[Joss Lehrer] She’d been true to her word and moved her new baby to the back of the packhouse. Heaven forbid Decker look like a hippie faggot – his words, not hers. She’s been thinkering ever since she brought it home, working around Randi as she works on the engine, and cleaning out the back so that she can rework it.
Which is what she’s doing right now – pulling out the nasty ass carpet the last owner had put in the back. She not overly large, Joss, but she’s strong enough. even so when that last bit breaks free, she comes tumbling out the back doors of the van and to the ground with a crash…
…and laughter.
[Andrew] He came back to the pack house bouncing. Not bouncing himself, but bouncing a red rubber ball. His red rubber ball. His special red rubber ball. Because it was his. He was bouncing it along the sidewalk, tossing it into the air now and then as he went along. Content for the moment. He’d gotten the kin home. Job done there. Though they weren’t happy to have him for some reason. He never understood that. Some were so afraid of him.
He heard the tearing, the tumbling, the thumping… and laughter. And he veered away from the door and walked around the back of the packhouse to see what the commotion was about.
[Joss Lehrer] She is crawling out from under the mass of gross carpet, and getting to her feet by the time he comes around the corner, bouncing his rubber ball. she kicks the bundle of gross to the side, and dusts off her hands as she looks over at Andrew.
“I don’t EVEN want to know what kind of grossness is in that thing.” The carpet, obviously.
“How goes it?” she asks, and she grabs a bucket of hot soapy water and a scrub brush.
[Andrew] He pauses. Bounce. Considers her. Bounce. “Does it matter?” Bounce. “Can’t get sick.” Bounce. He tosses the ball up into the air, watches it quietly until it comes back down and lands in his upturned palm. Tosses it up again. His eyes move over her van. It’s garish and bright and old. And he doesn’t understand at all why she has such affection for it. The ball slaps into his palm and fingers close over it. “Need help?”
[Joss Lehrer] She wrinkles her nose. “Doesn’t matter- it smells bad! I don’t want to ride in a van that SMELLS bad, do you? Sides, I have to rebuild the back anyway, to hide things that might need hidden.”
She watches him a moment, then smiles. “Sure, if ya like. There’s another scrub brush over there. Gotta get the inside good and clean so I can start modifying it.”
Inside the van it’s been gutted from just behind the front seats all the way back. She climbs in, sinks to a crouch, her skirts tucked around her legs as she starts to scrub.
[Andrew] He nods. Tosses the ball up and catches it one more time. Then reaches down and stuffs it awkwardly into one pocket of his cargo pants. Because that’s what they were for, cargo.
Picking up a scrub brush, he climbs in after her. Squats down. Begins scrubbing. With no apparent notion of how cleaning things work. He mainly imitates her. Rub the brush here. Rub the brush there. Move it around some. Look at it. Repeat.
[Joss Lehrer] She grins at him, and since he’s following her lead, she makes sure he can see what she’s doing. Scrub until they can see the original color of the interior paint, and move down farther, working their way toward the back doors. It’s good work, honest work, and she does it well.
“Settling in alright?”
[Andrew] He grunts. Settle in. Was he supposed to settle in? The brotherhood had been his home for a long time. Before that… where the fuck had he lived? The streets? It was easy enough. For one like him anyway. No kids, no kin, no one to support. No one to support him. Which hand do you bite? Both. Because fuck them, I can take care of myself.
“I guess.”
[Joss Lehrer] A brow arches slightly, as she glances at him, then down to her hands as she scrubs hard, hard, harder still, ridding the van of 40 years of filth.
“You guess? It’s probably not that different here, I suppose. Less people than the brotherhood – but comfortable enough. We don’t get into each other’s way too much, either.”
[Andrew] He nods. Shrugs. Nods again and keeps scrubbing. He’s not much of a talker really. Maybe he’s a good listener. No one’s ever tried that on him. Except Gina, and she was naked at the time, so it’s not like he’s gonna tell her to shut up or leave or something. Nudity gives you quite the attention span.
“Less people is nice. Guy next to me at the Brotherhood played drums. All the time. I went to punch him tonight. Got his roommate.”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods, laughing softly. “Let me guess – Alex? It’s a wonder he ain’t been killed yet. How’d his roommate react?”
No one’s ever accused Joss of having a problem talking. Or listening, for that matter. She actually does fine on both ends. And she’s just easy to be around, despite her rage, despite her oddness – or maybe because of it. She does not expect more than her companion wants to give, and is content to keep working as they have their disjointed little conversation.
[Andrew] “I guess that’s his name.” He pauses. Thinks for a moment. Then goes back to scrubbing. It’s rather boring work. He doesn’t get satisfaction from removing dirt from things the way humans do. Never really understood it. His world is dirty. And that’s fine. Sometimes it’s rocks. Sand. Dirt. Mud. Grass. Leaves. Whatever. He likes it all. And it all reminds him of home. Well, swamps would, sort of, but he hasn’t been anywhere with swamps in a long long time.
“I almost punched her in the face. Then she threw some clay at me. I threw it back. Then I found my ball and went home.” A shrug.
[Joss Lehrer] She laughs softly, delighted. “sounds like a typical evening at the Brotherhood.”
He may not get any satisfaction from the boring work, but she does. After a few minutes. “Think i should awaken her?” The van, presumably.
[Andrew] He grunts once, almost a laugh. A Decker-ish laugh. She’s familiar by now. Must be. The two of them seem to share certain qualities. Though he often thinks he’s probably the nicer of the two. It’s hard to compete with that level of assholery.
“Do spirits have genders?”
[Joss Lehrer] She pauses in her scrubbing, and tips her head, giving the question some thought.
“I don’t know that they do in the same way we do? But I often get distinctive feeling that they lean one way or the other. I find it more personable to refer to them with he or she, instead of “it”. They don’t seem to mind.
[Andrew] He nods a bit and continues. He has his own thoughts on spirit genders. There often seemed to be three states of being. The humans had males. Females. And occassionally both. He’d only heard about those, but he wanted to meet one sometime. Not the ones that dressed up like the other. That was like taking on the monkey skin. It worked to varying degrees, but everyone with half a mind and any attention to detail could see through it pretty easy. Something always gave it away.
Then there were the wolves. The humans. And the metis. Again. The “Both” category. Sure, they were more rare. And in both societies the in-betweens seemed to have it rough. To be generally hated by the populace and discounted as being against nature. Of course, metis were against nature. Or the Litany. Which was like nature for Garou.
“I sure wouldn’t like being called a human. I’m a wolf.”
[Joss Lehrer] She tips her head, and points at him. “You are Garou. But I see your point.”
She goes to scrub again, and is quiet for a bit. “I suppose I could ask them, though they never seem to mind if I call them him/her/it. Usually we’re too busy negotiating for something for the pronouns to matter.”
[Andrew] He snorts softly and shakes his head. “I am wolf first. Garou second. Just like homids. They like humans. Know humans. Expect human. If we were all Garou, would not matter. All expect the same. All the same. But we are wolf and human. And humans do not like wolves. They can wear the wolf-skin, but they are never wolf. They never understand wolf.”
He doesn’t look at her. And it’s downright wordy of him, all that. “You ever looked?” For genitals? Pardon me Spirit, can you roll over? I’m checking for a penis.
[Joss Lehrer] She listens. She has a way of listening too, that lets the talker know that she isn’t just doing it to pass the time – she invests in the conversation, she genuinely cares about what the others are saying. She nods slightly. “Point taken.”
And then she laughs, softly – delighted at the mental picture that invokes. “Can’t say as I have.”
With her tendency to get snapped in the ass by random lightening bolts while playing ‘snap tag’ with elementals? It’s probably a good thing.
[Andrew] He grunts. Shifts his stance a bit and continues scrubbing away. Unsure of what the human obsession with not smelling is. But he’s aware of it, and has to live with it. “Animals are easy to see. The other ones are harder. But I like animals best. I understand animals.”
[Joss Lehrer] She nods and looks back at the area they’ve finished. Over halfway done. She smiles, pleased, and gets back to it.
“Humans aren’t easy to understand even for those of us who are human. I imagine it is quite a bit more difficult for you.”
[Andrew] He grunts again. Drawing in a breath that’s almost a snarl. And attacking one spot on the van with a little too much energy. “They have forgotten dominance. Don’t recognize the dominant. Fear sometimes. That works for me. I get fear a lot. Avoid me. But don’t know when to turn tail. When to show throat. Lower themselves. Human ideas of equality.” Snorting and shaking his head.
[Joss Lehrer] She laughs. “We do tend to think too highly of ourselves at times. I think Garou forget it as well, sometimes. It’s not an easy thing to learn, when to back down, when everyone else is clawing their way to the top, destroying everything in their path to do so.”
[Joss Lehrer] (la fade…)