denied that Alex should wear one of those intricately patterned button-downs that are so popular because then, dude, it wouldn't show off his arms. Gotta show off the arms, man. Bitches love a set of ripped biceps.

Heather notices that he seems a little awkward, but she chalks it up to the way things ended last time they really talked, with the weird texts and her thinking it was his first kiss and his self-disclosure about girls being drunk and being gone when they sobered up. She doesn't realize that these aren't his clothes, or that these aren't things he would normally wear. She is smiling a lot, though, and notices that he grabs some keys, but as far as she knows he hasn't actually gotten a car, so she mentions:

"Did you wanna take my car, or... meet there, or..." Lots of trailing off. Lots of uncertainty. And then, at the end: "I mean, we could just take your bike, too."

Her eyebrows perk at the question. "I do like Mexican," she says, and grins. "Do they have margaritas, though?"

Alex
"Actually it's like two blocks away. Do you mind walking?"

Maybe his car - or motorcycle - is so embarrassing that he doesn't want her to see it. Or maybe he actually thinks motorcycle jackets are acceptable outerwear even when not riding a motorcycle, much the same way he apparently thinks popped collars and salmon-colored polos are acceptable shirts.

"They totally have margaritas," he adds as he's taking the steps down at a brisk trot, a spring in every step. "And mojitos. Mango mojitos. Friggin' awesome." He jumps the last three steps, landing with a solid thump, then turns to make sure she gets down the rest of the way okay. Glances at her shoes, too. "Oh and. We don't have to walk if your shoes are uncomfortable or something."

Heather
She smiles; shakes her head. "I don't mind walking."

He bounds -- hops -- down the last few steps and that smile flashes into a grin. She does not hop off, but gives a little graceful swing of her legs when she meets him at the ground level, which is when he tells her about the mango mojitos and notices her shoes. "Nah, they're pretty comfy. For a couple of blocks at least."

So they walk. Or start walking, at least. And she doesn't let any weird awkward silence last long before she asks him: "So how was your Thanksgiving?"

Alex
"Cool," he responds, and tucks his hands into his pockets and - after a moment - sticks his elbow out at her invitingly.

"Thanksgiving was awesome," he answers. Enthusiastically - not at all the way people who really hated Thanksgiving with their folks might grind out an 'awesome'. "Saw the parental units, saw the sibling unit. Didn't see any cold weather." He grins, his teeth a flash in his tanned face. "What about you? You stick around, or go home?"

Heather
She grins -- again -- at that, reminded of the whole 'joke' of taking his elbow from ramen night and how that was how he finally caught a clue and asked her out. Heather takes that elbow, since she was already thinking of maybe holding his hand. Maybe. The elbow is a little less intimate, a little easier when it's only the second time they've hung out that didn't include a ton of booze or a fight scene.

"I stuck around here. A bunch of friends, you know the drill. We potlucked it, drank wine, played Apples to Apples, that sort of thing. I'm going home for Christmas, though. That's when all the cousins and so on and so forth show up, too."

Heather looks around, noting the way they're going, how dark it is, how... it's actually kind of sketchy. But she doesn't see perturbed. She just looks back at him a moment later. "So you're okay, right? You're not still hurt or whatever?"

Alex
It surprises him a little that she even remembers he was hurt. He glances at her, and then he waves his hand in a pfft way, as though he were far too awesome and invincible to stay hurt for long.

"Oh yeah," he says. "Been fine for days. I'm tougher than nails."

The way they're going is kind of dark and sketchy. He's sticking to the main road, which at least has streetlights, but even so some of the storefronts have bars on the windows and there are junky cars parked on the curb. His neighborhood isn't bad per se, but Alex doesn't really live in the best part of town. If their relationship starts going places he might actually think about moving or at least buying her police-grade mace. Even if the walk from the parking lot to his apartment is about three minutes long.

Tonight, though, he doesn't worry about it. She's with him, and he's tougher than nails. Anyway, the place they're going - SURF TACO, it's called - is close. Even if it, too, looks like a hole in the wall, what with the whitewashed stucco and the cheap-ass sign.

"I know it doesn't look like much," Alex says as they get close, "but I swear, the burrito bowls are out of this world."

Heather
Human, human, human, human, kinfolk.

That was Thanksgiving, in her mind. Like Duck, Duck, Goose. Of all the people there that night, she was the one most likely to bring down some kind of fomori or Spiral or god knows what, just by being what she is, by being valuable to the Garou, by being -- in her own special way -- essential to the survival of their race. She felt a little like she was in a Terminator movie. She hasn't had any Garou baby heroes yet, but she might. And that potential makes her precious. That potential puts her at risk.

He isn't human. Tougher than nails. He'd forgotten, almost, that he got hurt, even if it stopped him from going out with her for a night or two. But she hadn't forgotten. She doesn't forget either, walking towards this burrito bowl place that is supposedly so very awesome, that he is not human. Human, human, kinfolk, Garou. Get up, run, one chasing the other around the circle.

"A lot of great places don't look like much on the outside," she says with a shrug. Then a smile, right at him.

Alex
Alex doesn't see the way Heather's thoughts turn toward who-what they are. He doesn't, oddly enough, think of himself as Garou, her as kin. He thinks of himself as tougher than nails, but one suspects even if he were born kin, even if he were born human, he'd think the same thing.

He thinks of her as... well. He doesn't really have words for it yet. Just a general sense of yay-happy-good. He likes her. He likes being with her. He likes that they're getting burritos from Surf Taco, he likes her hand on his elbow, he almost wishes he hadn't put on his jacket because then her hand would be on his skin. She seems not to mind that he's sort of taking her to a dump on their first official date, and

he's pretty confident that she's going to love it, anyway.


So they get there, and he pulls the door open for her like a gentleman, and inside this enormous dude in a Surf Taco t-shirt greets them with an enormous grin - greets Alex by name, actually, and then looks at Heather with unabashed curiosity. The place is hopping tonight, most tables full, a lot of conversation in the air, English and Spanish and sometimes both, a group of surfers over in the corner disagreeing over whether Insidious was awesome or sucktastic, a large flock of kids out with a couple parental chaperones, likely for some birthday party or other.

Alex asks for a table for two and they get led into the back - not outside, because this time of year San Diego is cold, or at least what would be considered cold if your entire wardrobe consisted of t-shirts - so; not outside, but in the back away from the noisy kitchen and the single questionably clean bathroom, in a little nook where they have a little privacy and warmth. They even get a little tealight set on their tiny little table, which is really a cafe table, barely large enough to hold the huge platters of food they get.

And they get a lot of food, because everything looks so good. They share some lime-mango-calamari and chips'n'salsa to start. They get margaritas and mojitos, and they make each other try their drinks, and in the end they agree that the other's choice is fine and dandy but they'll just stick to what they got, and by then their shared chicken skewers are coming, and with them come their burrito bowls, which are huge, which are humongous, which are washbasin-sized things full of mexican rice and beans - not healthy black beans but big ladles of the refried stuff - full of chunks of juicy steak and crispy lettuce, tomatos and salsa, topped off with guac and sour cream and a bit of cilantro on top.

They don't even talk for a while, they're so busy scarfing. And then they look at each other across the table, faces half-hidden by burrito bowls, and burst out laughing. Alex manages to laugh a chunk of steak right out of his mouth, which kind of mortifies him, but then she doesn't seem overly disgusted, just amused, and

they start talking while they eat, often through full mouths, and he tells her about the long sprawling crosscountry trip he took from Miami to San Diego, and how it was really more like going to a new town and settling in and helping out and moving on again when it felt right or he felt bored or whatever. That's why, he says, it took him literally something like two or three years to get from coast to coast. He's been here over a year now, though, he says, and he likes it. Thinks he might stay.

And what about her? he asks then. And that's how he finds out about going to school at UCSD, and being in a sorority, and doing pretty well in classes, and graduating, and getting a job, and somewhere in there is surfing, and Bubby, and the girls she lives with.

They're on their third or fourth drink by now. They've eaten about as much of their burrito bowls as they're likely to, and the Surf Taco dude brings them dessert on the house, and it's these surprisingly delicate little coconut-cheese flans topped with a bit of pineapple. Their bill comes discreetly with it, but they're urged to stay as long as they like. Alex pays, insists if Heather tries to split it, and then

they're spooning at their flans, sipping the last of their margaritas and mojitos, and

Alex smiles across the table at Heather.

"It's nice seeing you again," he says.

Heather
Heather doesn't mind. The other night she came over and he was dressed sloppily and he made ramen of all things, and more and more she's sort of thinking of that like a date even if they didn't intend for it to be. It sort of takes the 'first date' pressure off, even if all that means is that Alex is feeling a bit of it. Look at his popped collar. Just... look at it.

When he opens the door for her it does mean she has to let go of his elbow. Alex wasn't the only one thinking about the fact that her hand would be on his skin if he hadn't put on that jacket, but now she's not even touching the jacket. She's giving Alex a quirked brow and an amused look when the guy greets him by name and checks her out with curiosity -- and maybe surprise. It's busy and crowded and loud and she likes that, she likes the energy and liveliness and the big voice of the enormous dude and the Spanglish and the table of ten year olds being very very noisy because it is Manuel's birthday.

There is a table open. It's kind of amazing. It is enough out of the way that they can talk. Heather keeps her jacket on for awhile, at least until after they order and are waiting, at least til after they have had some of their margaritas and mojitos and her skin feels warm. Then she sheds it, hanging it on the back of her chair. Her arms are bare, except for that wrapped leather bracelet around her wrist, her top turning out to be sleeveless. They pass drinks back and forth, and she admits she cannot really 'do' calimari or most seafood, which is when he finds out that she's from Kansas of all places, and he teases her a little for it, and she just crunches into a chip while giving him a faux glare.

"This is too much," she keeps saying, laughing, as Alex orders just about everything on the menu. No, she'd be fine with just this, and this, but he gets everything that he thinks looks good, and he keeps offering some to her but she laughs and says if she eats that, then she won't eat her actual dinner. "Oh god," she says, when that actual dinner arrives, her eyes a bit wide and intimidated, even if

she ordered hers without sour cream, and chicken instead of steak. Still. It's a monstrous amount of food, and she does not scarf it. Heather eats with -- perhaps not surprisingly -- good manners, chewing a lot, never talking with her mouth full. She keeps her elbows off the table and all of this seems very natural to her, probably isn't even worth noting. She even uses her napkin to wipe her mouth. But Alex bursts out laughing, and she starts laughing. What? she wants to know, mid-laughter. What!

Oh, she lets out an Ew! God, Alex, but she's still laughing after he spits out the steak, and shakes her head. Better out than in, anyway. Wouldn't want to choke.

He talks through full mouths, unless he notices that she never does and stops himself. She eats more slowly, doesn't eat as much, and he asks her a few times if it's good and yes, it is, I really like it -- around the third time he asks she laughs at him, says: "God, you're like a dog with a bone. Here, will this make you feel better?" and she starts shoveling forkfuls in her mouth, loudly going MMM! and SO GOOD and chomping down on a few bits of steak even from his own bowl, til he's laughing and saying okay, okay, he gets it.

"So," she says after that, daintily wiping her mouth with a napkin and reaching to pick up her margarita, "you were talking about your road trip?"

And so on.


When it's her turn, it's partly because she cannot eat another bite. She doesn't mind talking for awhile, finally leaning on the table and telling him about how she got into UCSD partly because her dad knew a guy. Her dad is a mechanical engineering professor. Her mom illustrates children's books. Her sorority has a yearly surfing competition to benefit First Book. She tells him about how her first major was actually Vocal Music, but when the economy went downhill, she changed programs -- "and lost all semblance of a social life for a couple of years," she adds wryly. She got her job at a job fair, actually, where she went all dressed up and had her card and some resumes and got to talk to people and yeah, she's pretty sure she didn't get some of the jobs she applied for because so many men in their thirties and forties unconsciously have trouble grasping that a woman could understand technology.

Heather rolls her eyes and shrugs, moves on. He asks and she nods: yeah, of course she still surfs. Not as much as she'd like to, but she totally does. Julie surfs, too, that's her roommate, but Melissa usually stays on the beach with Bubby, and -- it turns out Bubby is not a chihuahua or anything like that, he's a big floppy happy golden retriever that is getting pretty old by now, but he likes to go on the beach and play frisbee still.

Near the end, Alex is on his third or fourth drink, and Heather has finished two margaritas and a glass of water. She looks at the dessert that shows up and -- of all things -- a slightly unhappy look crosses her face, sort of sad and worried, but it passes quickly. She ignores the bill when it comes. She insists on nothing, and doesn't even mention it in conversation. There's a flan in front of her, and a spoon in her hand, and she's sort of swirling the tip of the spoon in the sauce when he speaks. She looks over at him, smiling. "Yeah," she agrees, quietly.

Alex
He notices. Even though the alcohol, and the food, and the carb coma and the general happy of the night, he notices that she doesn't touch that awesome flan, and she looks a little bit unhappy. So he pays the bill and Taco Surf Dude takes a while picking it up because he doesn't want his guests to feel rushed, he wants them to keep coming back here with their birthday parties and their friends and their families and their first dates.

In the little bit of quiet that ensues, Alex crunches on some ice from his last mojito. Then he looks at Heather for a while, reaches across the table, and touches her hand. There's something shy and not-quite-sure about that touch, like he's not quite sure if it's precisely allowed to do this on a First Date.

"You all right?"

Heather
Heather looks over at him, blinking. "Huh? Yeah!" she says. "I'm great," she says, smiling, but looking a little confused at what he's getting at. She does not move his hand away, or move hers.

Alex
"You just seemed a little sad," he says, and his hand does not, in fact, move away either, "just now."

Heather
It takes her a second. 'Just now' isn't quite it, because 'just now' she felt very good indeed, very warm because of the way he looked at her and the way his voice changed a little when he said it was good to see her again, and she's trying to think of what on earth seemed sad, and --

Heather blinks again. "Oh!" She looks down at her flan, then at him. She glances over to make sure the big dude isn't around, then says quietly: "It's just... I don't really like coconut. Or pineapple. Or, um...flan. And I'm also just... so insanely full. But I feel bad if I don't at least eat some, because he brought it over on the house and everything, and I don't want to be rude or ungrateful. I was just a little 'ack'."

She smiles after that, and actually moves her hand so she can squeeze his. "I'm okay. It was just a little 'onoz' moment."

Alex
And totally without embarrassment, awkwardness, or even really greed, Alex says, "I can eat it for you."

He is quite earnest about this.

Heather
Something about that -- the earnestness, the seriousness, the way he's holding her hand and looking into her eyes and telling her not to worry, he can eat it for her -- makes Heather just... lose it. She cracks up suddenly, covering her mouth with her hand after the first burst, her eyes squinting, her shoulders shaking. "Oh god," she manages to get out a few seconds later. "You're just so... oh my god."

And a new set of giggles hits her, her cheeks pink with hilarity, and pleasure, and liquor.

Alex
And this is when - drawn by her laughter, or her pink cheeks, or just the simple warmth of her happiness - Alex, with one hand still on hers, leans across that little table and kisses her over the remains of their enormous dinner.

It's a soft kiss. Rather gentle, really, but not chaste; deepening even as the corners of his mouth spread in a smile. Because he's happy too, warm and happy, because he's kissing her, and they just had dinner at his favorite place, and she liked it, and

just, everything.

Heather
Quite suddenly, Heather understands how Alex felt when she kissed him. She's shocked, caught mid-giggle, and for a moment she doesn't do anything. She's stunned still, while his mouth touches hers. Her eyes are still open for a moment or two, and even so, she doesn't see or notice the people a couple of tables over that are looking at them. It's no quick peck of affection on her lips, either, meant to be light and cute and fast. Alex is kissing her, and she can feel him smiling,

as she closes her eyes and smiles, too. "What?" she whispers, as though his smile is somehow at her expense, but it doesn't really matter. There's a lower note in that soft word, more of an invitation than a question somehow. She kisses him back, also gently. Also deeper, perhaps, than is strictly appropriate in public. It really is right on the line.

She's still smiling.

Alex
"I'm just happy," he whispers back, and their lips move against one another's, a language of their own. When she kisses him back, when they meet in the middle that second time, it's right on the line of what is and is not acceptable for public consumption. Particularly with ten-year-olds a few tables over,

a few of them giggling about cooties already,

so then they draw apart and Alex laughs and takes her hand in his, holding that one hand of hers between his two and looking at it, smiling.

"We could watch a movie back at my place instead," he says.

Heather
At first it's a very delighted sort of kiss, urgent with happiness and met with surprise and humor. And very, very quickly, it deepens to something heavier, something hotter, something that almost crosses the border between sweet and inappropriate. It's close to the point where their heads start moving, where their mouths start opening, when the giggling gets to their ears and they separate. Heather's cheeks a little pink, her eyes flicking downward and then over at him again, a lopsided and slightly embarrassed smile on her face. Slightly embarrassed. Mostly pleased.

He's holding her hand in both of his, which is just as amusing as anything else he does. Granted, the thought flickers through her mind that this guy really is very, very lonesome and so very happy, so very eager to have a friend -- but that thought's conclusion is that word, itself. He's attracted to her. He likes her. He wants to kiss her and he was a little mindblown to realize that she wanted to kiss him, too, the first time. But the eagerness, the sort of... tail-wagging happiness, comes from a slightly different place.

Some text of his told her that story plainly enough: he can get women to sleep with him. It does happen. It isn't exactly sweet and she doubts names and phone numbers are exchanged much. There's a lot of alcohol involved. She imagines most of them are terrified of him when they sober up and hope, as they leave, that he doesn't call. But he can get sex. He can, even if it's just for the space of an hour, connect with another living, breathing, thinking being -- or at least get the release. These are not happy thoughts, but neither do they bother Heather much. He's sitting at a table with her, and not for a single second does she think he cares only about the sex, the release, the grunting, the sweating, the orgasm.

He's happy because she could be his friend, too. And play games with him. Be close. Be nice. Stay near, and be as happy in his presence as he is in hers. She knows all this, from how he smiles and how he kisses her and how he holds her hand in both of his, and she doesn't think

clingy.

desperate.

weird.

What she thinks is that if she weren't attracted to him, she'd still like him. And she thinks -- she's pretty sure -- that he'd still like her, too, even if kissing her didn't also seem very nice and appealing. If they were kids, and if this were a playground, then he would have shared his best toy, and when she had fun, he would have asked if she wanted to be his friend. And she would have said yes.

It's just that they aren't kids. They're grown up, and he has very nice arms, and she has near-perfect breasts, and she felt herself drawn to him almost all night when she was at his place, and now he's asking her to come back to it again. Lounge on his futon and watch a movie there. Her pulse thumps a little. She huffs a small laugh, exhaling, and grins at him.

"I don't think we should," she says, almost laughing still, but so very softly.

Heather
It's quite possible that Heather sees Alex more clearly than he sees himself. He doesn't quite realize that he's lonely without a pack, without real friends, without human contact outside of drunken bottle-blondes in PB bars. He doesn't quite realize that part of the reason he's so happy is that he likes her. Not just, finds her hot, wants to bang her, any of those things, but - likes her on an interpersonal level.

That's something he doesn't have very often. Or perhaps at all, since he left Miami and became a cross-country semi-drifter. He has it now, and he's eager and happy to have it. He was eager and happy and a little awkward when she came to his place and he was all but bounding in place to make her ramen; he's eager and happy and more than a little excited to be holding her hand right now, hanging out with her, with neither of them ... well, that drunk. Just a little.

He's a little crestfallen when she says no, though. He doesn't quite seem to have the emotional astuteness to understand why. He hears only the no, the we shouldn't; all but tilts his head to one side, confused.

"Why not?"

Alex
Most guys would know better than to ask, or just wouldn't -- wouldn't want to seem pushy, wouldn't want to seem stupid. Alex just asks, letting her see all the confusion, especially after that kiss and all the warmth and sweetness and glee that was in it.

Color rises in her cheeks again. "Just... um." The regular thing she might say comes to mind. She could tell him that she just wants to show him off a little, and stroke his ego. She could say she likes going out, doing things! No fun to just sit at home -- and maybe shame him a little for 'pushing'. But she doesn't think he's trying to push. She thinks of Bubby lying in his sheepskin-lined bed gnawing on one of his favorite toys, his tail thumping while she watches t.v., and how he loves to go on walks but he hops off that leash and trots over to his bed to flop down in the place that smells like him, and decides to just be honest.

So her eyes meet his. "I think if we go back to your place right now, we aren't going to get through a movie," she says, and she's not blushing anymore. "And I'd kinda like to get to know you more before I sleep with you."

Alex
What she says is so blunt that it makes him blurt a surprised laugh. He likes it, though - likes her honesty, likes that she isn't, in the end, afraid to tell him the truth.

Isn't afraid to tell him that she's attracted to him. Isn't afraid to tell him that if she's not careful, if they're both not careful, they're going to end up rolling around his little futon together, and on a first-maybe-second date at that.

"Oh," he says, and kinda scuffs at his hair for a second for lack of anything better to do. "Oh, well." He thinks. "There's a karaoke bar down the street."


[http://www.rockoutkaraoke.com/

I DID NOT KNOW THIS PLACE EXISTED BEFORE I TYPED POST. IT'S LIKE IT'S MEANT TO BE. LOL]

Heather
The laugh makes her blush, even though she got through saying that without so much as a flicker of embarassment. She laughs, too, leaning over and giving him a small, soft kiss that does not -- as before -- grow very heated very fast. Yes. She would totally end up having sex with him, on his little futon, on their first-maybe-second date, if they went back there right now, with tequila in her system. He suddenly suggets karaoke and she laughs.

"That would be awesome," she says. "To tell the truth, I'm not a huge fan of like... movie dates. At least not at first. Because you can't talk or anything, you know? And... I like talking to you." She smiles at him, warm and bright.

Alex
"Here I was just thinking," Alex says, grinning, "a dark movie theater might be more temptation than you could handle."

He picks a last bit of steak out of the remains of his burrito bowl. Truth be told, not a whole lot remains. There's probably more left on Heather's plate, and if she wants to bring a box he waits for her; if she doesn't, he doesn't yell at her for wasting food or whatever. Either way, they leave through the back door, Taco Surf dude yelling a see-you-later after them. The street back here is a little darker, a little shadier, but they don't stay on it for long. They get back on the main road, still walking away from his apartment; hang a left a few blocks down, and there it is, ROCK OUT KARAOKE, with music and howling voices seeping out of the walls, pouring out of the wide-open door.

"So the deal with this place," Alex is yelling in Heather's ear as they go in, "is that they have a live band! And you get up on stage and sing with them! Most of the songs are like, late 90s early 2000s pop and rock!"

Which is, in fact, how it is. A live band, a crowded floor, some tables jammed in the sides but most people up on their feet and dancing. Huge projectors on either side plaster up lyrics in twelve-inch letters, but the girl up there right now ripping through Alanis's ode to bitter breakups clearly doesn't need them.

"Song list!" Alex yells, pushing a flyer into Heather's hand.

Heather
That makes her blush -- again. She throws a piece of tortilla chip at him, laughing: "Oh god, leave me alone."

She decides against a box in the end, though she does waffle on it. If they're going to karaoke she doesn't want to carry it around, and she doesn't want to have to drop by his place to stick it in the fridge, either, though he says that's totally an option, it's not like it's far

but she honestly wasn't kidding. And his teasing was fair: right now, just like last time, the temptation is strong, tugging at her very viscera. She wants him. She didn't, really, the first time they met, and she certainly wasn't expecting to the second time they met, but she did. And it wasn't -- isn't -- the alcohol. It isn't like he's charming or seducing her or even making any overtures in that direction. She just wants him, in this vivid, skin-heating way. She wants his hands on her breasts and his mouth on her neck and his body fitting firmly and hotly between her legs, and a dark movie theater or his place or her car are all very, very tempting to her right now.

Yet: Heather Sinclair has certain standards for herself. It isn't just that she is a Good Girl, and she simply does not lay back and spread her legs for any old bro. It isn't just that she hasn't dated in a few months. And it isn't that she's uncertain. No, she's quite certain: she wants to go to bed with this man.

But she wants to know him first. And she wants to know if this is all worth the potential heartbreak and pain and weirdness. She wants to know if he's going to stick around, and if they could actually turn into something good. She wants to know which spot on his neck makes his eyes close or how he likes his earlobe to be licked. She wants to know that in the morning he won't be a total freak or a jerk, and that after he has sex with her, he'll hold her.

The thing is, though, she's... sort of already thinking that she knows him. That she gets him. That if she likes him and being around him makes her happy, then there's really no reason to make it any more complicated just because he's a werewolf and she's a kin. Heather sort of already thinks that if they were together, he'd stick around, and that it wouldn't always be perfect, but it could sure be great sometimes. She's pretty sure that he would like her hands to stroke his chest and his sides and his back, hold onto his arms, and she thinks he might be the type who wants to kiss her while he's inside of her.

She's thinking that chances are, he would absolutely hold her afterward, and not just to keep her happy. She's pretty sure that in the morning, he'd just want to make or go get breakfast. And that, she thinks, is part of why she is so very, very tempted.


So they go to Rock Out, and she's got her jacket back on but she walks with her arm looped through his elbow as before, like this is just How They Walk now, and as they're approaching she looks with surprise and not a little delight at the live band. "Oh, this is gonna be awesome," she laughs, and takes the flyer, and drags him to the front to sign up. There's already a long list -- they'll be watching for a long while before either of them gets a chance to get up there.

Oh yes. His name is down there, too. Right below hers.

Alex
Actually, Alex's name isn't below Heather's. When she starts to write him in, he protests - but no, not because he doesn't want to sing.

"Put me on the list with you!" he calls. "And if you really really really wanna sing solo I'll kick the drummer off the kit!"

So that's what goes on the list: Heather + Alex, which looks so damn dawww that Alex jokingly draws a big junior-high-style cupid's-arrow-pierced-heart around it, which doubtlessly makes someone somewhere roll their eyes in disgust. Not that they care; Alex takes Heather by the hand and pulls her into the middle of the audience area/dance floor/mosh pit/whatever it is, and

that's where they spend a fairly long time, really, deafened by the live band and the singers, some of whom are quite good, some of whom are quite bad, almost all of whom are belting it out for all they're worth, channeling their inner rock stars. An emo-goth girl who looks like she'd never be caught dead doing such a thing bops her way through Like a Virgin. A skinny white kid who introduces himself as Matt from Rancho Bernardo does a Billie Jean so convincing a few jaws are on the floor. Then there's a very enthusiastic, very off-key rendition of Sweet Home Alabama, but the singer's energy is so infectious no one cares that the poor band keeps shifting key to try to compensate for the out-of-tuneness, and

eventually, an hour or so after they get there, their names come up and they're called up there and the lead guitarist is asking them what they're going to sing.

Heather
She's a bit surprised. And laughs as he scrawls his name beside hers. Laughs again as he scrawls a stupid heart on the page. "They're going to think we're going to sing some sappy love song," she says, as they retreat to find a table. They get a couple of drinks: "Performance lubrication," Heather the former Vocal Music major informs him, and this time she's not doing 'ritas, she's getting Red Stag. And they scan the list, but

she's holding his hand between their chairs, atop her thigh. She never let go of it.

"Oh, this one," she says, pointing to something on the flyer. She looks at him. "You should like... sing backup and do the drums. You know this song?"

Everyone knows this song. She giggles and leans over, kissing him suddenly, a quick one this time -- for once. And it isn't a sappy love song that they're going to sing. She knows exactly what she'll sing next time she gets a chance to come out here. So when their names are called, the guitarist hollering for Heather and Alex to come on, get their asses up here, she squeals and they're heading on stage. Heather goes straight to the guitarist as she's shedding her jckaet -- the crowd whoops -- and

she actually knows a thing or two about music. She tells him their song, tells him what key, and then Alex informs him that he'll be playing drums. And the drummer is a little shocked but doesn't mind a break and the kit belongs to the club anyway, so he yells See ya, suckers! at the rest of the band and goes to get a drink.

The guy who usually does the keyboard pulls out his harmonica and a few of the regulars know what's coming and start hollering and clapping. The guitar gets going, and Heather gets to the mic -- when she claps, several people in the audience do as well, but the song really starts with a

"HEY!"

and the introduction of the drums, courtesy of one Mr. Alex Vaughn. It's high-energy, it's a tight three minute song, and it turns out that the blonde girl up there who had the band change keys to suit her voice, well

she knows how to sing, and more importantly, how to perform for a crowd. She dances across the stage to What I Like About You while Alex bangs away at the drums, and dances when it's the harmonica's turn. Her hair gets whipped out of that braid just before the second verse, her hand wrapped around the mic. She even does the vibrating lip thing before the last set of HEY!s.

In short, she fucking kills it.

Alex
Alex could tell from the moment Heather walked in the karaoke bar that she wasn't going to be one of those wallflowers who sang staring at her shoes with her hands in her pockets. He could tell by the way pretty soon she was the one pulling him through the crowd by the hand, and he could tell by the way she skims the song list and just decides.

Even so, when she tears through What I Like About You, Alex is surprised. Surprised, and laughing, and hammering away through the drum line and yelling along to the backup vocals, watching Heather work the crowd and own the stage. When the song comes to its frenetic close the crowdnoise drowns out even the band, and Heather takes a bow and then drags Alex out from behind the drumkit and they take another bow together, and the guy coming up after them is yelling that they owned that shit, man! and they're running-bounding-jumping their way off the stage, someone's highfiving them and someone else is hugging Heather like she knows her, telling her how awesome she was and she should totally come back.

They make it to the bar, where almost as crowded as the front row. Alex grabs them beers and hands Heather hers, asks her if she wants to go another round, and she does, so he signs them up again and since the wait time's something like another hour and a half they go out on the open patio where the ocean's in the air and it's a little quieter.

"You weren't kidding about your music almost-major," he says, clinking his bottle against hers and then gulping. "We should start like a weekend band or something."

Heather
Heather is thrilled. She's glowing with pleasure, obviously the type of person who thrives on performance, who is fearless when she's up on stage, even if sometimes off of it she's terrified. She totally goes behind the drums to get Alex to bow as well, and then they're making way for someone else and there are some high fives and at least one hug and she's just laughing, laughing

but she seems happy, when they go out to the patio, to slip her jacket back on and take the beer Alex hands her and just be quiet for a little bit, too. She keeps her hair down now, finger-combing it back. Their bottles clink. She laughs -- again. "Nothing 'almost' about it, I just didn't get the degree. But to tell the truth, even coming from UCSD, a vocal music performance major has to get damn lucky to really... make a living at it. I mean, how many opera singers or Broadway stars can you name off the top of your head?"

She shrugs, and smiles at him, taking a drink. "What's really going to impress you is that I play guitar, too. A little piano, but not much. It was not cool enough for me when my parents gave me the option of lessons in one or the other."

A beat. A grin. "So we could totally start a weekend band."

Alex
"Dude, let's do it." He's actually serious. "We can play at like, kid's birthday parties and stuff. I don't wanna be famous, I just wanna -- "

he cuts himself off there, because he was about to say something sappy and embarrassing. So he takes a swig of beer instead, his ears coloring. Good thing it's dark enough out here that she can't tell.

Heather
Her eyebrows perk -- she doesn't immediately dismiss the idea as stupid, because she's been to plenty of parties and company events and the like where live bands just like that are hired. She doesn't look down on it. People who want to perform, who are good at performing, and get paid to do so regularly without the hassle of either fame or the work of songwriting? She can get it.

"What?" she asks, setting down her beer after another drink and leaning on the table, looking at him. "You just wanna..."

Alex
A quick lick of his lips - the lower drawn in under his teeth, flicked with his tongue. Then he grins, lip still caught.

"I just wanna have fun with you."

Heather
Heather laughs, and she leans over and bumps her shoulder to his, her head ducked a little so that, for a moment, her brow touches his cheek. It is nearly a nuzzle, animalistic and familiar in a way that they are not. Physical affection, though, gets so much easier with liquor, and pleasure, and... well. Affection. As sudden as it might be.

"Why would you be all mumblemumbletrailoffmumble about that?" she says, as the swing of her little bump to him takes her back into her own space, even if that space is in a chair that is just a few inches from his anyway. Heather takes a drink of her beer. "That's what we're doing now."

Alex
"Yeah but..."

Alex is sipping at his beer almost meditatively, which must be a change from the usual. His brow furrows with thought. In the distance, the Pacific booms. It is so very different from the still, shimmering, hot, and occasionally hurricane-furious ocean of his childhood.

"I just don't wanna come off weird, y'know? Or like... clingy. Or desperate." He looks at her again. "I like you a lot. I don't wanna scare you off."

Heather
This time the blush to Heather's cheeks seems softer somehow. She's smiling a certain kind of smile, though, which perhaps makes the sudden rush of color seem gentler. Few would argue that she's pretty, but it's in a girl-next-door way, a familiar way, a trustworthy way. She has freckles, when she doesn't cover them up with concealer. Her hair is more 'straw' or 'wheat' than gold, and those eyes of hers maybe occasionally striking in how fair the blue is, but mostly, it's just reminiscent of lying on one's back and staring aimlessly at a half-clouded sky. She has a easy friendliness about her that endears most people to her. It is hard to imagine her lying, or slinging a bitter insult.

It is very easy to imagine her just like this, a bit of hair falling across her face as she ducks her head, a blush pinking her cheeks beneath several tiny, pale marks, a slow smile on her face. She's good with computers and that marks her as kin to Glass Walkers, even if they hadn't just... snatched her up, essentially. There's no way of telling what blood she really comes from -- could be Fenrir or Fianna or a mix of both, maybe a few others from long, lost lines of kin that intermingled with each other and with humans. There's no trace of breeding on her. Just a simple kind of beauty, a subtle strength that even she seems partly unaware of, and kindness. A willingness to help, as though once she saw there was a need, there was no question in her of what was right or what was good or what else was out there.

Because the ultimate question would be what she wanted to do with that information. And for Heather, the concept of running away or ignoring it or stomping off to Do Her Own Thing, consequences be damned, doesn't even enter into her thoughts.

She leans over and kisses him again, like they've been doing this forever, like kisses are just another way of talking now. It's soft, and safe for a public space, but it's also intimate, slow and soft and warm, tasting of exhiliration and, yes, the flavors of alcohol she's had. It's a very sweet kiss. When she draws back from it she smiles at him, leaning her elbow on the table and propping her chin on her hand.

"I've been thinking that off and on tonight, too," she says. "Not you, I mean. I mean me." Heather laughs at herself. "I mean: I like you a lot, too. But I haven't really worried about scaring you off, I guess. Every time I start to, I realize I'd be really surprised if that happened."

She gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I know this might sound kinda weird, but I feel like... I kinda just... get you."

Alex
No one could possibly look at Heather and not think her pretty. But that's what she is: pretty, warm, girl-next-door, hot chick. No one would ever call her ethereal or heartbreakingly beautiful or any of those phrases reserved for a more rarefied sort of beauty. It's the same with Alex, really. Nothing about him stands out - not his looks, not his performance in the war or the Nation, not his tribe, not his upbringing. Neither of them are superhuman or elevated above the masses in any great way.

But they are both self-reliant, self-made. For the most part, they are where they are because they have a certain level of drive in them; a certain independence. And maybe that's part of what draws them together. They're similar. They're not mad kings or ravening vikings; not machiavellian warlords, not secret-spinning warlocks. They're strongwilled, kindhearted, and unafraid of most things life has to offer. They're unafraid of this - whatever this is that they've found with each other.

"Yeah," he says, after that kiss, and after that little shrug. He says that, beginning to smile: "I guess you do."

And then he slugs down the last of his beer, straightens up.

"You wanna go back in?" he says. "Maybe dance til our turn's up again?"

Heather
Neither of them are such standouts, in looks or strength or skill, that people's jaws drop to behold them. But when Heather looks at Alex -- at least now, at least lately, though it feels like anything else was just a dream -- she kinda thinks he's probably the hottest guy she's ever gone out with. She has no other explanation than that she's drawn to him, because she can't analyze his facial features or parts of his body and nail down what is so appealing. He just is. He's just Alex, and she feels...

well. Drawn to him. Drawn in such a way that she would simply like to stay. Stay with him, and enjoy themselves, and if anything about him scares her now it's simply the fact that she knows she probably should be at least a little concerned with how at ease she already is, how suddenly it came to her that yes. This is good. This is how it should be.


There is a woman, much older than Heather but not as much older as you would expect, over in Miami who would understand this. No one would look at her and think she's the type to simply accept a wave and ride it, on the shore or in life, but she is. She's actually a very good woman, tougher and smarter and kinder than she gets credit for, and she has made a good life for herself. Not 'the best'. Not always the newest and shiniest or most socially acceptable or easiest, but that is what it is: a good life. A good marriage, two good sons, a good home, a good job, and so much of that has come to her from being able to take what life has thrown at her and not just ride it but find exhiliration and peace in it, both at once.

Heather doesn't know Ellen. Not right now, not yet. But the universe knows, and Alex probably knows, that if he showed up tomorrow and said hey mom, hey dad, I met this girl a little while before Thanksgiving and she's the love of my life and everything that sucked before sucks so much less now, cool?

...they very well might just smile and nod. Cool.


Heather's parents might be a little slower to warm up. Especially since he's a werewolf. No daughter of theirs is going to be breeding stock, no how. But then, no daughter of theirs would be the type to fly off the handle at the first wink from a guy with nice pecs, either. If she says this is good, chances are:


"This is good," she says to him, smiling as he's straightening up and she's... leaning over. Onto him. She's smiling, quite happily in fact, and laying her head against his shoulder, the top of her head touching his clavicle, giving a small breath of laughter at her own appropriation of him as her Comfy Spot. "I like dancing," she clarifies. "I just... like this better, right now." She tips her head up a bit, tries to see him. "Cool?"

Alex
"Cool," Alex affirms.

And she settles against him, and he wraps his arm against her, and she probably doesn't know that she's like his first kinda-girlfriend ever but she is, unless we counted Bianca in fifth grade and Tina in sixth. She doesn't know that, but she can probably guess, and that would mortify him except

it doesn't, really. It's cool. Everything's cool, and nice, and warm, and happy.

So they chill out there for a while - a long time - and they don't talk a lot but sometimes they do, and when they do it's about inconsequential things, but it's still nice. They talk a little more about that weekend band they wanna do. They're serious about it; they wanna do this. They make a pinky promise not to start any Dramuh. They talk about playing at weddings and birthday parties and the sort, but not frat parties, no, because if someone tried to prank Alex by pouring beer in his drum or something he might tear them a new one. No, really. So no frat parties.

And they talk about her dog for a while. And Alex wants to meet him, wants very much to meet him, but is afraid he'll be afraid of him. And he's so old, so Alex doesn't want to, like, give him a heart attack or something. But then the conversation takes a happier turn, and they talk about Heather's car for a while, and Alex says if he ever gets a car, like a real car with four wheels, he was totally thinking about the Elantra. They gush about the awesome feature-to-price ratio. They are very disdainful toward Civics.

They're talking about surfing, and discovering they both have an interest, when someone busts out from inside and yells HEATHER AND ALEX TO THE STAGE. ARE HEATHER AND ALEX IN THE HOUSE. REPEAT, HEATHER AND ALEX TO THE STAGE, and they get the idea and grab each other's hands and run for it, and when they get up they don't even know what the fuck they're gonna sing and they're both a little drunk and laughing and some Serious Karaoke People are getting pissy so they're like fuckit and she grabs the mic and he grabs the drumsticks and

oh god, it's the B-52s.

(Tiiiin roof! Rusted.)


Which is what he yells at random intervals, much much later, when they're finally walking back to his place. And she's a little tired by then, so she wraps her arm around his waist and makes him shh. Be shh. So he shhhs, and puts his arm around her, and they get back to his place and he looks sorta-longingly up at his apartment, but he knows better than to ask her in a second time.

So he walks her to her car, and as she's getting in - the second time she's done this - he leans down through the open window and smiles and says next time she should let him pick her up so he can take her home. And she kisses him, and it's quick but not shy, and he smiles more when she pulls back.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he promises. And then he straightens. She backs out. He stands in his motorcycle jacket and his awfulawful shirt, waving as the headlights sweep across him, waving as she drives away

from their second date.

awesome ramen dinner date.

Heather Sinclair

It's only about seventy-two hours later. The walking embodiment of the Defiler is dead, thanks to Smoking Gun and some distractions provided by her Galliard buddy, and the Executive Kinfolk Liason has already sent one of his delegates out to talk with Miss Sinclair. Pulled her out of work, even. Told her to tell them it was a 'family emergency', and it was only over the course of the rest of the day that she realized how common this is for 'kin'. Family emergencies. The entitlement. The hardassed San Diegoan Glass Walkers and their ever-so-shiny caern, the way they walk all over their kinfolk and do so with a smile.

And then they gave her the number of the Garou who would be her contact in the city in case of emergency or if she had information on the Wyrm. Her brain was tired by the time she left. They were telling her they were already informing her family and she protested, she never gave them her parents' info-- but they already had that, too. It was unsettling. It was infuriating. But it also all made sense. It also explained the inexplicable. They gave her coffee and were, on the surface, polite, even if she could sense the underlying imbalance of power and authority with every word.

So, a couple of nights after that whole mess, Alex finds he has a voicemail. It bypassed his phone; never rang. Cute trick. The message:

"...Hi. This is Heather Sinclair. I, uh... I'm new. Like, lost but not anymore? Wait, they gave me this -- E (as in elephant) 7Q4L8 apostrophe-mingle. I hope that means something to you." It does. It's a verification code; this is on the level. It comes from 'HQ'. And apostrophe-mingle means this 'Heather' girl is kin. "Anyway, they said you're my emergency contact now, so, uh, whoever you are, I thought I'd at least introduce myself. This number is my cell, so...yeah. I guess that's all."

Click.

Alex

Heather's message bypassed the ring. It bypassed his voicemail greeting too, or else he's pretty sure he would've gotten twenty seconds of obscenities and then a click. As is, Alex listens several times, back and forth, head cocked, before he's sure. And when he's sure, he lets out about twenty seconds of obscenities. Then his phone click!s as he hits Call Back.

Across the city of San Diego, Heather Sinclair - wherever she is - finds her phone ringing. The number is that of her Emergency Garou Contact.

Heather Sinclair

"Yellow," it sounds like, when she picks up. The entry in her phone that was flashed on the screen was 'David Kessler', a reference that, when Googled, brings up so much about some doctor guy that most people wouldn't notice the very last 'searches related to' at the bottom. It looks like a real name, too.

She's just getting home, dropping her things. There's no barking, nor the clicking of claws on a hardwood floor that they don't have, but she does have Bubby running up to her, and she's crouching, ruffling his fur, saying hello. "Is this my contact?"

Alex

"Yeaaaah," Alex says, "about that..." and by now she's probably recognized his voice, but if she hasn't he helps her along, "actually, I'm more like the guy that found you in the first place. Y'know. Beer burp dude?" There's a pause. "Are you panting?"

Heather Sinclair

In the end, it doesn't matter if she's recognized his voice or not. He explains. And she goes a bit slack on the other end, her insides squirming uncomfortably with the knowledge. Beer burp, he says, and she says:

"Oh."

Then he asks if she's panting, and whatever she might have been about to say gets wiped out with her saying: "Aww, no, that's Bubby," in a thoroughly fond and loving voice as she says the dog's name, scratching him behind the ears, making him roll his eyes back and tilt his head up in appreciation. "He's my doggy," she says cooingly. "Yes, yes you are. Good, good doggy."

She rises from her crouch, the I'm-talking-to-my-best-friend-the-dog-tyvm voice dropping. "Well. Are you going to ask them to change it?" Of course she wouldn't realize this is punishment. Of course she wouldn't grasp that they stuck her with him because he fucked so much up. That asking for a transfer doesn't work like that.

Alex

Alex just kind of sits through the cooing, grimacing. At least it's over fairly quickly. He's pretty sure she's got a little chihuahua or something. Something that fits in her purse so she can bounce all around town like the blonde bimbo she very likely is. No, it sounds a bit bigger than that. Some sort of toy breed terrier then, maybe. Or a Pomeranian. Ugh, he hates those things.

Then she's back, talking to him in a normal-person voice. "Nah," he says. "Anyway I doubt they'd approve it. The EKL's a lazy sonuvabitch who only changes assignments if he absolutely has to. I.e. if someone dies. So uh. They tell you, like. Stuff? Like the intro stuff?"

Heather Sinclair

She is a blonde bimbo. Sort of. He doesn't know what she does for a living, nor would he ever guess. She has a surfer's tan -- or just a SoCal girl's tan -- and hair that is bleached even blonder than natural by the sunshine. She goes clubbing in spangly tops and has mace that looks like a perfume bottle. She can scream like a horror movie star, and she twists her ankle while running like one, too. She was a Pi Phi girl -- still is, really -- and she raised money for charity by surfing.

Yeah, probably a chihuahua or some toy hybrid. A labradoodle or something. Named Bubby, a mashup of Buddy and Bubba and Baby, all of which are borderline unacceptable. It's probably a fat little dog, too. Except -- the panting. Who knows. Poodles pant a lot, too.

"Yes," she answers, setting her purse down inside of her bedroom, stepping out of her heels. "It was like getting a job at the mall. I had to watch videos."

There's a pause. "I'm sorry for the way I yelled at you the other night," she says. "And for macing you. I really thought you were going to kill me at the time, though, so... maybe you can understand. I wouldn't have gone to security if I'd known that guy really was bad, too, so... anyway. I'm sorry. I was drunk and freaked out and I just really didn't know."

The thing is, as unexpected -- and a bit stiff -- as all that is, she does sound at least a little sincere.

Alex

"Uh -- " Alex is just as stiff and awkward. "It's no big deal. I mean. Uh. Yeah, I didn't really expect you to, like. Not be freaked out or whatever. I'm sorry if I made you, y'know. Scared. For your life."

Another pause on the phone. His mind's spinning, spinning, trying to dredge up that one little hour of How To Deal With New Kin he took way back in the day. Not much is coming back to him.

"So ,.. do you have any questions?"

Heather Sinclair

"I guess... they told me to call you if something happens that I think is, y'know... your kind of problem. I don't really know how to tell, but I guess I'll figure it out. I think most of it is going to be like that. I don't know what answer to ask for until the problem presents itself. They said I should get a gun, but that's not really something I'm down for."

There's a pause. There have been lots of those. It's an awkward conversation, in that way.

"Um, there was one thing, but it's kind of... weird to ask you about."

Alex

"Well," and meanwhile he's trying to figure out what the hell she might ask that's so bad, steeling himself for the worst sorts of questions: so, do you have sex with she-wolves? "I'm not gonna get offended, so you might as well ask."

Heather Sinclair

"I'm not worried about you getting offended," she says, a touch dryly. "It's more just...weird and embarrassing. They said something about how I don't have any relatives who are, uh, like you guys. So if any of you guys come around and want to ...you know, be with me and stuff, like long-term and all that, they need to talk to you and there's some kind of... paperwork?

"To be honest it all sounded really screwed up. There was this whole speech about how I can carry on with my life and so forth but that it would be in everyone's best interests if I didn't seriously date or commit to anyone who isn't, y'know, like... in on the club. Which I guess kind of makes sense, just in a logistics and secrecy sense or whatever, but there was this whole weird vibe underneath it that really sounded like there being paperwork and stamps of approval for, like, having babies or something. I'm not exactly keen on Republicans dictating my uterus, so I don't know why you guys should, either, and... I guess maybe if you could explain what that's all about?"

Alex

Oh god. It's worse than he thought. Way worse. He can't believe they didn't talk her through all this at the Sept. He can't believe they left it for him to explain, those douchebags.

Alex is silent for a long, long time. Then he says, "Listen, this might take a while to explain. We should probably just meet up. Maybe I can come over to your place. Or if you're not comfortable with that, my ramen offer's still good."

Heather Sinclair

They talked through a great deal of it, but in very crisp, businesslike terms. There was no discussion. There was an assumption that she understood it, that it made perfect sense. Something about how there aren't many of them in the world -- very noble, very tragic -- and then they launched into this discussion of carrying on with dating as she pleases but nothing serious, please, and in the middle there was this whole part skipped over.

The messy parts. The parts about what happens when Garou mate with Garou. The parts about how Kin aren't just support staff or maids or clean-up crew or even what Alex made it sound like. Carriers of the gene was closer to it. Carriers, which starts to translate into 'breeders'.

She's asking him, somewhere in there, to tell her that's not actually how it is, that she can have babies when and with whomever she wants, or not at all, and that the rest of her life choices do not have to take into account the people in that building downtown. That isn't the truth, though.

"...Um," she says at first, then. "Well. I've got two roommates who aren't... y'know. In on anything, obviously. And Bubby is kinda picky about guys that come over." And they can't meet in public, for the same reason they can't meet at her place. "I was about to go for a run but I can come over after. What's your address?"

Alex

So he gives her his address, and it turns out it's nowhere near the Caern. It's over in PB, on one of the larger boulevards a block or so from the beach: one of your standard ugly 1960s so-cal apartment complexes with flat roofs and pink walls, a fenced swimming pool and some palm trees. He starts giving her directions, too, but by then she's probably looked him up on Google and has the street view pulled up.

"I'll see you in, what, twenty minutes?" he confirms. And she says yes. And they hang up, and Alex goes to see if he still has spinach and polish sausage in the fridge. For ramen, of course.

Heather

More like an hour, she tells him, a little surprised. It's an awkward little conversational dance there for a moment, where he starts in on her not having a car and she's not going to run to his place, wait, he'll just come pick her up and she's saying no perhaps two or three times more than is necessary, right in a row, reminding him she's going to go for a run before she leaves and she's got to like, shower and he's interrupting with a really boisterous OH like he's smacking himself in the forehead (only he's not). They both say okay a couple of times.

She takes Bubby on his walk first, after she changes. It's cut a little short, and he's whining when she takes him back to the house, wanting to go, why can't he go, but he gets a treat and he knows she loves him, oh yes, treattreattreat she loves him yes. And then she goes out, putting in her earbuds and taking off in the shoes that cost her close to a hundred dollars, her capri-length, skin-tight pants, a light hoodie on over her sports bra. She thinks of just running all the way to this guy's place -- realizing as her feet pound pavement that she still has no idea what his name is -- but it would mean passing through some really bad areas, it's already dark, she doesn't have Bubby with her, she'd show up pink and sweaty and if he's a werewolf and not a normal human being she's not sure that would send the right message.

So she turns up her workout mix on her iPod and runs until she gets to that place, that place where she feels like she just woke up, she's got her heart pounding and it's about as good as dancing, all the high-bps trance songs that make up the majority of the mix are blending together, and then she jogs home, cooling down as she goes. Bubby is as excited when she gets in the door as he was when she first got home, wagging his tail and stretching out his neck, laying his muzzle across her abdomen and looking up at her in the sort of utter adoration she wouldn't even recognize in a human face, because no guy has ever looked at her quite like that. She rubs the back of his head and neck, kisses the top of his stupid blocky skull, and by now her roommates are home.

They're still shaken up. So is she. She's not a great liar, and explaining how she got so separated from them -- and lost her shoes -- was a trial. They're all worried that she went out for a run, they're all worried that she's leaving again. So she lies again, while she's stripping down and turning on the water to warm for a shower.

"I've got a date," she says, letting her hair down from its ponytail. If it were drinks with a friend, they might want to come, and there'd be no reason to say no, because they usually come if they feel like it, her work friends like her college friends -- well, at least these two college friends. They like Melissa more. Julie was a physical therapy student, and they don't have a ton in common, even if they all think it is Very Nice that Julie works with injured vets and whatever. Anyway. Telling them it's a date turns out to be worse, because they have a dozen questions and in the end she's going guys. guys. I'm standing here trying to get naked and take a shower so I can go, will you just... shoo?

They shoo. She showers. And... now they're going to ..

Sit on her bed and talk about what she's wearing. The finer points of first-date wardrobe. They look disturbed when she puts on jeans. Where is this date, a dog park? So she takes off the jeans and takes a pair of black pants that she often wears to work -- and they look at her like she has a second head. And she can't get mad at them. They are her friends and if this really were a date this is exactly what they'd be doing, and she'd be kinda nervous-happy and they'd be really eager for it to go well even if the guy turns out to not be long term because Heather seriously needs to get back in the game as if three months is an eternity (they are, after all, twenty-three).

In the end, she wears a skirt, because 'dinner at his place' is not a dog park or a strenuous activity and it sounds romantic and so they have to insist she wear a skirt. She wears a pair of cute flats because they want her to look adorable but heels would be a little too dressy-dressy, you know? And she should look comfortable to be at his place, oh, definitely. They veto the flatiron, which Heather is glad of, because Christ, now she's going to be late. They accentuate what her hair does naturally, that's all. They make sure her sweater is a nice low v-neck to show off some cleavage, because good lord, she's not a nun, and it'd be wrong to cover up what that good lord gave her. This is also the purpose of the pendant necklace Julie picks out: to draw the eye.

Her cheeks are burning. They think she's shy and tease her, delighted to be dating vicariously through her. Julie is the expert here. The guys she goes out with are all well-built. They are masseurs and physical trainers and other therapists and occasionally work for the military, or are the brothers of guys in the military. And she goes out often enough that it isn't even cause for the other girls to get excited. She has dating down to a science. Except Heather isn't dating. Anyone. She looks at the clock and flaps her hands to get her friends to stop fussing over her and grabs her bag, heading for the door.

They'll feed Bubby after they eat, Melissa promises, just before Heather asks, and Heather is about to say she's not going to be gone long, and they're teasing, god, the teasing is making her turn red and not for the reasons they think. She goes out to the Elantra in the driveway -- Melissa's car is a POS that gets parked streetside and Julie's stays in the garage because her Daddy gave it to her and it is worth about as much as the house itself -- and tosses her bag in the passenger seat, glancing at herself in the rearview. Jesus Christ.

She looks really cute. There is some pride in that, and after a good workout she does have a tendency to flirt with herself in the mirror because damn, she's such a sexy little thing, but she looks first-date cute. If this were a first date, she would be so grateful to her friends, because her outfit really is perfect and her makeup is just right and not overdone and not covering up her freckles with concealer was the right choice. Except she's going to beer-hiccup dude's place for ramen. To talk about why the Executive Kinfolk Liaison mentioned paperwork involved in her getting into any long-term relationships with Garou or Kinfolk. The concept of a long-term relationship with a human wasn't even on the table. The proximity of this discussion to a mention about their species' dwindling numbers was unsettling.

BeerBurpDouche is going to think she's making herself pretty for her impregnation or something.

She scowls, and pulls out of the driveway, heading west.

It's more than an hour. The walk with Bubby, the run, the shower, the time her roommates spent fixing her up -- she's so frustrated. At least the traffic clog is mostly over. She does send a text message on her way, though, letting him know she'll be late, blames her roommates. And it's an hour and fifteen, an hour and twenty after that phone call before she finds a parking spot, slings her bag over her shoulder, and heads up the stairs and down the catwalk til she finds the apartment number he gave her and knocks.

Alex

Pretty much the minute Heather parks and steps out of her little Elantra, she hears someone banging on the drums. Doing pretty well too, thank you very much, but still: banging. on. the. drums. The din gets louder and louder as she approaches the address Alex gave her, and eventually she comes to the unavoidable conclusion that, yes, Beer Burp Douche is also Drumkit Douche.

It takes her three or four tries to get him to hear her over the noise he's making. Either that, or he's just ignoring her until the set's over. When the cacophony crashes to a close, Heather can hear scuffling inside, something banging against the wall, someone going Ow!, and then the door opens. Alex is wearing gym shorts and an a-shirt that Heather is fairly sure is actually underwear. He looks her up and down, his eyes pausing a moment at her cleavage (thanks Julie! the pendant worked!) before coming back to her face.

There's this, at least: having only seen her at a club and here, Alex doesn't assume she's dressed to impress him. He just assumes she always dress like this, being a little sorority girl and all. "Hey," he says, and throws the door open hard enough to bang on the wall. There's already, if Heather looks later, a significant dent there. "C'mon in."

The apartment is miniscule. It's actually just a studio: standing at the door, Heather can see everything. The cramped little kitchen where Alex has, in preparation for Heather's arrival, set out ramen, polska kielbasa, and a bag of ready-to-eat spinach. The futon, currently in sofa mode, the rolled-up sleeping bag and pillow at one end making it unmistakably also Alex's primary bed. The inordinately large, nice, expensive entertainment system - a huge flatscreen TV, a BluRay-capable multimedia center, five tweeters and a subwoofer. The Xbox, the PS3. The drumkit and, out on the equally miniscule balcony, both a large punching bag and a speedbag.

There's also a very small bathroom in the back. There might not even be a tub in there. And the drumkit, taking up most of the front part of the studio. There's no dining table; there's a coffee table, though.

Alex, meanwhile, has closed the door behind Heather - which is also a prerequisite to opening the fridge door. He doesn't seem to get much company; he has the eager awkwardness of an infrequent host. "You want a soda? Maybe a beer?" He checks in the freezer. "I've got ice cream too. We can make ice cream floats if you want."

Heather

Strangely, the drumming doesn't bother Heather. Even as she gets close to his door, and even realizing that it's almost eight o'clock and his neighbors probaby don't love it, it at least adds more dimension than 'beer burp'. She likes the drums. And she's no dummy, so she pounds on the door every time she knocks, using the side of her fist, til he answers. He is not dressed well. She is. He assumes it's because she always looks something like this -- which is partly true, but mostly not.

When he takes his eyes off of her tits she has her eyebrows up a little, the sort of glance that would never touch her face if she had been raised in the Nation: it's almost a challenge, sort of a warning. It's exactly the sort of look she'd give any beer-burp-douche if he decided to check out her cleavage. Excuse you. Even if, yes, the top and the pendant are a combination to bring one's attention right there. But that's if she's on a date.

She is not dating Beer Douche.

The door bangs the dent in the wall a little further in, and she steps inside, unshouldering her bag and letting it hang at her side as she steps in. She looks around and looks openly surprised, blinking as the door closes behind her. "This is where you live?" she says, with evident bewilderment more than judgement. Her mama taught her better than that. She looks a little embarrassed to have blurted it out, and is all ready to backpedal, but he's just babbling about soda and beer and ice cream and so forth.

"Um... sure. I'll take a beer," she says, and adds: "Thanks," because she's polite, and that is how her mama raised her. She also realizes, a moment after, that taking the alcohol route (which just sounds good after work, and since she did work out and she deserves it, and because this is going to be awkward enough without being sober) might make it sound like she plans on staying awhile, or maybe like she'd drive after one beer, which she has only done a couple of times and she felt really really bad, about it --

Heather exhales. She's overthinking. So she looks around for a place to sit, but doesn't just yet.

Alex

So he flips her a beer from the fridge, and yes, it's in a can, and yes, he sleeps in a sleeping bag, and yes he lives in this cramped little hole. With his drums. And his Xbox. And very little else.

"Here," he precedes her into the living/sleeping area and grabs his sleeping bag off the futon, dumps it on the floor. At least it's a nice sleeping bag: one of those jumbo ones with a removable flannel lining and a built-in pillow pad. "Have a seat," he invites. "I'm just gonna go put the water on for ramen. I know you've got questions but lemme just get the water boiling and we can talk."

She must think he just moved in, except the place looks lived-in. There's a bit of dust on the coffee table. When he opens the cupboards, they look full. And the cables behind the TV look tangled, the way electrical cables always get after a while no matter how OCD you are about setting them up. And Alex, despite his overall demeanor of don't-give-a-fuck, is actually sort of OCD about that.

"I would've had it ready when you got here," he adds from the kitchen, all of about six feet away, "but I didn't know when you'd actually show up and I didn't want the noodles to get all gross."

Heather

It isn't something from Stone, unfortunately. It isn't terribly good beer, but Heather started drinking beer when she was still in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas. She got her sea legs on crappy, cheap, canned stuff. So she catches it. And doesn't hunch over and bend her knees and barely catch it in both hands before it hits to the floor. She catches a glimpse of him tossing at her from the corner of her eye and brings up one hand -- her left, actually -- just in time, the aluminum smacking safely into her palm. She doesn't open it immediately, but taps the top to try and settle some of the bubbles of air.

He walks past her into the main area and shoves his sleeping bag aside. The futon is low, as all futons are, and in a skirt it's a little bit of a challenge to lower herself demurely. She manages, setting down her bag, then the beer on the coffee table, then smoothing her skirt down under her thighs before she sits.

The place definitely looks lived in. She doesn't think he just moved there, but he clearly doesn't clean up much. He's dented the wall with his door. She turns a little and watches as he rambles around the kitchen, then just opens her beer and takes a drink, her knees together and her legs slightly outstretched. He mentions not knowing when she'd 'actually' show up and she winces. "I really am sorry about that," she says, leaning forward a bit against the tops of her legs, holding the can. "I was just going to shower and throw on something before I came over, but my friends wanted to know where I was going, and I lied, and... well, they kinda got excited about dressing me up and stuff. I'm sorry it took so long."

Alex

"What? Oh, hey no no no. That's not what I meant. That wasn't supposed to be some passive aggressive guilt trip. I was just, y'know, explaining why ramen wasn't ready yet. But it will be."

He bangs a pot of water on top of the stove - an old-fashioned electric coil stove, at that - as though this definitively makes his point. Then he grabs a can of coke out of the fridge and comes to join Heather. Since she's got the couch, he throws his bedding in the middle of the floor, between TV and coffee table, and sits there.

"So what'd you tell your friends? Not that you were gonna go visit a real live werewolf, I bet."

Heather

It isn't something from Stone, unfortunately. It isn't terribly good beer, but Heather started drinking beer when she was still in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas. She got her sea legs on crappy, cheap, canned stuff. So she catches it. And doesn't hunch over and bend her knees and barely catch it in both hands before it hits to the floor. She catches a glimpse of him tossing at her from the corner of her eye and brings up one hand -- her left, actually -- just in time, the aluminum smacking safely into her palm. She doesn't open it immediately, but taps the top to try and settle some of the bubbles of air.

He walks past her into the main area and shoves his sleeping bag aside. The futon is low, as all futons are, and in a skirt it's a little bit of a challenge to lower herself demurely. She manages, setting down her bag, then the beer on the coffee table, then smoothing her skirt down under her thighs before she sits.

The place definitely looks lived in. She doesn't think he just moved there, but he clearly doesn't clean up much. He's dented the wall with his door. She turns a little and watches as he rambles around the kitchen, then just opens her beer and takes a drink, her knees together and her legs slightly outstretched. He mentions not knowing when she'd 'actually' show up and she winces. "I really am sorry about that," she says, leaning forward a bit against the tops of her legs, holding the can. "I was just going to shower and throw on something before I came over, but my friends wanted to know where I was going, and I lied, and... well, they kinda got excited about dressing me up and stuff. I'm sorry it took so long."

Alex

"Oh. Cool."

And Alex is silent for a moment too, and maybe Heather thinks oh god he thinks he's going to have to let me down easy but it's not that. He's looking at the coke can in his hands, which he pops open, and by then he's smiling a little. He looks - well. Quietly, stupidly pleased. If Alex is ever quiet about anything.

"So uh." He takes a swig too, and looks at her. "You had some questions I think. About like. Garou. And kin. And ... " too late, he realizes what an awkward, ill-timed segue this is. "Well. About that sort of stuff. Right?"

Heather

[crap. DELETE THAT. lol]

Heather

They are both so awkward. Hard to blame them; it's a strange situation. Heather even begins to apologize, nonono, she didn't mean he was being passive-aggressive, she just felt bad, she's never late, etc. But she is overthinking again, and quiets down halfway through yet another explanation.

"Uhm... I told them it was a date. Cuz if it was just drinks with a friend or work people, they might want to come, and I couldn't think of anything else..."

Her cheeks are pink. She drinks a heavy swig of beer.

Alex

"Oh. Cool."

And Alex is silent for a moment too, and maybe Heather thinks oh god he thinks he's going to have to let me down easy but it's not that. He's looking at the coke can in his hands, which he pops open, and by then he's smiling a little. He looks - well. Quietly, stupidly pleased. If Alex is ever quiet about anything.

"So uh." He takes a swig too, and looks at her. "You had some questions I think. About like. Garou. And kin. And ... " too late, he realizes what an awkward, ill-timed segue this is. "Well. About that sort of stuff. Right?"

Heather

Heather is quite busy fighting down her blush of embarassment and drinking her beer and not making eye contact, thank you very much. Too busy, in fact, to notice that Alex looks a little bit pleased, looks like he's smiling. She does think for a moment that, well, he's a douchebag, and he probably is as entitled and smarmy as any of them, so he probably is about to 'talk her down', which only makes her redden more, but he doesn't. And she doesn't look at him, doesn't see that smile, so she doesn't think that maybe she has to let him down easy.

So, uh.

They drink.

He brings up the reason she's here, which is not really for ramen -- Christ -- and shitty beer and conversation about non-dates. Heather straightens her back a little, looking over at him again, nodding. Truth be told, it's hard to remember when she looks at him that he's 'Garou'. He is absolutely nothing like the majority of the ones she met at 'headquarters' the other day, and he was so firmly implanted in her mind as a jerk with fists that she has trouble recalling exactly what he looked like when he changed. Except then she thinks about him changing, and it's crystal clear again, sudden and undeniable: his face shifting, his fangs growing, his eyes turning a little more gold, a little less hazel.

Garou and Kin and that sort of stuff. "Yeah, just... they glossed over some of that like it just went without saying. "I mean, you mentioned the whole... gene-carrying thing, but apparently all that does in my life is make it so I remember it when you guys change, but only into that one shape. Apparently people don't freak out if you're just... y'know, a wolf-wolf." She exhales, taking a sip. She's really skipping her way through that beer.

"But when I left I also saw like... these pamphlets in a Do Not Remove From Caern exclamationpointexclamationpointexclamationpoint stand and they like, had these women on front?" She glances at him. "Pregnant women? And of course they're all smiling and glowing and standing between these other two, a guy and a woman who is kinda... partially wolfy and all three of them are like... touching the pregnant belly? So I picked one up to see what it was and at the bottom was this big pink 'SURROGACY AND YOU' thing and that's when I got seriously weirded out."

Alex

Alex almost chokes on a mouthful of coke. He's seen those pamphlets too. Grabbed a handful and mocked them loudly in ridiculous voices, too, until the EKL came over pissed off as hell because the stupid dumbass actually thought they were very tasteful and wonderful. And he starts telling Heather this story - how he was horsing around with the pamphlets making up dialogue like OH, I AM SO FULFILLED NOW THAT I HAVE AN EMBRYO IN MY UTERUS AND A HUNDRED GRAND IN THE BANK, TEEHEE! and HOOH, I SUCCESSFUL GAROU BECAUSE I HAVE IMPREGNATED KIN IRREGARDLESS OF MY BIOLOGICAL SEX and

somewhere in the middle of this recounting he remembers, oh shit, she's not 100% up to date on all the gender politics of the Garou Nation, which is really fucking shitty and he bets this is the EKL's way of getting back at him for making fun of those absurd pamphlets, because seriously, how can you give a kin an Intro To The Nation talk without mentioning that shit? And: he kind of awkwardly takes a gulp of coke, stretches to set the can down on the coffee table, and then crosses his legs on the floor. Clears his throat.

"So uh. They didn't really tell you the whole story about Garou genetics and shit, did they? Like, what happens if two full-blown homozygous Garou have a baby?"

Heather

She really wants to laugh. Her social cues tell her that yes, dude telling story thinks this is HILARIOUS and so clearly she should be laughing. And it isn't that she doesn't think it's funny. It's that she simply does not understand what the hell he's talking about. Hooh! Means nothing. The idea of being a successful Garou because of impregnating Kin gets her back up, riles all the way up her spine so quickly he can sense it, and cuts himself off.

The EKL is, in fact, getting back at him for a number of things. Fucking up the other night. All but traumatizing a lost kin who is not only lost but comes from a bloodline they're reasonably sure was once Fenrir or something. She's still quite young. She's very healthy -- they did an extensive medical history during her day at HQ, and even if they ran into fertility problems they would probably be surmountable with reasonable procedures -- and has a stable income and lifestyle. She's a gem of a lost kin, not like the ones they run into occasionally who have just as little pure breeding -- the ones they usually just kinda nudge towards the Gnawers anyway. The EKL felt very burdened with having to make Heather Sinclair feel welcome in the nation, like there was a lot of stress to overcome. So: payback.

But the truth is, she wasn't traumatized. She was shaken, she was freaked out, but not traumatized. She came to terms with it rather easily, and rathe quickly, once some things were explained to her. But some things weren't. And those are questions that do, in fact, unsettle her on a deeper level than Alex-in-crinos did.

Heather sets down the now-empty can of beer on the coffee table and gives a subtle belch, mouth covered and a soft 'excuse me' uttered and everything. She shakes her head, looking at her manicure. "I was kind of wondering about that," she says quietly. I mean... you kinda went over heterozygotes and homozygotes and yadda yadda, but ..." She frowns and looks at him again. "It'd be like a genetic diseases, wouldn't it? Like homozygous C or cycstic fibrosis or something." Her brow furrows. "Only being Garou isn't a disease, and it's still heterozygous, so... would it be like... some kind of mutation or something?"

Alex

"Yeah. A mutation's a good way to think of it. With an evolutionary advantage, really. 'Cause I mean. You saw me the other night, right? I was leaping tall buildings in single bounds. Booyeah." She probably doesn't look very impressed. Alex coughs again, then presses on. "So I guess... you've already seen the paradox, right? If this thing's a standard recessive mutation -- which it's not, by the way, the inheritance ratios are much lower than one-in-four, so it's actually more like a two-gene double-recessive mutation where you have a one-in-sixteen...

"Man, I sound like such a geek. Sorry. I read a lot. 'Cause, um." Sudden embarrassment, where even her surprised you live here? didn't bring any on. He cracks his neck with a quick jerk of his head and starts over.

"What I mean is. No matter how low your chances of inheriting, the Garou 'gene' does work like a recessive trait in that if you cross two homozygotes - two full-blown Garou - you're gonna get a Garou out. So ... on the surface, it makes no sense for us to pay so much attention to the kin - the heterozygotes, or the carrier, at least so far as survival of the mutant species is concerned. Shit, I think I'm making this complicated.

"All I'm trying to say is. I think you've already kinda ... sensed that something else was up. So when I tell you what I'm about to tell you, don't freak out and think I'm a dickhead, okay? I didn't make these rules up. And the rules basically are these:

"You can't cross two full-blown Garou. Or you can, but then the offspring always, always, always has some horrible birth defect. Plus they're sterile. In that sense, it sort of is a disease. Try to breed Garou to Garou exclusively and the species dies out in a generation. So... that's why, I mean the real reason why, kin are so important to Garou. Garou-kin ... matings are literally the only way to reliably propagate the species. The chances of getting a Garou from a Garou-human mating is virtually nil.

"And our species ... my species, if I'm being honest, because kin are doing just fine - but my species, the Garou, are on the verge of extinction. So yeah. That's why you see so much just-under-the-surface obsession over babies."

The water is boiling on the stove now. Alex is watching Heather warily; he makes no move to go make ramen.

Heather

Heather just quirks a brow at him when he booyeahs the experience of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. She wants to say no, she didn't see him, because she was screaming her head off and trying not to hurl and burying her face against his fur at the time, but he seems to realize she's not in awe of his prowess without her saying so. They talk about genetic mutations instead. And:

for all of her sorority/valley-girl talk, Heather is actually quite bright. He still doesn't know where she went to school -- or even that she's out of school yet -- or what she does for a living, but she's not having trouble following talk of genetics. Heterozygotes, homozygotes. Yet: not a biologist, by far. He starts going off on the math of it and she just quirks an eyebrow at him, and he trails off, kind of embarrassed, he sounds like a geek.

"No, don't apologize," she says, even though she knows full well that 'sorry' wasn't really something worth remarking on. She tells him not to say sorry like he says sorry in the first place: almost kneejerk.

The further he gets the less sense it makes, though. The logic of it is starting to, but why are they talking about what happens when two Garou mix up their genetic goo? What's the point? What 'happens'? She frowns a little, and he starts over. He tells her not to freak out, he tells her he's not a dickhead -- or at least she shouldn't think he's one, cuz he didn't make the rules. But the rules are:

Garou shall not mate with Garou.

That's the big one. He doesn't say it, but that's the case. 'Can' does not imply 'should'; in fact, in this case, it's a very hardcore 'shouldn't'. He mentions birth defects, and her brow furrows with... ache, of all things. On most girls like her it would be The Right Expression to Have, the sort of face you pull to tell the speaker not only that you're listening but that you are a good person. With Heather, the goodness is actually there. The ache is actually real. The offspring have horrible birth defects...and are sterile.

The ache begins to fade, quickly as an unraveling sweater with a string pulled, as all the tumblers start falling into place. The species dies out. This is the 'real' reason why kin are important. She turns her face away, staring at the beer can on the coffee table that she was drinking out of. It has a print of her lips from the pink, shiny lipgloss she's wearing, which smells and tastes a little like berries. Because Julie and Melissa made her dress up pretty for this.

Which is a Garou telling her that the main reason her sub-species -- and it is a sub-species, she realizes, a support species nature came up with when it realized that the primary species had an intrinsic design flaw -- exists is for breeding. Breeding healthy young kinfolk -- like her -- to healthy, strong Garou -- like him. And she came in her first date outfit. Heather looks a little pale.

Obsession over babies. Surrogacy pamphlets. Even, she wonders, the EKL dumping her in this guy's lap and saying that now he's in charge of signing all the paperwork if she decides she wants to let anyone else put a baby in her. Oh, Jesus. Her stomach turns. Her eyes feel a little hot, and Alex can see her throat move when she swallows.

She doesn't say anything for awhile, and he's just watching her, wary. Then she blinks a few times, and exhales, and says: "Could you get me another beer?"

So: he does get up from the futon, to take care of the ramen and do some cooking and to get his guest another beer. She takes it with a thank you and pops it immediately, begins chugging it like she joined a frat in college, not a sorority. She really wishes that this were like... gin or something. Something really gross but way stronger than beer. Something bracing. But Alex hasn't offered her anything like that, so she stays with the beer, drinking in silence while Alex cooks this supposedly amazing, incredible, awesome... ramen.

He's out of the room the next couple of times she belches, but she does so quietly enough that he probably doesn't even know, and the myth that women never burp remains mostly intact. Heather has settled enough by the time he comes back with food that she can thank him, looking with some surprise at what he's actually brought her.

"Oh," she says, and adds: "Thank you. This... smells really good."

It's a few bites or more into dinner before Heather really has much to say. When she does, she takes a breath and stares at the broth while she talks: "I watched a lot of videos," she says. She told him that. But he's never seen those videos. They're for Kin, really. The cubs do other stuff. And San Diego is not the same as Miami. "One of them was about the... Wyrm? And it was really long and complicated, but the meat of it... there was footage, like real footage, of these... fomori-things. And this voiceover was going on the whole time of how a fomori is made, and how even regular people can... get so messed up, so easily.

"It never really came out and said it," she goes on, "but I think the real underlying 'message' was that in this war that's been going on forever and will go on forever, the Garou -- really, the planet -- well... we're kinda losing."

Which is sobering. She wants another beer. Or like, an AMF. Or three.

Heather looks over at him. "I mean, after you told me about that guy at the club and what he was really into, I kind of got it. I did. But that video just... it gets so much worse than pedophiles. And I'm hearing myself say that, that there's this very real, very in-your-face stuff that is worse than pedophiles and I want you to know it's taking a lot for me to not freak out thinking about that, but...I do understand. That it's important. That if your species dies out, there's very, very little standing between the world as we know it being turned into a totally literal... hell. I can even figure out that that's why the surrogacy thing is... y'know, a thing. Cuz Garou have to fight no matter what kind of plumbing they have and if a female gets pregnant that's nearly a year out of commission when the 'front lines' are already slammed, and... I get it."

She speaks rather quietly. Sanely. There's emotion there, several emotions in fact, but she faces facts like someone who simply does not know what else to do. This is reality: she's been faced with it, and she is not so weak-willed nor foolish to close her eyes or struggle against it like a child refusing to go to bed or take a bath. This is what's real. This is the truth.

"So I guess what I want to know is... from a purely militant and logical standpoint, why is it even still vol-- well, I guess I can figure that out, too. That video had a lot about how there's this cycle of depravity and sometimes the bad stuff people do just feeds the Wyrm and sometimes its the Wyrm pushing them, but... I guess if the Garou just started farming kin for babies or raping them they'd just... be monsters. Like the ...Spiral ones. And lose it all anyway."

Heather goes silent again, staring at her partially-eaten ramen. She frowns, her mouth kind of tight, thinking hard to herself. Finally, she exhales, and sighs, and picks up her fork: "Wow.

"Okay, then."

She begins to eat.

Alex

Well; he's right about one thing: she's no idiot. Alex really doesn't say much at all. He cooks, and she thinks, and then he brings her a huge bowl of epic ramen and she eats while he eats straight out of the pot, and

then she starts talking, and he watches her and listens, and he keeps quiet, and pretty much without any input from him she figures out that a) the war sucks, and b) they're losing, and c) they're losing because they have a personnel shortage, and d) morals and free will and all those pesky things are a big reason why they have such a shortage, but e) if they just threw all that out, they'd be no better than the ones they were fighting. And then they'd lose the war anyway.

It's an awfully cold, calculated way to think about it. It's a little chilling to realize by and large, the tribe - maybe the entire Nation - refrains from breeding and farming the kin not out of some deepseated sense of honor but simple fear of corruption. There's a difference there, not unlike the difference between being a good person because you're a good person, and being a good person because you're afraid to burn in hell.

She's quiet, then. And he's eating his ramen a little noisily, slurping, munching on slices of sausage and bits of cooked spinach. Mmm, sodiiium. And after a while he sets his fork down and looks at her and says,

"Truth is there's been some talk in the last ten years about ... enforcing reproductive strategies. 'Puppy-milling', the term is. It's been pretty fucking controversial, and most people - most Garou - are vehemently against it, thank god. But there are other tactics already underway, particularly in our Tribe -- they taught you about Tribes, right?

"There are the guys who are talking about -- and already allowing -- Garou to mate with Garou if they want to, because even if those cubs are born twisted and sterile, they're still guaranteed to be Garou. And a lot of people think the war's going to be over in the next ten or twenty years, so all we really need are shock troops. That's still pretty controversial, though. But then there are people who are talking about expanding the current surrogacy programs, passing a quota for fertile kin between certain ages - like you'd have to bear one surrogate child or something if you aren't mated to a Garou already. Or even if you are. And that's getting a little less flak. Then finally there are the people talking about developing and expanding fully in-vitro systems. Literally growing babies in test tubes. And that technology's still being worked on, but it's right on the horizon. Once that comes out you can bet there might be calls for everyone - Garou or kin - to donate sperm and eggs so they can just grow new Garou.

"It's complicated," he finishes, making a face. "And there's a huge grey area that everyone has different feelings about. I mean for me - obviously puppymilling is way out of the questions. But you keep coming down the ladder and ... y'know, if next year the test tubes are ready and I could donate so they can grow kids and hand them out to volunteer foster families to raise? I might be okay with that. I might even be okay with it if I had to donate once a year or something. As long as I had some assurance that these kids aren't going to grow up in some ... 1984 learning pod or something.

"Anyway. I guess what's most applicable to us, right now, is this: you don't have to worry about me getting in your business, okay? I'm not gonna lie to you and say it won't make any difference at all in the war whether you spend your life 'serving the Nation,' as they like to put it, or if you spend it pretending we don't exist. It will make a difference. There's so few of us now that the actions of every single one makes a difference.

"But ... like you've already figured out, you can't force any of this. If you do, you just end up turning the good guys into monsters. Whatever you do, you gotta do it because you want to, and because you know what the stakes are now. And hell, even if what you end up doing is marrying some nice human boy and moving to the 'burbs, you can still make a big difference in ways the bigwigs in the Nation don't really account for. Sure, you might not give birth to three glorious heroes of the Nation. But you might end up, I don't know, starting a company looking at ecofriendly fuels. Lessen the carbon footprints of the US by 0.0001%, which might not sound like much, but will probably do just as much good as an entire pack of glorious heroes fighting for their entire lives. Or you might end up coaching little league in your spare time and keep some kids out of trouble. Which might not sound like much either, but that might be five fewer fomori we have to kill in ten, twenty years. You get my point, right?"

Heather

The thing about Heather is: she doesn't feel like it's cold, to stop oneself from doing evil solely because of the consequences. It still takes goodness to want to avoid the evil. It still takes honor to recognize that risk and abstain from it. She sees that they don't do it because it isn't right, but she can also see that because it isn't right, it leads to things that are even worse. Total capitulation often does.

She goes quiet, eating -- and accepting. Alex picks up the train of though, though, telling her that there are voices in the Nation and within the Tribe -- yes, they told her about Tribes, and it seemed very silly, antiquated, and prejudiced to her, but she doesn't tell him that, she just nods -- that actually are trying to think of ways to stop themselves from going extinct. She blames nature, in her own mind. Survival of the fittest, right? If you can't even breed your way out of extinction, there's a problem. Well, she thinks to herself, that's not fair. Survival of the fittest works when you aren't endangered by factors that have nothing to do with nature. Which pretty much sums up the Wyrm's influence on the proliferation of Garou.

The mention of 'puppy milling', which is incredibly cold, makes her wince. She's uncomfortable hearing it, talking about it. She feels her stomach flip-flop at the idea of the war being 'over' in ten or twenty years, and she doesn't think he means in their favor. God. She looks at the polska kielbasa floating in her broth and seems quite sad for a moment. Her jaw tightens at the idea of fertile kin being 'required' to bear one surrogate child or osmething. But she seems interested in the in-vitro systems. She looks over at him, her brow quirked.

It is complicated.

"I think you mean Brave New World," she says quietly. "About the learning pods and stuff. 'I'm so glad I'm not a Gamma' and all that. Electric shocks when they reach for books and flowers." She spears a bit of sausage on her fork and eats it while he goes on. She eats steadily, and she eats her spinach as well, and she doesn't scarf or talk with her mouth full but she isn't dainty and girlish about it, either. She has an appetite. She is quite glad for the heavy protein and the carbs after her run.

Alex tells her all sorts of things she can do to help, even if she doesn't want to 'breed', strictly speaking. She huffs a little laugh. "To tell you the truth, I think settling down with some nice human boy is out of the question now. I mean, what would I do, just lie to him forever?" Heather shakes her head. "I guess I feel the same way about surrogacy and donations and stuff. I get it, I do, but... I mean, I've always... kinda known I wanted to have kids. I do. Maybe not anytime soon, but... if I did get married and all that, I'd want that." She chews a little on her lip, frowning. "What I don't want is someone else raising my kid. I don't want to just bear someone else's and then have to give them away, either. But now there's this whole added thing where, okay, maybe I'll end up having a kid who is... y'know. A werewolf. Or will have to breed with a werewolf. Or who might not see their twentieth birthday."

She swallows hard, and clears her throat, and exhales. "I mean, it's good to know there's other stuff that's important, too, just... yeah. It kinda... changes the whole face and underlying purpose of where I saw my life going."

Heather reaches for her second beer can and, finding it empty, just sets it down again. She looks over at him. "I'm really sorry to just now be mentioning this, but... I don't even know your name."

Alex

It sounds so depressing to Alex when Heather talks about this - this one thing, this one unlucky meeting at a nightclub on an otherwise ordinary night in her life - changing everything. The entire course of where her life is going from here on out. It might help if he knew that even before this she had moments where she wondered, is this all there is? Then again - it might not. In many ways, finding out what else is out there only constricts her options further.

He looks at her, though, when she says she doesn't even know his name. He's surprised, and then he's pissed off at the EKL. "That ass," he says, "I thought he'd at least attach a name to the number.

"Alex." He sticks his hand out. It's warm and rough and he gives her hand a sturdy pump. Alex isn't a creature given to bouts of depression - already he's cheering up, settling into the easier interactions of introductions. "Alex Vaughn. I have a brother who's Garou too, so don't mix us up if you email me or something. He's Aaron, I'm Alex. Ay-Em-Vaughn at Gee Dub dot net. I'm a Galliard, if that means anything to you.

"And actually," half-sheepish, half-laughing, "I was thinking of the Vulcan learning pods in Star Trek. But that didn't seem dystopic enough."

Heather

The upside of the beer is that it's finally hitting her system. The upside of the ramen is that it's helping her not be drunk. Two beers. Yes. Two beers. She is not a heavy drinker, as much as she thinks about how cool it would be if she were. She drinks slowly at clubs, stays for hours, does not do shots As A Rule. Two beers is enough to loosen her limbs and make her relaxed, but some of that comes from within, too: someone who spends all his days with his own rage and the rage of others can tell how calm she is. She is not easily upset, not easily 'freaked out'. She takes stress in stride. She accepts that yes, there are werewolves. She accepts that they are dying out in a war they're losing. She accepts that one of her primary roles is that of breeding stock, because otherwise, the world falls off a cliff

and into fire.

So it depresses Alex, however briefly, to hear that him saying Hey to her has changed the entire course of her life. It wasn't as though he knew; Heather would be upset if she knew he were briefly down over it. It wasn't as though it was anything like his fault. It isn't, she'd say, like they know for sure she would have gone another day, week, or year without finding out anyway. Maybe there is such a thing as fate. She doesn't know; human begins aren't supposed to know. It's half the point.

Alex. He offers his hand with the name and she takes it, giving back a handshake just as firm, not quite as energetic. It's the sort of handshake that men are often surprised a girl, much less a girl like her, can give. "Oh!" she says, seeming almost pleased when he mentions his e-mail address. "GW.net," she goes on, digging around suddenly in her bag for her phone. "I set up my account while I was there the other day. Mine is Ach-Jay-dot-Sinclair at da-da-da etcetera. It'll notify my phone, too, so. Yeah." She holds up her phone. "Smile!"

He barely has time to do so, if he does, before the shutter sound goes off and she captures his face to store along with his contact information. He may or may not have ramen in his mouth at the time.

Heather puts her phone away again. "And no, Roddenberry had a pretty utopian view of the future." She reaches for her bowl of ramen and sausage and the like, drawing it back towards herself. "Galliard makes sense," she says. "The tribes and auspices were relatively easy to memorize, I think it kinda... gave my brain some orderly scaffolding to hang the rest of it on, maybe. So what kind is your brother? Who's older? What's the M stand for?"

She pauses. "I'm sorry. I'm not being weird or nervous or whatever, I just... I actually am curious and I'm used to writing lists of questions in e-mails at work, so... I'm not trying to be rude or awkward. I just don't want to forget anything."

Alex

Alex does not, in fact, get to smile for the picture. She grabs a snap of him with a forkful of ramen hanging out of his mouth, his eyebrows up, eyes wide open in a startled deer-in-headlights look. "That," he complains, "was unfair. I was totally unprepared.

"And, I'm older," Alex adds, and then grins. "By like an hour. But it totally counts. And the M is for Madoc. Alexander Madoc Vaughn. Sounds badass, IMHO." He pronounces it "I'm-aych-oh". "What about you, Heather-Jay? Wait, lemme guess. Heather ... Jennifer ... Sinclair. Did I get it?"

Heather

A grin flashes across her face at the picture, ramen noodles hanging out and mouth partly open and eyes wide, surprised, frozen forever in dumfoundedness. It's probably the first time he's seen Heather smile more than a little curve of her lips -- the grin is a totally different animal, her nose wrinkling upward just a bit, all teeth and mirth. She puts her phone away, the grin dying a natural death as he answers her questions -- yes, all of them -- neatly.

"Oh, you're twins," she says, restating the now obvious. She blinks. "God, your poor mom. And: no, but you can keep guessing."

Alex

"Heather-Jo," is his next guess. "And if that's right, I'm gonna ask you where your banjo is."

Heather

She raises her eyebrows at him, feigning affront, then simply gives a slow shake of her head.

Alex

"Heather.... Jean. Heather Jane?"

Heather

At 'Jean' her eyebrows go up higher, every nonverbal play in the book she's giving him indicating that he's close. Warmer, warmer -- bingo. Heather Jane clicks her back teeth once when he gets it, snapping her fingers and giving him a finger-gun. "Not nearly as badass as 'Madoc', I'm afraid," she says, leaning against the back of the futon.

Alex

"I like it. It flows. Better than Heather Jennifer or Heather Jo, anyway." He picks up his fork, rocking on his ass before settling again, munching. "So what do I win for guessing?"

Heather

"I knew a Rayma Jo back home," she says, for no real reason other than making conversation. "Most of my childhood, there were about four Jennifers in any one class," she says, swirling some noodles onto her fork. "And in cheerleading there were usually two or three -- or more -- other 'Heathers', so a lot of the time my teachers and coaches just called me 'Sinclair'. And on swimming and track and all that, the coaches called you by your number or last name anyway. My mom is the one who'd rattle off first-middle-and-last, you know? All dad had to do was boom out 'HEATHARRR' and I'd like, know I was in for it."

She takes a bite, and he's finished his, the two of them falling into a rhythm of eating and talking, turn-taking. And he asks her what he wins. Heather rolls her eyes, finishing her bite of noodles and licking her lips to get the last drop or two of broth, chuckling. "Uh, you get a cookie."

Alex

"Well," Alex retorts, "is it a cookie you baked? Or are you just gonna foist some store-bought junk off on me?"

Heather

"Oh, nothing that fancy," she retorts, cocking her head. "I'm just gonna buy one of those dinner-plate sized sugar cookies at the company cafeteria and write 'First Place' on it in sloppy blue icing."

Alex

"Your company serves dinner-plate-sized sugar cookies? Where do you work?"

Heather

That's a harder question to answer than he thinks. Maybe he thinks she's ...whatever. Works at a hospital or something wearing pink and decorated scrubs with her hair up. Maybe she's a transcriptionist. A receptionist. Maybe she sits at a table with a ton of other people reading from a script and getting yelled at for calling during dinner, but none of those guesses would be right.

Heather gives a small laugh and shakes her head, "No, more like--" and setting her bowl down for a second and holding her hands up to make a circle that's about 5 inches in diameter. "Which is still huge. And... I could just say I work at CBeyond, but I'm not like, in sales or IT or whatever. What I do is sort of back-end," she says, picking up her ramen and fork again, looking down as she gets another bite. "My official title is pretty boring and indicates like, what level I am and who my boss is, but I do, ah... computer systems and software engineering?"

She stirs her ramen a little. "I like it, actually. The systems engineering team is really chill, and we do charity and stuff for Make-A-Wish, which I like. I've only been there about a year, year and a half."

Alex

Alex lets out a surprised laugh. "No shit. Really? You, a computer geek? So do you, like, program? My brother's into that shit. You should talk to him." A pause; he sort of blinks. "I'm not trying to set you up with him or anything."

Heather

She gives him a Look at his laughter, his no-really, his you?, patiently waiting it out as she has so, so many times before. She decides right then not to tell him that she thought seriously about becoming a musical theater major, and that for awhile she was a vocal music major, and that it wasn't until the economy crashed that she thought about changing it to music education and then buckled down and went for the other thing that she liked, was interested in and good at, and could feasibly get a job doing in a world gone mad: computer engineering.

And she nearly destroyed all elements of a social life getting it done after a late start. It's another reason Julie and Melissa got so excited tonight: Heather just stopped dating in college. Bryan was her first and only boyfriend for three years or so. There just wasn't any time. There just wasn't any energy left, if she wanted to get out on that same 4-year plan. And that was with summer classes and special permission to take extra hours per semester. She worked her ass off. And now she could possibly own her own home before she's twenty-five, especially if she jumps on something before the market swings back to the sellers.

"I am not a computer geek," she says primly, "I am an engineer. I actually... don't do as much programming as you'd think. It's hard to describe. If you want, you can just suffice it to say 'I make the thingies do the thing'. That's how Julie puts it."

His brother. She should. But he's not. Heather blinks; she wasn't even thinking that. And a minute ago she was thinking of asking this guy if they were flirting, because the cookie thing kinda was, but she didn't because she thought that if anyone was flirting it was her and not him. This sort of clinches it, she thinks. "Uh... I... didn't think you were." A beat. She's looking at her bowl, faintly embarrassed, hiding it well.

Alex

The truth is: he was flirting. He's not very good at it (Exhibit A: "Hey (beer burp)."), and he may not have even been entirely aware that the cookie thing was flirting. But it was.

That moment's past, though, and now he's put his foot in it, and she's embarrassed - or maybe angry - or maybe just wondering where her ramen went. The last possibility is the only one Alex can conceivably fix, so he all but jumps to his feet, holding his hand out for her bowl.

"You want more? There's more."

Heather

He moves faster than he thinks he does. He doesn't spend much time around kin, even less time around humans -- around around, not just watching them ignore him in a nightclub or whatever. 'Sitting on a couch and talking with them' around them, like he is with Heather. Who is kin, and seems to be taking that bombshell rather well all things considered, but who was very recently -- as in about seventy-two-hours-ago recently -- human.

She grew up with humans. She went to school with humans. She works with humans. She lives with humans. Alex is the first werewolf she's met -- as far as she knows, but she's almost completely certain, given what she's seen of werewolves. And werewolves, even the most peaceable of them, are built for once incredibly specific purpose.

Alex is not one of the most peaceable of all Garou. Nor the most...perceptive. Empathetic. Call it what you will. He can't even quite read what just happened, or why the conversation seems to have been derailed, like a train going off the tracks because of an errant pebble, or if Heather is angry or embarrassed or freaked out or something, jesus, he was trying not to freak her out, not make her feel like she's gotta hook up with a virile male Garou, stat. Or something.

Heather is a little better at all of this. No, face it: a lot better. She's always been social, in spite of -- and maybe because of -- growing up as an only child. One of the few social activities she never gave up in college was her sorority, and every year after she rushed she was some new girl's 'Big'. She knows exactly what's been going on, with the exception of not being sure if Alex was flirting or if that was in her head. The last thing she is thinking about is where her ramen went.

And then, suddenly, the first thing on her mind is how the hell he can't seem to tell how fast he moves, how intense his presence is, how much of a jolt to the senses it is when he mades a sudden movement. She startles, but not enough to upset her bowl, clutching the sides of it inside and blinking up at him. "Oh -- no, I'm -- I'm fine." A huff of laughter, assauging her own startlement with a sort of gentle smoothness, laughing it off, relaxing again because something about his demeanor, as she looks at him, is a little familiar. "You gave me like... half a gallon of that stuff, I'm good."

A beat. "I mean, you don't have to stop eating if you're still hungry, I won't think it's rude or whatever." A pause. "I saw a pamphlet in one of the common areas someone had left behind. I think it was for, uh... new werewolves. It was all 'Why Am I So Hungry?' with this kid on the front clutching his stomach." She laughs a little. "It was... informative."

She's grinning at him now, sort of.

Alex

Aw, now he's gone and scared her. Or startled her. She hides it well, though - doesn't toss what's left of her broth all over the place - but he can still tell, and it makes him feel bad. He thinks about telling her not to be scared of him, but that'd sort of be a lie. So he just reaches across the gap and puts his hand on her forearm a second, sort of reassuringly, he hopes. And then she's waving off his offer of more food and he's nodding and straightening up. She mentions the pamphlet. He grins; he laughs.

"It really sucks," he says, "the first time you shift or get hurt and have to regenerate or something, and no one tells you that in advance. It's like forgetting to buy food over thanksgiving weekend."

He totally does go get more. Since his studio is all one room, he doesn't feel rude, like he's walking out of the room mid-convo or something. Since. Y'know. He's not actually out of the room. He brings the pot over this time, holding it out to her:

"Grab a few more chunks of sausage at least."

Heather

If it weren't for that familiarity she's sensing, that touch on her arm might be awkward. Out of place, because she isn't scared of him, she was just startled because he jumped up so fast to try and fix... whatever. But he puts his hand on her arm and she just smiles. She's okay. And they go on.

"No thanks," she says, laughing at the pot of food he holds out. "Seriously, I'm fine. But don't worry: if I get hungry, I won't be shy about it. Deal?"

And she's leaning back, her two empty cans and her mostly-empty bowl on the coffee table, while he totally gets more. She rests her elbow on the back of the futon, her legs crossed. "The regeneration thing has to be nice, though," she says. "Whoops, my arm just got cut off -- no biggie! I'll just grow a new one. Sucking chest wound? Pfft. Ain't no thang. That'll be gone before 'Biggest Loser' is on."

Alex

"Deal," he agrees, and happily chows down on sausage. His mouth is full when she gives her rendition of regeneration. His laugh is a muffled snort.

"Well, it's not quite that good," Alex says. "I mean yeah, if you stab me or shoot me I'll be a-ok in seconds. But most Wyrmlings have nastier toys - either tainted weaponry or just their own claws and teeth. That shit'll leave a mark for days. And then there's silver. They teach you about silver?"

Heather

"Oh goodness, days," she says, deadpanning, shaking her head at the stress and horror of having to wait days to recover fully, scarless, from multiple lacerations, puncture wounds, infections, and poisonings. "That must be so hard. Though apparently I also heal faster than 'normal humans', which explains a few things."

She nods slowly to the question, though. "They did, including more gradually negative impacts. And the video did a very good job of talking about the sapping of spiritual energy actually sound scientific. But I suppose for you guys it is a discretely measurable phenomenon.

"Note:" she says, sitting up a bit, using Vanna White hands to display herself with little twirls of her wrists, "the lack of silver jewelry this evening. And this is not just due to my skin tone looking better in gold; I thought I'd be courteous to my host." A beat. "Even if I got here twenty minutes late." Shrug.

Alex

"Aw, don't worry about that. The late thing. I wasn't at all berating you. I didn't even mind, I was just chilling here and playing some Xbox. You ever play God of War? Awesome game.

"Seriously though: silver's bad. Not just because it drains us spiritually but because it cuts right through us if we're in any form but our birth form. So - if you had like a silver butterknife, and I was in Crinos? Hot knife, butter. I'm telling you this because I don't know if the EKL would've told you. Probably not, 'cause he's a dick concerned about liability. And, well, there have been kin that flipped right the fuck out when they found out. You don't seem the sort, though. And I just wanted you to know in case, y'know. One of the Dancers came after you."

A small, awkward pause.

"Or, I dunno. Some guy that can't take no for an answer. If either situation should arise," look at him, sounding all official, "mace and stab first. Then call me. Okay?"

Heather

She shakes her head. She's never played God of War. Awesome game, he says, and her eyes say Okaaay.... She was teasing, kidding around, actually

getting a step or two closer to that area where the sort-of flirting was,

and he reassures her again he wasn't berating her, don't feel bad. She just smiles. She wasn't feeling bad. Not anymore. But anyway: silver is bad. And that's harder to smile about. Hot knives through butter is a pretty vivid image to give her, and she remembers him in crinos, and it's... uncomfortable. She's frowning a little, her brow wrinkled, simply because she is the type of person who frowns at things like this. Who is unhappy to think of people getting cut up. Shot at. Hurt.

Heather nods near the end, when he says he just wanted her to know in case one of the Dancers came after her. She had some training at the caern on how to tell a Dancer from a Gaian Garou, but it all seemed pretty questionable -- she's rather sure it's highly possible that she might not know til it's too late. But then Alex adds something else, even more disturbing.

If she were a teenager, this might be the first Heather would think about that possibility, and she'd be stunned and upset and horrified. One of her one. Someone like him. He couches it in the terms it's usually couched in: some guy that can't take no for an answer. Some jerk who tries to 'take advantage'. Whatever phrase the speaker wants to use, it all means the same thing in the end. And if Heather were much, much younger, she might not have realized before right now that this could happen. The superheroic Garou, the warriors of Gaia, being... the villain. Like that.

But Heather is twenty-three. Heather has had guys push and pressure before. Heather has held her keys in her hand just in case while walking out to her car. Heather has carried pepper spray in her purse since 2007. When she was watching 'training videos' and learning about the very serious dangers associated with Dancers, she instantly connected the dots. Not all Garou are heroes, not all of them are moral. She's pretty sure there are ones out there who think that she'd owe them a little something if they helped her out of a jam, if they saved her life. She already realized, the way that any woman her age would realize, that the normal deterrents one could attempt to use on a normal human man would not work on a Garou. She saw that the other night.

She tells a human guy no, she's already at a physical disadvantage.

She tells a Garou no, and mace isn't going to do a goddamn thing. Hell, a gun wouldn't, either.

She knows.

Alex says it, awkward for a moment, then Very Official Guardian-ly, and Heather just nods, as though to try and let him know that yeah, she gets it, he doesn't have to spell it out. He's not talking about 'some guy' in this case, he's talking about a Garou. "Okay," she says. "So I guess I know what I'll be Googling tonight. I'll, ah... probably email you any I find, see if you have any input on what I buy. Maybe I can find one with a pink handle so it matches my mace."

She gives him a glittering, pageant-queen smile over her shoulder, all coy eyes and a toss of her wheat-colored hair. Bats her eyelashes. Pink!

Then, as she lets her shoulder down and drops the brief, shiny persona, she leans over and gives him a hug. Kind of out of nowhere, but sincere as anything else she's said tonight, tossing her arms around his neck and giving him a quick, not-creepy-lingering-at-all squeeze before moving back into her own space.

Alex

"Hey -- " laughing at the sudden squeeze, reaching up and around to give her an awkward counter-squeeze. "Okay."

They separate. He sinks back in the poofy nest of sleeping-bag-and-pillows he's made on the floor, stretching out. Seems like that covers all the official stuff, he thinks. He tries to figure out what else he might want to tell her. Or ask her. Or ... maybe she wants to ask him something.

"Anything else you wanna know? While we're, y'know, here?"

Heather

It's a quick hug, but he doesn't tense up or go stoic til she lets him go. He even sort of... gets his arm around her kinda weird... and like... pats her back kinda. And she laughs as she goes back to her own space, shaking her hair off her shoulder again, re-settling on the futon. She smooths her skirt. And, surprising to her, he doesn't ask her why she hugged him. At all, much less then, so suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.

So she doesn't rush to explain. She just leans onto her knees, thinking for a minute. Give her this credit: she did prepare herself with questions before coming over, but they covered a lot of it. And not in a rapidfire Q and A session, either. It flowed. It was conversational, even at some of the most awkward points, the most uncomfortable topics. She thinks, and after awhile she glances around, then back to him.

"Well... this is going to sound really bad, so please don't take it wrong, but... how do you afford any of this?" She says this like she knows how rude a question it is, how personal, but who else is going to explain to her how it does and doesn't work? "That headquarters building was pretty nice, all shiny and cutting-edge. Do they like... give you a salaray or a stipend or anything? And if they do, how come you're living... y'know. In a sleeping bag?"

Alex

"Long story short, you're paying for it." He slurps down the last of his ramen, then plunks the pot on the coffee table. "Well, not you, but kin. And some of the Garou, too. We're pretty different from most werewolves. We're not all RAR WE RUN AROUND HUGGING TREES AND BURNING MONEY. By and large we believe in staying up-to-date and sort of ... riding the tide of humanity more than trying to turn it back with twigs. There are a lot of ways to interpret that philosophy, but being good with computers and/or having MBAs are two popular interpretations.

"There's an entire sub-tribe that calls itself the Corporate Wolves, and basically... well, they are the 1%, y'know? And so are their kin, and they really sort of fund the whole tribe. I hear rumors that they're mandated to pay a 15% income tithe to the tribe or something. Don't know if that's true or not. But even if you're not a Corporate Wolf or one of their kin, their accountants and fundraising department definitely starts asking you for donations as you soon as you hit some pre-determined adjusted gross income. And if you're not making a lot they just send mail, but I hear if you're like, Bill Gates, they're basically always on your doorstep making puppy eyes until you get shamed into donating.

"Then that money goes into the tribe, and it gets spun around and distributed to different projects and packs and stuff. It's all very complicated. All Garou get a stipend, based on some mysterious sliding-rule of tribal and war contribution that I do not understand. You can apply for extra grants if you're doing something special, but...

"Well. I'm not doing anything special. And I don't fall very high on that mystery slide-rule either, since I don't have a pack, I don't have a mate and I really don't have cubs." Alex shrugs. "So I apparently don't contribute much to the war by their standards, especially since I haven't, y'know, raised a Caern or something. I don't really care. I get enough to live off of. I've thought about, I dunno, cagefighting or something to get a little extra. But it doesn't seem like it'd be fair."

Heather

She's lounging now. He's lounging, finished eating, explaining to her in broad strokes how the financial workings of the Glass Walkers operate. She puts her elbow on her knee, her hand under her chin, watching him as he speaks. There are moments when he can tell he's covered something she was either told or that she picked up on her own, because of the way she notds, or simply a degree of understanding in her eyes. She smiles a bit at the 'being good with computers and/or having MBAs' quip.

One thing they did not cover was 'sub-tribes' and sects, so that's news to her, and she soaks it up, determining to stay away from the Corporate Wolves if she can help it. She wonders what the adjusted gross income is when they start knocking on your door. She thinks of how much 15% of her income is and hopes to god nobody asks her to give that much; she's doing okay, but not that okay. Okay: they'll just send mail. For awhile.

Projects and packs and stipends and sliding rules and applications for grants -- she laughs a little, shaking her head at all of it, but that fades naturally, into something easier, then perhaps a little sympathetic. He says he's not doing anything special, doesn't have a pack or a mate or cubs so he's not really contributing, and she doesn't sit there arguing with him. She doesn't know what counts and what doesn't. For all she knows, he really is a lazy douchetard compared to the majority of Garou. What matters more, however, is that she knows she's not exactly contributing, either. He doesn't care. He has enough.

Her expression scrunches up a little at the end. "Yeah," she agrees. "That'd be kinda douchey."

There's a pause, where she thinks about how this might sound. Her parents did take her to church for years, as though they were trying to figure out how to instill some kind of morality in their child despite being pretty agnostic themselves; it was when she brought home a coloring sheet of an open book with flowers all around it and the word OBEY in huge letters across the pages that they stopped letting her go to Sunday School, because it was all just a bit too 1984 for them.

The thing is, they didn't need the church for it. They are moral people. They are good people. Hardworking, disciplined, kind, warm. But most of all, perhaps because they live in Kansas and perhaps because that's how their families raised them and perhaps because they have so much when others have so little, they are generous. And because it was not strange to have daddy's coworkers or mommy's artist ment-ee come over for Thanksgiving, they raised a child who, at her core, is kind, and warm, and most of all, generous.

And savvy. She doesn't end up telling him that if he ever needs some help, she'd be glad to. That she makes a pretty decent living for someone so young, at her first job, especially in this economy, and it's enough to let her be saving up for a down payment on a house sometime in the next five years. She doesn't tell him that she's not hurting for cash, even if she stays reasonably thrifty. She does not tell him that if he wants to, he can ask her for cash or whatever. She just finds that willingness, and sets it aside for later, because she can tell

he probably would never in a million years ask, even if he did need something. And he doesn't seem like the kind who finds himself In Need for much. He has what he really needs, and some extra. So okay.

"Do you ever wish you weren't Garou?" she asks, somewhat quietly. Quiet because, well, it's a personal question. It isn't asked flippantly.

Alex

Alex hesitates only a beat. Not because he doesn't know the answer, but because it seems such sacrilege to say it. But - as briefly as he's known her - he trusts her. He trusts his own instincts, too. He's not much good at reading people, but this much he can do. He can tell the difference between genuine and false, and everything about Heather Sinclair says real to him.

"Yeah," he says. "All the time. And y'know, there are actually ... ways you can give up your heritage. Rites and stuff. But ... well, the thing is, if everyone who wanted to give it up did, there'd be no one left to do what needs to be done. Or worse. The only people left are the ones that get off on being a big ragey monster. Which... probably isn't how you wanna run a nation. Or a war. Or anything."

A bit of a pause.

"Didn't expect you to ask though," he adds quietly. "I mean... I think most kin tend to envy Garou, if anything. And they don't ever think that maybe the other way around is kinda true too."

Heather

There is very little false about her. She wasn't even that good at pretending with the whole 007 thing at the nightclub -- though, to be fair, she was also pretty smashed. When she apologizes, it's said politely and appropriately, but there's the sense that she means it, she wouldn't say it just to Be Polite. When she's putting her mind to a problem she doesn't get frustrated with her own slowness, nor does she shy from asking a question in case he thinks she's stupid. She keeps asking him for the truth, and even when it's been uncomfortable or awkward, she's taken it in stride and recovered with grace.

The grace isn't feigned, either. She's a girly girl -- she jokes about it, even, is aware of it, but she's not apologetic for being feminine. She has a physical ease from years in athletics, and she's comfortable here. She's asking him questions about things that are impolite, and she wouldn't blame him if he refused to answer or got annoyed, but he doesn't. He just talks with her. She trusts him, too: if nothing else, she trusts that he will give her an honest answer. Even if it's not a happy one.

Like in this case: it isn't a pretty picture. Yeah. He wishes, all the time, that he weren't Garou. He knows, however, what giving up would lead to. It has its own honor, even if -- she can guess -- it isn't something most Gaoru ever talk about. Ever.

Her head tips a little to the side, hair swinging out past her knees, when he mentions that he didn't expect her to ask. "I think... now that I know what's going on? I do envy Garou a little. There's so much that has to be done and by comparison, there's so little I can do. And that... frustrates me a little, I guess. I'm close enough to it now to know how important it is, that literally everything in the world hangs in the balance, but all I'm capable of is... this background support stuff. It's like being on the other side of a wall and hearing the fighting, but you can't climb over it or dig under it or go around it or break through it. You can just hope that what you're doing on your side is making a difference for the people who are in the thick of it."

She shakes her head. "At the same time, I think it'd be so hard to be Garou. I think... it'd be lonely, most of the time."

Alex

That, of all the things they've talked about, makes Alex avert his eyes. He shifts a little - loops his wrists over his knees, grips one hand with the other. Fidgets just a bit.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "I guess it can be. You know all this stuff that other people don't, and can't, know. Maybe it's better with a pack, but I'm not too good with other people. I guess I can be, like. Abrasive."

And somehow they're talking about him. Alex is a little embarrassed. He gets up abruptly, grabbing their dirty dishes and heading for the kitchen.

"I oughta clean up," he says. Laughing, "My place is tiny, so I gotta clean up all the time or I get buried in filth."

Heather

He's lonely. She knew that before, really. She sees the way he lives, a sleeping bag on a futon and one Xbox controller with its cord neatly put away and the other one actually, frequently used. She hears the way he talks: no pack, no mate, no cubs. He doesn't do much, he says, for the war. And she saw him at a nightclub, pissed drunk, unable to even pick up a pretty girl. Heather knew, before she got to the end of what she said about what she thinks it would be like to be Garou, that it could very well be like laying her thumb on a bruise and giving it a firm press.

They're talking about him, and he's clearly embarrassed, uncomfortable, what have you. She doesn't rush to try and soothe him, but he's grabbing dishes and he's doing that thing, that thing she's even seen her mom do, where you invent a chore or grab one that a minute ago was okay to just let lie for awhile and it's this really great way of just passing through a weird conversational place, but

Heather touches his arm. Sort of the way he did earlier, trying to reassure her, no, don't be scared. She gives him a smile. And lets him go, but then she's reaching for the empty beer cans, because her mama raised her right. She best help clean up.

Alex

It surprises him, that touch on the arm. It stops him. He appreciates it, though. He looks at her hand a moment; then at her for another. He'd cover her hand with his, but he has none free,

and anyway that seems oddly personal, oddly intimate. So Alex just smiles at her, returning that gentle genuine expression of hers, before straightening up and taking the dishes to the sink.

There's no dishwasher here. There are in the larger apartments, but this is the smallest one they have. It's all right. He doesn't mind. He has everything he needs here, and even a few things he doesn't. He's happy enough here, even if he is lonely.

So he washes the dishes, and she wipes down the coffee table, which is probably the first time it's been wiped in ages. He thanks her for her help as he's putting the dishes away still wet, and she probably wants to dry them, but he says they'll dry on their own, like magic. She relents. He's pleased.

Then he's done with chores, and he's a little awkward because he doesn't know if she'll take this as a signal to go. That wasn't his intention. He's equally uncertain if she wants to go, herself. He sort of stands there a while, and then he makes some dumb little gesture with his hands.

"So like," he says, "you don't have to stay here or anything. But you should totally come by whenever you want."

Heather

He takes the dishes: bowl, forks, pot. She grabs the beer cans, balancing them and taking them to the sink to try and rinse them out, see if there's a recycling bin, but this complex doesn't pay for people to pick up recycling and this is the first time he hears Heather actually sound seriously annoyed. That is so stupid, she even says, warrior for the planet can't even recycle his aluminum. and rinses them out anyway, finding a spare bag to toss them in, which seems like a lot of effort to recycle, but, well

try telling her, tonight, to do less. That it isn't necessary. That it isn't important, somehow.

So he washes the dishes, and she takes a cloth and wipes down the coffee table, which has a thin layer of dust on it even if they didn't spill anything. She offers to dry and he says no, it's fine, and she says it's like what, four dishes total, and he says it's like magic, and

she just laughs, relenting.

But then, yes, it's a little awkward. Dinner and dishes are done, and they aren't really talking about the Nation anymore. In the back of her mind she's thinking that she's only been gone an hour, thinking that if she had to, she could head home and just tell her roommates that this 'date' of hers was ridiculous, he wore an A-shirt and shorts and made ramen, it was so not romantic, that's why she's home after only an hour, hour and a half. Alex seems a little awkward, too, neither of them quite knowing if the other wants to call it a night, and eventually he just makes a weird gesture with his hands.

Heather laughs a little, nervously, because at first it sounded like he was trying to get her to leave, except then telling her to come by whenever, and she glances over at the t.v., then looks at him. "Um... if it's okay, maybe I should stay a little while, just... make sure my buzz is killed before I drive back, y'know? If that's okay. I mean, if it's not, I'm sure I'll be fine, it was just two beers. I don't wanna impose or whatever."

Alex

"Yeah! Totally!" Alex is blurting this our around when she's saying maybe I should stay a little while, long before she gets to the rest of it. If she says it anyway, he adds - with equal enthusiasm - "Dude, it's so not an imposition. You can stay all night if you want. You can move in if you want. But it'd probably be crowded."

So he's coming back to the living/sleeping area, and he's kicking his sleeping bag out of the way and getting down on hands and knees to turn on his Xbox because apparently, in his head, having company means playing the Xbox. As the TV flares to life he unwraps the oft-unused controller, tossing it to her.

"So since you're staying," he says, "you gotta try God of War 3."

Heather

Oh, god, he's a golden retriever. He's Dug from Up, hiding under the porch. He and Bubby are so not gonna get along. She laughs at the blurt, and she's mumbling about beers and he's telling her to stay, stay all night if she wants, move in if she wants, and even though it sounds like a joke she's caught a little off guard that he would just say that, like an excited kid, and

his loneliness stabs at her again, puts her a little off-kilter. He does... come on a bit strong. She's not going to move in, but he was kidding. She's pretty sure that even if it comes from a core of truth, he was kidding.

"You read my mind," she says, following him back over to the futon when he climbs around to get the controller. "It was either that or asking what movies you have." A beat. "Which is still on the table, I... am so not a video gamer. I'm probably going to suck at this," she laughs, and sits on the futon again, smoothing her skirt again, but stepping out of her flats and tucking them to one side. Her toenails are painted a pale matte blue, rather recently pedicured.

Alex

"Pfft, games are so easy these days, no one can really suck." And he reaches over and hits the start button for her.

It turns out God of War isn't actually a fighting game. Well, it is, but it's not multiplayer, and it's not competitive. It's one of those action-adventure-RPG-things, and it seems the point is that she plays a gigantic, bald, muscle-bound dude named Kratos. Who, as Alex explains, is a captain in the Spartan army (but he insists the game predates 300). And also a demi-god. And then also a god, after he kills Ares. But then he gets demoted back to mortal by Zeus. And now apparently he's making war on the gods with the help of the Titans, but then he gets betrayed, and

it's all very complicated, and frankly rather campy-cheesy on the dialogue and plot end. But the action's great, and the effects look great, and it's generally just great fun to swing huge weapons and splash blood everywhere.

They play for - well, for as long as Heather wants to play. Mostly she's got the controller, and he's watching enthusiastically, though once in a while she gets stuck and he takes over. She discovers something: he's generous, too. Generous with his toys, glad to share, glad to let her play while he watches. He doesn't really interfere. He doesn't mock her, though he does laugh at her when she runs face-first into a cliff wall. He doesn't give unwanted advice, and once in a while he even refuses to tell her what to do because, as he says, figuring it out is half the fun.

Heather

"I'm trusting you on that," Heather says, and gets the controller ready, not quite sure... which buttons do what... but look! There's a tutorial. And there's also Alex. She is actually rather keen on the story part of it, but laughs at the burly avatar of KRATOS. Every time she says the name she booms it out: "KRATOS." She often does a small fist-shaking gesture with it as well, looking ever so badass.

A lot of Heather's playing is just button-mashing, which works out okay. She runs into things a lot, and sometimes goes ack! ack! ALEX, ACK! when the button-mashing isn't working and she almost -- nope, there she goes, dead. She scowls at the television and goes at it again, the tip of her tongue between her lips for a second, focused. She does it again, and this time does not die, but giggles rather adorably when Kratos roars or slashes or something on screen.

"Oh god, this is ridiculous," she says repeatedly, at various moments, especially during cheesy dialogue. During one cut scene she scoots off the futon and arranges herself -- carefully -- on the floor with Alex, keeping her skirt over her thighs. Thankfully there's enough fabric in the swishing A-line garment that she can sit cross-legged and just let it drape between her legs, quite demurely, thank you.

They play for awhile. It isn't a marathon play session by any means. She has that habit of giggling at the big weapons and splashes of blood, a tendency to laugh when an enemy goes down. She's not shy about asking for help, either, shoving the controller at him and saying "Screw it, I give up, you do it" without any real frustration or malice or upset in her tone. He seems to be enjoying just watching her play, though, she realizes -- after one of those moments where she realizes she's monopolizing the game and maybe he's bored and she apologizes and no, no, it's fine, it's fun watching you play.

She smiles at that. At him. And plays. The longer the play the less he's willing to take the controller, scoffing you've got this until she goes ahead and does it herself. And she does have fun. And she does whoop when it works finally, bouncing a little on the floor. But, in the end, they only pay for maybe half an hour. She thinks. When she decides she's getting a little bored with video gaming, she glances at the clock and blinks, realizing she's been here for a little over two hours now. And it's a little while past ten o'clock, and she works at 8. Her brain calculates drive times and how long she can get ready in the morning quickly, before Alex has even turned off the Xbox. When he sits back up, she's smiling, but also reaching for her shoes.

"I should probably go," she says, not sounding, at all, like she's eager to. "I have work tomorrow morning. But this was actually... really fun," she tells him, that warm, broad smile still on her face. She has her shoes in her hand, but has yet to get to her feet and she has yet to slip them on. "You know, considering... everything."

Everything. That might be: the fact that she thought he was a douche, then that she thought he was a homicidal maniac, then that she thought he was a monster who was going to eat her. That may also be: the fact that she came over here to talk about Garou-Kin relations and gender politics and baby obsessions and ended up talking, also, about stabbing Garou with silver and tithing to the tribe. It could be a lot of things, most of them pretty awkward. Just: 'everything'.

Alex

It turns out Alex has this in common with Bubby too: he's a little sad when Heather finally gets up to go. He doesn't have a tail to droop or ears to wilt -- well, in this form, anyway -- but he looks a little crestfallen nonetheless when she says she should probably go.

"Yeah," he agrees, "yeah, yeah. Work in the morning. And stuff." She says this was actually really fun - he perks up a little, smiling. "Yeah, I had a really good time. And I meant it. If you wanna come by again sometime, you know where I am. Just gimme a call, you know?

"And, oh yeah. If you're ever in trouble or whatever. Or if someone's just bugging you! You should call me. 'Cause that's, like. What I'm here for."

Heather

It makes her want to grin, when she can tell he's disappointed. It sort of makes her want to tease him, too, tell him he reminds her of her golden retriever, but she thinks that would probably insult him, or he'd try to stop acting like that, and it's so cute. As it is, she just puts forth the effort necessary to stop herself from scratching him behind the ear and smiles, slipping her shoes on finally. She gets to her feet, looking around for wherever she set her bag.

Finding it, and picking it up, she slips it on over her shoulder and smiles at him again. "Yeah, definitely." There's an awkward little pause; she hasn't moved to walk herself to the door yet, but she's standing and she's shoed and she has her bag so there's really nothing stopping her. "And, y'know. You have my number, too. So... if there's anything you need to tell me about, just call. Or, like, if you just want to hang out or whatever. That'd be cool, too."

She smiles, and nods her head over to the door. "Wanna pretend to be a gentleman and walk me to my car?"

Alex

"Awesome." He looks so pleased. "I'll do that. I'm going home for Thanksgiving, but maybe I'll look you up when I get back? And - yeah. Lemme just get my shoes on."

This is San Diego. There's no need for a jacket, even in mid-November; especially not when it's just a quick duck outside to say goodbye to a friend.

He uses the term in his mind, to himself, almost without thinking about it. Friend. That makes him happy, too; makes him think of Sims and their blue smiley-faces, which he thinks about telling her but maybe that's too dorky for a big bad awesome werewolf. So he keeps that thought to himself, and puts on 'shoes', which turn out to be flipflops.

"Okay," he says, grabbing his keys. His door has one of those dorm-style auto-locks on it, and he can't count the number of times he had to climb in through the window. His downstairs neighbor probably can, though. "Let's go. You want me to offer my arm too?" - and he sticks his elbow out at her, grinning.

Heather

She's in long sleeves, but her sweater is thin, skimming her upper body, elongating what is already a long waist. Her skirt falls just above her knee, and in flats she's a few inches shorter than Alex, but other than that, they couldn't look more mismatched. He's in shorts and an A-shirt, like he's just bumming around the apartment -- which he was, til a few hours ago. And she's dressed like she's on a first date.

They step outside, the door locking behind them, and they start to head towards the stairs. He jokes about offering her his arm and then actually does, cocking his elbow. Heather just lifts her eyebrows, her eyes twinkling a bit, her smile almost a pursed smirk that is trying not to become a grin. It's all quite silly, except

something about the way she winds her arm around his elbow and rests her hand on his forearm doesn't quite feel playful.

Alex

Which might be what inspires him, a little later, to say --

back up. So she winds her arm around his elbow, and this might be the first time in his life he's actually had a girl on his arm like this, like in the old movies. He grins, and she maybe grins too, and they go out into the hall, which is outdoors because this is California: a balcony-thing ringing the apartment building, looking down on the turquoise pool downstairs.

They go down the stairs, his flipflops flapping loudly against the concrete steps. They go around the pool, and he tries to go one way but she tells him her car is another, and he follows her over and when they're at her car her hand slips out of the crook of his elbow and maybe the fact that she's kept it there that whole time is what inspires him to say,

-- "So, do you wanna maybe catch a movie when I get back from Florida? I mean, not like a date, but... okay, well. Like a date. But it's totally okay if you say no. Especially considering all the ... stuff you just found out about."

Heather

They are chill and playful and a little silly about how they walk down to the car, Alex all but swinging her about on his elbow when he starts to head left and she starts to head right and they end up laughing, even though all they're doing is going out to her parking spot. She does grin at him, her flats tapping and his flip-flops smacking, and they walk to her car pretending they are not standing close, making fun of themselves wordlessly for this old-fashioned movie sort of thing.

Her car is a little red Elantra, and could probaby use a wash. She does slide her arm out from around his, once again a little slow, once again a little... reluctant, almost. And the fact that she did it at all, and the fact that she kept her arm linked to his even after the 'joke' was over, inspires him to say

what he does. And he's barely past the 'So' when she's perking, looking at him with an expression that is carefully curious, not too interested, too eager, what have you. She starts smiling when he asks her if she wants to catch a movie, and it flickers when he says not like a date, and spreads into a warm grin when he admits that yeah, like a date (totally like a date). That grin smooths, gentles into something softer at the rest. Her head tips a little.

"You know, with all the 'stuff' we just talked about, it got me thinking..." she pauses, and then gives a small shrug. "If I were Garou, and there was a kin I was interested in, I'd kinda want him to make the first move. Not... just because I'm a girl or whatever, but because that way it'd be easier not to wonder all the time if he was only saying yes because he was scared of saying no, or because he felt like it was his 'duty' or something." She looks down between them, her back to her car door, and it seems shy but she's actually looking at his hands, and at his abdominals through his shirt, but he doesn't have to know that. Her eyes lift again, find his.

"So I just want you to know: I'm not scared of you. I know I don't have to do... whatever." Her smile is soft here, so are the words: "I like you. So... you really should call me when you get back after Thanksgiving and... we should go to a movie or get dinner or something. Like a date," she ends firmly.

She smiles at that, as though to seal it, and then leans across the small distance between them, lifting herself up just enough on her toes to kiss him. Given the way she looks, the way she talks, the sweetness of all that, he may be expecting -- once he realizes she's going to kiss him -- a quick peck, a girlish favor bestowed upon him. It's... not that. Heather kisses him, though her lips are close together and it is relatively soft, with the same sort of firmness of her insistence that yes, it would be like a date. And while all night she's been so sweet, and a little playful, and quite demure, and not even swearing, something about that brief kiss is heated, is a different sort of girl altogether. It's the sort of kiss that makes clear that she knows what she wants, hints at what she wants,

and leaves the rest up to imagination.

Alex

To be fair, he's a little dumbfounded by the kiss. He wasn't expecting it, and even when he knows it's coming he doesn't know how to react so

when her lips touch his he's sort of just standing there frozen, like a middleschooler getting his very first kiss ever, and his eyes are still open and it's not until she starts drawing back that he even kisses her back, and so

it's just the slightest movement of his lips on hers, catching her lip between his. No tongue, no saliva, nothing of the sort. Then she's back on her heels and he's mumbling some goodnight or other, and as she's getting into her car he's still processing everything else so all he manages to say is some stupid comment about how he's thinking about getting a red Elantra himself, but right now he has a motorcycle and...

"I need to shut up. I'm being a dumbass," he says suddenly. She's already in her car. He laughs a little, looking at her feet, then at her. "Okay. I'll see you, like, in a couple weeks. Okay?"

And it's not until she's driving away that it even occurs to him to thank her for not being afraid of him. And for telling him: she's not doing this, any of this, out of duty. And it's not until she's almost home that her cell phone chimes and she gets a text message from him:

Dude, I just got kissed! You just kissed me! :D

Heather

The way he -- doesn't -- react makes her wonder if she underestimated all his social nervousness, his awkwardness. She wonders, when he doesn't grab her by the waist and press her to the car to maul her face, or even really kiss her back, if he's even been kissed before, but god, that would be terrible, he's at least a few years older than she is, he can't be that inexperienced. So she draws back, awkward now, and

he talks about the freaking car. She just stares at him for a moment, torn between smacking him on the face and -- well, not laughing, but continuing to stare at him with every drop of what-the-fuck she can muster. Heather is stunned, and a little put off, opening her car door before he even realizes that he's being a dumbass. She just lifts her eyebrows at him as though to say 'really, you noticed?' and starts to get back in her car and he's saying he'll see her in a couple of weeks and she kind of wants to throttle him but, truth be told, she's too nice even if she is completely confused now.

She smiles, though, even if it is a bit weird, and nods. "Yeah, just... gimme a call when you get back."

Driving back, she's going over the end of the night, and then the rest of the night, and has pretty much come to the conclusion that of course she moved too fast, or he's really not that into her and he's just kind of shocked that anyone would maybe be into him or he's just a dumbass or he's gay or something because she's kissed other guys like that and they've nearly torn her clothes off, what the hell, the lovable puppy thing was really endearing and the awkwardness made more sense when she realized he's lonely but dude, what the hell.

Heather exhales, and she glances at her phone but doesn't pick it up til she pulls into the driveway. Then, sitting in the car still, she takes her phone and reads his text, and her eyebrows flick upward. She texts back:

LOL. I did. Please tell me that wasn't your first kiss!

Alex

OMFG no. Now he's embarrassed. I just wasn't expecting it! And I didn't think you were that into me, or something. Aw man. You probably think I'm some sort of freak now.

Heather

The reply comes in two texts: the rapid OMFG NO followed by the explanation, the aw man, the 'oh, crap' tone.

No! I don't think you're a freak. I just... had a good time. And you seemed so shocked.

Alex

There's a bit of a pause before the reply text.

I guess I'm just used to getting kissed when both parties are really smashed. And we're at like a club or a bar or something. And then she's usually gone by the time she sobers up. I think it's the rage or something.

And then a second text:

Gah, let's just nevermind, ok? This is awkward and I feel all emo. Let's just pretend the night ended on the kiss and I'll see you after Thxgiving.

Heather

She doesn't get what he means at all, at first. She's sitting in her car still because she knows that as soon as she goes inside she's going to get mauled by two post-grads and one golden retriever who will all, in their respective ways, be sniffing at her to see what she's been up to, frowning at her phone's screen in confusion. It's the rage, he says, and she thinks maybe it's like 'all the rage' or --

oh right. Rage. Like the reason people are scared of him. As in the reason why even the six foot tall bouncers hesitated when they approached him. She doesn't get it. She can only sort of sense it, herself, but she isn't intimidated into a corner by it for some reason. The videos informed her Many kin, even those raised in the nation, feel tension and fear in the presence of a Garou's rage, even when that Garou is not agitated. This is normal and instinctive, and nothing to be ashamed about. This is simply a natural response to ... blah blah blah.

She almost winces, understanding again. He never told her thank you for telling him that she isn't scared of him, but he doesn't really need to, now. She gets now, figuring it out on her own yet again, that most women are. And she thinks of how she was so very drunk at the club, and so was he, and that was when he said 'hey'.

There's a long enough pause that he might think she's just given up, yeah, this is way too awkward and emo, he really stepped in it now, way to fuck it up, Vaughn -- or god, what a bitch, just ditching him mid-convo or something.

But after awhile, his phone does chime, with simply:

Okay. But fwiw, I'm glad I made myself wait til I was sober to kiss you.

And another:

Have a good trip, ok? Thanks again for dinner. :]

Alex

Who knows what he's thinking in those seconds before she texts him again. Probably kicking himself for screwing it up. Way to fuck it up, Vaughn. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or something. Probably not thinking about what a bitch she is, though, because while Alex is a lot of not-so-flattering things, he's not a peevish dick unable to accept his own shortcomings.

Then his phone lights up. And he reads her text, and it makes him smile. It makes him feel - well, a little better about the way the night ended.

I'm glad too, her phone shows a moment later. Night, Heather.