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.
AlexHeather'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 SinclairIn 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.
AlexAlex 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 SinclairShe 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?"
AlexOh 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 SinclairThey 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?"
AlexSo 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.
HeatherMore 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.
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."
HeatherStrangely, 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.
AlexSo 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."
HeatherIt 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."
HeatherIt 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]
HeatherThey 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?"
HeatherHeather 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."
AlexAlex 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?"
HeatherShe 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.
HeatherHeather 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.
AlexWell; 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?"
HeatherThe 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."
AlexIt 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."
HeatherThe 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."
AlexAlex 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?"
HeatherA 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."
HeatherShe raises her eyebrows at him, feigning affront, then simply gives a slow shake of her head.
Alex"Heather.... Jean. Heather Jane?"
HeatherAt '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?"
HeatherThat'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."
AlexAlex 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."
HeatherShe 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.
AlexThe 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."
HeatherHe 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.
AlexAw, 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."
HeatherIf 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?"
HeatherShe 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?"
HeatherIt'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."
HeatherShe'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.
AlexAlex 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."
HeatherThere 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."
AlexThat, 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."
HeatherHe'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.
AlexIt 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."
HeatherHe 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."
HeatherOh, 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'.
AlexIt 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."
HeatherIt 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.
HeatherShe'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.
AlexWhich 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."
HeatherThey 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.
AlexTo 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
HeatherThe 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!
AlexOMFG 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.
HeatherThe 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.
AlexThere'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.
HeatherShe 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. :]
AlexWho 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.
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