[Kora] The hint of fall is in the air. The maples and oaks are still green, not yet changing colors, but somehow at dusk, as the sun disappears, there are windblown leaves, wet on the darkening streets, a subtle hint of chill in the air.
Later, the windows are dark, the sun has disappeared from the sky. Not evening the last streaks grace the western sky. The air feels clear, the warmth of the day is rapidly disappearing but there was a hint of stuffiness in the apartment when she came in. Before she into the kitchen, nosing about for her dinner tucked away in the oven, she threw open two of the living room windows, leaned forward into the glass, watching the dark street below, the last light in the sky.
She didn't call ahead, just came, found him gone. Erick ducked in and then left again, off to a support group meeting, Iraq veterans at the VA Center. He might be out late, he said, and she tipped him a half-smile. Be safe., she told him, meaning it, her attention lingering on the closed door, the darkened foyer for long moments after he left.
Barefoot, she sits on the couch, leaning back into the embrace of the sectional's corner joint. When he is not there, she does not turn on the television for company. She likes the silence, the scent of the place. Even the white-noise hum of the fridge, the domesticity of it all. An empty plate is on the coffee table, knife and fork in the middle, an oven mitt underneath doubles as a trivot. Her bare feet are on the cushions, her knees drawn up, a book open, resting on her thighs. Once she stills, stops.
Miss Kora's in the family way. Roman tells his cousin, and she hears it too. They're joined. We'll talk, she tells him. Soon.
This is firm. There is a frision of tension that curls through her body like a hook. And then, just like that, it is gone. She pushes her fingers through her hair returns to Rilke.
[Trent Brumby] One would think that the drive home might cool down Trent's rarely spoken temper, but it hasn't. It's when he's alone that he lets that part out, fume and curse and want to hit things - sometimes he even does. Most of those times he makes it to the gym, hits a bag, presses some weights and works off the steam. Tonight though, he's got spew on his leather shoes, splattered on the hems of his good jeans and his car stinks of bile combined with old spaghetti and meatballs. Vomit is the most unpleasant smell ever. He had pulled over the car just to grab out his bag from his trunk to spray the interior of the car with tons of that body cologne he uses at the gym.
Now, he's made it up to his apartment, fumbles his key into the lock and shoves open the door. He is not aware that Kora is here, and by the silence of his apartment assumes that Erick is gone also. He knows the basics of the other mans routine and tonight he shouldn't be here anyway. This is why he walks in, shuts the door behind him loud enough to vibrate the immediate wall, and storms through the living room.
It's classic, when he see's her there, sitting in the corner of the couch and enjoying some peaceful time. He abruptly halts. His face is flushed. His eyes are glittering storms, and veins are popping out along the sides of his temple and neck alike. Its times like this that the bulk of him, the solid frame of muscles, are readily apparent. "Great." Breathing in, unsteadily, he tries to swallow it down.
It's not her fault. It's not her fault. It's not her fault. Nobody to blame here.
"Sorry. It's good to see you," he manages. Then: "I need to shower. Your packmate threw up on me." This here, is only part of why her mate is fuming and looks as though he wants to really hurt somebody. And he doesn't wait for her answer, to get much of a change to move, before he's continuing through that living room directly for the back of the apartment to throw his leather loafers into the laundry tub and move the next door down for the bathroom.
[Kora] The scent of vomit flares around him, underneath the overwhelming glut of cologne he sprayed to tamp it down. Her nostrils flare and she's looking up when he walks in, vibrating with this fundamental, underlying anger, rich enough to make him stark, rigid. Blood pumps through his body, she can almost scent the stress hormones underneath his skin.
While he struggles to breathe - reminds himself that it's not her fault, it's not her fault, it's not her fault - she watches him, her dark eyes settled on him, touching his stormy eyes, his rigid shoulders, the pulse that throbs in his neck, his mouth, drawn tight over his teeth. Peace, he wanted. Someplace to be anger, to indulge it alone, to let himself go. She's here instead, sitting on his couch, reading Rilke in German.
He tells her that her packmate threw up on him, and she goes still. That little out of place missive (she thought he scented her, and suddenly processed what that strange scent meant) from Roman to Sparrow across their shared spirit-bond is given new meaning. Her mouth thins and her brow draws taut.
Then she smooths the expression away, neat and sure as you please. He disappears down the hall, and her attention lingers there. She hears the loafers in the laundry sink, the bathroom door open and close, then looks back down at Rilke. Thinks, oh, you never had to deal with this to the long-dead German poet, and closes the book after trying three times to read the next line of the sonnet.
Quiet, she sits there, her hands on her thighs, the book wedged against the back of the couch. Then she stands up, pads into the kitchen, refills her glass of milk from the fridge and grabs a beer, pours it into a glass for him and brings it back out to put down on the coffee table beside her empty plate.
After a moment's though, she ferrets out the whiskey from the kitchen cabinets, or the sideboard in the dining room, and brings that to the table too. Then she sits back down, pulls Rilke back up from between the cushions, smoothes open the pages, and stares off at the dark movement of reflections in the windows, forgetting to read. The signs of her own answering tension are subtle, but she swallows them, pulls them back into her body, closes her eyes and listens to the way the pipes open in the walls.
[Trent Brumby] He's gone a long while. He scrubs himself down even though Romans dinner didn't make it beneath his clothes, it still has that feeling of being dirty. Nothing like puke to do that to anyone. It's also meant to calm him down, this ritual washing and the running of water across his muscles. He stays in there, leaning hands into the wall, eyes closed and trying to bring himself under control.
He thinks of Kora. Her Rage. Her position. Its the last that makes him swallow some of his pride, his anger and his accusations.
So when he comes back out again, he's still in a towel, wrapped around his waist, and his hair is damp. He's dried off for the most part but there's a few drops from his hair down his neck and shoulders. There's time yet to get into clothes before Erick gets home, but guys are alright with other guys dressed like this, from locker rooms - as long as they're not homophobes with a gay man amongst them. His scars are there, still rather new and pink, taking time to fade against the coloured hue of his skin.
He sits heavily on the couch, not taking up her room but not sitting the far end of her anyway. Normally that beer he'd leave for her, same with the whiskey, but she's not been drinking since she confirmed she's carrying their child, which leaves him reaching for the bottle. "Thanks," murmured over the lip of it, and then he's taking a swig. And another, longer.
Hunched forward, leaves his back broader across the shoulders. The bottle hangs there between his knees, and his forearms rest on the navy towel over his thighs. His heart is beating hard again, not as wild as before, but he's still not calm. His skin is flushed all the way down his neck, and its not all to do with hot water. "Roman asked if you were pregnant. I was talking to Imogen, asking her some questions. Seeing if she knew anything that I could tell you about Garou pregnancies."
Here there's a huff and a shake of his head. He lifts the beer and drinks deeper from it, swallowing it down like it's sour, like he's not enjoying it. Leaning back against his thigh again, he's looking forward, not at her. He doesn't like to be around her angry. Around anyone. "He came out of nowhere, overheard."
Then he puked.
[Kora] There is this brief, subtle moment when he reappears, wearing just the towel wrapped around his waist, droplets of water on his shoulders, glistening in his still-damp hair, where she forgets his anger and drops her gaze, watching his body move, the subtle bunch and shift of his abdominals and obliques, those broadwinged spans of muscle flanking his spine, watching them move underneath his skin. Then the moment passes, he skirts the edge of the couch, and as he sits down - that heavy movement - she's folding the book open on her legs closed, smoothing her long fingers over the cover, like she might take some sort of lesson away from the cool slick cover.
He sits, and she's leaning over, tossing the book onto the coffee table, coverside down, on the far side of her empty plate. The book slides another handful of inches, then stops. Her eyes are on him the whole of the time. She lifts up her feet when he sits, wanting him closer somehow, then plants them again along the side of his thigh, digging her toes into his quadriceps, making that physical connection between their bodies as he leans forward, exposing the broad muscles of his back to her, the whiskey bottle hanging between his thighs.
He starts speaking, and she stops moving, just sits there with her toes curled, kneading his muscles, her body language loose, the curve of her spine against the back of the couch dipping through the hips, rising again through her thighs, a parabola defined by some strange equation. There's a rigidness underneath that stillness, this animal watchfulness that does not ease when he mate is angry, his skin flushed, this terrible, sour look on his face as he swallows the beer.
"I heard," she tells him, quiet in response, her voice low and even and sure, the rhythm of it. The spare moment she takes to breathe in as he breathes heavily out. " - him tell Sparrow. I thought he might have - sensed it, yeah?"
Now she sits up, slides her feet from his thigh to the floor, plants them there and rises from her slouch, scooting to sit closer to him, leaning over to plant a chaste, soothing kiss on his back, the hard plane of a scapula shaping the overlying muscles, lifting her chin to rest her cheek on the back of his shoulder. "I'm not surprised," that he sneaked up," she tells him, quiet, in a way that doesn't interrupt, just nips in here. "He's a Rotagar," she says, then corrects herself, cheek curving against skin as she smiles this still half-smile. " - a Ragabash. Sneaks everywhere."
This is not strictly true, but she doesn't correct herself.
"Then he threw up?" she prompts then, unsuring whether the question will lance the wound or feed the flames.
[Trent Brumby] Normally he'd grab her foot, start working his fingers into it, like it's a second nature to him. These things come naturally and are as soothing to him as it may be for her. But there's none of this now. His anger is a sharp thing, intense in a way that he feels, always, under the skin but rarely breaks through the surface. It shows how his discipline is a trained thing, ingrained in him, as much as it is a skill. But tonight it's all gone. Like that other night, the one they don't speak about.
Instead he's just sitting there, under her kneading toes - later, under the soft kiss she gives to his hot skin, and cheek rested into him there. He listens to her. He doesn't know how she's already overheard Roman tell Sparrow. Doesn't ask either. Doesn't care right now. He's like that. Single minded. Focused. Even in his anger. Especially in his anger. It's a very male thing and the selfishness of it is a stark contrast to his usual willingness to accommodate everyone else above him.
"Yeah. Then he puked on me," hotly.
Gesturing with a hand in a jerking motion to the side. "Had the rest of the fucking sidewalk, but he puked on my fucking shoes." Doesn't matter that Roman is sixteen. Doesn't matter what this means for Roman or the pack. Doesn't matter about the shoes either. It's something else. It's the entire situation that has him riled.
"You would think somebody other then me might be fucking happy about this." There it is. That underlying boiling emotion that makes him burn with fire. She can feel the way he's bunching, coiled, ready to spring out of that chair, maybe start pacing. But he manages to stay there, under her touch, because she's touching him - it's meant to soothe him, but still part of his brain, registers that it soothes her and even under all this, subconsciously, he is still that accommodating Kinfolk. The man that wants nothing more then to make the woman that chose him, happy.
"You know what?" Half glancing towards her. Eyes near slits. Nostrils flaring. "I get it! I get that it's fucking dangerous. That the likelihood of our child reaching full term is slim. But she or he is in there, right now, growing for the future. Our blood, my seed in your womb, making something fucking wonderful, and Garou are throwing up on my goddamn fucking shoes."
Looking away, sharply. "All I wanted to do was to get some advice, to help you stop worrying, have some answers so you don't have to go looking for them. And she tells me to get my nose out of it. Just like the Black fucking Furies." Yeah, that hurts too. It hit him right in the insecurities and ripped it wide open.
[Kora] His anger is unreasoning and entire, utterly visceral. It pours through him, hot as the blood that flushes beneath his skin. His arteries are spiked with hormones - adrenaline, testosterone - that flush through his dilated blood vessels filling him up and she knows exactly how that feels inside her, that way her throat closes and the words clot inside, the way the world feels washed and wrung out, the her vision narrows to this corded tunnel defined by the object of her fury.
He is not a wolf, not an animal, but there's something of them inside them. Some spike in his blood that draws them to him, some echo of his ancestors that makes itself known in his blood and in his bones, in the muscle bunching beneath her cheek. She knows the way his body moves, and can feel him readying himself to move; and the way he stays right there, even with his muscles screaming under his skin, his anger as hot as her rage.
There is an answering chime, this stirring inside her when he gives her that half-glance, the narrowed eyes and the flaring nostrils.
In the end, she defends neither of them. Oh, she starts. Lifting her cheek from his back to plant her chin on his shoulder, muscles tense, hard and solid underneath the sharp point of her chin, she starts. "We fought together," she begins, " - last night. These inhuman - " She starts to tell him how they fought; how Roman has called Imogen Miss Doctor Slaughter Ma'am since the day they met. How Roman will now throw himself in front of the maw of every monster to protect her.
Then he turns to her - You would think somebody other then me might be fucking happy about this. - and she goes still, absolutely quiet, her jaw working soundlessly, her chin moving against his shoulder, digging into the knotted muscle.
He is in profile to her; she watches him sidelong, through half-lashed eyes - the distinct line of his nose, the hot points of his slitted gray eyes, the way is mouth goes flat.
Her eyes close.
Her fingers find their way into his black half-curls.
"When I challenged for you," this is after. After he's gone silent again, the old insecurities lashed wide open. "Adamidas demanded a story from me. A story of your ancestors."
Then she says a word that sounds like her own name, the human one, the one her mother gave her. Kora. Kore. The memory of the long-dead Garou breathed into her by one of the twice-born in exchange for a memory of her own. "Her name Daughter of the Dawn." She says then, in English.
She's moving beside him. Were he not so drenched in his anger, so focused with her, burning, he could feel her move, drawing her knee up underneath her, depressing the couch beneath her weight, sharper on the fulcrum of the joint. " - and sometimes I wake up in the morning beside you, and just watch you. And sometimes I see her in you. And sometimes I wonder if I'll see you in our son or our daughter."
It is the first time she's utter the word son or daughter and attached it to their child, growing inside her. She's still and firm now, not giving, not indulgent, just clear as she lifts her chin from his shoulder, replaces it with her hand and pushes him firmly, solidly, inexorably up and back.
She wants to feel his resistance, his body tensing under the pressure of her hands, his strength pushing against her own.
And she wants to feel him give way.
--
When he does, if he does, she swings her body over his, pivots from the knee she's drawn up underneath her and settles, kneeling, over him, pulling his head gently, firmly back as she looks down at him.
"I'm happy about this."
[Trent Brumby] She tells him a story. There's a point to it, but not until the end, and when she began he filled his lungs and stomach with a slow drawn air, as if he had to bear a story when he really didn't want to hear it. He's like this, angry. Completely unreasonable. Its no wonder, then, that she first saw him bloodied. She liked it then, maybe not now though, not when part of it seems directed at her.
But this leaks out of him, not the anger, the air, sliding through his nose in a hot breath when she mentions son and daughter. Makes her point, drives it home in the way Galliards do. It deflates some of that stiffness in him. Not all.
Raising his arm he took a swig of his beer, right before she's tugging on his shoulder. That core strength of him has filled out, expanded into his physical form. What was hidden, something under the surface that showed in the discipline and the strength of simply standing still, is now this raw shine of solid stubbornness. He's stronger now then when he's ever been with her, sitting rigid as she pulls.
... then gives.
He flops back, expelling another one of those hot growling sighs. But she grips his hair, sharpens that look in his eye as she forces him to look at her. Tells him that she's happy. It makes him frown, cutting these lines in his dark brows, making his eyes lighter against them, but no less glittering unhappy. "You have a funny way of showing it."
Off to the side, his beer is held, rested on the couch, hand around it loosely. His other by his thigh, on the couch, not touching her. His body is not relaxing but he's becoming placid with her. Letting her show her dominance by riding higher over him, covering his body with hers, holding his head in place. The extend of his anger about this becomes clear, when there remains no stirrings in his jeans. Not yet, anyway.
Later, the windows are dark, the sun has disappeared from the sky. Not evening the last streaks grace the western sky. The air feels clear, the warmth of the day is rapidly disappearing but there was a hint of stuffiness in the apartment when she came in. Before she into the kitchen, nosing about for her dinner tucked away in the oven, she threw open two of the living room windows, leaned forward into the glass, watching the dark street below, the last light in the sky.
She didn't call ahead, just came, found him gone. Erick ducked in and then left again, off to a support group meeting, Iraq veterans at the VA Center. He might be out late, he said, and she tipped him a half-smile. Be safe., she told him, meaning it, her attention lingering on the closed door, the darkened foyer for long moments after he left.
Barefoot, she sits on the couch, leaning back into the embrace of the sectional's corner joint. When he is not there, she does not turn on the television for company. She likes the silence, the scent of the place. Even the white-noise hum of the fridge, the domesticity of it all. An empty plate is on the coffee table, knife and fork in the middle, an oven mitt underneath doubles as a trivot. Her bare feet are on the cushions, her knees drawn up, a book open, resting on her thighs. Once she stills, stops.
Miss Kora's in the family way. Roman tells his cousin, and she hears it too. They're joined. We'll talk, she tells him. Soon.
This is firm. There is a frision of tension that curls through her body like a hook. And then, just like that, it is gone. She pushes her fingers through her hair returns to Rilke.
[Trent Brumby] One would think that the drive home might cool down Trent's rarely spoken temper, but it hasn't. It's when he's alone that he lets that part out, fume and curse and want to hit things - sometimes he even does. Most of those times he makes it to the gym, hits a bag, presses some weights and works off the steam. Tonight though, he's got spew on his leather shoes, splattered on the hems of his good jeans and his car stinks of bile combined with old spaghetti and meatballs. Vomit is the most unpleasant smell ever. He had pulled over the car just to grab out his bag from his trunk to spray the interior of the car with tons of that body cologne he uses at the gym.
Now, he's made it up to his apartment, fumbles his key into the lock and shoves open the door. He is not aware that Kora is here, and by the silence of his apartment assumes that Erick is gone also. He knows the basics of the other mans routine and tonight he shouldn't be here anyway. This is why he walks in, shuts the door behind him loud enough to vibrate the immediate wall, and storms through the living room.
It's classic, when he see's her there, sitting in the corner of the couch and enjoying some peaceful time. He abruptly halts. His face is flushed. His eyes are glittering storms, and veins are popping out along the sides of his temple and neck alike. Its times like this that the bulk of him, the solid frame of muscles, are readily apparent. "Great." Breathing in, unsteadily, he tries to swallow it down.
It's not her fault. It's not her fault. It's not her fault. Nobody to blame here.
"Sorry. It's good to see you," he manages. Then: "I need to shower. Your packmate threw up on me." This here, is only part of why her mate is fuming and looks as though he wants to really hurt somebody. And he doesn't wait for her answer, to get much of a change to move, before he's continuing through that living room directly for the back of the apartment to throw his leather loafers into the laundry tub and move the next door down for the bathroom.
[Kora] The scent of vomit flares around him, underneath the overwhelming glut of cologne he sprayed to tamp it down. Her nostrils flare and she's looking up when he walks in, vibrating with this fundamental, underlying anger, rich enough to make him stark, rigid. Blood pumps through his body, she can almost scent the stress hormones underneath his skin.
While he struggles to breathe - reminds himself that it's not her fault, it's not her fault, it's not her fault - she watches him, her dark eyes settled on him, touching his stormy eyes, his rigid shoulders, the pulse that throbs in his neck, his mouth, drawn tight over his teeth. Peace, he wanted. Someplace to be anger, to indulge it alone, to let himself go. She's here instead, sitting on his couch, reading Rilke in German.
He tells her that her packmate threw up on him, and she goes still. That little out of place missive (she thought he scented her, and suddenly processed what that strange scent meant) from Roman to Sparrow across their shared spirit-bond is given new meaning. Her mouth thins and her brow draws taut.
Then she smooths the expression away, neat and sure as you please. He disappears down the hall, and her attention lingers there. She hears the loafers in the laundry sink, the bathroom door open and close, then looks back down at Rilke. Thinks, oh, you never had to deal with this to the long-dead German poet, and closes the book after trying three times to read the next line of the sonnet.
Quiet, she sits there, her hands on her thighs, the book wedged against the back of the couch. Then she stands up, pads into the kitchen, refills her glass of milk from the fridge and grabs a beer, pours it into a glass for him and brings it back out to put down on the coffee table beside her empty plate.
After a moment's though, she ferrets out the whiskey from the kitchen cabinets, or the sideboard in the dining room, and brings that to the table too. Then she sits back down, pulls Rilke back up from between the cushions, smoothes open the pages, and stares off at the dark movement of reflections in the windows, forgetting to read. The signs of her own answering tension are subtle, but she swallows them, pulls them back into her body, closes her eyes and listens to the way the pipes open in the walls.
[Trent Brumby] He's gone a long while. He scrubs himself down even though Romans dinner didn't make it beneath his clothes, it still has that feeling of being dirty. Nothing like puke to do that to anyone. It's also meant to calm him down, this ritual washing and the running of water across his muscles. He stays in there, leaning hands into the wall, eyes closed and trying to bring himself under control.
He thinks of Kora. Her Rage. Her position. Its the last that makes him swallow some of his pride, his anger and his accusations.
So when he comes back out again, he's still in a towel, wrapped around his waist, and his hair is damp. He's dried off for the most part but there's a few drops from his hair down his neck and shoulders. There's time yet to get into clothes before Erick gets home, but guys are alright with other guys dressed like this, from locker rooms - as long as they're not homophobes with a gay man amongst them. His scars are there, still rather new and pink, taking time to fade against the coloured hue of his skin.
He sits heavily on the couch, not taking up her room but not sitting the far end of her anyway. Normally that beer he'd leave for her, same with the whiskey, but she's not been drinking since she confirmed she's carrying their child, which leaves him reaching for the bottle. "Thanks," murmured over the lip of it, and then he's taking a swig. And another, longer.
Hunched forward, leaves his back broader across the shoulders. The bottle hangs there between his knees, and his forearms rest on the navy towel over his thighs. His heart is beating hard again, not as wild as before, but he's still not calm. His skin is flushed all the way down his neck, and its not all to do with hot water. "Roman asked if you were pregnant. I was talking to Imogen, asking her some questions. Seeing if she knew anything that I could tell you about Garou pregnancies."
Here there's a huff and a shake of his head. He lifts the beer and drinks deeper from it, swallowing it down like it's sour, like he's not enjoying it. Leaning back against his thigh again, he's looking forward, not at her. He doesn't like to be around her angry. Around anyone. "He came out of nowhere, overheard."
Then he puked.
[Kora] There is this brief, subtle moment when he reappears, wearing just the towel wrapped around his waist, droplets of water on his shoulders, glistening in his still-damp hair, where she forgets his anger and drops her gaze, watching his body move, the subtle bunch and shift of his abdominals and obliques, those broadwinged spans of muscle flanking his spine, watching them move underneath his skin. Then the moment passes, he skirts the edge of the couch, and as he sits down - that heavy movement - she's folding the book open on her legs closed, smoothing her long fingers over the cover, like she might take some sort of lesson away from the cool slick cover.
He sits, and she's leaning over, tossing the book onto the coffee table, coverside down, on the far side of her empty plate. The book slides another handful of inches, then stops. Her eyes are on him the whole of the time. She lifts up her feet when he sits, wanting him closer somehow, then plants them again along the side of his thigh, digging her toes into his quadriceps, making that physical connection between their bodies as he leans forward, exposing the broad muscles of his back to her, the whiskey bottle hanging between his thighs.
He starts speaking, and she stops moving, just sits there with her toes curled, kneading his muscles, her body language loose, the curve of her spine against the back of the couch dipping through the hips, rising again through her thighs, a parabola defined by some strange equation. There's a rigidness underneath that stillness, this animal watchfulness that does not ease when he mate is angry, his skin flushed, this terrible, sour look on his face as he swallows the beer.
"I heard," she tells him, quiet in response, her voice low and even and sure, the rhythm of it. The spare moment she takes to breathe in as he breathes heavily out. " - him tell Sparrow. I thought he might have - sensed it, yeah?"
Now she sits up, slides her feet from his thigh to the floor, plants them there and rises from her slouch, scooting to sit closer to him, leaning over to plant a chaste, soothing kiss on his back, the hard plane of a scapula shaping the overlying muscles, lifting her chin to rest her cheek on the back of his shoulder. "I'm not surprised," that he sneaked up," she tells him, quiet, in a way that doesn't interrupt, just nips in here. "He's a Rotagar," she says, then corrects herself, cheek curving against skin as she smiles this still half-smile. " - a Ragabash. Sneaks everywhere."
This is not strictly true, but she doesn't correct herself.
"Then he threw up?" she prompts then, unsuring whether the question will lance the wound or feed the flames.
[Trent Brumby] Normally he'd grab her foot, start working his fingers into it, like it's a second nature to him. These things come naturally and are as soothing to him as it may be for her. But there's none of this now. His anger is a sharp thing, intense in a way that he feels, always, under the skin but rarely breaks through the surface. It shows how his discipline is a trained thing, ingrained in him, as much as it is a skill. But tonight it's all gone. Like that other night, the one they don't speak about.
Instead he's just sitting there, under her kneading toes - later, under the soft kiss she gives to his hot skin, and cheek rested into him there. He listens to her. He doesn't know how she's already overheard Roman tell Sparrow. Doesn't ask either. Doesn't care right now. He's like that. Single minded. Focused. Even in his anger. Especially in his anger. It's a very male thing and the selfishness of it is a stark contrast to his usual willingness to accommodate everyone else above him.
"Yeah. Then he puked on me," hotly.
Gesturing with a hand in a jerking motion to the side. "Had the rest of the fucking sidewalk, but he puked on my fucking shoes." Doesn't matter that Roman is sixteen. Doesn't matter what this means for Roman or the pack. Doesn't matter about the shoes either. It's something else. It's the entire situation that has him riled.
"You would think somebody other then me might be fucking happy about this." There it is. That underlying boiling emotion that makes him burn with fire. She can feel the way he's bunching, coiled, ready to spring out of that chair, maybe start pacing. But he manages to stay there, under her touch, because she's touching him - it's meant to soothe him, but still part of his brain, registers that it soothes her and even under all this, subconsciously, he is still that accommodating Kinfolk. The man that wants nothing more then to make the woman that chose him, happy.
"You know what?" Half glancing towards her. Eyes near slits. Nostrils flaring. "I get it! I get that it's fucking dangerous. That the likelihood of our child reaching full term is slim. But she or he is in there, right now, growing for the future. Our blood, my seed in your womb, making something fucking wonderful, and Garou are throwing up on my goddamn fucking shoes."
Looking away, sharply. "All I wanted to do was to get some advice, to help you stop worrying, have some answers so you don't have to go looking for them. And she tells me to get my nose out of it. Just like the Black fucking Furies." Yeah, that hurts too. It hit him right in the insecurities and ripped it wide open.
[Kora] His anger is unreasoning and entire, utterly visceral. It pours through him, hot as the blood that flushes beneath his skin. His arteries are spiked with hormones - adrenaline, testosterone - that flush through his dilated blood vessels filling him up and she knows exactly how that feels inside her, that way her throat closes and the words clot inside, the way the world feels washed and wrung out, the her vision narrows to this corded tunnel defined by the object of her fury.
He is not a wolf, not an animal, but there's something of them inside them. Some spike in his blood that draws them to him, some echo of his ancestors that makes itself known in his blood and in his bones, in the muscle bunching beneath her cheek. She knows the way his body moves, and can feel him readying himself to move; and the way he stays right there, even with his muscles screaming under his skin, his anger as hot as her rage.
There is an answering chime, this stirring inside her when he gives her that half-glance, the narrowed eyes and the flaring nostrils.
In the end, she defends neither of them. Oh, she starts. Lifting her cheek from his back to plant her chin on his shoulder, muscles tense, hard and solid underneath the sharp point of her chin, she starts. "We fought together," she begins, " - last night. These inhuman - " She starts to tell him how they fought; how Roman has called Imogen Miss Doctor Slaughter Ma'am since the day they met. How Roman will now throw himself in front of the maw of every monster to protect her.
Then he turns to her - You would think somebody other then me might be fucking happy about this. - and she goes still, absolutely quiet, her jaw working soundlessly, her chin moving against his shoulder, digging into the knotted muscle.
He is in profile to her; she watches him sidelong, through half-lashed eyes - the distinct line of his nose, the hot points of his slitted gray eyes, the way is mouth goes flat.
Her eyes close.
Her fingers find their way into his black half-curls.
"When I challenged for you," this is after. After he's gone silent again, the old insecurities lashed wide open. "Adamidas demanded a story from me. A story of your ancestors."
Then she says a word that sounds like her own name, the human one, the one her mother gave her. Kora. Kore. The memory of the long-dead Garou breathed into her by one of the twice-born in exchange for a memory of her own. "Her name Daughter of the Dawn." She says then, in English.
She's moving beside him. Were he not so drenched in his anger, so focused with her, burning, he could feel her move, drawing her knee up underneath her, depressing the couch beneath her weight, sharper on the fulcrum of the joint. " - and sometimes I wake up in the morning beside you, and just watch you. And sometimes I see her in you. And sometimes I wonder if I'll see you in our son or our daughter."
It is the first time she's utter the word son or daughter and attached it to their child, growing inside her. She's still and firm now, not giving, not indulgent, just clear as she lifts her chin from his shoulder, replaces it with her hand and pushes him firmly, solidly, inexorably up and back.
She wants to feel his resistance, his body tensing under the pressure of her hands, his strength pushing against her own.
And she wants to feel him give way.
--
When he does, if he does, she swings her body over his, pivots from the knee she's drawn up underneath her and settles, kneeling, over him, pulling his head gently, firmly back as she looks down at him.
"I'm happy about this."
[Trent Brumby] She tells him a story. There's a point to it, but not until the end, and when she began he filled his lungs and stomach with a slow drawn air, as if he had to bear a story when he really didn't want to hear it. He's like this, angry. Completely unreasonable. Its no wonder, then, that she first saw him bloodied. She liked it then, maybe not now though, not when part of it seems directed at her.
But this leaks out of him, not the anger, the air, sliding through his nose in a hot breath when she mentions son and daughter. Makes her point, drives it home in the way Galliards do. It deflates some of that stiffness in him. Not all.
Raising his arm he took a swig of his beer, right before she's tugging on his shoulder. That core strength of him has filled out, expanded into his physical form. What was hidden, something under the surface that showed in the discipline and the strength of simply standing still, is now this raw shine of solid stubbornness. He's stronger now then when he's ever been with her, sitting rigid as she pulls.
... then gives.
He flops back, expelling another one of those hot growling sighs. But she grips his hair, sharpens that look in his eye as she forces him to look at her. Tells him that she's happy. It makes him frown, cutting these lines in his dark brows, making his eyes lighter against them, but no less glittering unhappy. "You have a funny way of showing it."
Off to the side, his beer is held, rested on the couch, hand around it loosely. His other by his thigh, on the couch, not touching her. His body is not relaxing but he's becoming placid with her. Letting her show her dominance by riding higher over him, covering his body with hers, holding his head in place. The extend of his anger about this becomes clear, when there remains no stirrings in his jeans. Not yet, anyway.
