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[Imogen Slaughter] She looks at him once, sharply, when he says 'angsty existentialist' the movement one of restrained violence, where she nearly interrupts, nearly spits out a reply and then - simply - subsides. He finishes speaking.

Again, another silence. Imogen has always chosen her words carefully. She has always been reserved. It's the kind of quality that can draw a man in, but just as quickly, repels him when he realizes that it isn't an act. She really is this reticent.

Her finger taps on the edge of the cigarette, scattering ash toward the snow, until there is none to drop. A few more taps, and she stops, her fingers stilling on the fag. She flicks the cigarette away toward the gutter, and watches it until it disappears at the bottom of its arc, behind the sidewalks curb.

"That poem," she says finally, "by John Donne speaks more of humanism than it does of friendship.

"Look-" one sentence follows the next, but is abruptly truncated. Sharply so. She pauses a moment and then a moment becomes several, and several becomes an eternity. Her jaw tightens and loosens repeatedly as her gaze turns back to the street.

"There were people here who knew me once," she says finally. "And they've all died or chosen to leave. I haven't quite worked out how t'fill the holes they've left behind. Or even -" another pause. This one is complete. When she speaks again, it is a new sentence.

"I don't do this," she gestures toward the bay window. "I know its yours and it makes you happy, but it's not mine. I cannot sit there and tell lies about my life and enjoy it and find connections there. I don't even celebrate Christmas."

[JB Cavanagh] "Jesus Christ - " his curse is voluble; he breathes out a lungsworth of tobacco smoke with the words, nearly coughing at the end of the breath. Out here, the air is bright and cold. The sidewalks has been shoveled clear of snow, and scattered pearls of deicing salts that crunch underfoot when they move. There's an illusion of warmth from the warm light washing through the windows of the small café. Strands of small LED lights frame the windows, and there's a garland of fresh pine cuttings over the door.

"Do you always put things into so fucking many boxes? You don't do what - " there's a pleasure burn of alcohol in his veins, and he reacts thoughtlessly, reflexively now, taking a quick pull on the cigarette and exhaling smoking through his nostrils. His sleeves are rolled half-way up his forearms. The black lines of his tattoo move like water when he clenches and unclenches his hand. " - this?"

The echo is accompanied by a sharp gesture toward the interior, the murmur of voices, someone turned from the table, a profile etched in sharp relief against the warm lights. "You don't eat food and drink alcohol? You don't do that? Or you don't do it with strangers, or you don't do it when you aren't paying. Or you don't let go and smile at a fucking stranger across the table? What the hell do you think this is? We aren't celebrating the birth of some future zombie-man. I'm pretty sure Cindy and Lara only exchange presents on Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

"Christ." He curses again, shaking his head as he looks from her to the street, maybe unaware of the damned irony. And she must imagine, by now - that he's missed the interval piece. There were people here who knew me once. Except now, looking away, his jaw set, a band of tendon flexing underneath his skin, the summer's tan faded, pale beneath the bristle of dark stubble.

"It's not a fucking equation. It's not something you work out."

[Imogen Slaughter] For some time, Imogen is quite still. There is something nearly preternatural about it, this absolute stillness. It almost appears as if she does not breath, though the truth is, she merely breathes shallowly. The air is heavy with her cigarette smoke, and her breath steams as if she were still smoking, with her exhaling, giving her away.

A gust of wind, tunnelled between the buildings sweeps over them. Despite herself, she shivers, and it breaks the moment. A tendon moves along her jaw, then. Her mouth tightens and she steps away from the bay window.

She is graceful in all things, including this.

"I think I'll get my coat," she says. "Enjoy the rest of yer party." She steps toward the door.

[JB Cavanagh] The silence is broken only by the flare of embers in the cigarette he smokes. The ashes are caught by the wind, whorl about like snowflakes rising like heat over the heavy, cold air. When she speaks again, he looks back at her, brown eyes swimming with light, his mouth a flat line as he exhales another cloud of smoke. His mouth twitches into the edge of a prescient smirk that only deepens as she finishes her thought. Tells him to enjoy his party.

He exhales again, a sharp burst of forced air. Irritation, vexation. Or something else: the snap of a tendon finding its fixed groove against the bone.

She steps toward the door; he looks up and away, the slice of sky visible between the low brick buildings here, the red lights flashing underwing of some airplane climbing away from the city, into the mottled, snow-laden evening. And he smokes - smokes the remnants of his cigarette down to the quick, until the burning embers start to melt the filter and the chemical burn fills his nostrils. Only then does he throw it away, a low sound in the back of his throat as the butt his the slushy puddle in the storm sewer, disappearing with a small hiss.

Only then does he go back inside, smelling of smoke and the winter night.

[Imogen Slaughter] He is still outside when she leaves. It takes time for a cigarette to burn down to the filter, and Imogen is swift in her farewells, though polite. She smiles at all the right moments and answers the right questions. Yes, she's sorry to go, but she has to work in the morning. Everyone should have a drink on her account.

She steps out of the restaurant again, adjusting her coat around her torso and pausing past the threshold to wind her scarf about her throat. Her gaze is forward, the street, the cars as they pass. Her wool coat does little to warm her, there is little heat left in her bones.

She glances at the Fianna kinfolk, smoking steadily. "Goodnight," she says, simply, and turns and walks away, her heels clicking on the snow strewn sidewalk.

[JB Cavanagh] "Night." That's all he says, a truculent edge to the tone, though it goes no farther than that. And only in response - in grudging response, it should be said. He straightens when she walks past; throws out the cigarette with the force necessary to jam a hockey puck into the net. To stuff a basketball into a hoop. To punch some stranger in a bar brawl for love or money, for the honor of Kierkegaard, or another round of stout. He straightens when she walks past, throws away the cigarette which gutters and dies in the icy murk floating about in the storm sewer, and goes back inside.

Lucy escapes from someone's clutches and comes barreling up to him from the table, demanding to be excused until dessert. She's laughing, shrieks something in bright response to a familiar tease from someone at the table and wraps her arms around his legs, then back away, her little nose wrinkling.

"EWW!" she exclaims, all vehemence at the smoke in his clothes. "YOU SMELL."

He laughs, tangles a rough hand in her hand and pulls her closer while she wriggles to escape his grasp.

[JB Cavanagh] get transcript!
to JB Cavanagh

[Imogen Slaughter] Inside are bright lights and decorations. People sit closely with friends, good food, good drinks and a good atmosphere. The music pours out as the door opens, and a slight red-haired doctor steps outside into the cold, without her jacket.

She wears a skirt, a dark blue blouse loose about her torso. The chill reaches her immediately, and she welcomes it.

She balances her wine on the window's ledge, and reaches into her small handbag. Her breath mists in the night as she exhales slowly, leaning back against the building, her body pressed against the brick framing of the bay window of Cafe Lulu's, leaving her presence only slightly visible to those who might look without. She takes out a cigarette case and lighter, and lights up.

The street is far from empty, the bars and restaurants up and down the street drawing customers walking arm in arm, keeping warm together, or perhaps good naturedly weaving down the sidewalk. If any address her, she ignores them, lighting her cigarette, and drawing poison into her lungs.

She lifts a hand to her hair, pushing back loose strands from her eyes and watches the cars pass, as close to alone, at the moment, as she will get.

[JB Cavanagh] The staff and cooks are a boisterous bunch. They've been together long enough that they function like a family - a loud, dysfunctional/functional family - with everything that entails. Cindy - the waitress with the shocking red hair - is dressed up in a chic little black dress, Christmas via the Addams Family, complete with spider-webbed fishnets and a hairpiece that can only be considered a confection, while her girlfriend - Janine, the pastry chef - is wearing jeans and a sweater with Rudolph in the center.

Rudolph, whose nose lights up when she leans forward, or when a little tab at the bottom seam is squeezed, much to Lucy's delight.

And so on - there's Luis, the sous chef, who looks like a drug dealer in the right light, arms covered in tattoos, his hair cropped close - and old gang tattoo scrawled across his neck - with a buttoned down shirt and an argyle sweater like an extra from Father Knows Best, and his sister, a sweet, retiring girl, more than a bit shy, with a pretty round face and glittering dark eyes who makes eyes at Johnny D, the busboy/dishwasher/prep cook who so loves rockabilly music that he has managed a duckbill hairstyle not often scene since the 50s, one that literally defies gravity.

--

The food is plentiful, the alcohol more so. If Imogen arrived early, she might've seen the guests pulling up not in cars but in cabs - which JB paid for - or off the bus, the better to ensure that there would be no drunken fights at the end of the evening, trying to take away someone's keys, negotiate who would be the designated driver, and who might get blitzed.

Imogen slips outside, into the bright, cool air of the crisp winter's night. There's snow on the sidewalk - piled up around the lamppost, the newspaper boxes, the small noticeboard kiosk set up by the city so that promoters could paper its cork boards with ads, rather than their streetlights. A slice of the sky, visible far above, is gray and still - it has that glow of a city in winter, as if there had been some distant nuclear explosion, and the brightness lingered still, the city's lights augmented by - reflected against - the white carpet of snow.

"Got a light?" she's halfway through her cigarette when JB slips out after her.

His voice is low; unlike the rest of his folks, he's dressed as he always seems to be - in loose, worn jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. The chef's jacket is abandoned for the evening. The food's family style, buffet, not cooked to order, and it's meant to feel like home. There are a handful of bracelets around his wrist - all silicone. One of the thicker LIVESTRONG bands, and a handful of sillybandz, the thin neon silicon things so popular with kids now. They stand out against the obvious strength - solid muscle, thick bone, pulled taut around his wrist.

The city's lights wash against the blunt planes of his features - dark brown eyes, a once-broken nose, the close cropped hair.

He's smiling, though from this angle it looks foreshortened, crooked, wry.

" - and a cigarette?" he asks after a moment, hands empty.

[Imogen Slaughter] She had not arrived early, and she had arrived alone. She had been seated with others, perhaps chosen because they might provide stimulating conversation, or at least not grating conversation, and certainly, she had kept all pretences of polite conversation up, at least until the moment where she had excused herself and stepped outside.

She has eaten little, but given her eating habits, this is hardly surprising. She drinks in a controlled manner and one imagines, she will not be drunk by the end of the night.

She glances up when he comes out, a certain tension returning to her body, that does not quite ease when she sees who it is. She lowers her cigarette to tap ash toward the snow, where it hisses, unheard and melts flakes, unseen. She unclasps her handbag with a faint click, drawing out the zippo, when he adds he also needs a cigarette. Her mouth twists, a barely seen smirk.

"Am I helping you return to a bad habit?" she asks, before fitting her cigarette between her lips, and freeing her hand to withdraw the cigarette case. It matches the zippo, though not quite. Both are bronze plated, but in varying ages of use. The zippo is much older.

[JB Cavanagh] "I'm just revisiting an old habit," he tells her, that crooked smile deepening briefly, the city's lights glittering in his eyes. " - not returning to one."

The air is sharp and cold, with a metallic tang that promises snow-to-come, one that hasn't been fulfilled for several days. Neglected as the city's poorer neighborhoods may be, here work crews have mounted glittering light sculptures, shaped like snowflakes to every other streetlight, adding to the manic glow of the darkest season, which always seems brighter when the sun goes down.

There's salt under their feet; chemical melt, just enough remaining beads that they crunch beneath his shows - dark brown loafers, his only nod to formality, those shoes.

He reaches out to accept a cigarette between blunt fingers, and when he lifts it to his mouth, he holds it like a joint as he reaches for the Zippo, feels the familiar run of the metal wheel underneath his callused thumb and lights it. It's been long enough since he smoked that he coughs up his first experimental lungful of smoke, waving it off as he returns the Zippo to her, holding it deep in his palm, under rather than overhanded. The second pull is smoother. "Glad you came, though."

[Imogen Slaughter] "Be careful," she returns, "That's what I always say." When they had first met, she had been a much more social smoker than she is now. Bum a cigarette at a party while drinking, buy a single pack and make it last for weeks.

Now, she fills her lungs with poison as a past-time.

She wears heels, easily balanced on the uneven ground. The salt has melted the ice and snow removal here is common, but it is imperfect. Small, hard packs of snow still cling stubbornly to the sidewalk, making walking treacherous.

She is perhaps a little more finely dressed than most of his company. Still, she manages to avoid the appearance of over dressed; perhaps simply because her day to day attire is rather finer than the majority of his company as well. She smooths the line of her skirt with one hand, reaching down to pick up her wineglass, the white wine chilled now by the air, lifting it to her lips as he speaks. The dark-eyed woman flicks a glance toward him as he says he's glad she came and she smirks faintly.

"Perhaps it will get me out of the doghouse fer a bit, then, will it?"

[JB Cavanagh] He was the smoker then; a pack a day or more, Marlboro reds always on the table. Smoking wasn't banned in bars, and even some restaurants still had smoking sections. So he inhabited pubs that were the equivalent of smoke-filled rooms, with smoke near the ceiling, this eerie, semi-solid mass of it made both translucent and opaque by the lights - like fog, conducting and reflecting light, obfuscating more than it illuminates.

"Yeah," he says, not laughter, but awareness underneath his voice. "I remember. No worries, though," he continues, assuring, "Luce'll keep me in line."

Now the smoke unfolds from the pair of them like separate ribbons, born off by the chill wind that drives down over the lake from the north, carrying with it that arctic scent, sharp and clear in the nostrils.

He breathes out, through his nostrils; puff the magic dragon style, as if he were a firebreather, and lowers the cigarette clenched between thumb and forefinger, cupped in the curve of his big hand to protect it from the wind, until his hand is turned at his hip, low. And gives her a look, mouth hooking into a bemused sort of smirk.

"Temporarily, sure - " he returns. "Like a furlough. Only renewed if you come back for New Year's."

The white lights in the Café's picture windows glitter and shine behind them, the light reflecting like moving stars on the hard, stubborn patches of snow and ice remaining on the snow.

[Imogen Slaughter] The red-haired kinwoman passes him a brief, unreadable glance, before she says, "I'm working. Christmas and New Year's."

Her mouth twists slightly and she lifts her cigarette for a deep, sharp drag. "It's my tradition."

[JB Cavanagh] "Me too," he returns, flicking ashes away with a twist of his thumb. The flare of the cigarette is just visible inside his cupped hand as he raises it to his mouth again. " - I meant Chinese New Year's."

[Imogen Slaughter] A frown flickers across her brow, creating a line between copper eyebrows. She looks away toward the passing traffic and lifts her cigarette to her lips again. Another drag, then she lowers the cigarette to tap it with ash, drawing it toward the wall, where the cherry will be protected from the wind with her body.

"I imagine I'll ha' to risk the doghouse, then."

[JB Cavanagh] This time there's no fist, no promise of implicit violence in his body. John Brendan is half-way to drunk, somewhere near the warm midpoint of it, and his eyes shine with the expansive good humor that is only augmented by this perfect sort of buzz. The windows are enough to cut them off from the sound of the cast and crew, the friends and family inside, but they can hear them through the windows, the conviviality evident, not forced, not unnatural, effortless and affectionate as a big, manic family - the sort of family that chooses itself, rather than the one into which you're born, with a crazed aunt and a sharp-handed, disappointed mother, and monsters under the floorboards, in the attic, in the wilds, howling at the moon.

"Jesus - " he says, and it's a curse not a prayer, the first syllable short and hard edged enough that it could become ugly, except that he laughs at the end, like he's just figuring out the answer to a question he'd long forgotten the shape of. " - not that I'm surprised, just - " another flare of his nostrils, this one abbrevieted and sharp. " - jesus."

[Imogen Slaughter] She is silent, her eyes forward, her jaw tight. A tendon moves along the side of her face and she picks up her wine glass again, this time draining it before setting it down. It nearly overbalances, but she catches it, easily, and rights it again, steadying its centre before leaving it to stand on its own.

The silence is not perfect - it is broken by ambient noise. Chatting, cheerful passers-by, cars, their tires whispering against the damp roadway. But between them, it is perfect. They do not speak and she does not look at him.

Her gaze drops to the ground, her fine shoes on snow and pavement, heels that give her the height she was not born with, which truly, is hardly on the low side of average for a woman. She lifts her cigarette to her lips, taking a deep drag. The words she speaks come out on smoke, "Then why did you ask?"

[JB Cavanagh] He towers over her. Most of the tribe she was born into do - the men, at least, born true, born half-blooded, big, brawny men born to a big, brawny stock, who've made their livings - what living there has been to be made - by the work of their hands, the strength of their backs, the sweat on their brow.

His shadow is longer, sweeping - multipartite from the many sources of light - and when it shifts over her, when he turns like this, pushing away from the cool glass, from the echo of people inside the restaurant, the laughter rising and then falling into a valley as the chatter of alcohol-lubricated conversation resumes - with a short, sharp laugh as he shakes his head.

"Brick wall," he tells her, breathing out another laugh now, full of smoke, " - and my head. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate, like scallops and lime, like alcohol and the fucking Irish. What's not to love?"

Then, he shakes his head, the gesture subdued, his cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers.

"Or maybe I never pegged you for some angsty existensialist. You know that's all modernist bullshit. No man is a fucking island." There's a moment of hesitation there, he cuts her a look from lowered eyes, the look is askance - " - besides, I make a kick-ass dim sum. Worked with this Chinese cook in Seattle. My dumplings could kill if they wanted to."

[JB Cavanagh] transcript!
to JB Cavanagh

[Imogen Slaughter] She looks at him once, sharply, when he says 'angsty existentialist' the movement one of restrained violence, where she nearly interrupts, nearly spits out a reply and then - simply - subsides. He finishes speaking.

Again, another silence. Imogen has always chosen her words carefully. She has always been reserved. It's the kind of quality that can draw a man in, but just as quickly, repels him when he realizes that it isn't an act. She really is this reticent.

Her finger taps on the edge of the cigarette, scattering ash toward the snow, until there is none to drop. A few more taps, and she stops, her fingers stilling on the fag. She flicks the cigarette away toward the gutter, and watches it until it disappears at the bottom of its arc, behind the sidewalks curb.

"That poem," she says finally, "by John Donne speaks more of humanism than it does of friendship.

"Look-" one sentence follows the next, but is abruptly truncated. Sharply so. She pauses a moment and then a moment becomes several, and several becomes an eternity. Her jaw tightens and loosens repeatedly as her gaze turns back to the street.

"There were people here who knew me once," she says finally. "And they've all died or chosen to leave. I haven't quite worked out how t'fill the holes they've left behind. Or even -" another pause. This one is complete. When she speaks again, it is a new sentence.

"I don't do this," she gestures toward the bay window. "I know its yours and it makes you happy, but it's not mine. I cannot sit there and tell lies about my life and enjoy it and find connections there. I don't even celebrate Christmas."

[Alexa Thanos] Truth is, he's tracking as much ice and snow, as much frozen mud around the room as she is. His boots are muddy from the trip to the tree farm, crusted with scattered salt from walking on a treated sidewalk, all the filthy slush of the season. Once his scarf and cap are off, he unzips the old parker and tosses it, too, on top of the table at the top of the stairs, at last taking a moment to unlace his boots and step out of the shoes into a pair of moccasin style leather slippers left haphazardly near the door.

There rooms are clean enough, but far from neat, and the scattered way he leaves his boots behind just adds to the sense of lived in clutter about the place. Just the tree has that clean shape, a blanket of rich dark green, like the quiet heart of a forest. He misses the way his frown changes her body language, the way it stiffens her body, makes her feel (again) like an interloper, an alien in an ordinary world. And it is ordinary - now he's sorting briefly through the mail left on the table, still frowning that vague frown - considering what's in the fridge, whether they need to duck downstairs for a meal. When she asks about the shed.

" - the shed?" His back is to her, broad at the shoulders, tapering to the waist. He's wearing a fine-gauge sweater over a white t-shirt and jeans worn enough that they seem as lived in as the living room. A recent haircut has his close-cropped brown hair even closer to the skull. That frown worms its way across his brow as he cuts a glance back at her. "You said the shed, right?"

Then he gives a decisive shake of his head. "There's a studio apartment over the garage, but the heat's not on and it's too cold. You don't have someplace warm to sleep? We can make room here for a night or two."

And with that, he disappears down the dark hall toward the kitchen, to through together dinner.

[Alexa Thanos] Before her mouth opens to protest he's already walking off, but maybe he hears a quiet: "You don't need to do that." and the imploring way that it comes across. She really doesn't want to wedge herself in their private life here. Well, okay, maybe some part of her does. She'd love to have some of this herself, the warmth, the comfort, the home that they share. It's nice and thaws out some part deep inside her. But it still feels stolen, this little slice of happiness.

After hesitating, standing there as if her shoes are glued to the spot, she begins to take off her belongings, starting with the back pack and following through with the scarf and jacket. She piles them into a barren corner just behind the door rather then hanging them up, because it just doesn't feel right to have her things hanging next to the childs or even the Kinfolks.

A quiet huff comes from her, dry and a little amused, as she images that curly, red-haired Metis popping out of nowhere. While the Fianna Metis had never said anything to Alexa, just the fact the other Garou almost always shows up was enough to remind the Strider of her place. It's no wonder she's half expecting the same thing to happen now.

"Can I help you with anything?" She called out, just loud enough. Looking down at her shoes she drops down into a crouch, ear craned to listen, while fingers pluck at wet, red laces, which are much harder to get off then dry. Lean fingers have to be persistent.

[JB Cavanagh] "I got it - " he calls out from further down the hall. The house itself is eighty years old or more, a warren of narrow, chopped up rooms that would be joined together in a contemporary build to create an open floor plan. From the living room, a set of closed French doors lead into a small dining room, dark just now, while on the other side, a long dark hall disappears into darkness. At the end of the hall, a slanting rhombus of light cuts into the shadows, occasionally disturbed by the movement of his shadow. " - thanks, though!"

His voice comes from a distance. The kitchen proper is at the back of the house, tucked behind the dining room, overlooking the oblong addition to the downstairs built to accommodate the cafe's professional kitchen and the barrow back garden. The snow glistens pristinely in a distinctive cone shape from the security light above the garage.

The hardwoods creak underneath his weight; every inch of the old house has some distinct sound. He turns on the water in the kitchen and pipes groan open somewhere in the walls, water rushing audibly through ancient pipes as groaning valves open and close in shifting succession.

After a moment, he calls out, " - you want a beer?"

[Alexa Thanos] "Just water." One lace is pulled free. "Thanks."

Soon enough she's got her boots off and set them to the side and two layers of socks have been pulled of her feet, rolled together and stuffed into the open tongue of her boot. She makes sure there's no lint between her toes before she gets up, snags out her bag from under her jacket and begins to wander the hall in quiet, bare feet.

When she speaks again, she's just approaching the kitchen, watching his dancing shadow before flicking her gaze up and around the corner to peer inside the door frame. "Do you mind if I make a quick trip to the bathroom? I need to change from jeans." Which were wet down on the legs from tromping through snow, and just generally being outdoors almost always. Her bag dangles from her hand, and without her jacket on, she's in several layers from a sweater to two different colour t.shirts beneath, red and yellow.

[JB Cavanagh] Like the rest of the apartment, the kitchen is cramped. The cabinets are old, and the countertops chipped formica. The stove's gas, but that's the only thing about it that makes it a chef's kitchen, as suburban house hunters (who never cook) are always going on about. Humans have been cooking great meals for centuries though - long before Sub-Zero refridgerators were invented, long before every McMansion in the greater Chicago region was outfitted with a matching set of granite countertops and faux-custom faux-cherry cabinets.

There's a small table - 50s style, chrome and formica - tucked into a corner of the cramped room, but he fills the space that remains, working efficiently - though not quite as efficiently as he would downstairs, with a full mise-en-place prepped and laid out in front of him. It's more casual here, the food simpler.

He's got his sleeves rolled up enough to reveal the lower third of the complex tattoo covering his right arm, and the silicone bracelets - LIVESTONG and a handful of sillybandz - look soft against his solid forearm and big hands, the hard articulation of his wrist joint.

A beer is open on the counter, and the radio is on, playing some old Pogues song. "Half-way down the hall," he tells her, looking up as she appears in the doorway, lifting his chin in the vague direction of the bathroom. "Second door on the right."

[Alexa Thanos] Nodding, she turned and disappeared down the hall. She doesn't snoop but goes directly to the bathroom. There, she takes in details but makes quick work of changing clothes, washing up and making herself a little more presentable. While she might like to soak in a hot shower she doesn't take that liberty. It's not like she stank anyway. She smelled of outside, sandalwood and some rose, only if one were to get close enough to bury their nose in her hair.

Since the indoors are warm, she comes out in a pair of shorts and minus a t.shirt and a sweater, both of which were tucked into her bag again. Her jeans hang over the shower to dry the bottom before she has to head back out into the cold again. She steps down the hall and drops her bag off by the front door, then reappears back at the kitchen.

"Do you have a broom and a dirty cloth?" While he's doing dinner, she can clean up pine needles and mud trampled through the place. Her fingers curl against the edge of the door frame as she leans a hip against it.

[JB Cavanagh] The bathroom is as old-fashioned as the kitchen, with dark midnight blue tiles on the wall and a matching powderblue toilet, sink and shower. The shower itself is cluttered with soap and bodywash, bubble bath in a plastic bottle shaped like a glitter-covered dolphin, and two different shampoos. The grout has pulled away from the tiles in places, and part of the shower surround has been temporarily repaired with duct tape and plastic wrap.

As he cooks, he's nodding in time to the beat of the CD playing on the wall mounted stereo. The beat is fast, but there's a wheeze of accordian in the background that gives the song an Irish feel - like slam-dancing an Irish jig. When she reappears in the doorway, he says - "Your water's on the table - " and lifts his own bottle of beer in vague toast. Things are just heating up now, meatballs in a sauce and pasta boiling in a big stock pot, and all that remains is a light hand with the former and an eye on the latter.

"A broom? - " he enquires, then, shooting her faint smirk. His tone of voice is mild, a bit incredulous. "There's one in the hall closet. What the hell does a Garou want with a broom?" He continues with a laugh.

[Alexa Thanos] Finding herself grinning at his smirk, more so at the look he gave her, she gave a shrug with one of her shoulders and managed to look on this side of sheepish. Without bothering to answer him she trundles off to find it and search for something like a cloth or an old towel, something, in the same closet. In short time she's in the main room and cleaning up the mess from the tree and both of their boots, enjoying the fact that she's able to do something in return, even however small. The needles would be swept up and offered for the trash, before she set the broom back and the cloth into some dirty laundry. All of this happens with this quiet efficiency that she won't be swayed from.

It lets him cook without being bothered or having her looking over his shoulder and invading his space, and makes one less job he has to do later. Then she comes in and finds herself a seat at the small table where her water has been placed, letting herself relax as she takes in the smell of the food. Her stomach cramps uncomfortably, but she's ignoring it, and listening, instead, to the lyrics and beat of the song playing from the radio that the Kinfolk had been previously bopping to.

"Whats your tattoo represent?" She asked, out of nowhere. Curious and observant.

[JB Cavanagh] The lyrics are borderline incomprehensible on the first go-round, the combination of the singer's Irish accent and the pub noise evident in the background. When the start to make sense, though, to resolve themselves, it's clear that it's not Oh Danny Boy, some manipulative, emotional paean to Irish loss or Irish faith -

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair -

The head bob is more the abbreviated remnants of the physical gestures of the younger man who would've been down in the pit, front and center, ten years ago than anything else. It appears when he's working, and disappears when he is still. The scents of tomato and basil and cooking meat fill the kitchen. Occasionally, he stirs the sauce or tests the pasta but otherwise he's leaning back against the edge of the countertop, arms crossed.

The question he's heard before, no doubt. The intricate tribal piece covers the whole of his right arm, all intricate blackwork, but instead of stretching it out, explaining something of knots and lives, he unfolds his arms and turns over his left forearm, where a pair of chef's knives are inked into the paler flesh of his inner forearm.

"Chef's knives." - he says, contracting the muscles to make the blades seem to move. "Got them when I got my first sous chef position. First official sous chef position."

[Alexa Thanos] "Better then some skulls or a naked lady," she murmurs to him lowly, a slow smile creeping across her mouth and through the deep blue of her eyes. Looking up from the moving knife-flesh, she trailed her gaze up to watch his facial features. He's nice to look at. But there's more then that. He has some breeding. It's not a lot, but in this day, it's plenty. It gets her attention, not only the human guise she was born in, but also to that which lies beneath.

For now though, she's just watching him and listening to the lyrics, the cooking in the pan and the boiling of the water. It's a very domestic scene. While it is alien, foreign to most of her days or nights, she's spent plenty of time around people, Kinfolk and Garou alike, in various places like this. Food cooking, wine flowing and voices chatting. It's these times that keep Garou like her going. Without it everything would just be cold and miserable, like the outdoors.

Small snippets. Like a scrapbook. That's her life; a scrapbook.

[JB Cavanagh] "Or a great big heart with an arrow through it and the word Mom - " he returns with a laugh, tipping back his bottle of beer for a last long swallow before returning the bottle to the narrow slice of counter behind his right hip, between the sink and the stove. "Or a screaming tombstone with angel's wings and a harley bursting through the middle, wrapped about with barbed wire..."

" - yeah." he continues, smile eliding into a brief smirk, brown eyes lightened with humor. "The big arm piece, that was the creation of an old friend of mine. I could go into the symbolism, but then I'd sound fucking pretentious. Usually, I save that shit for the philosophy club." With Lucy elsewhere, JB curses freely. Were the girl in the room, he would work to control his tongue.

As it is, he lets loose freely and easily while keeping the tone light. The next time he tests the pasta he decides it's done, and soon enough he's dumping off the hot pasta water with a rush of steam into the sink, holding the big stock pot over the sink as it drains.

He dishes out two discs of spaghetti, topping them with the homemade tomato sauce he canned over the summer, with fresh organic tomatoes, and lamb meatballs.

" - sure you don't want a beer?" he says, as he retrieves his from the counter and tugs out the second chair at the table for himself.

[Alexa Thanos] Chuckling under her breath, her eyes smile just as much as her generous mouth does. The chapped lips have vanished and the cold red that had bitten her cheeks has faded too. In the bathroom she had rid of any sort of minor problem with a quick shift and the miraculous genetics of being a mythical creature born to save the planet. "It's less about the tattoo and what it means to you." She shrugged lightly, and drank from her water, eyes following the cloud of steam that rushes for the ceiling.

They roam then, around the room and the decore of the squished room, taking in the clash of colours and the older styled apartments. She likes it much better then white washed walls she's seen in the suburbs, where every house is a carbon copy of the one next to it, mirrored and neutral. Reminds her of the Weaver.

Her attention is instantly drawn back when he comes to the table with food for them both, sitting himself in the other seat. "No. Thanks." Pushing her water to the side to make room for the mouthwatering food, she takes in the scent and sight of it, savouring both, and casts a glance to him, smiling. "Dehydrates you." Alcohol, she means.

[JB Cavanagh] "I don't think you'll need to worry about heat stroke in Chicago for another couple of months, at least," he returns, sitting back in the chair and setting his beer bottle firmly down on the laminate tabletop. The plates are artfully arranged so its difficult to gauge, but hers contains rather more food than his own.

"Shit - " he says then, as soon as he has managed to sit down, jumping up to the oven, pulling out half-a-loaf of his pastry chef's excellent sourdough boule from the oven, set to its lowest setting. " - forgot the bread."

It fits neatly on a cutting board wedged onto the narrow table, close to the wall.

"The tattoos - mine anyway? They're not so much about meaning." he says with a broad sort of shrug, the bulk of his upper body moving with the thoughtless gesture. "Mostly it's decoration. Art. Not specifically symbolic in the way folks think. Sometimes I make shit up though, just to have something to say when they ask me."

[JB Cavanagh] (pause!)

[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 Cavanagh] Chicago is firmly in the grip of an arctic front, with the biting north wind driving the already bitter temperatures lower. The evening news has reports nightly, now, of neighbors finding the bodies of those who have died of the cold - homeless men insensate with alcohol, sprawled, dead-white on the corner of a major intersection, ignored by passers by for a full three hours of the morning commute, an elderly couple whose gas was cut off late last summer for non-payment, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from the cheap, badly made heater they used in lieu of their aging, inefficient furnate. Stories like these are bookended by speculation about the economy, the shopping season, or cheery little lifestyle pieces instructing the well-heeled and well to do on the latest expensive trends of the season.

Late on a frigid afternoon, the sky is gray falling toward full dark, for all that it's not yet the dinner hour. Café Lulu is open six days a week now - closed Mondays, so says the little sign in the front window - but it is early enough that only a few tables are occupied. The big picture windows papered with ads for local bands, the odd handyman or ROOMMATE WANTED or babysitting offer are framed with little white lights, and electric candles burn in every window of both the restaurant and the living quarters fitted into the second and third floors of the old frame house onto which the brick storefront where the dining room is situated was built.

A good 8 inches of snow has fallen over the city proper. Someone built a snowman in the sideyard days ago, and he has slowly compacted not from heat, but from the solar radiation when the sun peaks through the clouds. The snowman seems to - sag - back against the snowcovered bench of one of the picnic tables tucked into the side yard. Beside him is a rather more whimsicle snow cat. The sidewalks in front of the building have been shoveled, and the snow in the side yard has been amply trampled over the past few days, but now there's something - traquil, still, about the blanket of white in the frigid air.

The side door to the detached garage behind the house proper swings open, and JB steps out, onto the still-snow-covered and welltrampled back sidewalk, then turns and hefts the stem of a great fir tree through the narrow door. The tree is too fat for the door, and so the lowest branches scrape against the door frame as he pulls it through, raining needles down over the snow, releasing that resonant scent of pine sap into the crystalline air. Turning, he shoulders the big tree, balance it over his broad shoulder, the rootball - intact, wrapped in burlap - forward, the great weight of the tree balanced behind.

[Alexa Thanos] The cold is her worst enemy. She spends a lot of her time curled up somewhere in lupus, especially when the night falls, or constantly moving in order to keep warm. Her lips have been chapped, cheeks windburned, and ears threatened to be frozen off. But the bonus about being a Garou is the amount of brutality the body is able to withstand. This does not necessarily make it pleasant or less painful, but it means that she doesn't become a stiff corpse down a side alley, clawing at the cardboard boxes and surrounded in newspapers like so many others without a home. It also means that every time she shifts, just for a little while, her minor wounds heal and her fur helps keep out the bitter cold.

Her footsteps have trawled through the snow, along the wet sidewalks, carefully navigating the slippery slopes as she makes her way through the below freezing temperatures. Gloves fit over her fingers and a jacket buttons up over layers of clothing. Her scarf, a dull gray thing, is tucked around her neck and into the upturned collar of her jacket. Dark, spiraled and curled hair spills out of a knitted cap that falls across her brow and tries to keep in the mane, but can only hold onto so much; the colour of it is multi-striped and seems more suitable for Jamaica then the winter silly season in Chicago. Jeans are darker from the knees down, from where she's been tromping through the wet, and her doc martins have suffered the same fate, making red laces soaked to brown.

It's the slow cloud of her hot breath that moves more then she does the moment she spots the man carrying a tree in the side yard. The smell of the pine was sharp on her nose, the cold highlighting scents. She can only watch him for a few moments, and although he doesn't seem to be struggling, finds herself asking from the sidewalk; "Want a hand with that?" As usual, the pack on her back hangs heavy with her belongings.

[JB Cavanagh] There's a moment where he's startled by her voice; her still presence, just the steam of her breath in the sharp cold air, a shadow against the evening shadows as the edges of the world close in upon themselves, again, as the world sinks toward its darkest day, its longest night. The tension is easy to read in his shoulders, bulky beneath his old down coat, and his thighs, the way his bare hands grip the trunk of the tree, bracing the awkward weight as he turns - a moment's stillness, just another figure in the gray, snowy dusk, tall and broadshouldered, the details of his dress lost beneath the old winter gear, a coat, a hand-knitted scarf that matches, vaguely, and a green and black skicap with a sports logo on the front, which does not match. His hands are bare, the better to grip the trunk of the tree, or perhaps he just doesn't want to get the sticky sap on good leather gloves, the sort one needs in a city.

And so, the man's blunt fingers are red from the cold, his eyes watering from the sting of the bitter wind - just those eyes, dark brown, and the bridge of a once-broken nose are visible, but he speaks through the muffled layers of the scarf after that moment's wariness - the not-quite-animal hint of alertness that skims over his mien and big frame.

"Sure," - is what he says, voice roughened with the cold, a low rumble. He keeps the tree balanced with one hand, then fishes in the front pocket of his jeans for a heavy set of keys, taking a moment to unlatch the carabiner on which they hang from a beltloop before tossing it to her. "Get the door - " he gestures with his head as the keys sing through the air, the metal tight with cold and the sound of it sharper for that. " - would you? And grab the stand."

When she looks, she'll see the red and green metal tree stand mostly assembled, beside the front door. He'd intended to fit the tree to it down here to avoid raining needles all over the living room floor, but the air is sharp enough to make an ordinary person breathless, so vaccuuming doesn't seem like quiet such a chore.

[Alexa Thanos] She hadn't meant to scare him, but these things happen. It's easy to forget simple things like that; the human way of thinking, and how their senses aren't quite as sharp, and their reactions slower. Not always, but mostly. Hers, on the other hand, are much quicker. The way her hand darts out and weight shifts through the wet, is quicker then one might expect from her; she who is always so cautious about the way she blends in with the humans. Her reflexes are far better then she leads on.

His keys are muffled by the glove of her hand when her fingers curl around them. She holds them by her side as she makes her way over towards him, as directed. "It's too cold out." Her voice is low as she passes by, moving to grab the stand in her free hand first, testing the weight of it as she picks it up in the one hand and puts it under her arm. The look she gives him is mildly disapproving, somewhere deep in the dark blue of her eyes. "You should do this at the warmest part of the day." Not towards evening as dusk is falling. Never mind he has a business to run and a child to dote over.

Moving to the door then, she opens it up after fiddling with the keys, guessing at which one might turn over the lock. This close she can barely scent him, it's all sharp tang of the fur, that of the bark and wood beneath. Then it's the food cooking inside, making her empty stomach twist unhappily inside the many layers of clothing, hidden under her jacket. Her hunger is an acute thing and demanding, but her discipline is far better.

Once the door is opened, she steps out the way to let him inside.

[JB Cavanagh] "You know I went to college in Boston - " he informs her, brushing past her with the big tree in hand. It is fresh - and more than that, it is a living thing, roots still intact, if perhaps a bit frozen from the bitter cold - so the trail of its needles in the snow, and then on the worn out hardwood of the narrow interior stairs is narrow, a vibrant green against the vaguely gray, sootstained snow, and the dark, old fashioned stain on the worn flowers. "We'd play hockey, outside in weather colder than this."

There is a rich vein of heat from inside that snakes outward as she shakes through the keys, guessing at the right one until he directs her to the one on the extra steel loop that opens the door. The narrow stairs lead upward into darkness, but a quarter of the way up he steps, a distended shadow above defined by the long sweep of the tree's top, reaches for a switch by feel. There's a distinct click, but nothing happens until he hits the wall with the flat of his palm. Then, the thin, reedy light of an antique fixture comes on, enough to see by.

They're headed upstairs, to the living quarters over the restaurant. The narrow stairwell opens up into a small living room, with an old hearth on one wall, and the sort of antique woodwork one expects in 80 year old homes, even frame houses like this one, except here that old woodwork has been painted over, a uniform white. The living room has a - lived in look. There's a modest flat panel beside the hearth on a stand, and less-modest stereo system beside it, everything from a turntable to a subwoofer, and a half-dozen more components in between, flanked by wooden shelves with books and vinyl record albums. Over the mantle is the classic Edward Hopper painting - three people in a late night diner, all sleek modern lines, the interior stark white, the exterior still, almost meditative. On another wall, a poster of the iconic London Calling cover art - Paul Simonon smashing his Fender bass. The couch is deep, slouch, comfortable, and there's an old recliner that belongs in a bachelor's place. Any woman would've evicted the recliner long ago.

The place feels lived in - a child's backpack on a table by the stairs, all sorts of winter gear on the pegboard over the table - and its clear that he's been moving about the furniture to make room for the tree. There are no winter decorations up just now except the electric candles in the windows, which give another dimension to the light in the room.

"Here, give me a hand - " he says, indicating a cleared out space in the corner of the room, close to the fireplace but not too close. And so saying, he shifts the tree from his shoulder, careful of the things in the room, holding it by the trunk as needles rain down, ready to plant the tree in the stand when she sets it down. " - then step back and tell me if it's straight."

[Alexa Thanos] There isn't a lot of time for her to take in her surroundings, just enough to spot a few details that she keeps to mind, and note the windows, doors, and any extra beings inside the room. She steps over towards the corner when she's asked, aware of her own predicament of not wanting to trample wet boots across his floor but also not wanting him to hold the heavy tree longer then he needs.

Over at the indicated space, she sets down the stand, a little away from the wall to make room for the trees circumference, and stays crouched to help him put the tree into its place. An extra set of hands making it easier. The Strider balances easily enough under the needles, with the extra weight on her back, and the bulk of her clothing over her too lean frame.

Once the tree is settled and there's no fear of it toppling through a window or knocking paintings from a wall, she steps back and rises up again, moving back away from the tree to some central point in the room to have a look at it. "A little to the left," she tells him, indicating with the motion of a gloved hand. And she watches as he rights it again. "Oops, no. Back a little."

"Yeah. That's it."

[JB Cavanagh] He's done this before, balanced a tree, rootball and all, into that red and green metal stand, old enough that the paint is chipped where the cross bars meet and the beginnings of rust are evident in the water basin. When the tree is finally in place, he manages to hold it up while winching home the last screws holding it up. When they're done, the live fir fills the corner of the room, dark and majestic, the tip brushing the high ceiling, the branches disturbed by all that manhandling slowly settling with the work of gravity, the way some medieval queen must surely have settled her skirts around her after a turn at the reel, around the dance floor.

"Thanks for the help," JB says, straightening, brushing needles off his hands, sticky with pine sap and fragrant with it. What errant snow flakes had landed in his ski cap - with the Eagles logo on the front - or the loops of his handmade scarf are already melting in the relative warmth of the living room. Outside the windows, dusk settles over the street, changing the tincture of light. It's futile, maybe even counter productive, but once the loose needles are off his hands, he wipes them on his thighs, clearing away little of the sap. "I promised Lucy a tree. Wanted to surprise her."

Then he's unwinding his scarf, reaching to pull off the cap, standing in front of the unlit fireplace, a thoughtful frown on his mouth as he gives Alexa a brief, critical sort of once-over, the sort that leaves him frowning, faint and thoughtful. " - you hungry?" is all he says in the end. "I'll get you some dinner."

[Alexa Thanos] "You're welcome." There's even a small smile as she says it, tearing her eyes from the tree to look over at the man, just in time to catch his frown as he looks at her. Maybe it's the shoes, she's thinking, and the wet of her jeans. It chases away that small pleasure she had in looking at this tree standing in the middle of the living room, lending its strong fragrance to the house, already working at disguising all the others that could have told her much about the people that lived in the upstairs quarters.

Gloves are still on her hands, wool, black, knitted, and she moves to brush the back of her thighs in a self conscious gesture. She doesn't want to move anywhere now, except to retrace her steps back through the house and down the stairs, leaving him and his little girl their space without an intruder. Alexa has become increasingly aware of where she's standing and how far away that world is from hers. The small peek of it seems stolen and sits wrong with her.

How misunderstood some simple things can be, when the world is coloured through a different lens. A small frown, a critical look, and some inner monologues can twist it all out of shape. But she reminds herself that John has been nothing but kind, too generous, and sometimes even a little stubborn in his ways with her. When he asks if she's hungry, he follows it up with an offer that sounds closer to a statement, and she was going to take him up on it, because sometimes pride even has its limits when the world is a miserable, cold place, and the hunger turns to pain. "Thanks. I'd appreciate that."

Gesturing, then, out towards the way she came. "Do you mind if I stay in the shed, tonight?" Because that's why she was coming, to hole up in the place he'd once offered her. As winter has come around maybe he would have noticed her another night, even though she touched as little as possible and always tried to put things back where they belonged.

[JB Cavanagh] Truth is, he's tracking as much ice and snow, as much frozen mud around the room as she is. His boots are muddy from the trip to the tree farm, crusted with scattered salt from walking on a treated sidewalk, all the filthy slush of the season. Once his scarf and cap are off, he unzips the old parker and tosses it, too, on top of the table at the top of the stairs, at last taking a moment to unlace his boots and step out of the shoes into a pair of moccasin style leather slippers left haphazardly near the door.

There rooms are clean enough, but far from neat, and the scattered way he leaves his boots behind just adds to the sense of lived in clutter about the place. Just the tree has that clean shape, a blanket of rich dark green, like the quiet heart of a forest. He misses the way his frown changes her body language, the way it stiffens her body, makes her feel (again) like an interloper, an alien in an ordinary world. And it is ordinary - now he's sorting briefly through the mail left on the table, still frowning that vague frown - considering what's in the fridge, whether they need to duck downstairs for a meal. When she asks about the shed.

" - the shed?" His back is to her, broad at the shoulders, tapering to the waist. He's wearing a fine-gauge sweater over a white t-shirt and jeans worn enough that they seem as lived in as the living room. A recent haircut has his close-cropped brown hair even closer to the skull. That frown worms its way across his brow as he cuts a glance back at her. "You said the shed, right?"

Then he gives a decisive shake of his head. "There's a studio apartment over the garage, but the heat's not on and it's too cold. You don't have someplace warm to sleep? We can make room here for a night or two."

And with that, he disappears down the dark hall toward the kitchen, to through together dinner.

[Imogen] Her phone vibrates slowly making its way off the balcony chair's armrest. She is seated there, her hair damp from a shower, her body hidden by a terry cloth robe, her skin chilled by the outdoors, her stomach warmed by a fresh swallow of scotch.

She looks down at it a moment, before leaning forward to set down her cigarette, her tumbler still in hand as she pushes a button to activate the receiver.

"Slaughter," she says, answering an unfamiliar number with a professional reply. Her eyes trial to the view from her balcony, bright city lights, Chicago's familiar buildings.

[Cell] "Imogen - " first his voice is far away, speaker phone. Then, abruptly, it is as close as if his mouth were against her ear. In between, she will hear the clatter plastic against metal or god knows what as he reaches for the handset and tucks it against his shoulder. " - hey. It's JB. Question."

There's music in the background, which fades when he picks up the phone.

"I had some visitors tonight. Want to know if one of them is what they said she is." There's a certain tension in his voice, a hint of irritation, though that is thinned by wires and distance. "Though you might be able to help."

[Imogen] There is a pause on the other side of the phone, filled with ambient sounds. He can hear the air whistle, the far away sounds of traffic. He knows she is outside.

Imogen's jaw draws briefly tight, then loosens as she lifts a hand to her hair, pushing the heavy, damp weight back from her face, over her shoulders.

"Alright," she says. "Go ahead."

[Cell] "A girl named Rory. Red hair, pale skin." He begins, then closes his eyes. The fucking music box is on is desk, the note somewhere. "Something's wrong with her, too. Some mental thing."

"I don't know any other names for her. After, though, I got a note. From The Bogeymen., right?"

There's a hint of disbelief there. Gods only know what leads Garou to pick such bizarre names for themselves. Somewhere in the background, a door clicks shut.

[Imogen] A pause. "Spoonerism," she says, "She speaks in spoonerisms. Tends t'mix up sounds right? Says 'I'm hery vappy' not 'I'm very happy', fer example.

"She's Garou," she says, "Fianna, I believe, though I'm not familiar wi' what the 'Bogeymen' are. I don't much mind pack names.

"Why?"

[Cell] "Yeah, that's it - " he confirm, distant before his voice shifts back to the receiver, his tone quiet, confidential. Even with the pantry door shut, the sounds of the kitchen. "Feels like a - like a serial killer, acts like a Catholic school-girl in a - well, in a movie." He tells he, thinking better of saying in a fucking porno to Imogen, even over the phone. "And acts like Rain Man - or like she's austic or schizophrenic or something. Just sat there half-hiding all night. Kept insisting she would work for me. Then snuck into the kitchen last night and left a fucking music box sitting on my counter with a goddamn note for my - " Maybe his resolution not to curse has deserted him.

Maybe he just wanted to vent. " - baker to find, bright and early this morning. I just - " he stops, pauses, arrests the deluge. "Listen, sorry. I didn't mean to unload. Just wanted to make sure she was who they said she was. Not something - else.

"Given the rest."

[Imogen] JB unloads, as he puts it, and Imogen is silent through it, listening, though it is hard to say if it is with empathy or simply absorption.

"For better or worse," she says when he's finished and redirected his purpose, he can hear the shift in her breathing over invisible lines as she fills her lungs with cigarette smoke, speaking with words choked in poison, "she's exactly what she says she is.

"Last I checked, she's also the only full-blooded representative o' yer tribe." Her exhale, emptying her lungs of the last coils of smoke punctuates her words. There is something in her tone that intimates what she does not say aloud - that is: Unfortunately.

[Cell] There's a silence on the other end of the line, then this eruption of air. It sounds like a fan being supercharged into the receiver, but he's really just breathing open. Someone on the other end interrupts - a door opens, and half-a-conversation is held off-screen. One of those three or four sentence things that suggests the familiar rhythm of an ordinary question, the movement of a workday.

Then his voice is back, deep, right against the receiver. " - my tribe?"

[Imogen] There is a pause.

"Fianna," she clarifies, though it may well not be what he's asking.

[Cell] That earns her a brief, sharp retort of a laugh, the sort that sounds like a gunshot and has very little humor in the substrates of the sound, underneath. It's just an exclamation, a sort of give-in that opens out. "I know the name," he says, with an irony that is anything but subtle.

It's quiet, though. The irony in his voice, the tone, the volume - they have this baritone resonance he never had as a younger man. He takes another breath, one of those long inhales that sounds like a sigh, whistling through the nostrils, just filling his long, followed by a brief, bullish burst of air, another sharp sound of dry humor.

"Imogen," he says. A moment's pause follows. Then, "Thanks for the ear."

[Imogen] There's a brief pause.

"This may sound like a foolish suggestion," she says, "but yeh may want t'ask her not to do it again. The Garou 'ere - a lot o' them are, shall we say, non-traditional. Whether she'll listen t'yeh or not, yeh'll get away with it here."

A beat.

"Goodnight, JB."

[Cell] "I'll keep that in mind." Another pause, not entirely empty. The ring of something metal against metal in the background. "We've got the beer and wine license, now. Come by sometime."

Then, a shout in the background, the noises yawning open as a door moves somewhere. "'Night."

Click!

[John Brendan Cavanagh] The late evening dinner rush is mostly over, but the café is open for another hour or two or three. The beer and wine license has finally come through, which means that the diners are more likely to linger over their meals, sharing a bottle of wine, drinking a beer. Maybe ordering coffee and a dessert to share after because they're feeling mellow, expansive after sharing alcohol.

The license is new. There's a sign in the window - Now serving wine and beer! - underneath the menu posted there, affixed to the picture glass. With the lull in orders, JB set Ernesto to expediting the remaining meals, and wandered out into the dining room. Maybe half the tables are full, most people on the tail end of their meals, coffee and a cookie or a cupcake, a slice of pie. The desserts are easy and unpretentious, baked goods made from scratch every morning, early. Today's selection - rather depleted - are displayed in the pastry case near the front register. While his staff handle the paying customers scattered about the tables, JB serves one who eats free at the counter - a little girl her hair wet from a bath, dressed in warm flannel pajamas. She's sitting on one of the stools, finishing up her evening snack - pear wedges, a chocolate chip cookie, and milk.

Organic, naturally.

JB leans over the counter talking to her - some old joke that has her laughing and him smiling, while Cindy the waitress tends register and the place buzzes with faint conversation, music in the background, indie rock and alt-country, the eclectic mix from a local college radio station.

[Luana Kirchmann] Luana's been there for awhile, sitting at a table by her lonesome. There's a sleek laptop on the table, and her cheese platter for two, being eaten by one, somehow is made to fit there too. She's been drinking white wine, is on her third glass just now, but hasn't become one of those loud, obnoxious drunks. In fact, she's looking quite well put together still, occasionally letting her fingers fly across the keyboard on the wireless connection plugged out the usb socket.

But now, as she catches sight of someone semi familiar over the opened screen of her computer, she finds herself watching the man with the little girl at the counter. Her train of thought flees her as she's momentarily distracted by the sight. She knows John instantly, remembers with vivid details. Olive eyes shift to the girl, watching the back of her hair, taking in the pajamas and the way the two interact.

She smiles, surprisingly warmed by the affectionate display.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Cheaper to buy a bottle," Cindy - the hostess/waitress noted to Luana cheerfully when she ordered her third glass of the house white. " - you know, if you don't drink it all, we can shove the cork back down in there," a wink there, as she set the glass down on the table with a neat motion. " - and you can take it home." Even if that's technically not legal. They aren't a retail establishment, but no one would really care. "Anything else I can get you?"

-

And so on. The banter is light but engaging; Cindy's mastered the waitstaff art of being friendly and personal without being obtrusive. She doesn't glance at the screen of Luana's laptop, and never asks her single customers if someone is going to be joining them, just in case someone isn't.

--

The vision is charming; though he's cleaned up tonight in an chef's jacket over a dark t-shirt, the first three buttons unbuttoned to show the leather cord and silver chain around his neck, the old dog tags on a longer popcorn chain fall longer and are tucked away underneath the unbuttoned shirt, this big, rather rough looking man bends down to the girl's level, engages her directly, as if they were the only two people in the universe. Her legs dangle, swinging, and she's finishing up the milk and cookie. As Luana watches, it becomes clear that it is storytime. Sometimes he moves, turning the pages over, dark eyes darting to her face as the story unfolds. The girl is seven or eight, so storytime is not a picture book but a proper one that they read together, the book flatted on the bar top between them.

When the chapter comes to an end, though, he closes it firmly, shakes his head to her every protestation. "Bed." - firm and quiet can be heard through one of those strange lulls in conversation that sometimes strike even a half-busy restaurant. It is the end of the child's protestations. She knows the tone, and slides down from the stool, living her plate, her empty milk glass on the counter. They disappear into the back for five minutes, ten minutes, before he returns, alone, draws himself a beer from one of the varieties they have on tap, takes a good long drink before he starts around the dining room, pausing at each of the remaining tables to inquire about the meal, make that sort of necessary small talk the world requires.

[Luana Kirchmann] "Don't encourage me," Luana had said to Cindy, grinning all the while. She had been tempted, but paying more by the glass doesn't seem to bother her. She knows if she had the bottle there, it would be gone quicker then she would order a glass. "I'm good for now. Thanks." Cindy would be getting a good tip by the time Luana actually got out of there. She doesn't seem to be in a hurry to leave.

Storytime gets a few more glances before she's back to working on the laptop. Pausing frequently she sips her wine or grabs a new slice of cheese with some bread, spreading paste, enjoying different combination as she stuffs it into her mouth and continues to eat. The woman eats like she enjoys it, because she does. While she can do the same thing at home, it's just not the same atmosphere.

Later though, she's looking up when he's making the rounds, closer to her table. "Chef, hmm?" This is from her when he's approaching, presumably coming towards her table. Her gaze flitted over his body, down then up again, focusing on his face. A sip of wine is taken before she reaches and sets it on the table, away from her computer. "I wouldn't have guessed."

[John Brendan Cavanagh] Underneath the chef's jacket, he's wearing scuffed jeans, the aged sort that some men and women pay for, and others simply - wear to near-non-existance. The jacket hides the leather belt cinched at the waist, the long sleeves most of his tattoos, though he's pushed them up his forearms now, which are broad with muscle and rope with tendons. He's carrying his draft beer as he circulates, the liquid is a deep red-amber, some seasonal brew. It's his first of the night, though, not his sixths, and his brown eyes are clear.

"No?" he returns, as he comes close, setting the glass down on the table, leaning over one of the empty chairs there, big hands folded over the smooth, curving slats. " - what would you have guessed?" The response is direct, automatic. There's this moment where his open features are blank, like he's trying to place her. God knows how many faces he sees in a day.

Then the spark of recognition hits, and his attention changes, sharpens maybe. It's not precisely readable, mostly because he's not really processed her presence until now. He's not the sort of man to ever be at a loss for words, though, and he breathes out the edge of a laugh. "Never figured on seeing you again."

[Luana Kirchmann] "Honestly?" A quick look over what she can see beneath and takes in the way he leans, he talks, recalling the last and first time she had met him. "Laborer maybe, or a musician." Her mouth quirks at that, lifting with the way her eyebrows raise in a quick arch.

Far from being dressed for the night life, Luana's in a buttoned down blouse, some silk kind, and a high waist skirt with a pair of heels. Since this weather is still warm to her, even if it's damp and likely to rain outside, she's not wearing stockings and her jacket isn't with her but in the car. A professional laptop-cum-briefcase is settled down between her chair and the wall, tucked out of the way. Her hair is rolled up in a clip, a little messy from the day, but leaves her face open. Make up is less dramatic this time around.

Sitting with her legs crossed, she leans back in the chair and watches him, her smile increasing as he laughs. "And now that you have?" There's a brief pause, where her brows raise again, "Are you wishing you hadn't?" She's holding back her own laughter, but it's there, this quiet amusement threaded through her accented tones.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Here I was hoping to be mistaken for a gentleman farmer," he returns, both bemused and direct, easy, his bulk apparent as he leans over the frame of the second chair at the table. There's a simple silver band around the base of his otherwise bony thumb, and those cheap silicon bracelets that every kid between 4 and 14 seems to wear, three or four per wrist. " - or maybe a mendicant philosopher. Manual labor wins out every time." That's wry, not bitter. Every man in his family worked with his hands. It's no surprise, really, that he came around to it after college.

After a fashion.

She leans back, and he straightens, more through the shoulders, this way of measuring himelf, for his hands are still on the back of the chair. "Naw - " he returns, when she asks if he's wishing he hadn't. It's quiet, there's laughter behind it, more conversational now - part of the banter rather than some deep signifier of amusement. " - that's a conversational trap I'm not falling into. Not by a long shot." His grin deepens with the last, though it does not quite bring out the dimple in his cheek. Then his eyes drop to her meal on the table. "Especially since I'm here in a professional capacity. Everything was to your liking, I take it? Questions, comments, complaints?"

[Luana Kirchmann] Laughing softly, then, easily. Smart man, this one, to not fall into the trap that she sets up. There had been no regret or apology for mistaking him as some other profession. Not that it mattered since he clearly isn't a dock worker, but a successful looking chef and father at that.

When he asks about comments or complaints she slides her gaze over to the cheese platter she had worked through over the last two hours, then back up towards him again. "Next time, when I order something requiring cooking, I'll let you know. But I've enjoyed the atmosphere," she admits that much.

And then, "And I like the service staff. Very pleasant without being personable." For this she meant both Cindy and now him, this latter said with a small glint in the eye. Hard to tell that she's teasing, she's not as open with it as she had been at the bar the other night. He's here professionally after all. "Something often lacking in this country."

[John Brendan Cavanagh] Success is a relative sort of thing. Half of all restaurants fail in their first year. Here, he has all the money he's saved over the years tied up into the building, the establishment. Cindy and her girlfriend, the pastry chef and baker responsible for the flatbreads on the cheese platter, the chocolate chip cookie he'd fed Lucy earlier, and even his sous and line chefs, they've all put things on hold, accepted privation, worked overtime without compensation, and so on, to get the place off the ground. Sometimes it feels like he's walking a tightrope over a precipice without a balancing pole or net beneath. Six months.

They have six months to make it work.

Mostly, he doesn't think about it. It's easier like that. It's how a practical man who learned how to plumb a sink and frame a room at the hands of his father ended up with a useless undergraduate degree in philosophy. It's how -

- none of that, he thinks of none of that. He just grins at her, reaches out over the table offering her his hand to shake. His own is broad, callused, scarred. Teflon hands, from working the line for so many years. The dark lines of his tattoo curl around his wrist and crawl up his forearm. "I'm glad to hear it. You'll let me know if there's anything we can do to improve, won't you? Dessert's on the house tonight, by the way. Compliments of the chef, if you'd like to try anything."

He keeps it light. He doesn't ask where she's from; doesn't bristle at her comment about what's lacking in the States, but he smiles, broad, sure - confident - all white teeth and brown eyes - until he's called away.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] It's well after midnight, a hole in the wall sort of place near the mile that opens onto a dark, still street. There are clubs dotting up and down the way, little herds of drunk girls in short skirts and high heels stagger between them. They have names that seem sharp, immediate - Fluid and Icon and Club Babylon which appears to promise both heaven and hell, with purgatory in between, just the way Dante dreamed it, just the way John Milton feared.

Gumby's[i] is on the same corner. The exterior is not mirrored glass and sleek, underlit neon, but planked wooden paneling. Mounted on the exterior wall is an old ship's steering wheel, from some huge old riverboat. The odd tourist stumbling drunk from one glittering dance club to the next would think it a kitschy themed seafood restaurant, the sort with a knotted net affixed to the ceiling, filled with plastic models of dungeness crabs and Maine lobsters, with swordfish and giant rainbow trout, nevermind the impossibility of their comingling in any actual fisherman's net.

It's not fish inside, but music. The blackboard mounted beside the captain's wheel lists Friday as a [i]loud and local night, and band inside is both - loud enough that the music makes the glass panes in the half-open front door shudder, local enough that they have a following even though they're without a record deal.

JB is inside, beer held loosely in one of his big hands, seated on a barstool it his back to the bar, listening. Just another guy, tall and broad-shouldered, but ordinary, really - wearing a Pogues t-shirt and torn jeans, with a scruffy day and a half beard bristling across his jaw.

[Luana Kirchmann] Well after midnight is still early in the party crowd, many of them wake at ten, dress and then head out to get drunk and high, and reek havok across the city. Luana is not quite one of them but she's similar enough and knows the lifestyle. Friday had her working, the late afternoon spent passed out on top of the bed covers catching some sleep before her weekend began. By Monday she's in sunglasses, popping advil, and a grumbling bitch.

But that's not now. Right now, the short woman is sliding up to the side of the bar, giving John the look over with a quirk of her mouth.

She's a little more dressed for a place like this, likely having come from or going to one of those clubs up the road. A pair of strapped heels up the ankles, dark, matching the dress that's a little longer on the thigh then most younger girls out there, with straps criss-crossing down the back and a decent plunge line at the front. There's a bracelet on the left wrist, a thin chain down her neck, glittering like a soft strand of spiders web, delicate and feminine. Dirty blonde hair is in back in a clip, slightly messed in the way it's been grabbed at the back. Across her hip is a small purse, its attached to the strap over her shoulder, blending in with the black of her dress.

From this she's pulled some cash, and she's lifting her accented voice to order a whiskey, of all things.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] It's not his sixth beer of the night, JB. It's not his first, either. And he's tired from a long day that began before dawn, sorting out deliveries, getting his daughter off to school, working dawn to dusk, and after, really. Friday nights in a strange new city usually find him jogging upstairs when service ends, maybe after a few beers with his staff, to tuck in his daughter while the rest of them head out for the night, to retire it in style. Tonight, though, Cindy offered to hang out, spend the evening with Lucy, give him a night off.

An hour and a half later, and he's lost most of the rest of his staff to other pursuits. Freddie's trying to score something decent weed from a dodgy connection on the northside, and Raoul followed some sharp faced, pretty little college girl out of Gumby's twenty minutes ago. "You'll be back," JB warned his sous chef as the squat little bulldog of a man left, laughing, trailing after his latest conquest.

By now, it's absolutely clear that he was wrong.

So instead, he's sitting here, listening to this loud, pseudo-punk band Either / OR made up, entirely, of philosophy undergrads from the University of Chicago. If he could make out the lyrics, he might laugh. It's all a growl of feedback loops, art school stuff, not his scene even if he totally gets the energy. The beer's good, though. They've got decent stuff on tap, and it's opening up his veins and he's taking an interest in a stranger's drink order.

"Not Bushmill's!" He tells her, and - reaching back with a sort of direct gesture, sets his hand down on her cash as she reaches it across the bar. "Jameson's cask strength is what you want if you're drinking Irish whiskey. Though you look more like a Cosmo girl."

[Luana Kirchmann] "I'm a whatever takes my fancy girl," she responds to him, amused at the way he's put his hand over her and the cash on the bar. Olive eyes flick over his face, the humour in her expression clearly expressed. "But whatever the man says." This was to the bartender who's come to get her a drink. Content with the suggested order, she leaves her cash on the bar and slips her hand back out from under his.

With him sitting, he's still taller then her. But she lingers by his side, facing him more then the bar now, as she waits for her drink. "What makes you think I'm a Cosmo girl?" Already sharp brows arch a little higher. Her pale painted lips curl up in a direct, playful challenge. The woman isn't only looking at his gaze, but taking in his features and even the name splashed across his t.shirt. She picks up the little details as she looks him over, slow, unhurried, before meeting his gaze again.

Even alone, the woman seems far from afraid of the college students, the drunk men, even those that are telling her what she should be drinking. Her sharp angled face is proud, though quiet, and hinted with a faint playful flirt under the guise of her dark shadowed, eyes.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Oh," he says, with this sort of exaggerated care, lifting his beer, holding it with his blunt fingers on the rim of the glass, humor glinting in his warm brown eyes. " - that sort." Underneath. Whatever that means. Then she slides her hand out from under his, and he releases her money. When the tender comes back with her whiskey, John Brendan gestures wordlessly to the man that he'd like another round. It's an easy, familiar gesture - the sort perfected by a certain kind of guy in pubs the world over. Then he drops his right arm again, resting the bottom of his beer glass on one solid thigh.

His jeans are worn white there, the threads of the underlying cotton visible at the knee. A dark, intricate tattoo crawls up the right arm, moving whenever he flexes his muscles, otherwise still. It is all curves, sharp dark lines, crisp and clean like the edge of a blade, joined together to a whole.

Must've taken hours.

He glances briefly up; the lead singer's at the mike, announcing a break, she's dressed in sharp red, a smear of color against the stage lights, and then gone. His brown eyes wander back to her again, " - why do I think you're a Cosmo girl?" he asks her, laughing, this big gesture of it that is mostly just his face, the broad way his mouth moves, the engaging gleam of his eyes.

His gaze drops to the hem of her skirt, and his grin crests into an edge of a smirk. Then he finds her gaze again, " - because I'm giving you credit for not being a frozen strawberry daiquiri girl."

[Luana Kirchmann] "I can't," she tells him, watching his eyes as they travel down her petite frame, plenty hidden in the folds of the dress, and yet folds show just what they should. It's downright modest compared to some, and allows her into clubs and into lounge bars, or places like this, without much a problem. "I get those ... what do you call them?" Her brow creases and she makes a rolling gesture with her fingers, making motion, "... those painful headaches when you have something too cold."

There's a quick flash of teeth in a grin.

Then she's reaching for her drink and thanking the bar tender with a small smile and nod of her head. Lifting the glass, she takes a sip from it, drinking it straight without the ice. Turning from the bar now, and the man in the stool, she faces the crowd. Another inches in against the bar, making her step to the side to allow them more room. She throws them half a look over her shoulder, and turns back to John after. Close enough now, her hip is almost against the side of his leg. Blame it on being at the bar.

"You like this music?" She asks of him, looking up to where he's sitting. Her glass is held at her waist, fingers curled over the top of the glass, protecting the opened space with her fingers. Too many spiked drinks, one can assume, has her naturally wary and certainly accustomed to clubs and pubs. Her fingers and hand is small, delicate, somewhat boned along the knuckles.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Ice cream headache!" he supplies, a little loud maybe. The band was loud, and there's still this sort of afterecho of the music thrumming in his ears. Were he more sensible, he might remember to wear ear plugs to a bar like this, on a night like this. It's not something he thinks about, though maybe the ringing in his ears gives him a flash of that, some old man in a pub cupping his ear going, eh? at the end of every queston. " - those things are foul, anyway. They just use mixes at any of these places. Seventeen kinds of chemicals engineered to taste like strawberry candy, and a boatload of high fructose corn syrup, to cover up the booze. Way I see if, if you're gonna get drunk, best you taste what the hell you're drinking."

Apparently, the man has opinions. He glances down as she crowds closer, gives her the fleeting edge of a smile, the sort of look that has him holding her gaze, sidelong, sure. Maybe even cocky. Then he tosses back the rest of his beer and reaches back behind her, sliding the empty over the counter, picking up the full glass that has miraculously replaced it.

"This shit?" he says, a gestue toward the stage, followed by a glance. The band's drifted away now, though he could probably find the lead singers red dress floating around in the crowd. "It's not bad. I mean, the fucking - concept is a bit self-indulgent, but they've got the hooks and know how to crunch a fucking chord." Then, he lifts his chin at her, a flash of white teeth. Asks. "You?"

[Luana Kirchmann] He has her laughing, a sound that is lost under the thrum of people and voices, loud talkers like John. Luana isn't that way, she's more quiet, at least volume wise. She makes up plenty in other ways. The way she's looking at him may indicate that. He's been around enough to know that its a similar look that college girl had given his co worker before dragging him out of there. This woman has similar plans.

"Does it matter, by the end of the night, you won't know the difference." Seeking to encourage his opinions, throwing a little more gas on the fire, so to speak. She knows it too, by the way her brow lifts and her mouth quirks.

Shifting her grip on the glass, she brings it to her lips for another drink, swallowed down with a quick gulp of her throat and motion of her cheeks. She had looked away again, over the crowd, this time a fleeting glance, before eyes drift back to him again. Her grin is quick, eyes crinkled briefly. "Hate it."

"I came in expecting to see fisherman and pick up good cocktails." It's jest, probably. It doesn't matter anyway, she's here and talking to a nice enough man. She's drinking. The awful music has stopped, long enough that she can fill it with some conversation. Another sip is taken.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Course it matters!" God knows he's had this argument before. She's flirting with him, though, and that has him focus on her rather more directly, sitting up as he lifts his beer to his mouth. "I'm not living for the end of the night, you know - " he tells her, smiling around the edge of the beer glass as he sips off the foam from the head. " - every moment in between counts, too. What is it they say - Life's too short for - " but he frowns, furrows, chasing the idea in his head. " - fuck if I know. I think it ends with bad beer, though." The stuff he's drinking is good. She could figure that out by the price. It's not Budweiser, or one of its lesser competitors.

Then, she confesses that she hates the music. "No way! Shit, I bet you like that fucking electronica stuff. You know, Music by Computer. Give me crunch guitars and blood and sawdust, and I'm a happy man."

Make that past tense, John. Then, a flash of a grin that shows the hint of a dimple - just the hint of it - in his cheek. "Oh, like those tiki cocktails, right? The ones that come with a spear and eighteen kinds of fruit, poke your eye out, those kind?"

[Luana Kirchmann] It worked, of course. He goes on, it has her smiling more, just short of grinning. Her eyes are practically gleaming at this point. She's watching him over her glass, drinking from it as casually as one would water. A shame, really. Maybe she's not even stopping to enjoy it. It's more likely that she's just a regular drinker, though, and more engaged in conversation then the warmth flowing down her throat and settling into her belly.

"I like all sorts of music, as long as it sounds like music, and not the kids next door screaming to some blared music out of a bad stereo speaker," she confesses, waving her drink a little as if to dismiss the idea that she was just into electronica. It wasn't true, either.

Laughing softly, she shook her head and indulged him with a wry expression. "The sort where shrimps are arranged prettily on the side and you eat it from a glass, not drink it." Whatever they're called. She hadn't meant drinking cocktails. It's seems she's one of those that may have mistaken this for some gaudy restaurant. Of course the music had been a dead give away. She's merely playing.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Oh," he says, getting it now. " - shrimp cocktails. I hear they do a great one of those at Red Lobster." He deadpans. Luana is being subject to his opinions on music. Best not get him started on chain restaurants.

"Now, see - " John leans over, alcohol on his breath, a nice hoppy pale ale, actually, that smells like bread, like yeast, the fermented sugars inside it. There's something golden about it, too - pale ales smell like summer, not fall. It's cool outside, clear tonight, a huge moon hanging like a baleful eye in the middle of the sky, now that the front has moved on and left the city bare to the stars, naked underneath them. She can sense his smile as much as she can see it, an edge of it, the bristle of his whiskers dark brown. He hasn't shaved since morning. They grow back fast.

" - now," he has a professorial air, really. No, that's not it. Barroom professor is more like it. "See, kids banging in their mum's garage, screaming over feedback of the third-fucking-hand amp they picked up from the pawn shop down the corner, that's exactly what music is. Right? S'about the experience of it. People yelling, putting together chords and the like, - about participation rather than this passive shite where some bloke feeds parameters through a computer and punches out something, then test markets it on a select group of inebriated thirteen-year-old who wouldn't know a fat chord progression if it smacked them in the face.

"We've been banging drums since the cavemen times. It's a fucking - you know - communal act. Making music, s'posed to be, anyway. Like a charm against - "

He doesn't finish what he was saying. Instead, he gives a gesture, down at the surface of her glass. "You want another of those?"

[Luana Kirchmann] All the while he talks and she listens. Whether he's right by her ear or sitting back on his stool, she's listening to what he has to say and what's found under it. Closer she can pick up other little things about him, like the smell of his breath, or any cologne he's wearing. She can make out the colour of his eyes better, too, now that he's sitting closer in the darkness of the pub.

This time there's nothing much to be said, but her interest is still there, not a bright spark, but just under the surface and in the way she hasn't left him to talk about such nonsense to the next man at the bar. Truthfully she doesn't know much about music, just which she liked and what she didn't. Chords, guitars, anything else was beyond her. Other people played it, even more wished they could, and then there were those like John that thought they knew everything about it. Alcohol makes the opinion stronger, so she thinks.

But when it comes to asking about her drink, she nods to him once and downs the rest in her glass in a sweep of her tilted chin and swallows it down. The empty glass is pushed onto the bar, reaching through his body and the person still standing next to the bar next to her. She's crammed between them, a little on the outside, so she's standing closer to his knee then his side now. "One more," she tells him, "and then I am leaving for better places."

"You should come." Direct.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Yeah?" He returns, his brown eyes gleaming, a little bit unfocused, but lingering on her, tracking the movement of her eyes. His own gaze drops to her hand, the empty glass, as she pushes it between them.

The shift arrests his rather passionate discourse on music, the nature of communal expression before he starts up again. The way he's looking at her, some shadow on his brow, suggests that he's disappointed she didn't rise to the bait, jump in and turn it around on him, offer an opinion, maybe loudly, no matter how wrong he considers it. That's there, on the surface, dissolving as he follows the line of her arm back toward the bar, the movement quiets that boisterous self that sparks with alcohol, opens in a barroom, that expansive sense of camaraderie, of rightness of the world that fills him up.

That opens up in him.
That gleams in his brown eyes.

He gestures to the bartender to get her another, leaning back to pay, holding sliding his wallet from his back pocket and unfolding a bill, leaving behind a generous tip before he lifts her drink back over the bar, offering it to her.

When she has her drink, he picks up his beer, leans forward, and says into her ear, still maybe a hint too loud, but with a grin underneath his voice. "What constitutes better places?"

[Luana Kirchmann] Taking the drink from him has her murmuring a quiet: "Thank you." She doesn't immediately lift it towards her mouth to drink from it, but holds it down by her waist as he leans back with his own drink. It's only moments later that he's folding his body towards her, coming close enough to her ear to know that she doesn't smell like the drunks, or the cheap body sprays on super market shelves, but of some subtle higher class oil pressed into the back of her ear, down by her collarbones, again at her wrists. Not a lot, but enough to know its only the start of the night and not the end.

Her tongue licks her lip, wets it as she hears his grin. Responding in kind, her mouth curved into a slow, more sly smile. All still flirtatious, quieter, maybe playful. "Less people," she tells his ear in return, "more room to move." Her smile can be heard. This close, she's watching him side ways, eyes flicking over the side of his face.

Leaning in close has her free hand resting on his thigh, closer to his knee then higher up. It just rests there, doesn't grip, hardly even steadies her. "Doesn't have to be electronica that you detest. But ... I'm sure we could work out somewhere we both like." Suggestive lilt.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] His laughter isn't quiet. She is close enough that she can feel it, the way his lungs expand with it, the way his shoulders move. He lifts his head, that flash of teeth again, rough jaw rising, looking up and away from her, down the line of the bar maybe, behind the next guy, and the next guy down.

Toward the front door.
It's open, a slice of the streetlife outside visible, a cool current of air that slices through the retained heat inside the crowded club.

His thigh flexes beneath her hand. The big, long muscles solid in the front of the thigh, the long bands that make up the quadriceps. The denim of his jeans is soft, washed and worn and worn and washed. Brown eyes drop to her hand, and there's a certain shift, a kind of conservation of energy. "I think you have plenty of room to move," he tells her, lower this time, the hint of his dimple reappearing in his cheek. Head still, he lifts his eyes to meet hers. "Right here."

Then, he shifts his beer from his right hand to his left. Reaches up, tilting her chin up with the flat of his index finger, tipping it higher with the blunt edge of his thumb. Not breaking eye contact now, not for a fraction of a second.

[Luana Kirchmann] Lifting her chin obediently, has him looking into paler olive coloured eyes. They're made lighter by the way her eyes have been shadowed in black and grays, carefully applied only a few hours ago, accentuating the large, slightly almond shape of them. Her eyebrows cut away from them sharply, shaped. Her mouth has stilled, like her expression, and holding her like that has her staring at him.

"You think so?" She asked softly, a mere mouth moving under the sound. If the band had been playing, her voice would have been lost under it.

Her body moves, shifts so that she presses her side into his thigh, and her hand curls from the top of his thigh to the inside, still down by the knee in safe areas. Her thumb feels the muscle, rubbing across it to feel the hardness of it under the pressing pad. The chin in his grip is angular, the lines of her jaw are long, raising up to the sharp angles of her cheekbones.

"And what about the music?" She asks, tilting her head just a little more to the side, eyes still direct. "When that starts, I won't hear a word that you're saying." Excuses. Testing the waters, to see what opinions he comes up with. There's a hidden smile in her mouth.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] "You don't give a fuck," he tells her, looking at her aslant as she shifts herself to his side. The bottom of his beer glass rests against the opposite thigh, his fingers relax, loosen around the glass. Briefly, his eyes drop to her hand as her fingers curl inside his thigh - linger there, then up again, this cross-wise look accompanied by a dark, sweeping glance. His features are shadowed, a strong, bristling jaw, a broad, blunt nose that suggests it has been broken once or twice before. " - what I say, you know."

That sounds almost conversational.

He does not hold her chin up for long. Turning to face her directly, looking just down from his higher angle, he sweeps his thumb along the line of her jaw, the pad callused from work, rough against her skin. "It's all just placeholders." The touch changes, deepens. Without looking toward the stage, he indicates it with a gesture of his dark head. "The music starts up, we can just mouth the words. Same meaning, then."

[Luana Kirchmann] Surprisingly, her mouth starts to curve in a smile that widens further into a grin. She has nice teeth, either natural or afforded by a good dentist. The expression softens those sharper, harder angles of her ancestry. She has a strong nose too, broader at the base, but it matches her mouth just nicely and fits her face to make it attractive. "What sort of woman do you take me for?"

His thumb starts to take advantage. It's only fair really, her hand started it. Her drink is in her other hand, held down by her waist still, an elbow tucked closely into her body so she's not knocked around and the whiskey isn't spilled everywhere. "I give a fuck," the word sounds good on her tongue, harsher like her accent, "what you say. How else would I know it's called an ice-cream headache?"

The womans eyes are laughing around the edges, but the look in them is direct enough to be considered raw. Direct enough to upset Garou, often. She doesn't shy away. Smaller, petite she may be, but she's full of an unwavering force. Personality she has in loads.

[John Brendan Cavanagh] That's an open ended question and one that he, in his alcohol-haze, still wisely dodges. There's a shift of his shoulders before his torso tightens with laughter, some low chuckle, not really loud enough to be overhead above the ambient noise of the club, the garage band stuff they're piping in, quieter, over the sound system while Either / Or is offstage.

His hand drops from her cheek, then. Quite deliberately, he reaches down to grasp her drink, his big hands over the surface of the glass, over her fingers, tugging until she gives way. When she does so, he reaches back, sets whatever remains of her drink on the bar, not back where the bartender will reclaim it immediately, but forward, near the edge, suggesting she's not finished with it. His own drink, though, he finishes, lifts it up and drinks it down, pushes the glass onto the bar and farther back than her own, before rising, his big, broad frame filling the space, filling her space really, close. His t-shirt - The Pogues - is a bit loose hanging from his broad shoulders, just the suggestion of strength underneath.

He's looking down at her now, this look that is scouring and intent, hungry. The suggestion of intimacy turns a head or two of their nearest neighbors, but the bar is dark and they quickly look away.

Not touching her, he bends down - and down, for he's a full foot taller than she is - this seeking gesture that has a sort of energy, the sort of force that one magnet gives another, opposing magnet, then bends down to kiss her mouth, this leashed gesture, soft but rough. Held back. He is close enough that he can smell her high-end oils, the other drinks she's had, smoke lingering in her hair from some other bar. He head moves as he kisses her again, forehead close, his hands still loose, open around her body, not close.

"I think," he says at last, this close. "That you're the sort of woman who isn't used to being told no."

This time, he leans in, but does not touch her mouth with his own. His solid frame is tense, aware, alive to her closeness.

"And I think," then he smiles, a hint of regret there. " - that I'm the sort of man who has a sitter, whose sitter has a girlfriend, who expected her home an hour ago. Goodnight," he finishes, reaching back to pick up her drink, to hand it back to her. "Cosmo-girl."

[Luana Kirchmann] Her hand drifts from his leg when he shifts off his stool, stealing her glass from her in the process, given up with only a momentary hesitation. Stepping a touch back leaves him more room, only because she doesn't want to be staring him in the chest, suffocated by the largeness of him. Her head tilts more up, eyes looking through lashes from her shorter angle.

That is, until he's leaning down. He kisses her, making her head rear back at first, before she goes with it. It's not as pushy as her demeanor may have been, but it's opened mouth, softer then he may expect from her. Her fingers have found the warmth of his seat, steadying where she is in the throng of the crowd, in the corner space of the bar, other people, his taller frame.

She breathes him in when his brow rests to hers, eyes still open to look at his face from the small space that leaves her nose almost against his. "Maybe another time," she responds. It doesn't sound hopeful. It's just that, a statement. Luana doesn't offer her number or ask for his. The ball is thrown in his court for all that she's not used to being told no. How easily she can project something other then she is. She's told no quite often. But she likes a challenge.

With her drink back in hand, she lifts it in a salute. "Have a good night." She never got his name and doesn't ask for it. He's leaving after all.