[Adamidas] Does she want a beer?
The Fury thinks about it, and she shakes her head from side to side. No, no she did not want a beer. She actually thought about this, though, more than she usually did. Eyes up and to the side, and her expression quiet and thoughtful. She shook her head again after reconsidering. No, she definitely did not want a beer.
Instead, she does write an explanation.
[I can't drink, thank you though]
Laughter and the like was in the air. Sounds coming from those around them that had the demeanor of friends. Trent sat, somewhat uncomfortable. Somewhat... something. She wasn't entirely certain. She glanced back at Trent; the page she was writing on serving as her own personal log of things she has and has not said. Something she can go back and refer to later.
He's sorry to hear they're gone, and it makes her shrug. He is as sympathetic as he can be, and she writes things down again to continue conversation. Odd, because either she was getting to where she wrote faster or she was just getting quicker on the draw. Whatever it was, she replied.
[Have things been okay for you?]
[Trent Brumby] Kora asks Adamidas if she wants a beer and Trent is feeling like an ass for not getting on it sooner. His gaze flickers to her, taking in the way she thinks and shook her head. "How about something to eat?" The suggestion is given as she writes Kora an explanation, and although his hand was around his beer, it was all but forgotten in the company of the Fury.
Again, glancing down to the writing on the pages, he nods, lifting his gaze to her after. "Everything's fine. No troubles," he assures her.
By now those cheese fries and wedges have to be coming towards the table, or shortly enough. At least, Trent is hoping. He glances over his shoulder, sneaking a look at the kitchen door and around at the others sitting in the eating area, noticing where wait staff are and what they're doing. Then he's turning back to his company and taking a longer drink from his beer. Not just a sip.
[Kora] Kora cranes at the neck, canting her head to read Adamidas' response to her offer of a drink. Her head is sidelong, neck elongated by the gesture, the black leather choker - just a handful of strips braided together, cinched around her throat perhaps an inch from the base of her neck - pulls with the gesture. There is a thick metal hoop - iron, not silver - nipped through the inner cartilage of her left ear, with a charm the size of a child's little fingerbone dangling from it. It is the only metal jewelry she wears, otherwise unmatched. The patina is aged and the pattern is old.
With a small huff of laughter, Kora shakes her head. She reaches out, taps her index finger against Adamidas' looped and whorly turquoise response. The nail is blunt, the polish old - black - peeling, and the gesture distinct, direct. "That," she explains, the supple weave of laughter backgrounding her voice without stuttering into the tone, " - never stopped me when I was your age."
Their waiter is hovering at the kitchen door. Kora's dark eyes touch on Trent's head as he turns, shoots a look over his shoulder, and then follow back - to the waiter standing watchful at the swinging door. She gives him a look, makes the universal circular gesture for another round for all that her own beer is but half-gone, and Trent's all but forgotten. Within a handspan of heartbeats, they have appetizers - bacon cheese fries, wedges - and another perhaps unnecessary round of draft beers standing foaming over the warm scarred surface of the well-used wooden table.
[Adamidas] Everything's fine, no troubles!
She smiled, and her shoulders fell in relief. She shook her head no to the question, whether or not she wanted something to drink. She retrieves the pen and writes again. The letters loop and curve like grapevines. No, she wasn't hungry.
Though, admittedly, the age thing never stopped Kora from drinking when she was Adam's age. She grinned, something innocently mischievous.
[Re: my age: 10 - 15 years ago?]
She looks up and to the side, trying to look innocent as she took a poke at... well.. the Skald who couldn't be any older than her twenties.
[Kora] Adamidas - with her sidelong attempt at innocence, her childlike handwriting, her mischievous little grin - may well be disappointed by the Fenrir woman's rather even response to the poke. She receives, for her trouble, the familiar hook of a half-smile and a brief flash of white teeth behind her expressive mouth - suggestion of laughter without the vocalization. Kora shakes her pale head, the warm, burnished light in the room pricking out amber and honeyed highlights along the crown.
"No," she corrects, with a deadpan born of her native directness, " - twenty."
[Trent Brumby] "I feel like an old man," Trent mumbles under his breath, inhaling deeply from his nose and straightening out his spine before easing to sit back in the booth. He lifts his drink again, saluting the retreating waiters back and finishes it off easily. The empty beer is set aside. Whether he or someone else keeps the orders and drinks coming, Trent is footing the bill. He'd have no argument over it either. Trent does have a backbone, he's just reserved about it and careful about where and how he uses it.
Gesturing with his hand, he nodded for Kora and Adamidas to have first digs at the food set before them. He'd take to them after, grabbing one of the smaller, seasoned wedges to drift the opposite end through some sour cream and a dab of sweet chili sauce too.
[Adamidas] [You're not old, I'm unseasonably immature.]
Which makes her smile. Wear something like contentment and, with that sense of contentment, she is there to sit back. Relax. And, well, observe.
[Kora] Both draw Kora's eye. Kora sits up, straight through the spine, offering Trent a closed-mouth grin that twists into something aware and bemused at the corners. She doesn't correct or gainsay him. There's no little retort, none of the usual polite quips one might expect another to supply in response to such a mutter. Instead, when he looks at her, if he looks at her - hand hovering over spiced potato wedges, the open pot of sour cream at the edge of the platter - he will find her looking back at him, direct and clear eyed, unshadowed.
Then, her attention sweeps down to the Adamidas' round scrawling hand, flashing up to the young girl(wolf's) content expression, and stills. It's the set of her mouth; and something else superimposed on that image. Just a shadow, like the dark side of the moon.
Somewhere in the middle of this, the food has arrived. Kora grabs a plate and loads it up - not as if her life depended on it, not as if someone were abotu to take it all away from her - but with the sort of appetite one expects from a teenage boy, or a Garou - whose blood runs hotter, whose heart pumps harder, and whose body much constantly burn itself out to renew itself again. She is a neat, hungry eater, consuming the food in front of her with no shame over her appetite, picking out the bacon and licking her thumb and forefinger when necessary gather up stray bits of cheese.
[Trent Brumby] "Ah, well, I am old." This comes after he reads what Adamidas has wrote, and how Kora had met his eyes. His night hadn't gone anywhere like he had predicated or hoped. But that was how it was in Chicago. Even the best paved intentions went a little awry. He's rolling with the punches though, taking a Garou boasting about immaturity into his stride, without voicing on it at all, swapping the subject to his age and taking that weight onto his shoulders instead. Yes, he'd noticed the way Kora had looked at both him and the Black Fury. "Twenty-seven is ancient compared to everyone else. It's like being back in college." Except he remembers college being far more fun and stress free.
Biting off the end of his wedge, setting potato to steam in the air, he ate it quickly. It burnt his tongue and all the way down his throat. His eyes water but it's blinked away in a matter of moments. He's still going for a second bite, but he doesn't double dip into the sauces. Trent's considerate like that.
[Kora] "If we're trading," Kora looks up from her feasts, her chin forward, her head swept sidelong, her eyes fixed and level, "tid-bits," and she says the word carefully, with a language lover's care for the shadow of consonants, the fine little internal rhymes inherent in the phrase. "I'm pretty sure I'm twenty four."
-----------
Later, the meal is finished. The hour is growing late. The bartender has made last call, and Adamidas has slipped away - upstairs to sleep, perhaps, or out into the cool spring night to walk back toward the Caern, where it lives - impossible - amongst the ruin of the old industrial docks.
Garou are night creatures - the hunting is best then - and while the bartender and waiter have become soft and airy with want of sleep (the latter has bruised eyes as he takes the check, and stifles a yawn as he brings back Trent's change. He insisted on paying. She does not gainsay him, does not insult his hospitality by attempting to do so) she seems brighter somehow, her expressions sharper and more distinct, her sense of her self immediate, visceral, physical, as if the moon were pulling an invisible filament up through the crown of her skull toward the sky.
The soft clink of dishes still sounds from the kitchen. The pass-through door is propped open, and the bartender and waiter and stacking the chairs atop the tables, wiping them down, filling up the salt shakers and ketchup bottles, polishes the bar. The music is different now, and someone from the back is singing along with it, a thready voice, just out of tune with the nearly nameless hum of the radio. The front door is wide open, the street without dark, the breeze brisk and cool, carrying the metallic hint of the lake in the air.
"Thanks for dinner." She's had three beers, four - and one to grow on, she said when they talked the bartender after another round at last call. Her eyes shine with it, but the rest of her has that edge, that sense of presence. All she has to to is shift to burn off the warm, burnished glow in her veins and she can feel that too, her other selves inside her. He can see them, too, in her eyes. "And - " she continues, reaching for the bags under the table, tucked there the whole time Adamidas sat with them, " - you know. For the stuff."
[Trent Brumby] Trent has paid for dinner by now, and was relaxed much more by the time Adamidas had gone and left them alone. For the entire time she had been there he felt awkward and came across more closed off. While he had nothing against his Tribe, nor the young Garou herself, he was extra cautious in their presence. He is far more relaxed and comfortable with Kora. Probably because they had got off on the right foot and continued to build a working relationship between them.
"Thanks for joining me," he tells her with an easy smile. The rest he nods at, watching her from across the table. His wallet was put back into his pocket and his jacket, still on his lap, was pulled over an arm. He hadn't drank more than two beers over the course of the night, having switched to soda along the way, explaining that he was driving. Responsible had left him clear eyed and sharp.
"Can I take you anywhere?" Sliding out of the seat as she gathered her bags, filled with clothes that will fit close enough. He had a good eye for those things, but designs he had only guessed at by what he's seen on her so far and what was practical. Jeans, she'd find several pairs, the same with t.shirts - of different designs, some of those cotton camisoles for hotter weather, and two sweaters; a hoody and one with a collar. A jacket was separate, with all its buttons, and was the last of the winters range. He hadn't picked outlandish colours, but hadn't stayed on monochromes either. Advice from women friends had helped, a lot, and his attention to detail of his company serves him well. None of it's from Wal-Mart, but from stores that had been popular choices for young, trendy women.
[Kora] She stands easily - not unsteady - not precisely - from the alcohol she has consumed, just loose, her shoulders twisted just forward, her spine and torso faintly curved, not quite a languid S-shape, but some lesser cousin of it. She wears things fitted, tight against against her frame - the old jeans and worn t-shirt cling to her narrow torso, flare out just with the curve of her hips. As she stands, she reaches up with her right hand ti pull down the hem of her t-shirt over the waistband of her jeans, smoothing it out absently, thoughtlessly, the gesture little more than muscle memory now, repeated half-a-thousand times.
The bags are heavier than she'd remembered them, and she picks them up, the roped handles in her left hand, feeling the unfamiliar swing of one against her left thigh. She doesn't look down at them, not now. Somehow, that seems a deliberate choice. There is a moment where she turns toward the door, considering the night, and he could swear that she seems to be listening to something, the low-voiceless hum of the distant radio, maybe - although that is all wrong. The text on the back of the t-shirt is obscured by her hair at the top, but below it he can see the words FRINGE FESTIVAL pricked out, pallid orange or pallid orange, against the wings of her clavicles and, lower, the in-curve of her lower back.
"Yeah," then she shoots him a look back over her left shoulder, accepting his offer easily. " - okay. Cabrini's not out of your way, right?"
[Trent Brumby] "Nah, it's not. I live nearby." He did, just further towards the Mile area. That's how they ended up in the same laundromat that night. That, and his broken down machine. It was fixed by now, he'd fiddled around with it the day after until he got it working, replacing a part that he tracked down. There was no more laundry trips for him.
Glancing to the bags, he thought about offering to carry them, but he wasn't too sure how it would be received. His car wasn't far, and they wouldn't strain on her. They were just clothes after all and she's a mighty Get of Fenris. She'd probably take it as an insult. Just like a Fury would. They're similar, in ways. Just not similar to the one that had been with them for dinner.
He likes the way she stretches and how she carries herself, and how she uses odd things to tie up her hair. That quirk was one of his particular favourites.
Walking with her towards the door, he carries his jacket over his arm against the still-warm heat of the night. He moves a few steps in front of her at the last minute, pulling open the door to let her out first. He'd like to know if she had more plans for the night, but asking them now would give the wrong impression. Instead, as he falls in step behind her, leaving the Brotherhood's door to close behind him, he's pointing down the road. "The car's just there." A simple, common sedan.
[Kora] "Cool." - that it isn't far. That he lives nearby, perhaps. Somewhere close to her territory. He walks ahead of her to pull open the door and she slows her long stride enough to let him open it - then turns, her dark eyes capturing the light, reflecting it back, fixed on him the whole time she's walking by. As if he were the fixed point of a protactor, and she the free-swinging arm.
Outside, she breaks the line of her stare and looks away, ahead, pausing long enough for him to fall in step beside her, before falling into her usual long-legged stride. They are close enough to the lake, here, that some of the nascent glow of the city - burnished orange, ugly and raw - is dampened by the spreading darkness of the lake waters. She lifts her head to the night sky, searching out the moon she knows lingers up there, somewhere, and breathing in the crisp air deeply. When they reach the sedan, she leans against the passenger's side, waits for him to open the trunk so that she can stow the bags in the trunk for the brief ride back through the dark, sleeping city.
Kora carries the bags herself - mighty Get of Fenris that she is - but hands them over to Trent to drop inside the trunk. She is still leaning against the car, the metal cool against her skin where the hem of her t-shirt has ridden up a scant half-inch in the back when the trunk snicks closed. "Hey," she has turned, watches him as he circles the car to unlock the passenger's door, reaches out to arrest his progress with the tip of the toe of her black boot against his calf, his ankle. If he is close enough, she touches him under the elbow, too, her hand warm and firm. " - about the other night."
[Trent Brumby] There's something about being under her gaze that stirs him. He likes it, even with the glint of other within her stare, he likes how she watches him, without word or any indication of what she might be thinking. Its a mysterious and intense look from her, that's attracted to. It's a bit like a moth to a flame; Garou are so bright, vibrant, and their sheer presence is something whole and heavy, that can't be compared to a human or a fellow kinfolk. They are bright and dangerous beings, and yet, there's blood in him that carries ancestors of the same, which makes him a part of it all in a distant sort of way.
He's quiet as he walks to the car, taking the bags from her without word to pop them into the back of his car. There's a tool box in there, jumper leads and a bottle with extra water - just in case. It's all neatly arranged with a blanket folded next to them. The bags are placed at the other side of the trunk and he closes it down.
Keys from his pocket were used to unlock the car by remote, but he was coming to the side she stood on to open up the door. He didn't do it because she's a woman, but because he's giving her a lift and it's something he doesn't think about. He only thinks on it in the context of coming nearer her again. It's there she stops him with a motion of her foot, to which he glances down to quickly, then back up at her.
"Yeah?" His elbow is taken, and he moves a step closer but no more. The only reason his eyes are reflective is due to their colour, a pale gray that makes his pupil dark and clear. There's hints of blue, but only in the way a paint needs to mix primary colours to make another.
[Kora] He is taller than she is - by a handful of inches - and she is leaning against the car, cheating her height by another inch or two with her causal posture. Her head is tipped upward, the pale wash of ambient orange light and the faint glaze of the moon's reflected light casts her upturned features in a distinctive glow. He steps closer - one step, now more - and she releases his elbow, her arm falling back toward her side.
"Back when I was a person," she begins, such an odd locution, though she says it quietly as if there were a distinctive border between then and now. There is, there must be - it defines her life, folds it neatly into two imperfect, unequal halves - before, and after. Her low voice is thickened by the alcohol she has consumed, but she speaks so precisely that she cannot be anything but controlled. "I would've taken you home that night."
Her brows are lifted over her dark eyes. She meets and holds his gaze. Another Garou would deem such a direct, naked look a challenge and there mnust be a frission of that even now in her eyes. " - but I'm not. It's different now, you know? There's a line somewhere, between I take you home and you're mine. And I don't know where that is. Not yet. And I thought you should know."
[Trent Brumby] As she explains himself he listens. He doesn't tower over her, make her feel trapped in against the car, and he does that by standing with his back straight and by being close enough, but a little off to the side, as she talks quietly to him. It gives her room to move, without feeling cornered.
There's no outward expression to what he tells her, other than, at the end, he nods with a hint of a softer smile. "I understand Kora, and I'm flattered." A little disappointed too, but he understood that they were different Tribes. He's not sure how a Fury would react, whether they'd care - at least the ones here. Then there's her Tribe. He had tried not to think about it too much, the what ifs. That would be presuming too much, but to say he hadn't thought about it wouldn't be the truth either.
He wants to reach out and touch her, the hand shifts his jacket in his arm instead, lowering it down so that his thumb hooks into the pocket of his jeans. It still leaves the other free. Trent hasn't looked away from her, but his gaze isn't as intense as hers or any Garou's. He's calm and understanding. "Thanks for telling me, and I don't want you to stress about it. Or, you know, worry yourself over me or this. It is what it is." Whatever that is. He can't and won't make demands anyway. The ball is in her court.
[Kora] "I'm not stressed about it." His smile is softer, then. Hers, suddenly, is not. In the light of the moon, on a dark spring night, there is little soft after her. He sees the flash of white teeth behind the familiar shape of her expressive mouth. He sees the glint of the moon reflected in her eyes. She stands up straight, casually, carelessly steps into his personal space, rises up onto the balls of her feet to bring her cheek alongside his. Her mouth close to his right ear.
They are close enough that he can feel the radiant heat from her body, that he could see the supple shadow of her pale lashes against her cheek. She is not blushing. She is not coy. "I just want you to know," She is, instead, direct as ever, her breath a warm wash against his ear, her voice quiet enough that - close as they are - he has to strain to hear it. " - what you're getting into."
[Trent Brumby] While she isn't soft, he doesn't mind. That's part of the attraction. She's still capable of smiling, even if not right then and now. Coming in closer against him, enough that he does reach out a hand to touch it lightly against the side of her arm, rather then her hip, he breaths in deeper. His skin warms, his body responds, heating quickly. It's not a blush either, it's a rush of blood instead. Tilting his head, just a hint, towards her, has stubble touch her softer skin and his mouth comes dangerously close to her own ear. "I know," he tells her, and with a small stretch of his chin, brushes his mouth with it's healing split against her ear.
When they part, he sees her into the car and safely to what destination she desires.
The Fury thinks about it, and she shakes her head from side to side. No, no she did not want a beer. She actually thought about this, though, more than she usually did. Eyes up and to the side, and her expression quiet and thoughtful. She shook her head again after reconsidering. No, she definitely did not want a beer.
Instead, she does write an explanation.
[I can't drink, thank you though]
Laughter and the like was in the air. Sounds coming from those around them that had the demeanor of friends. Trent sat, somewhat uncomfortable. Somewhat... something. She wasn't entirely certain. She glanced back at Trent; the page she was writing on serving as her own personal log of things she has and has not said. Something she can go back and refer to later.
He's sorry to hear they're gone, and it makes her shrug. He is as sympathetic as he can be, and she writes things down again to continue conversation. Odd, because either she was getting to where she wrote faster or she was just getting quicker on the draw. Whatever it was, she replied.
[Have things been okay for you?]
[Trent Brumby] Kora asks Adamidas if she wants a beer and Trent is feeling like an ass for not getting on it sooner. His gaze flickers to her, taking in the way she thinks and shook her head. "How about something to eat?" The suggestion is given as she writes Kora an explanation, and although his hand was around his beer, it was all but forgotten in the company of the Fury.
Again, glancing down to the writing on the pages, he nods, lifting his gaze to her after. "Everything's fine. No troubles," he assures her.
By now those cheese fries and wedges have to be coming towards the table, or shortly enough. At least, Trent is hoping. He glances over his shoulder, sneaking a look at the kitchen door and around at the others sitting in the eating area, noticing where wait staff are and what they're doing. Then he's turning back to his company and taking a longer drink from his beer. Not just a sip.
[Kora] Kora cranes at the neck, canting her head to read Adamidas' response to her offer of a drink. Her head is sidelong, neck elongated by the gesture, the black leather choker - just a handful of strips braided together, cinched around her throat perhaps an inch from the base of her neck - pulls with the gesture. There is a thick metal hoop - iron, not silver - nipped through the inner cartilage of her left ear, with a charm the size of a child's little fingerbone dangling from it. It is the only metal jewelry she wears, otherwise unmatched. The patina is aged and the pattern is old.
With a small huff of laughter, Kora shakes her head. She reaches out, taps her index finger against Adamidas' looped and whorly turquoise response. The nail is blunt, the polish old - black - peeling, and the gesture distinct, direct. "That," she explains, the supple weave of laughter backgrounding her voice without stuttering into the tone, " - never stopped me when I was your age."
Their waiter is hovering at the kitchen door. Kora's dark eyes touch on Trent's head as he turns, shoots a look over his shoulder, and then follow back - to the waiter standing watchful at the swinging door. She gives him a look, makes the universal circular gesture for another round for all that her own beer is but half-gone, and Trent's all but forgotten. Within a handspan of heartbeats, they have appetizers - bacon cheese fries, wedges - and another perhaps unnecessary round of draft beers standing foaming over the warm scarred surface of the well-used wooden table.
[Adamidas] Everything's fine, no troubles!
She smiled, and her shoulders fell in relief. She shook her head no to the question, whether or not she wanted something to drink. She retrieves the pen and writes again. The letters loop and curve like grapevines. No, she wasn't hungry.
Though, admittedly, the age thing never stopped Kora from drinking when she was Adam's age. She grinned, something innocently mischievous.
[Re: my age: 10 - 15 years ago?]
She looks up and to the side, trying to look innocent as she took a poke at... well.. the Skald who couldn't be any older than her twenties.
[Kora] Adamidas - with her sidelong attempt at innocence, her childlike handwriting, her mischievous little grin - may well be disappointed by the Fenrir woman's rather even response to the poke. She receives, for her trouble, the familiar hook of a half-smile and a brief flash of white teeth behind her expressive mouth - suggestion of laughter without the vocalization. Kora shakes her pale head, the warm, burnished light in the room pricking out amber and honeyed highlights along the crown.
"No," she corrects, with a deadpan born of her native directness, " - twenty."
[Trent Brumby] "I feel like an old man," Trent mumbles under his breath, inhaling deeply from his nose and straightening out his spine before easing to sit back in the booth. He lifts his drink again, saluting the retreating waiters back and finishes it off easily. The empty beer is set aside. Whether he or someone else keeps the orders and drinks coming, Trent is footing the bill. He'd have no argument over it either. Trent does have a backbone, he's just reserved about it and careful about where and how he uses it.
Gesturing with his hand, he nodded for Kora and Adamidas to have first digs at the food set before them. He'd take to them after, grabbing one of the smaller, seasoned wedges to drift the opposite end through some sour cream and a dab of sweet chili sauce too.
[Adamidas] [You're not old, I'm unseasonably immature.]
Which makes her smile. Wear something like contentment and, with that sense of contentment, she is there to sit back. Relax. And, well, observe.
[Kora] Both draw Kora's eye. Kora sits up, straight through the spine, offering Trent a closed-mouth grin that twists into something aware and bemused at the corners. She doesn't correct or gainsay him. There's no little retort, none of the usual polite quips one might expect another to supply in response to such a mutter. Instead, when he looks at her, if he looks at her - hand hovering over spiced potato wedges, the open pot of sour cream at the edge of the platter - he will find her looking back at him, direct and clear eyed, unshadowed.
Then, her attention sweeps down to the Adamidas' round scrawling hand, flashing up to the young girl(wolf's) content expression, and stills. It's the set of her mouth; and something else superimposed on that image. Just a shadow, like the dark side of the moon.
Somewhere in the middle of this, the food has arrived. Kora grabs a plate and loads it up - not as if her life depended on it, not as if someone were abotu to take it all away from her - but with the sort of appetite one expects from a teenage boy, or a Garou - whose blood runs hotter, whose heart pumps harder, and whose body much constantly burn itself out to renew itself again. She is a neat, hungry eater, consuming the food in front of her with no shame over her appetite, picking out the bacon and licking her thumb and forefinger when necessary gather up stray bits of cheese.
[Trent Brumby] "Ah, well, I am old." This comes after he reads what Adamidas has wrote, and how Kora had met his eyes. His night hadn't gone anywhere like he had predicated or hoped. But that was how it was in Chicago. Even the best paved intentions went a little awry. He's rolling with the punches though, taking a Garou boasting about immaturity into his stride, without voicing on it at all, swapping the subject to his age and taking that weight onto his shoulders instead. Yes, he'd noticed the way Kora had looked at both him and the Black Fury. "Twenty-seven is ancient compared to everyone else. It's like being back in college." Except he remembers college being far more fun and stress free.
Biting off the end of his wedge, setting potato to steam in the air, he ate it quickly. It burnt his tongue and all the way down his throat. His eyes water but it's blinked away in a matter of moments. He's still going for a second bite, but he doesn't double dip into the sauces. Trent's considerate like that.
[Kora] "If we're trading," Kora looks up from her feasts, her chin forward, her head swept sidelong, her eyes fixed and level, "tid-bits," and she says the word carefully, with a language lover's care for the shadow of consonants, the fine little internal rhymes inherent in the phrase. "I'm pretty sure I'm twenty four."
-----------
Later, the meal is finished. The hour is growing late. The bartender has made last call, and Adamidas has slipped away - upstairs to sleep, perhaps, or out into the cool spring night to walk back toward the Caern, where it lives - impossible - amongst the ruin of the old industrial docks.
Garou are night creatures - the hunting is best then - and while the bartender and waiter have become soft and airy with want of sleep (the latter has bruised eyes as he takes the check, and stifles a yawn as he brings back Trent's change. He insisted on paying. She does not gainsay him, does not insult his hospitality by attempting to do so) she seems brighter somehow, her expressions sharper and more distinct, her sense of her self immediate, visceral, physical, as if the moon were pulling an invisible filament up through the crown of her skull toward the sky.
The soft clink of dishes still sounds from the kitchen. The pass-through door is propped open, and the bartender and waiter and stacking the chairs atop the tables, wiping them down, filling up the salt shakers and ketchup bottles, polishes the bar. The music is different now, and someone from the back is singing along with it, a thready voice, just out of tune with the nearly nameless hum of the radio. The front door is wide open, the street without dark, the breeze brisk and cool, carrying the metallic hint of the lake in the air.
"Thanks for dinner." She's had three beers, four - and one to grow on, she said when they talked the bartender after another round at last call. Her eyes shine with it, but the rest of her has that edge, that sense of presence. All she has to to is shift to burn off the warm, burnished glow in her veins and she can feel that too, her other selves inside her. He can see them, too, in her eyes. "And - " she continues, reaching for the bags under the table, tucked there the whole time Adamidas sat with them, " - you know. For the stuff."
[Trent Brumby] Trent has paid for dinner by now, and was relaxed much more by the time Adamidas had gone and left them alone. For the entire time she had been there he felt awkward and came across more closed off. While he had nothing against his Tribe, nor the young Garou herself, he was extra cautious in their presence. He is far more relaxed and comfortable with Kora. Probably because they had got off on the right foot and continued to build a working relationship between them.
"Thanks for joining me," he tells her with an easy smile. The rest he nods at, watching her from across the table. His wallet was put back into his pocket and his jacket, still on his lap, was pulled over an arm. He hadn't drank more than two beers over the course of the night, having switched to soda along the way, explaining that he was driving. Responsible had left him clear eyed and sharp.
"Can I take you anywhere?" Sliding out of the seat as she gathered her bags, filled with clothes that will fit close enough. He had a good eye for those things, but designs he had only guessed at by what he's seen on her so far and what was practical. Jeans, she'd find several pairs, the same with t.shirts - of different designs, some of those cotton camisoles for hotter weather, and two sweaters; a hoody and one with a collar. A jacket was separate, with all its buttons, and was the last of the winters range. He hadn't picked outlandish colours, but hadn't stayed on monochromes either. Advice from women friends had helped, a lot, and his attention to detail of his company serves him well. None of it's from Wal-Mart, but from stores that had been popular choices for young, trendy women.
[Kora] She stands easily - not unsteady - not precisely - from the alcohol she has consumed, just loose, her shoulders twisted just forward, her spine and torso faintly curved, not quite a languid S-shape, but some lesser cousin of it. She wears things fitted, tight against against her frame - the old jeans and worn t-shirt cling to her narrow torso, flare out just with the curve of her hips. As she stands, she reaches up with her right hand ti pull down the hem of her t-shirt over the waistband of her jeans, smoothing it out absently, thoughtlessly, the gesture little more than muscle memory now, repeated half-a-thousand times.
The bags are heavier than she'd remembered them, and she picks them up, the roped handles in her left hand, feeling the unfamiliar swing of one against her left thigh. She doesn't look down at them, not now. Somehow, that seems a deliberate choice. There is a moment where she turns toward the door, considering the night, and he could swear that she seems to be listening to something, the low-voiceless hum of the distant radio, maybe - although that is all wrong. The text on the back of the t-shirt is obscured by her hair at the top, but below it he can see the words FRINGE FESTIVAL pricked out, pallid orange or pallid orange, against the wings of her clavicles and, lower, the in-curve of her lower back.
"Yeah," then she shoots him a look back over her left shoulder, accepting his offer easily. " - okay. Cabrini's not out of your way, right?"
[Trent Brumby] "Nah, it's not. I live nearby." He did, just further towards the Mile area. That's how they ended up in the same laundromat that night. That, and his broken down machine. It was fixed by now, he'd fiddled around with it the day after until he got it working, replacing a part that he tracked down. There was no more laundry trips for him.
Glancing to the bags, he thought about offering to carry them, but he wasn't too sure how it would be received. His car wasn't far, and they wouldn't strain on her. They were just clothes after all and she's a mighty Get of Fenris. She'd probably take it as an insult. Just like a Fury would. They're similar, in ways. Just not similar to the one that had been with them for dinner.
He likes the way she stretches and how she carries herself, and how she uses odd things to tie up her hair. That quirk was one of his particular favourites.
Walking with her towards the door, he carries his jacket over his arm against the still-warm heat of the night. He moves a few steps in front of her at the last minute, pulling open the door to let her out first. He'd like to know if she had more plans for the night, but asking them now would give the wrong impression. Instead, as he falls in step behind her, leaving the Brotherhood's door to close behind him, he's pointing down the road. "The car's just there." A simple, common sedan.
[Kora] "Cool." - that it isn't far. That he lives nearby, perhaps. Somewhere close to her territory. He walks ahead of her to pull open the door and she slows her long stride enough to let him open it - then turns, her dark eyes capturing the light, reflecting it back, fixed on him the whole time she's walking by. As if he were the fixed point of a protactor, and she the free-swinging arm.
Outside, she breaks the line of her stare and looks away, ahead, pausing long enough for him to fall in step beside her, before falling into her usual long-legged stride. They are close enough to the lake, here, that some of the nascent glow of the city - burnished orange, ugly and raw - is dampened by the spreading darkness of the lake waters. She lifts her head to the night sky, searching out the moon she knows lingers up there, somewhere, and breathing in the crisp air deeply. When they reach the sedan, she leans against the passenger's side, waits for him to open the trunk so that she can stow the bags in the trunk for the brief ride back through the dark, sleeping city.
Kora carries the bags herself - mighty Get of Fenris that she is - but hands them over to Trent to drop inside the trunk. She is still leaning against the car, the metal cool against her skin where the hem of her t-shirt has ridden up a scant half-inch in the back when the trunk snicks closed. "Hey," she has turned, watches him as he circles the car to unlock the passenger's door, reaches out to arrest his progress with the tip of the toe of her black boot against his calf, his ankle. If he is close enough, she touches him under the elbow, too, her hand warm and firm. " - about the other night."
[Trent Brumby] There's something about being under her gaze that stirs him. He likes it, even with the glint of other within her stare, he likes how she watches him, without word or any indication of what she might be thinking. Its a mysterious and intense look from her, that's attracted to. It's a bit like a moth to a flame; Garou are so bright, vibrant, and their sheer presence is something whole and heavy, that can't be compared to a human or a fellow kinfolk. They are bright and dangerous beings, and yet, there's blood in him that carries ancestors of the same, which makes him a part of it all in a distant sort of way.
He's quiet as he walks to the car, taking the bags from her without word to pop them into the back of his car. There's a tool box in there, jumper leads and a bottle with extra water - just in case. It's all neatly arranged with a blanket folded next to them. The bags are placed at the other side of the trunk and he closes it down.
Keys from his pocket were used to unlock the car by remote, but he was coming to the side she stood on to open up the door. He didn't do it because she's a woman, but because he's giving her a lift and it's something he doesn't think about. He only thinks on it in the context of coming nearer her again. It's there she stops him with a motion of her foot, to which he glances down to quickly, then back up at her.
"Yeah?" His elbow is taken, and he moves a step closer but no more. The only reason his eyes are reflective is due to their colour, a pale gray that makes his pupil dark and clear. There's hints of blue, but only in the way a paint needs to mix primary colours to make another.
[Kora] He is taller than she is - by a handful of inches - and she is leaning against the car, cheating her height by another inch or two with her causal posture. Her head is tipped upward, the pale wash of ambient orange light and the faint glaze of the moon's reflected light casts her upturned features in a distinctive glow. He steps closer - one step, now more - and she releases his elbow, her arm falling back toward her side.
"Back when I was a person," she begins, such an odd locution, though she says it quietly as if there were a distinctive border between then and now. There is, there must be - it defines her life, folds it neatly into two imperfect, unequal halves - before, and after. Her low voice is thickened by the alcohol she has consumed, but she speaks so precisely that she cannot be anything but controlled. "I would've taken you home that night."
Her brows are lifted over her dark eyes. She meets and holds his gaze. Another Garou would deem such a direct, naked look a challenge and there mnust be a frission of that even now in her eyes. " - but I'm not. It's different now, you know? There's a line somewhere, between I take you home and you're mine. And I don't know where that is. Not yet. And I thought you should know."
[Trent Brumby] As she explains himself he listens. He doesn't tower over her, make her feel trapped in against the car, and he does that by standing with his back straight and by being close enough, but a little off to the side, as she talks quietly to him. It gives her room to move, without feeling cornered.
There's no outward expression to what he tells her, other than, at the end, he nods with a hint of a softer smile. "I understand Kora, and I'm flattered." A little disappointed too, but he understood that they were different Tribes. He's not sure how a Fury would react, whether they'd care - at least the ones here. Then there's her Tribe. He had tried not to think about it too much, the what ifs. That would be presuming too much, but to say he hadn't thought about it wouldn't be the truth either.
He wants to reach out and touch her, the hand shifts his jacket in his arm instead, lowering it down so that his thumb hooks into the pocket of his jeans. It still leaves the other free. Trent hasn't looked away from her, but his gaze isn't as intense as hers or any Garou's. He's calm and understanding. "Thanks for telling me, and I don't want you to stress about it. Or, you know, worry yourself over me or this. It is what it is." Whatever that is. He can't and won't make demands anyway. The ball is in her court.
[Kora] "I'm not stressed about it." His smile is softer, then. Hers, suddenly, is not. In the light of the moon, on a dark spring night, there is little soft after her. He sees the flash of white teeth behind the familiar shape of her expressive mouth. He sees the glint of the moon reflected in her eyes. She stands up straight, casually, carelessly steps into his personal space, rises up onto the balls of her feet to bring her cheek alongside his. Her mouth close to his right ear.
They are close enough that he can feel the radiant heat from her body, that he could see the supple shadow of her pale lashes against her cheek. She is not blushing. She is not coy. "I just want you to know," She is, instead, direct as ever, her breath a warm wash against his ear, her voice quiet enough that - close as they are - he has to strain to hear it. " - what you're getting into."
[Trent Brumby] While she isn't soft, he doesn't mind. That's part of the attraction. She's still capable of smiling, even if not right then and now. Coming in closer against him, enough that he does reach out a hand to touch it lightly against the side of her arm, rather then her hip, he breaths in deeper. His skin warms, his body responds, heating quickly. It's not a blush either, it's a rush of blood instead. Tilting his head, just a hint, towards her, has stubble touch her softer skin and his mouth comes dangerously close to her own ear. "I know," he tells her, and with a small stretch of his chin, brushes his mouth with it's healing split against her ear.
When they part, he sees her into the car and safely to what destination she desires.
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