[Danny Jones] 123 not me!
[Henry Allard] ((Fuck!))
[Danny Jones] (HAHAHHAH!)
[Henry Allard] The seasons are out of sync with each other this year, the months more of a grab bag than a progression. While June had been blazingly hot, July is coming in cool, windy, cloudy. By all accounts today was a nice day, with the normal amount of cloud cover, the normal amount of wind, everything everyone had come to expect from a July day… except for the temperature. It isn’t even 70 degrees out today, and it’s causing more than a few people to scratch their heads.
For a Sunday, the park is not considerably crowded. It is a holiday weekend, or the weekend before a holiday, and many people are celebrating at home, in smaller parks, with their friends and family. Henry is out of the house to get the hell away from his friends, who are synonymous with his roommates, who have been sitting in the living room most of the afternoon watching old videos taken from seemingly every single 4th of July party they’d thrown since 1999, and enough was enough. He’d changed his clothes and got in the truck and aimed it south, and now he is moving through the park at a pretty good clip, jogging for the first time in weeks.
Needless to say, right about now, a mile in, his lungs are cursing the day they ever met him.
[Danny Jones] Santi tries not to hover when he’s concerned, but the hovering! Finally he had to go to work, and she was able to slip past Mama and Rafi and Carolina to take a walk herself. She loves being there, with the noise and the bustle and the hustle and the laughter and the love – but sometimes, ya just gotta get away, an’ she didn’t want to upset Carolina by letting her know she’d done a lil damage with her knee that last time she jumped up on Danny. So, instead, she promised she’d be back for dinner, and claimed she had something to do.
She was good though, and got a ride from Santi, an’ promised to call him if she needed a ride back. The boy worries, an it’s cute. She likes it. Though she’d never admit it. She ain’t had no one worry bout her for a long time. She even let him help change her bandages and dress before she left, giving a stern shake of her head so that he said nothing about the couple of stiches she already ripped in play with his niece. She’s tough, she kin handle it.
Anyway! All that to say, she’s sitting atop a trash can in the park, legs criss cross apple sauce under her, munching on an ice cream cone garnered from the vendor over there that gave her two scoops for the price of one since she was hurt n all. The story of her ’emergancy operation’ mighta had something to do with it. And her cute ‘i’m a teenage girl, just like everyone else’ grin mighta helped too. Either way, she’s not complaining at all.
Chocolate and Mint Chocolate Chip. In a waffle cone. What’s there to be sorry about? Unless, of course, you’re that poor guy over there jogging this way and looking the worse for wear…
[Henry Allard] Now, normally, the sight of a teenage girl sitting atop a crash can in the middle of the park wouldn’t be something that would particularly catch Henry’s attention, for any number of reasons, the primary factor being the first point. Other people might find her choice of location a bit odd, what with there being perfectly clean grass and perfectly nice picnic tables and benches for her to choose from. Other people might find her, herself, a bit odd, as a matter of fact, there’s just something about her that sends that sense through them, and while they, too, are momentarily wary, maybe even paying attention, it does not last long.
What does slow Henry’s steps is the fact that he has met this girl before. If we were able to see the flow chart of his thought process, it would look something like this:
1. I know her.
2. She’s Garou.
3. She’s a Garou female.
3a. She might be hurt.
3b. She might be pregnant.
As he draws closer, a name comes to mind, and he slows to a walk, hands moving to his hips, lungs struggling to pull in a breath that isn’t starved for oxygen. Compared to the last time Danny saw this guy jogging, when he looked rangy enough with his chicken legs and long limbs, he somehow manages to look thinner.
Henry coughs into his hand, then gives the girl a friendly enough smile and a “Hey… Danny, right?”
[Danny Jones] She pauses in the process of rescuing a long meltingish glob of ice cream from it’s decent into death along her fingers, to peer up at Henry with a blink, then she finishes rescuing the melting stream of chocolate, by condemning it to complete suicide in the slide across her tongue and into her gullet. She sits up straighter and a wince of pain works its way across her features, though she tries to chase it away before it’s noticed.
In it’s place, a grin, as she nods slightly. “Yeah, s’Danny. Yer… the paramedic – Henry, right?” She takes another lick of her gooey goodness and arches a brow. “How is it, ya always joggin an’ ya always look like shit for it?” That grin don’t slip away at all, even as she presses an arm against her belly and straightens up careful like.
[Henry Allard] That question could very well have offended the wrong person, someone who was more concerned about his outward appearance, perhaps. Were his cheeks not already decidedly flush with blood from his pressure and pulse being elevated, he might have blushed at the comment, stammered a bit at not knowing how to respond.
“What,” he huffs, “you mean getting completely out of breath and drenched in sweat isn’t attractive?”
That movement of arm towards stomach doesn’t escape his notice. Many people put their arms across their stomachs for no particular reason, but there are tells to a person’s face, and those tells speak of pain, discomfort, injury. Danny’s is no exception, no matter how well she may be at pretending there’s nothing wrong, and Henry’s brows flinch inward in a sort of fleeting frown as he debates whether or not to say anything.
He loses the debate.
“You okay?”
[Danny Jones] It’s hard to be offended by Danny, even when she’s trying. She’s young and cute and sassy and all around fun to be near. She grins and arches a brow, looking over him. “Well, I guess it kinda depends on the situation, ain’t it?”
She takes another bite of ice cream, and arches a brow as he asks, before her gaze narrows just a little. “I wasn’t givin NUTHIN away, I swear. Dammit! You as bad as Santi – he can always tell too.” Of course, she knows she’s got a uniquely expressive face, and she can’t hide anything from anyone. She sighs, dejected like, but that grin reasserts itself right back in place. “What would ya say if I told ya that I got in a fight with a giant ass spirit like pig an almost lost…”
She can’t be serious… right?
[Henry Allard] Her exasperation makes him smile. Were not for his earnest struggle to return his respiration rate to normal it would have been closed lipped, bemused almost, but no, now teeth show, making him look wholeheartedly amused. There is no response, no retort–he doesn’t ask who Santi is, but he doesn’t have to stretch too far to assume it’s a boyfriend. It’s all in her tone, in the way she says his name, it gives it away, just the same as the way he had spoken Tristan’s name in her presence all those weeks ago had alerted her to the fact that the Eagles kin was not just a “friend”.
Then she is asking what he would say if he were informed as to the other night’s happenings, if she duked it out with a pig monster and nearly didn’t come out alive, and he reaches up to scratch the side of his head as he seems to give this due consideration. His thin chest continues to pull for air, and he curls his hand up into a fist to muffle a cough that rattles with displaced phlegm. For as unglamorous as this exercise is, turning him red and dousing him in his own salt water and making him cough up mucous that normally just sits complacent in the bottom of his lungs, there is a method to this madness. It relieves stress. It works up his appetite. It, though it burns calories, will get him to eat, and a lot, when he gets home in a few hours. He will make up the calorie deficit in beer alone.
“I’d ask if I could see the scar.”
Tough customer.
[Danny Jones] “Hm.” is all the reply that gets at first, as she considers this, and takes another lick of her fast disappearing double scoop o’goodness. She gives this tough customer’s comment due consideration, before she nods. “alright then.”
She shifts her position slightly, and waves him closer, before she holds her cone in her left hand, and uses her right to lift the right side of her shirt, where the front and back of her torso, low on the right side, is bandaged. She tucks the shirt under the lower edge of her bra, and then peels the loose bandaging away from the front, to show the neat row of mostly intact stitching via Mama Isabel. “Matches on the back, but I can’t reach that’un – you’ll have to peek under there yerself.”
She balances precariously in this position, so as not to jostle the muscles that scream with every movement. While Mama was quite adept at the stitching the outer wound, there was precious little that could be done for the damage inside. That she has to heal up on her own.
“If that ain’t enough, I kin show ya the tusk what done that….” grinned, playful.
[Henry Allard] A low if not mildly impressed whistle sounds from his lips as she unveils her corporeal souvenir.
“No, that’s all right, I think I can imagine.”
With one of her hands occupied by the waffle cone she has been intermittently enjoying, Henry steps forward to help her return the bandage to its previously secured position, exhibiting absolutely no qualms with doing so. This is of a medical nature, after all. The way some people are glancing over, one might think she had decided to go topless.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” he says, as if this is something they’re both well aware of and not some novel concept she hasn’t yet heard of.
[Danny Jones] She fakes a little pout. “Awww. No one wants to see it. Cept Rafi, an’ that’s cuz he was stuck on it right before I removed it for a prize to take to the Docks n shit.” The grin returns though, softer, as he helps affix the bandage back in place. She nods, slightly, and then chuckles. “Yeah. Rafi was worse. I found someone to patch him up though, so’s he was only sore by the time I got him home.”
She don’t say why she didn’t ask for the same herself, but anyone that knows her can likely figure it out. “Mama Isabel – Rafi’s Mama – she stitched me up. Course, I done already mussed up a few of em, playin with Carolina after.” The grin turns sheepish. It’s hard to remember that your hurt, when you can heal up faster then anyone on earth. “I’ll be right as rain in a few days though.”
[Henry Allard] An onslaught of names: Rafi, Isabel, Carolina. Rather than interrupt, Henry once again finds himself attempting to figure out who each one is based on contextual clues. One of them has to be a packmate, probably another Gnawer (Mama… yes, definitely a Gnawer). The last one has to be a child. Not her child, maybe the packmate’s. This reasoning is nearly visible on his face as he seems to slightly zone out as she’s talking, almost as if he isn’t listening. He is. He’s just thinking on the sidelines.
“That you will,” he says. His wind has finally returned to him, his lungs now able to pull in an entire breath without lurching on him, and he gives her a reassuring smile. This is the blood that distinguishes them, the powers exhibited that her lot has and his don’t. His only have the added benefit of resilience, of being tougher to kill than the average human, and that has absolutely nothing to do with bodily differences but more along the lines of mentality. He’s seen this: so many people become devastatingly injured and give up, have no impetus to continue fighting, even if they have significant others, worse, children. Kin don’t go down that easy, even if they will be hurting for months afterwards. And the Garou?
The Garou just keep on doing it. This is the second time he’s seen Danny that she’s been injured, and she seems considerably more cheerful than she did the last time.
Henry’s got his wind back, and what does he do to celebrate?
Digs a pack of cigarettes out of his gym shorts and lights one.
Thank Gaia his mother isn’t alive to see him doing this.
[Danny Jones] It occurs to her, as she watches him, that he ain’t know who the hell she’s talking about, and she has the grace to blush a little. “Rafael Durante – he’s my new packmate. This happened when we was huntin, cuz I was petitioning to join him an’ his boys. He said i done proved myself good, so’s I’m in, just not quite officially yet. Santiago Durante is his brother, an’ my…”
She pauses, brow furrows. They ain’t never really talked about what they is to each other an’ all.. she ain’t put no claim on him official like, even though she ain’t seein no one else an’ don’t think he is either… She realizes she’s rambling in her head, and blushes. “Well, he ‘n’ me, we’s… yannow.” Smooth Danny. Real smooth.
She grins, an’ shrugs, an’ regrets the movement – she catches her breath and moves on. “Carolina, she’s Rafi’s daughter. She’s 7 an a bundle of fun… an Mama Isabel, o’course, is they’s Mama. Rafi an’ Santi I mean. That much was pretty obvious, I guess.”
She grins then, and watches him light up. She doesn’t point out the obvious, she just chuckles and takes another bite of her melting ice cream.
[Henry Allard] “Well, he ‘n’ me, we’s… yannow.”
“I know,” he assures her, another quiet smile taking up a comfortable place on his lips, this one far less forced than others he has mustered in her presence before. It doesn’t look as if it’s killing him to make the effort, as if he’s slipping up by allowing her to see such a display on his face.
The translation seems greatly appreciated, even if he does not remark on any of the points, and as the conversation peters to a halt and the two fall into their own vices, he his nicotine and she her sweets, Henry notes the wry laughter and looks slightly sheepish. He regards the leaking cigarette in his hand, stares at it for a long moment as if he’s just realized what he doing, and a sigh sounds from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Christ,” is all he says. The end of that aborted sentence could be easily inferred.
[Danny Jones] He knows, and she’s blushing. Because he knows, and she knows, and well, who knows what Santi knows, but all this knowing has stained her cheeks red, and she just watches him regard his cigarette for distraction from how warm her face is.
She laughs then, and arches a brow. “So – why do you jog, anyway? Seems innately painful, an ya too fuckin skinny. Mama Anne – she’s my Mama down in Florida – she’d have a field day and feed ya till ya ain’t able to move until ya got some meet on ya bones. An’ if ya keep doin that, don’t it kinda negate the good ya doin?”
Lecture made, and over, she just shrugs and chuckles and offers him her ice cream cone. “Wanna bite o’this instead? Cool ya down an’ shit.”
[Henry Allard] A question for question’s sake, no chance to offer up some sort of stilted logic for why he bothers exercising when he’s just going to keep smoking, and then onto a subject near and dear to every Gnawer’s heart. The way she describes her mother’s philosophy makes him exhale a voiceless laugh, teeth once again showing themselves in a smile.
There comes a barely noticeable flush of pink to his cheeks as something she says conjures up a memory in his head, something he isn’t going to explain as thoughtfully as she had the meaning of the names she had tossed out.
At the offer of ice cream, Henry distractedly shakes his head.
“That’s all right. You need it more than I do.”
[Danny Jones] She grins at him, and shrugs. “That ya official medical opinion? That Ice Cream makes it better? or…” she pauses to take another bite, this time getting into the waffle cone of deliciousness too – it’s disappearing fast enough to give anyone an ice cream headache. Cept her, of course. “or ya sayin I’m too skinny… in that case – hiya Pot, I’m kettle, we both black…”
She’s teasing though, and that much is clear. She don’t push for whatever memory makes him flush like that, but she does send both eyebrows upwards toward her awesome colored (thankfully NORMAL – well, for her – COLORED now) hair in unasked question. But she don’t actually ask it. Just insinuate the asking. She’s cool like that, yo.
She doesn’t offer the cone again though, mostly because the waffle cone is the best part. She does manage to make it disappear rather quickly, and then spends time licking the residue off her fingers. Who needs napkins, hm?
[Henry Allard] When those eyebrows go up, Henry brings a fist up to his mouth as if he’s going to cough. It actually serves to hide the fact that he’s smiling out of embarrassment at having been caught blushing and, thus, having been caught thinking something that’s gone unsaid. It’s rude, in a way, not involving the person with whom he’s having a conversation in the actual conversation, after all.
“Um… I… sorry, that just reminded me of…”
Something he’s been trying to work on lately is his reluctance to speak, his proclivity towards stammering when the threads of conversation spin his way. Although he has been making considerable progress with Tristan, although he manages to go through paragraphs of speech with his coworkers and roommates out of self-defense, it’s the community at large that he has trouble dealing with. There is not a large population of Garou, of kin, in this city. One would think that everyone would know each other, would be somewhat at ease with each other, but that isn’t the case. There are fissures everywhere, gaps in communication, gaps in areas where help could be extended.
Perhaps it’s the thought that she could one day need him that has him opening up. This is the case with the other teenage warriors who have seem to flocked to him en masse, the Walkers and the Fianna and the Coggies. They have come to him in need, and he has has to open up by proxy. It’s got to work in reverse, somehow.
“Tristan’s mother. I, uh, met her a couple of months ago, back before I lost too much weight, and that was her goal, too. Was to ‘feed me up proper.'”
And then the matter of the ice cream. He smiles as Danny runs through the two possible interpretations of his retort, and then he says, “Opinion? That’s widely held medical knowledge, ice cream’ll fix most non-life threatening wounds.”
[Danny Jones] She lets him work through it, while finishing sucking the last bites of mint and chocolate from her index finger, before drying it on her jeans. She grins then, and nods. “Most Mama’s I know are like that. Think the worlds gonna end if they ain’t got an extra five pounds on us within a week. Poor Mama’s fightin a losin battle with me, cuz I burn it off by breathin most days, but they like it cuz that just means they getta feed me more. Mama Isabel’s an awesome cook. They’s from Mexico n shit, an her tamale’s? Oh. Em. Gee. So fuckin fantastic….”
She moans at the thought and rubs her belly and then winces as she catches her wound, and frowns at herself. “Well THAT was stupid, stupid.”
And then he gives Medical FACT about Ice Cream being the cure all above all and nods. “AhHA! See, i knew it! S’why I heal up so fuckin quick – Ice Cream’s my favorite. There was this guy, s’fuckin Kendra, now, an’ he took me out for fancy smancy Italian ice cream once… galled it Gelato or something like that. Was some fuckin high end fancy shit, it was…”
Yes, she connects people she knows to what they feed her. In her head it makes perfect sense. Seriously.
[Henry Allard] Henry isn’t the only one who’s found himself surrounded by teenage Garou lately, either–he keeps forgetting about Mister I Tried To Fight An Eagles Kin Because He Spilled Coffee On Me and Lost. Poor Joe.
“Never had gelato,” he admits, ashing off the end of his cigarette and taking another long drag from the end. For someone whose lung capacity can’t be too stellar, he’s inhaling it quickly enough, as if he’s being timed. “Sounds expensive.”
[Danny Jones] “It was alright – good, but dunno why it cost so much n shit. I ain’t waste my pennies on it cuz ya can get twice as much for twice as cheap . But if someone’s buyin, I ain’t sayin no! Beggers, choosers, an’ so on.”
She tips her head slightly. “ya know Joe?” curious. Seemed as if he recognized the name. But she tends to know just bout everyone, so ain’t no surprise that someone else’d be that way too.
[Henry Allard] Henry nods, slightly, pulling smoke into his lungs and holding it there while he speaks.
“I’ve met him a couple of times.” Pauses to blow smoke out his nostrils. “Seems like a decent guy. Don’t know too much about him, though, other than that he’s been helping Kendra out.”
Doesn’t know too much about him, or just isn’t going to volunteer any more information than that. If he’s stingy about what he allows people to know about himself, he’s even worse when it comes to contributing to area gossip mills. Not everybody has that sort of mentality.
[Danny Jones] She laughs. “He ‘helpin’ her alright. She’s all knocked up n shit. Dunno what it is about this fuckin city? But I for sure ain’t drinkin the water, just in case. Everyone’s caught up pregnant and shit! I ain’t do NO ONE without makin sure that shit’s wrapped, ya know? Even when I only doin one, ain’t takin no chances. Imagine the damage this shit woulda caused?” She gestures toward where her side is bandaged under her shirt and shakes her head. S’fuckin irresponsible, in her opinion, but she just rolls her eyes and smirks.
“Course, ya ain’t gotta worry bout that, do ya. How’s Tristan, anyway?”Her grin turns teasing, as she strives to get that blush painted across his cheeks again.
[Henry Allard] Henry doesn’t have to strive hard to imagine the damage that could have been caused to an unborn child were one to have been present when Danny ran into the ‘spirit like pig’ she had found the other night. This is the first thing he had told Rayne, the first thing he had told Kendra. They have a responsible to Gaia, certainly, but that responsibility changes the moment they learn they are pregnant.
He is about to comment on this when, from absolutely out of nowhere, comes the comment about having no cause to worry about losing a child followed by the inquiry about his boyfriend. It’s like having the wind knocked out of him before being checked into the wall, so clueless is he about how to respond, and within seconds he is flushed. Henry opens his mouth to say something, closes it, opens it again, then brings his free hand up in an attempt to hide the fact that his cheeks have opened in bloom.
“Um,” he says into the meatless palm of his hand, then chuffs out some uncomfortable approximation of a laugh and pushes his fingers back into his pocket. Seems to steel himself for a moment, finally brings his eyes up from their focal point at the mouth of the trash can, and says, “He’s good.”
[Danny Jones] SCORE! She grins and lifts a hand in victory as that blush blooms and she grins. “Ain’t no need to be all shy bout it with me, Henry. Sure, other folks is stupid n’shit, but me.” She shrugs, and idly scratches where the tape is on her bandages. Cuz that sticky shit itches, eventually. “I’m a fuckin Gnawer. It’s Love an’ Fuckin, so fuckin love, already. S’my take on it. Gotta itch, scratch an’ all that. Sides, anyone kin see the way ya feel when ya say his name. He loves ya half as much an ya’ll got somethin special, for sure.”
Nods. Like she’s the definitive authority on Gay Relationships.
[Henry Allard] “You might be on to something, there.”
He says it, and it’s a good of good nature, good humor, but that doesn’t make the flush fade from his cheeks any faster. It’d be nice if he could say that he would have this reaction to someone asking how his significant other was if this were a heterosexual relationship, but he knows better. He didn’t start out this way. He may have been genetically predisposed for reservation, may be a private person by nature, but he is not shy. He has a spine, and he has a mouth, and though neither shows very often, they do when it counts. What he had to learn was to feel this flush of shame–for that’s all embarrassment is, really, when you boil it down, is shame without remorse–whenever his personal life came up, and he was a very precocious pupil.
She could have asked him how work was and she might have received a similar response, but it would not have completely caught him off guard. That, he would have had a safe response for. There’s no way to truly answer the ‘how is Tristan’ question without revealing some piece of himself in the process, and that’s where the perceived shyness comes in.
“Half Moon?” he asks.
[Danny Jones] She laughs, and shakes her head. “Not anymore.” now there’s a cunnundrum, hm? She grins and digs through her pocket for some bubble gum -Hubba Bubba, watermelon flavored! – and goes about unwrapping a piece. “Technically, I was born halfmoon, but ain’t never quite fit in that way. Got myself in a messa trouble down at the docks couple months ago? An part of my pullin my head out my ass made me realize what part of the problem was. So went through an did a whole rite and ritual an’ shit, and now I’m a nomoon – which is what I was always destined to be n shit.”
Nods, as if that should make perfect sense.
[Henry Allard] He, perhaps surprisingly, follows along with her story, sprinkled with expletives though it is, and doesn’t seem at all surprised by its conclusion, nor does he seem to question her reasoning. Given that he isn’t actively trying to keep his thoughts off his face, Danny can see his comprehension there on his face. So far as he can tell, it made perfect sense to her, and it is simply a response to the question he had asked.
“Gotcha.”
That cigarette is sucked down to the filter now, vanished within only a few minutes, and Henry rocks forward to scrape the cherry off on the side of the garbage can and push what’s left into the waiting bag inside the canister upon which Danny sits.
“All right, Danny… it was good talking to you. Take care of that wound, don’t overexert yourself while you’re healing up, huh?”
[Danny Jones] She grins and nods. “Yes, Daddy.” She is teasing, of course, as he tells her to behave herself. She unfolds her legs from under her, and lets them hang down the side of the can after he has deposited the remainder of his cigarette. Her feet bang lightly against the edge of the can, as she nods once more. “You take care of yourself too. An’ Tristan, though I hardly think ya need any prompting there huh?”
A shameless grin for her tease, before she just lifts a hand and waves, watching him as he goes to walk away.
[Henry Allard] “I should hope not!” he fires back, a healthy if not good-natured grin lying in the wake of his words, before he likewise raises a hand to see himself off as he turns and begins to stroll off, skinny legs and giant steps moving him back through the park unhurried yet not without purpose.