[JB Cavanagh] The night outside is bitterly cold. The morning news will bookend reports about homeless men and women freezing to death under bridges, in damp, derelict squats with bright pieces about choosing the perfect Rolex for that special man in your life, or wrapping your gift in sheets of uncut bills from the treasury. Now, though – there’s just this cold, dark night. The clouds are clearing away, allowing the bitter arctic air to settle over the city. There’s nothing to keep what warmth remains in, just that unconscious challenge of that great darkness over the lake and the snowcharged glow of the city behind them.
JB carries Lucy the whole way to Imogen’s car. The girl is stiff in his arms, wary, bright and the shock of cold air just charges that sense of alertness further, but she’s tired enough that she is finished talking for the moment, and just watches the Brotherhood recede into the shadows around it.
Here, the snow is loose, powdery. The sidewalk outside the Brotherhood has been shoveled, but the winds send sprawling drifts that crunch beneath their feet. “Be great skiing if there was a hill anywhere within a hundred miles of Chicago,” he says once, voice rumbling from somewhere deep in his chest. Small talk, really. The night is vast around them with the austere promise of winter.
It’s the only thing he says until they are settled in the car, Lucy buckled safely in the back seat, shivering again, holding her jaw sharp and tight. As soon as the heat cranks out, she’s be drowsy, asleep by the time they make it home, but now she’s making that humming sound underneath the chatter of her teeth and blowing on her mittened hands.
He’s a big man, though he lacks the presence of garou, the sense of incipient violence that crystallizes the air around them, and he fills the seat without overwhelming it, knees bent awkwardly against the dash. As the engine rumbles to life and the heat begins to blow, he reaches out and tests the vents in front of him, then shifts the louvers upward so the heat will blow over him, into the back seat.
The shadows are soft in the car, muted by the cut of the streetlights through the windshield, dirty from salt and snow. As Imogen begins to pull out, he looks out the passenger’s window, up at the city, quiet in the distance, the lights bright, distinct points in the shockingly clear, cold air, like some new undiscovered galaxy lowering itself to the earth.
Then he glances at her, brown eyes briefly touching her porcelain features. “ – you going anywhere for the holidays?” is what he asks, in the easy gracenotes of someone comfortable with small talk.
[Imogen Slaughter] The Volvo is old and not Imogen's style. Faded paint and rust, a vehicle that likely was sold for less than the repairs would cost.
The heat in the Volvo works, thankfully, but the engine is cold, and at first the air that comes out of the vents is unpleasant. She pulls out of the parking space and heads for the parking lot exit, flicking a glance to her rear view mirror as Lucy begins to hum.
The engine runs a little choppily, beginning to smooth out as she accelerates down the street, headed toward a red light.
Though she had not truly responded to JB's first attempt at small talk with little more than a sound, one which could be taken for agreement or neutrality, when he asks the question, she has little choice but to speak.
"No," she says absently, casting him a glance before turning her attention back to the road. "I'll likely work. You?"
[JB Cavanagh] "Booked solid for two seatings on Christmas Day," he tells her, voice wry. Or maybe rueful, though his attention is now fixed evenly on her profile, tracing the blur of her pale skin against the shifting shadows of the city beyond the driver's side window, the glare of sodium vapor lights on big drifts of snow, scoured and sculpted by those big northern winds until they resemble the elegant forms of sand dunes beneath a scouring moon. "Doing a traditional, family style meal rather than the usual service, though. It's easier to plan for, don't need as much prep time so we'll have the morning and first part of the afternoon. Hope it means an earlier night than usual for my crew, too."
He pauses there, cuts a look up at the rearview mirror, studies his daughter's reflection there. as the heater coughs to life, the chattering I'm-so-cold hum stops and drowsiness - the aftermath of all those stress hormones in a small body in so little time - begins to set in. Lucy has her face against the cold glass, breathing out little clouds of moisture against the window, but her head is gradually lolling forward, until it's held up more by the shoulder belt than by any conscious will.
"You every get back home?" he asks, after another pause, voice framed by the engine's hum, the crunch of the tires over ice and snow.
[Imogen Slaughter] His wry voice, or his rueful voice draws a smirk from her. "I'll take that as a no," she inserts, before he explains his plan. To this, she has little to offer. He has never had any hint as to whether or not Imogen is much of a cook; though that may be a remark on the brevity of their relationship rather than anything else.
While he studies his daughter in the rearview mirror, Imogen drives, coming to a stop at a stoplight, Snow has begin to fall and she turns on the windshield wipers. They begin to squeak rhythmically across the glass.
She cuts a glance to him at this question, her expression carefully contained. The question, for all its innocuousness seems too personal to her.
"I used to," she says finally, "I don't anymore.
"How's business, then?" the change of subject is deliberate.
[JB Cavanagh] She says, I used to.
She says, I don't anymore.
Then she changes the subject. He's watching the city move now that his daughter is warm enough that she has stopped chattering, has started nodding off. Ahead of them, a snowplow fishtails on a side street, narrowing avoids plowing into someone's white range rover, pristine under its white blanket. There are few enough people out on the streets. Just the drug dealers, the most desperate prostitutes remain outside. People on the late shift at some non-union window factory in the guttered remnants of an old slaughterhouse, trudging wearily home through the snow.
And everywhere, the glitter of lights, illuminated snowflakes on the streetlamps, windows and balconies wrapped in chasing strands of moving light, charms against the darkness only half remembered by humans, in this age of electric light. "We might make it - " says JB, of business, with a low sound at the back of his throat, frustration wrapped in a skein of humor. "I'll know by April or May."
Then he shrugs, and continues as if she hadn't changed the subject. "Lucy's going home to visit my folks over New Years," he says, " - The 27th to the 3rd. Then school starts again on the fourth. We'll have our big meal on the 21st. The crew, their families, a few friends. You'd be welcome, if you wanted to come."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen allows her mouth to curl, but it's not quite humour. "Thank-you," she says, casting him a glance. "But I'm not particularly fond of strangers. And I would imagine most would be human." As if most kinfolk did not consider themselves human.
It is at least a statement of her beliefs.
Her mouth twists further. "Yeh keep invitin' me to do things, and I keep refusin'. S'not personal."
[JB Cavanagh] "No?" he returns. His voice is still quiet, but it isn't wry this time. There's a harder edge underneath, something like bedrock. Dressed for the weather - a down parker, solid leather gloves, not fine like a lawyer's gloves, but rough like a workman's, and a short knitted scarf double-tied around his neck with the hood of the parker half-way up, he's muffled, expression lost in the shadows, the sound of his voice dampened by the cold weather gear.
" - then what the hell is it?" The tension isn't lost, though, this sudden, abrupt burst of anger underneath, so abrupt it surprises him, the way it burns the back of the throat. Hands fisted in his lap, he wouldn't mind punching something.
Strange, too. He figured his brawling days behind him.
[Imogen Slaughter] His reaction was unexpected - the force of it. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye as the car decelerates, trapped behind the slow moving, some what erratic snowplow. Even behind it, the roads are slippery, the snow pushed away to reveal the black ice beneath. The tires slid for a split second before regaining control.
She does not speak for some time. And when she does, it is unsatisfactory, even to her own ears.
"It's-" a hard stop, then a start again, "complicated."
[JB Cavanagh] "Tell me what isn't - " his voice is flat, is low. Then he opens his gloved hands - and he does this deliberately, reminds himself to open his fists rather than close them a solid inch above his thighs, the sort of gesture one makes when negotiating with a violent stranger, except that he is negotiating with himself.
"Complicated." He breathes out, the flat of his palms falling solidly against his thighs. He glances back at Lucy, her pale cheek against the cold window, mouth slack, cheeks rosy, her eyes closed, face haloed by the staticky strands of hair that have escaped her ski cap. And he glances back, watching the brakelights come on behind the snowplow, bracing himself for another brief slide. "Jesus fucking Christ."
[Imogen Slaughter] Until now, she's been calm. Usually, she is ice. It does much to add to the frustration of others: barely containing their anger, while she coolly regards them while revealing nothing.
At first, the only hint he gets is a muscle moving in her jaw as she clenches her teeth. Then releases it through a deliberate effort.
"I did," she says, "I'm not fond o' strangers. If yeh need me to elaborate, I am not good at small talk, and I don't particularly enjoy it. Nor do I enjoy sittin' in a room full of people feeling entirely alone." Her lips compress suddenly, her jaw clenching again.
When she speaks again, she is closed off once more. In control, though chastened by saying more than she had intended. "I don't get the warmth o' the holiday glow that most seem t'get. I've never been much o' one for them: Christmas, Easter, whatever."
[JB Cavanagh] She finally unclenches her teeth, recites her reasons - not fond o' strangers has his open hands curling again. The snowplow ahead releasing the brake lights, the red glow fading. He turns away, looks out his window at the sidewalk, the dark storefronts moving along beside them, the gleam of lights reflected in the picture windows against the darkness beyond.
Then he looks up, back at her and shakes his head. Says, with feeling emphasized by a quiet flare of his nostrils. "You wouldn't be." He starts to say something else, but thinks better of it, and closes and compresses his mouth when she continues, says something about the holiday glow. It makes him breath out, sharply again, not wry now - something else.
"Well," he returns at last, with a philosophical shrug, " - if you change your mind, you know where we'll be."
[Imogen Slaughter] You wouldn't be, he says, and she nearly fires something back, but then restrains it with an effort - betrayed by her hands tightening on the steering wheel.
She wears fine leather gloves, smooth as a second skin. They may cost nearly as much as this car did.
Instead, she says what she did. That she is not much about the holiday glow, as this is less 'complicated' then anything else she could explain. And he responds, philosophically.
With this, the conversation ends. Imogen only nods. "I do," she says, and lets them lapse into silence. They reach an intersection and she turns down the street, away from the river and further into downtown toward JB's restaurant and home.
JB carries Lucy the whole way to Imogen’s car. The girl is stiff in his arms, wary, bright and the shock of cold air just charges that sense of alertness further, but she’s tired enough that she is finished talking for the moment, and just watches the Brotherhood recede into the shadows around it.
Here, the snow is loose, powdery. The sidewalk outside the Brotherhood has been shoveled, but the winds send sprawling drifts that crunch beneath their feet. “Be great skiing if there was a hill anywhere within a hundred miles of Chicago,” he says once, voice rumbling from somewhere deep in his chest. Small talk, really. The night is vast around them with the austere promise of winter.
It’s the only thing he says until they are settled in the car, Lucy buckled safely in the back seat, shivering again, holding her jaw sharp and tight. As soon as the heat cranks out, she’s be drowsy, asleep by the time they make it home, but now she’s making that humming sound underneath the chatter of her teeth and blowing on her mittened hands.
He’s a big man, though he lacks the presence of garou, the sense of incipient violence that crystallizes the air around them, and he fills the seat without overwhelming it, knees bent awkwardly against the dash. As the engine rumbles to life and the heat begins to blow, he reaches out and tests the vents in front of him, then shifts the louvers upward so the heat will blow over him, into the back seat.
The shadows are soft in the car, muted by the cut of the streetlights through the windshield, dirty from salt and snow. As Imogen begins to pull out, he looks out the passenger’s window, up at the city, quiet in the distance, the lights bright, distinct points in the shockingly clear, cold air, like some new undiscovered galaxy lowering itself to the earth.
Then he glances at her, brown eyes briefly touching her porcelain features. “ – you going anywhere for the holidays?” is what he asks, in the easy gracenotes of someone comfortable with small talk.
[Imogen Slaughter] The Volvo is old and not Imogen's style. Faded paint and rust, a vehicle that likely was sold for less than the repairs would cost.
The heat in the Volvo works, thankfully, but the engine is cold, and at first the air that comes out of the vents is unpleasant. She pulls out of the parking space and heads for the parking lot exit, flicking a glance to her rear view mirror as Lucy begins to hum.
The engine runs a little choppily, beginning to smooth out as she accelerates down the street, headed toward a red light.
Though she had not truly responded to JB's first attempt at small talk with little more than a sound, one which could be taken for agreement or neutrality, when he asks the question, she has little choice but to speak.
"No," she says absently, casting him a glance before turning her attention back to the road. "I'll likely work. You?"
[JB Cavanagh] "Booked solid for two seatings on Christmas Day," he tells her, voice wry. Or maybe rueful, though his attention is now fixed evenly on her profile, tracing the blur of her pale skin against the shifting shadows of the city beyond the driver's side window, the glare of sodium vapor lights on big drifts of snow, scoured and sculpted by those big northern winds until they resemble the elegant forms of sand dunes beneath a scouring moon. "Doing a traditional, family style meal rather than the usual service, though. It's easier to plan for, don't need as much prep time so we'll have the morning and first part of the afternoon. Hope it means an earlier night than usual for my crew, too."
He pauses there, cuts a look up at the rearview mirror, studies his daughter's reflection there. as the heater coughs to life, the chattering I'm-so-cold hum stops and drowsiness - the aftermath of all those stress hormones in a small body in so little time - begins to set in. Lucy has her face against the cold glass, breathing out little clouds of moisture against the window, but her head is gradually lolling forward, until it's held up more by the shoulder belt than by any conscious will.
"You every get back home?" he asks, after another pause, voice framed by the engine's hum, the crunch of the tires over ice and snow.
[Imogen Slaughter] His wry voice, or his rueful voice draws a smirk from her. "I'll take that as a no," she inserts, before he explains his plan. To this, she has little to offer. He has never had any hint as to whether or not Imogen is much of a cook; though that may be a remark on the brevity of their relationship rather than anything else.
While he studies his daughter in the rearview mirror, Imogen drives, coming to a stop at a stoplight, Snow has begin to fall and she turns on the windshield wipers. They begin to squeak rhythmically across the glass.
She cuts a glance to him at this question, her expression carefully contained. The question, for all its innocuousness seems too personal to her.
"I used to," she says finally, "I don't anymore.
"How's business, then?" the change of subject is deliberate.
[JB Cavanagh] She says, I used to.
She says, I don't anymore.
Then she changes the subject. He's watching the city move now that his daughter is warm enough that she has stopped chattering, has started nodding off. Ahead of them, a snowplow fishtails on a side street, narrowing avoids plowing into someone's white range rover, pristine under its white blanket. There are few enough people out on the streets. Just the drug dealers, the most desperate prostitutes remain outside. People on the late shift at some non-union window factory in the guttered remnants of an old slaughterhouse, trudging wearily home through the snow.
And everywhere, the glitter of lights, illuminated snowflakes on the streetlamps, windows and balconies wrapped in chasing strands of moving light, charms against the darkness only half remembered by humans, in this age of electric light. "We might make it - " says JB, of business, with a low sound at the back of his throat, frustration wrapped in a skein of humor. "I'll know by April or May."
Then he shrugs, and continues as if she hadn't changed the subject. "Lucy's going home to visit my folks over New Years," he says, " - The 27th to the 3rd. Then school starts again on the fourth. We'll have our big meal on the 21st. The crew, their families, a few friends. You'd be welcome, if you wanted to come."
[Imogen Slaughter] Imogen allows her mouth to curl, but it's not quite humour. "Thank-you," she says, casting him a glance. "But I'm not particularly fond of strangers. And I would imagine most would be human." As if most kinfolk did not consider themselves human.
It is at least a statement of her beliefs.
Her mouth twists further. "Yeh keep invitin' me to do things, and I keep refusin'. S'not personal."
[JB Cavanagh] "No?" he returns. His voice is still quiet, but it isn't wry this time. There's a harder edge underneath, something like bedrock. Dressed for the weather - a down parker, solid leather gloves, not fine like a lawyer's gloves, but rough like a workman's, and a short knitted scarf double-tied around his neck with the hood of the parker half-way up, he's muffled, expression lost in the shadows, the sound of his voice dampened by the cold weather gear.
" - then what the hell is it?" The tension isn't lost, though, this sudden, abrupt burst of anger underneath, so abrupt it surprises him, the way it burns the back of the throat. Hands fisted in his lap, he wouldn't mind punching something.
Strange, too. He figured his brawling days behind him.
[Imogen Slaughter] His reaction was unexpected - the force of it. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye as the car decelerates, trapped behind the slow moving, some what erratic snowplow. Even behind it, the roads are slippery, the snow pushed away to reveal the black ice beneath. The tires slid for a split second before regaining control.
She does not speak for some time. And when she does, it is unsatisfactory, even to her own ears.
"It's-" a hard stop, then a start again, "complicated."
[JB Cavanagh] "Tell me what isn't - " his voice is flat, is low. Then he opens his gloved hands - and he does this deliberately, reminds himself to open his fists rather than close them a solid inch above his thighs, the sort of gesture one makes when negotiating with a violent stranger, except that he is negotiating with himself.
"Complicated." He breathes out, the flat of his palms falling solidly against his thighs. He glances back at Lucy, her pale cheek against the cold window, mouth slack, cheeks rosy, her eyes closed, face haloed by the staticky strands of hair that have escaped her ski cap. And he glances back, watching the brakelights come on behind the snowplow, bracing himself for another brief slide. "Jesus fucking Christ."
[Imogen Slaughter] Until now, she's been calm. Usually, she is ice. It does much to add to the frustration of others: barely containing their anger, while she coolly regards them while revealing nothing.
At first, the only hint he gets is a muscle moving in her jaw as she clenches her teeth. Then releases it through a deliberate effort.
"I did," she says, "I'm not fond o' strangers. If yeh need me to elaborate, I am not good at small talk, and I don't particularly enjoy it. Nor do I enjoy sittin' in a room full of people feeling entirely alone." Her lips compress suddenly, her jaw clenching again.
When she speaks again, she is closed off once more. In control, though chastened by saying more than she had intended. "I don't get the warmth o' the holiday glow that most seem t'get. I've never been much o' one for them: Christmas, Easter, whatever."
[JB Cavanagh] She finally unclenches her teeth, recites her reasons - not fond o' strangers has his open hands curling again. The snowplow ahead releasing the brake lights, the red glow fading. He turns away, looks out his window at the sidewalk, the dark storefronts moving along beside them, the gleam of lights reflected in the picture windows against the darkness beyond.
Then he looks up, back at her and shakes his head. Says, with feeling emphasized by a quiet flare of his nostrils. "You wouldn't be." He starts to say something else, but thinks better of it, and closes and compresses his mouth when she continues, says something about the holiday glow. It makes him breath out, sharply again, not wry now - something else.
"Well," he returns at last, with a philosophical shrug, " - if you change your mind, you know where we'll be."
[Imogen Slaughter] You wouldn't be, he says, and she nearly fires something back, but then restrains it with an effort - betrayed by her hands tightening on the steering wheel.
She wears fine leather gloves, smooth as a second skin. They may cost nearly as much as this car did.
Instead, she says what she did. That she is not much about the holiday glow, as this is less 'complicated' then anything else she could explain. And he responds, philosophically.
With this, the conversation ends. Imogen only nods. "I do," she says, and lets them lapse into silence. They reach an intersection and she turns down the street, away from the river and further into downtown toward JB's restaurant and home.
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