[Ray Ostermann] The Ostermann household, or depending who you talked to the Gellar residence, sat perched, high above the city on the great tower of concrete and glass. It was a quiet night now, unlike earlier in the evening. The little one is asleep at last, and Ray and Marni are free to be themselves for a little while. No more screaming, no more pooping, no more ordeals…at least not for a few hours they hope. Ahhh the desperate hope of new parents.
Ray has already cracked open the wine, it seems to be a bit of a ritual nowadays, as soon as the baby was asleep. A bottle was opened, or at the very least it would be finished. He say on the couch now, he looked tired, tired from the child, as well as the job he maintained. It was a full plate for Ray, and it showed at the end of the day. His tie was gone, his shirt was half undone and he sat oh so casually, almost flopping out one might say.
[Marni] It hasn’t been easy. She’s had to start going back out, to hold down late night watches at the construction site outside of the caern. She’s had to step back into the sept after spending months at home, with Ray, awaiting Indy’s birth. Now, he’s here, happy and healthy and giving them all the grief that every new parent goes through. It’s kind of nice to be normal. It’s also exhausting.
Ray’s flopped on the couch with the bottle of wine, and Marni leans over the back of it, sliding her arms around him until she can rest her chin in his hair.
“Never thought it’d be this exhausting, huh?”
[Ray Ostermann] Ray slowly shook his head despite the chin that rested on it. He was staring blankly at the TV screen, which still wasn’t turned on. Ray was often worried that the noise from it would wake the baby. Not something he really wanted to do. So it remained off, and the bottle of wine and Marni would have to suffice. Marni who wasn’t around to often due to the Caern’s requirements.
Ray had been lucky that he was able to do some of his work from home.
“Never.” He said in a tired voice. “I can’t wait till he has some kind of normal sleep schedule.”
[Marni] “Me too.”
She closes her eyes and just remains still for a moment, before breathing deeply of his scent, of everything that makes him.. him. Then she climbs over the couch, and falls to sit next to him. She’s quiet for a long time, watching him watch nothing, knowing that none of this was what he expected, yet hes stepped up, stepped in, stayed when so many others wouldn’t have.
Softly, then… this. “Are you happy?”
[Ray Ostermann] He had thought it would be a quiet night, maybe a little vegging out on the couch, maybe even a quick individual jaunt to the pool room, or doubled if they dared to take the child monitor with them. He knew by now that the one he’d purchased could reach. But then Marni had slipped over the couch and leaned in against him.
And then she had asked him if he was happy. He blinked, as if maybe he hadn’t expected that question, but he doesn’t answer immediately. “It’s hard Marni…it really is. I try to be, with you and Indy.”
[Marni] She nods, slightly. The answer doesn’t surprise her. She knows that he’s trying, that it’s not been all fun and games like it had been at the beginning, and now they’re parents, and he chose her over his tribe and that makes his happiness and contentment weigh even more on her heart, her mind, her soul.
“What can I do?” to help, of course.
[Ray Ostermann] Her question illicits a light tired chuckle from the man and a hand rises from the folds of the cushions on the couch and sets down gently on Marni’s shoulder. “Try to be home more?” He asks with a hopeful look. “As its standing with me having to be here most of the time, I’m going to have to drop the majority of my work load. I can only do so much online, alot of its still ground work, still meeting face to face.” He paused and sighed. “And most of it won’t work with a baby.”
Ray’s life style in general didn’t really work with a baby. But yes…he was trying, yes he hadn’t left her. So far he’d made good on the responsibility of being a parent.
[Marni] “I…” She stops, and then sighs deeply. “I hate being gone. Every moment of it.. I really do. But it’s… you know. Black Sun.” He does know. She does too. And then she’s simply quiet for a while, leaning against him, tucking her head to rest against his shoulder.
He hasn’t left her.
Yet.
“I’ll call Mama.” Not the one that betrayed her, of course, but her Mama from New York, the one that was going to come for the birth, but didn’t arrive in time. “I was thinking, maybe, that if you didn’t mind another dirty gnawer messing up the place, there might be one of the girls from home willing to come be our Nanny. Someone Mama recommends.” That would be easier for Marni to trust than those she knows here in Chicago.
[Ray Ostermann] Ray listens to Marni’s words. He did indeed know about Black Sun, the group which was trying to turn the Caern into some kind of toxic waste dump, if they succeeded, the Black spiral dancers up in the woods wouldn’t need to destroy the garou, they would already be destroyed. Or corrupted so much they might as well be BSD’s themselves.
“It’s not that I don’t want to look after Indy. Its not. But if I don’t keep working…we are not going to be able to afford the lifestyle we have. We’d have to give up alot.” The words arn’t spoken but maybe she knows they are there, Ray isn’t ready to give up what he has…he had worked long and hard to get where he was after all.
He seemed to lighten somewhat as she spoke of finding a Nanny and he looked down at her curly mop of hair and then back to the TV. “The only problem there…is we would need another room for them.”
[Marni] “I know.” And she does – he didn’t grow up like she did, in the underbelly of New York City, crawling through the subways, dumpster diving for dinner, gratefully sharing meals with dozens of others that would make poor Ray decide starving was the wiser choice. He wasn’t born a Gnawer. He is strong in his own way – but this… this is where she excels – and where she understands. He’s not ready to give it up.
And he shouldn’t have too.
“I can find’er livin arrangements if ya don’t want her to move in here. We’re Gnawers, babe. We don’t need much, we don’t take up much room.” Truth, really. For all she’s lived here the past year – Marni’s stuff is still largely confined to a small space, a drawer or two at most, with her pack near at hand. She doesn’t leave her things laying around, and should she pack everything of hers? It would still fit in that backack.
Indy’s stuff, of course, grows in the way of the newly born and utterly adorable. But even so – if Ray should look at Marni’s backpack, there’s a smaller version there and packed as well. Always.
She’s a Gnawer.
She’s always prepared.
[Ray Ostermann] Ray was used to a certain lifestyle, a certain amount of predicability and security. Marni was prepared at all times for the possibility of being out on the street. It is quite possible, despite the times he’s been with Marni out in the gutter that it is almost impossible to imagine the buisnessman, the former kin of Thunder to be out on the street, dressed in ratty clothing and searching the dumpsters for food, his face scraggly and his suits nowhere to be found, the scent that was his…gone and replaced with another.
“That isn’t right Marni. You don’t drag some poor woman or man halfway across the country and then expect them to look after a child in a place like this while they live in some hole.” He said with a shake of his head, to him it didn’t make any sense at least. “No we’d have to find them something equivelent to this.”
He gestures at the place to indicate exactly what he meant.
[Marni] She knows he’ll never truly understand the freedom of her previous lifestyle, of the lifestyle she could go back too at a moment’s notice, and not loose one bit of what makes her… her…. things that drew him to her in the first place.
She hasn’t changed, really, since the night they met. There are changes in her body, sure, pregnancy enhancing her already dangerously lush curves. She turns heads no matter where she goes…. and it’s even worse, now. Or better, depending on how one looks at her.
Nothing’s changed – even this: she laughs, and slides her arm around him, sliding her head so that she can press her lips up under his jaw. “I’ll leave that up t’you, then. Ya know what we can afford. I’m picking up some work here and there now too, and’ll help..” Not that she makes anything near what he does.. but it’s a pride thing.
[Ray Ostermann] It was a pride thing, for both of them. For the longest while, it had been Ray’s job that had ade him who he was, no steady girlfriends defined him, no real hobbies…it was the job that did it. And Ray giving up his job was about as likely as mount everest turning into a flat plane.
But Ray nodded to Marni’s assumption about the nanny. “Alright, as we are pretty secure. I’ll see what I can come up with, hopefully something very local. Hell in the building would be preferable.”
He looked up and away to think about it for a moment before nodding. “It won’t be like this place….but it should do.”
[Marni] She nods, slightly. “I’ll call tomorrow. I’m sure I kin get someone here by Monday at the latest – I’ll set her up somewhere until we get a place settled an’ such.”
She takes a breath. It’s hard to trust Indy to anyone but herself and Ray – but she knows she has too. She’s always known. In fact, she might not live to see him grow up, see him play ball, see his first change, see him become a hero. She might not live past tomorrow, she could get caught doing the work they’re doing at Black Sun, she could…
She could live to be 100. It’s not likely, but well.
“So. That’s settled. No slackin’ at th’ job for either of us anytime soon.” a beat. “Anything else I kin do to help keep ya happy?” she spreads her fingers comfortably along his side. “I know we aint never been the norm… but I want ya to know I’ll do anythin’ ya need, t’make this work.”
[Ray Ostermann] Ray sat there in silence for a few minutes then, maybe Marni might think he didn’t hear her, lost in his own thoughts. Or maybe he was simply considering her words, knowing how ray is it would usually be the later. He brought the cup of wine up to his lips and took a sip.
“I….I don’t know Marni. Asking certain things of you sin’t kind. And I won’t do that.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what it was that she could do, so obviously there was something but Ray didn’t want to go there. So he changed the subject.
“Any luck finding a new pack?”
[Marni] She shakes her head, slightly. “Is it any more kind t’keep things th’same if ya ain’t happy?” She knows he’s holding something back. She doesn’t push, though, just lets him know she knows. She’s given up a lot of things he’ll never know of or understand, in order to have Indy with him, to ensure that he is as involved as he wants to be. She won’t quit trying to ensure he’s happy about that decision, as happy as she is.
Well, mostly. He changes the subject to something just as difficult, only this time for her. She sighs, softly, and shakes her head. “Owen asked me t’join his.. but I couldn’t. No way I’d follow that pompous windbag of a Fang anywhere. I ain’t been around them much, since.”
Being without a pack wears on her. She’s a cuddly beast, and one that excels when she’s packed with those of like mind. What happened to her last, though… what’s happened to her here in Chicago? She’s understandably gunshy.
[Ray Ostermann] “I’m sorry to hear that.” He said with a nod. There was alot that Ray wasn’t apart of anymore. The general happenings of the Caern was not of them now. He was a father, a kin, and that mean’t his expected place was taking care of the children. It made it hard to know what was happening unless he was told by Marni….and that was one particular thing she obivously didn’t like talking about.
“Its not that I’m unhappy Marni…you just can’t expect me to immediately become accepting, to fall into this roll. At least I certainly hope you don’t.” He chuckles lightly as he looks at the woman.
[Marni] She shakes her head, slightly. “I don’t… It’s just. It’s not overnight – we been t’gether for months now. And…” She pulls away, and leans forward to grab herself a glass, and pour herself a glass of wine. she doesn’t return to his side, but instead it’s her turn to stare at the tv they haven’t even turned on.
Finally, her voice soft. “I swore I wouldn’t make ya give up anything – anything more than ya had to. That’s all. Just ask that ya be honest… an’ appreciate that ya are, that ya tryin.” She shrugs, slightly, before she turns back to look at him, studying him for a long moment. “Just promise that ya’ll let me know when ya tired of tryin, before it becomes somethin’ to fight over. I ain’t want that for Indy. His life ain’t gonna be easy as it is – long as we’re on the same page with him, well. Whatever else will be, will be.”
She knows. She knows he isn’t in love with her – he may never be. And she keeps to that promise of months ago – she will not force any kind of life on him. “You… we… shouldn’t have to [i]try/i] so hard, ya know? So jus’ be honest with me. That’s all.”
[Ray Ostermann] “I have been.” He said as he took another drink of his wine. “And I am not going to stop. I promise you that. I have no intention of hurting you…or Indy for that matter. I just need to figure out exactly what I want, and where we need to be for this to work.”
He watches her as she watches him. Mother and Father, having discussions that no child should ever hear, or ever have to deal with. It was not something Ray intended to let happen either. He wouldn’t have a broken childhood for this child, as the rest of their life could be very…very broken.
He reaches out then and pulls Marni back to him, letting her rest against him once more. “Come on, lets get our asses into bed..maybe I still have enough energy in me to give you a good night lick.” He says this and that old smile spreads across his face. “Maybe.”
[Marni] [aaaaand fade – we know they got energy for THAT always. :) ]