[Rory] She left the alley and stayed close to the shadows. She had two choices of where to go, and though the first is closer, it also involves her imposing on one she would call a friend. The other option is farther away – and involved itching powder and cold showers the last time she was there. The ShadowLord told her it wasn’t aimed at the mule, but there are some things that she would like to avoid. Putting herself in the same position twice is one of them.
So it’s to Gabriel’s she goes.
Soon enough, she shows up at his door and knocks lightly. Her zipped up sweatshirt hides most of the dark crimson stain on her clothing – but it cannot hide the smell. Or the smear of blood and gore across her face, seen only as she tries to pry a bit of gristle from between her teeth with a fingertip as she waits.
[Gabriel] Inevitably, these things always started. It had been this way when he’d moved to New York, too. A month or so of relative peace, and then… they found him. Garou, fomori… situations and creatures that made no logical sense and yet existed anyway. They always found him, and sooner or later, knocks started coming on his door, and there would be the face of someone he knew covered in blood.
Gabriel lived on the first floor of an old brownstone that had been converted into a couple of apartments. Unlike most modern buildings, each unit had a separate entrance. There were two doors facing the sidewalk (Gabriel’s was on the right), and then a path leading around to the back where a staircase could take you to the two apartments on the top floor. Rory knocked, and after about fifteen seconds, a familiar face opened the heavy wooden door and looked out onto cement stoop where the Fianna was standing. His eyebrows went up ever so slightly, but he didn’t question her sudden, macabre appearance. Instead he just stepped aside and opened the door wider for her to enter.
“Jesus, you look a mess. Are you alright?”
[Rory] He opens the door, and she meets his gaze briefly, before ducking her head to hide the shy little grin behind escaping curls. He doesn’t question, exactly, not before he opens the door and lets her come inside. She hesitates only a moment, and then steps past him. Her rage is still there, still a powerful force, though it’s not quite as high as it has been before.
He asks if she’s alright, and that little grin is still there. “I’m Fine. But you should gee the other suys.”
She hesitates in the entryway, and pushes her hood back off her curls, and looks up at him. “Hate to ask but… can I shorrow your bower?”
[Gabriel] As he had before, the Fury kin ignored the rather odd manner of speaking that Rory used. Rather, he simply fixed the letters in his head once the sounds reached his ears, and if he noticed that he had to do this, he was either too nice or too polite to mention it. Rory said she was fine, and he relaxed a little, nodding.
“Oh, of course you can. It’s back this way.”
He shut the door and locked it out of habit, then led them down the hallway, passing by the living room and a closed door that may have been a bedroom. The next door was open a little, and Gabriel stopped to push it open all the wat and flip the light on, illuminating the bathroom. It was a relatively simple apartment, but at the moment, everything was clean and in working order. Luckily, the floor in the hallway was hardwood, and tile in the bathroom, so if there was any blood or dirt being tracked in, it was easily cleaned.
“I’ll grab you a clean towel, hang on a sec…” And here Gabriel moved back to the bedroom and opened the door, disappearing for a few moments before he came back into view with a fluffy green towel that he offered to the Ahroun. “I’ll just be in the living room, whenever you’re done.”
[Gabriel] [“push it open all the way…” Sheesh typos.]
[Rory] She tucks her hair behind her ear, only to have it spring free again as she unzips her hoodie. Her tanktop is soaked in blood that’s not her own. There are no rips or tears – whatever, whoever she fought did not manage to lay a hand on her, but for a small scratch on her calf that’s already long healed. She slips from the straps of her backpack, and peels from the hoodie as she follows him down the hall. He pushes the door open, and she peeks inside, and smiles, putting her pack on the counter with a clank. He’s seen the things that pulls from the depths – that it rattles cannot be of any surprise.
She’s not actively trailing blood or dirt. Her shoes are damp, but it’s with water, and leaves no mark – just squeaks as she walks, until she kicks them off.
He steps aside to get a towel and she peels out of her tank top too. She learned to hide from beatings at an early age, or fight back, but she never learned modesty. Clothes are a necessity, not a requirement. When he returns with the towel, she’s topless.
And still shy. She doesn’t cover up, but does duck her head to hide her smile, as she takes the towel. “Thanks.” She rubs her chin with the back of her hand, dried blood flaking off as she does so, before she asks timidly. “Can I borrow a shee tirt? Until I kin get these washed. S’my last one…”
[Gabriel] When he came back, there was more of her to see than before. For his part, Gabriel didn’t seem overtly shocked. There was a brief moment where the sight of her breasts gave him pause, but he simply glanced away politely as he handed over the towel, as if perhaps this was not the first time that he’d been confronted with the image of a half-naked warrior or Gaia covered in blood. Perhaps it wasn’t.
She asked to borrow a t-shirt, and he actually smiled a little, looking back up to attempt to meet Rory’s eyes (though they were ducked down). Odd, that. For someone so strong and dangerous to be so shy. Shy in some ways, at least. And yet… not at all in others.
“Oh, yeah… of course. Sorry, I should have offered. I’ll grab you something.” After a second’s hesitation, he turned and went back into the bedroom. This time, he was gone a little longer. If the door was still open when he reappeared, he’d walk in to set the clothes on the bathroom counter. If the Fianna had already begun her shower by then, he’d just set them on the floor outside the door. Surprisingly, they were woman’s clothes. A pair of old jeans and a black NYU t-shirt. The original owner had been close in size to Rory. Likely, the jeans would be about an inch too long, but otherwise, they should fit well.
[Rory] He pauses a moment as he sees her topless, and she doesn’t really notice. She sits the towel on the counter, and strips from her jeans too, as he turns away to find her something to wear. By the time he returns, she’s in the shower, though the door is left wide open.
As she is uninjured, the shower does not take long. She conserves hot water in case he wishes to shower later, considerate to the last. In no time at all she’s climbing from the shower stall, and wrapping herself into the big green fluffy towel. Even as short as it was – this shower was much more satisfying then the one at the brotherhood, or the one at the Y. At the Y they look at her weird when she’s covered with blood.
She finds the clothes, and blinks. They’re girls clothes, and soon she’s pulling them on – and they do fit. She rolls the cuffs of the jeans up to make up for the length, smooths the old denim over her hips. Her clothing is wrapped into a ball and shoved into her pack, and the towel is hung neatly on the bar, after she makes sure to clean up any mess she made.
Her hair is a hopeless tangle of bloodred curls. She grabs her brush, pack and her shoes, and pads on bare feat to the living room once again. All told, it took her about 15 minutes from the start until she places her pack on the floor and tries to tame her curls. It’s hopeless, but she tries anyway.
[Gabriel] For once, Gabriel didn’t have his hat on. At home, there were usually fewer layers of clothing to obscure him. Instead, his near-black hair was tucked behind his ears, and only a pair of army-green cargo pants and a plain white t-shirt covered his body. The shirt was old and a little thread-bare, allowing for a faint outline of the shape of his torso, which was reasonably fit, if not exactly athletic. He wasn’t a soldier for the cause, like Rory was. He was just… Gabriel.
When the ahroun entered the living room, he was lounging on a brown suede sofa, bare feet up and legs stretched out on the cushions. A large book was in his hands, and he looking up from what he was reading to take in the sight of Rory in his ex girlfriend’s old clothes. This was an odd juxtaposition, but he shrugged off the feeling of deja vu. Sarah had been brunette, anyway. He dog-eared the page of his book and reached back to set the thing down on the end-table with a light clunk, sliding his feet back down to the floor so he could sit properly instead of taking up the entire length of the sofa.
“Oh good, the clothes fit. I thought maybe they would.” He smiled a little and gestured toward the empty cushion next to him. “Have a seat if you like.”
The kitten that he’d adopted didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight, but the window was open, so perhaps he was merely out exploring.
[Rory] She studies him a long moment. It’s the first time she’s seen him without his hat, in just one layer of clothing. There’s a strength there, even though it’s not what she has. Rory looks fragile, easily broken. She’s exactly the opposite of that. He is bigger, looks stronger, and she could probably break him if she wanted too.
She doesn’t.
He sits up, and she realizes she was watching him, and ducks her head as the color spreads across her cheeks, even as she moves to take the seat he offers her. She sits, and pulls her knees up to her chest, as she attacks her curls vigorously, making a face as the brush encounters the mess of tangles.
“Thanks. Cor the flothes, I mean.” she pauses, and then asks, shyly, almost timidly. “You gave a hirlfriend?”
[Gabriel] She could very easily break him, if she wanted to. Even for a regular man, he wasn’t notably large – though he was larger than Rory (in her present form, at least.) Average was probably a good was to describe him. But size meant very little when it came to the difference of kin and garou. Luckily for Gabriel, Rory didn’t seem to have the slightest inclination towards causing him bodily harm.
Which was good, because he rather liked her.
She asked if he had a girlfriend, and he shook his head, reaching up to absently run a hand through his thick hair. “Nah. Used to. Those are her clothes. She was a Gnawer, like Chloe. We split up shortly before I moved out here.”
[Rory] She likes him too. It’s clear with the way she colors when she talks to him, when she seems him looking at her. She’d never ever do anything about it though – it is not her place. She wouldn’t even react if his elder said he couldn’t talk to her anymore or be her friend. She knows her place, and it’s not with anyone else. Ever. Except pack, and that’s different.
But she still likes him.
He had a Gnawer girlfriend, and that gets her to look at him, a brow lifting slightly. “Oh. Sorry.”
She pulls her hair down in front of her, trying to comb through a particularly vicious tangle, concentrating on that until the brush slides free, using the red wavy shield to ask… “Hot claimed nere, then?”
[Gabriel] “Not yet.” Gabriel chuckled ruefully. “I imagine it’ll happen sooner or later. Met a Fury named Marrick not that long ago. She seemed… well, intense, but better than some. Don’t know if she’ll try and claim me or not.” If he was lucky, she would ask first. But one never really knew, with garou, how one was apt to be treated. Some tried to be respectful. Others never bothered. Most fell somewhere in the middle.
“Here, let me help with that…” She was having a difficult time brushing out the mass of fiery curls, and without really thinking about it, Gabriel slid a bit closer and reached out to take the brush from her hand – should she allow it. Perhaps he’d get snapped at instead, but so far Rory’s behavior hadn’t indicated that this was likely.
[Rory] She let’s him take the brush, perhaps a little out of shock that he offered, and the color rises in her cheeks again, splashing across her fair, freckled skin like a tattletale raising a flag and waving it while squealing hey look here! But just lets him have the brush, and turns on the cushion so that he can help her with those curls. Her hair is longer than it looks – the curls shortening it by half when left to it’s own devices.
She hugs her knees to her chest as she lets him tackle her hair. “Don’t mow Knarrick yet. Met two Tenrir foday. Was they’re blood.”
She’s actually kind of proud of it. She stood up for herself, and even Kemp, they’re elder, said he wasn’t surprised. “Called we meak.”
[Gabriel] He took the brush from her hand gently and began to work at the tangles in her hair as if he were completely comfortable with this particular activity. As if he’d done this many times before. Perhaps he was one of those men who’d spent a lot of his life around women. (Given his breeding, this was… likely.) In any case, he worked carefully, working out the knots without pulling too roughly on Rory’s damp hair. She had her back turned to him, so she didn’t seem his wry smile when she mentioned the fight she’d just won with two Fenrir.
“Good for you. Sounds like they deserved it.”
[Rory] Her back is to him, so she can breath, she can blush and he can’t see the heat rise in her cheeks, or the little smile that lingers as he brushes her hair. She’s never had anyone do something like this for her – she attacks tangles with vigor, and he does so with gentleness, without pulling, working the knots free one by one.
“Did.” deserve it, of course. He can hear the smile in her voice, maybe, even a touch of pride. Though she continues, too. “I don’t hear the way I talk. People fake mun, it doesn’t matter. I han’t cear it, fan’t cix it. But I’m not weak. Ban’t ce.”
[Gabriel] “No, I don’t imagine that you are,” he agreed thoughtfully. He was working his way through the tangles. Most of them were smoothed out at this point. For a moment he paused to deal with a particularly bad one, holding Rory’s hair just above it so that he wouldn’t end up yanking on her head while he carefully pulled apart the knot. Once that was gone, he ran the brush through her damp curls one last time to make sure that he’d gotten everything, then set it down on the wooden coffee table in front of the sofa.
“What auspice are you? If you don’t mind my asking.”
[Rory] He runs the brush through her hair a final time, and the curls fall free of the brush into soft springs, creating a drying halo around her face. He sets the brush aside, and asks the question. She turns on the cushion again, so that she can face him, one foot tucked under her knee, as that foot its the floor.
“You can ask.” There’s the feeling that she means anything – not just her moon. “Am mull foon.” She’s likely the shyest Ahroun he’s ever met – that anyone has.
[Gabriel] Part of Gabriel wasn’t entirely surprised to hear her say as much. After all, Rory carried around a hell of a lot of rage. He could feel it in the air sometimes… prickling like electricity. Dangerous. But then she’d speak, and smile shyly, and blush, and duck her head as if she were merely a demure little girl. It was an interesting combination of traits, and if Gabriel hadn’t already been told that she was metis, he might indeed have questioned the truth of her claim.
But he didn’t, because he knew. He understood.
“Well then, I imagine you showed the Fenrir precisely how wrong they really were.” There was some amusement in his voice, and the barest hint of another smile turned up one corner of his mouth. In the light of the room, his eyes weren’t as dark as they might have appeared on their previous two encounters. More of a murky grey-brown. The sort of color that tended to change depending on when and how you looked at it.
“Can’t say I’ve met too many of them that I was fond of, to be honest.” (Read: None.)
[Rory] Though her rage is less tonight, for the battle earlier, it is still more than most. It seems to boil from her small, slender form, sometimes, especially when the moon is heavy, pregnant in the sky. Tonight, it is only half seen, a Philodox’s moon, but it doesn’t stop the slow simmer under her skin.
“I did.” She says with a decisive nod. He hasn’t met any that he was fond of, and she searches his eyes, right up until she realizes she was doing so, and then ducks her head again. “Kemp is ok. Funny. Irreverent. But probably grolds a hudge like they do.” She rubs the side of her nose, absently, and a skinny shoulder shrugs upwards. “I don’t like to trudge on jibe – but individual. Because I been judged bince sirth.”
[Gabriel] “I can understand that,” Gabriel mused thoughtfully. “Suppose I have been too, though… differently. Suppose we all are. Not like you, though. I shouldn’t really make comparisons. I mean… I get labeled as breeding stock, which is its own set of problems, but… metis have a really rough time of it, from what I’ve seen. I think it’s bullshit, personally. I mean, you can’t help what your parents did.”
The Fury kinsman wasn’t usually much of a talker, but when he had a strong viewpoint, he wasn’t afraid to speak it. This was a quality he seemed to share with his female relatives. The man gave a light shrug, as if to say that he found the views of most garou on this subject to be rather illogical, then he leaned back on the sofa and raised his arms up to thread his fingers together behind his head.
[Rory] She listens to him with the same intentness that she fights with, sometimes. Gathering what he thinks, what he knows, how he feels with the way his words fall between them. He leans back, and stretches, and she watches him, her green eyes bright – until she realizes she stares, and she ducks her head, letting her hair cover up the sudden burn in her cheeks.
“When people can’t surt the hinner, they find wevenge in other rays.” She shrugs, her skinny shoulder lifting and falling easily, as she peeks back up at him. “Many things to fake mun of me for. Sometimes that is the theast of lem.”
[Gabriel] There was, of course, the desire to insist that Rory was better than her circumstances. To encourage her to stand up for herself. To fight back, as she had done earlier that day. To demand respect.
But both of them knew that the matter wasn’t quite so simple as all that. Instead, Gabriel merely frowned gently, a crease appearing between his dark eyebrows. “They don’t know how ignorant they are, then,” was his final judgment on the matter.
She’d been staring at him. It was hard not to notice when an ahroun stared at you. Rory’s intense gaze made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle slightly. Just as Marrick had done when she’d gazed at him half the night upon their first meeting. Just as others had done before that. Gabriel didn’t attribute it to appearance. He knew better, or at least he thought he did. Garou stared at him because his blood was pure. Because they could smell on him that he might be able to father a strong son or daughter. A true-born, perhaps.
None of that mattered, though, in Rory’s case. She was metis, and he wasn’t her kin. Still, she stared. And he noticed her staring, but for now, he chose not to mention it.
[Rory] She smiles, living her hand to hide it, even if he’s not looking directly at him. Then she look at her hands, and then holds them out, palms down. It’s not been noticed here, it’s not been mentioned even that it is odd for a Metis to fight in anything other than her birth form. She does, and how she fights is effective, after years of compensating for a deformity that many thought she could not possibly survive.
“They nook lormal, here.” she says, hesitantly, as though confessing a greater sin. “but I can’t wight fith them. So they laugh. Bo I site.” a beat, and that shy little grin. “Hard.”
He does not mention her staring, and she tries to keep it to a minimum, shy and timid, and always unsure. She is Metis, a mule, deformed and unwanted. He is strong, pure, of a bloodline not even close to her own.
But that is not why she stares. She finds him attractive for other reasons in truth, the matter of birth and strength never occurring to her. He is nice to her. He thinks she is something more than others do. And he doesn’t make fun.
[Rory] (OOC: oh my. living? Lifting!)
[Gabriel] Occasionally, Gabriel’s eyes would shift towards Rory’s chest. Not obviously so. He wasn’t staring. But something about it seemed to draw his attention, and oddly enough… it wasn’t the obvious stereotype of a man gazing at a woman’s breasts. Rory was wearing a t-shirt that had a lot of memories attached to it. Despite the fact of it having been washed, it still smelled faintly of another woman. Another garou.
It was a symbol of another place. Another life. But one that he still acutely remembered.
“Can’t say I’ve ever bitten anyone before, myself,” he responded with a bit of dry humor. “Well… not in self defense, anyway.” (Apparently there were other reasons to bite someone. A comment like that tended to take the mind in interesting directions.)
[Rory] His eyes drift, and she thinks nothing of it, really. She does not see herself as attractive in any sense of the word. Her breeding is true, but wasted. Her potential stolen in the forbidden love of her parents. Maybe in her next life she will be rewarded for her trials in this one, but that is not now, and not for her to know.
The clothing holds the scent of another woman, another garou. Rory herself has no scent. There is none of the normal musk that a Garou might have, no body odor, only that of his shampoo and soap, and what clings to the clothing of his ex-girlfriend.
He says he’s bitten in ways that are not self defense and she blinks, and look up at him, her head tilting curiously. “…there are rother easons?”
Innocent, shy. It’s hard to remember at times that she is a full moon, and appeared on his doorstep covered in blood – and she decides to ask, after all. “Does it bother you… that I clear her wothes?”
[Gabriel] Most women would have either rolled their eyes at the implied joke or grinned knowingly. Rory did neither of these things. She simple asked him to clarify, as if he were explaining something worthy of understanding. For a moment, he felt a little bad for saying it, in much the same way that an adult might realize they’d made a joke that went over a child’s head and wasn’t sure they really wanted to explain it.
He didn’t blush or fluster, though. He seldom did, really. Besides, Rory distracted him momentarily by asking about the clothes. Gabriel let his hands drop back to his lap and shifted slightly, angling himself against the crook of the arm rest so that he faced her slightly. Giving this question serious consideration before answering.
“No, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just a little odd, I suppose. They bring back memories. But then… I’m the fool who kept them to begin with. And hey, they came in handy, so I’m glad for that. Otherwise you’d be sitting here in my ratty old things, and we wouldn’t want that.” The kinsman chuckled softly. One might note that he hadn’t actually answered her first question. Maybe he assumed he didn’t really need to.
[Rory] He doesn’t answer her question, but he doesn’t blush or fluster either. She doesn’t come back to it right away, though, as he talks about the clothing. She lifts the edge of the shirt, and studies the NYU design on the front, before letting it fall again.
“Your things rot natty. They’d lell smike you.” Honesty. It’s enough to make one wonder if she has a deceptive bone in her body, if there’s anything that she not tell him if he asked. There was a time she’d be beaten for any little thing – and evasion of a question is likely one of them, yet somehow, she came out the other end with an innocent curiosity, rather than a jaded hatred for life and ll those in it.
And then she brings it back with that little shy grin and open curiosity again. “When bo you dite?”
[Gabriel] Most people might simply let the matter rest. But Rory wasn’t most people. She wasn’t even human. And there was a curiosity in her. Gabriel had noticed this upon their first meeting. She liked to know things. The world fascinated her.
And right now, she wanted to know why anyone would bite another person for any reason other than to do them harm. It had been a joke, mostly. An offhand remark. But since she’d asked him twice now… Gabriel was rather compelled to give a serious response. He laughed a little, as if this were more humorous than Rory intended.
“Well, not in a serious way. I just meant, like… during sex. Gently.” Well, not always gently, but not roughly either.
[Rory] He answers her, honestly, and she studies him for a long moment, to see if he’s teasing her. He’s not, and her voice is soft. “Oh.” and maybe it seems that she might not blush, but then – she does. The tell-tale color splashes across her cheeks as she grins and ducks her head, to hide it, shyly. “….oh!”
She chews on her lower lip, absently, as she folds her fingers together. before flexing them again, almost at lost without something to keep them busy. He’s always seen her before working on something, tinkering, keeping her hands busy doing something so that they don’t often think of doing anything else that might get her hurt again. Old habits die hard, after all. And with that thought now in her mind, she is suddenly at a complete loss as to what to do with her hands now.
Then, she lifts a hand and rubs at the side of her nose, pushes her hair back only to have the drying curls spring forward once more… and then so soft, that he might not even really hear it… “..lat’s it whike?”
Now there’s a loaded question…
[Gabriel] An extremely loaded question. Gabriel couldn’t shake the feeling that he was explaining the birds and the bees to a budding teenager. But Rory wasn’t some silly thirteen year old. (Well, not a human thirteen year old, anyway. Gabriel wasn’t entirely sure how the ages matched up, but he had a vague understanding that metis grew more quickly at first than humans did.) Until now, he hadn’t blushed. Even when she asked him to try and describe what he meant, his cheeks remained pale. There was, however, a slight discomfort in the way he laughed. As if to ease tension. And he lifted a hand to scratch absently at the light growth of hair on his chin. A nervous gesture.
“Well, that’s not really easy to explain. Sex, or biting during sex? Either way… better just to experience it, I think. I’m not much good at explaining things, anyway.”
[Rory] He laughs, and scratches his chin lightly, and is nervous, almost. She listens to this answer as she has all the others, with an open curiosity and desire to know, an innocence that surrounds her though she is more than capable of killing in a single blow. She is an animal under her skin, more monster than man, but sometimes she is just so achingly human…
He doesn’t blush. She does. It’s wistful, though, her next words, her next admittance here in the living room of a man who’s shown her more kindness in the past weeks than many she’s known her whole life. “No one would want to even miss ke.”
Defective. Wasted potential. Mule.
[Gabriel] There it was. An admission. Rory had never even been so much as kissed. Gabriel had begun to suspect that this might be the case, but it hadn’t really hit home until now just how inexperienced in certain aspects of life the metis really was. Confronted with this situation, some men might have thought to take advantage of it. For a moment, Gabriel’s thoughts did move towards contemplating what it would be like to kiss the Fianna. He hadn’t kissed someone for the first time, like that, since he was a kid.
And he felt sorry for her. Not in a condescending way. She deserved better than pity. But a life without physical affection seemed quite lonely to those who knew how much better it could be. Especially to someone like Gabriel, who also remembered a time before he’d experienced these things too. When he hadn’t even had physical affection in the familial sense.
“Don’t be so sure of that. Maybe you just haven’t met the right person yet.” There was a long beat, then he added, as if this were nothing particularly noteworthy… “I wouldn’t mind kissing you.”
[Rory] A first kiss is a big thing, and something that has always been unthinkable, unreachable. Wasted, stupid, deformed – such words, such thoughts and actions do not lend one to expect any affection, any kind of tender touch. Chloe hugged her now, and it still shatters part of her confidence every time she does, she still expects it to be followed by a fist, by tooth and claw, by something more understood, more natural to the mule. She’s learned to accept it from Chloe. Enough to question the lack of affection she knew before coming to Chicago.
Maybe she hasn’t met the right person yet, he says, and then he follows it with a statement that brings her gaze up to his, immediately. Maybe she expects to see he’s teasing her, he’s setting her up, he’s making fun, that there are others hiding nearby to tell the tale later, to point and laugh. Maybe that’s exactly what she expects…
..but she finds him, just watching her, and maybe understanding in some way just how conflicted she is with the statement he makes. Her eyes search his, and then drop away again, as she tucks her hair behind her ear again, a definite nervous gesture. Then, softly, she asks the question she fears the answer too most.
“…why?”
[Gabriel] She wanted to know why.
“Well,” he mused on this subject thoughtfully. “Because I like you. You’re nice. You’re interesting. And you treat me like a person instead of a pet or a trophy or a walking penis.” Ironically, they liked each other for rather similar reasons, even if the specifics were a little different. “Besides..” Gabriel let his hand drop down to his thigh and drummed his fingers there lightly. “You’re kind of adorable. In a dangerous way.” (Was that possible?)
He cleared his throat, gently, and looked away for a moment. It was only the second time since they’d met that he’d looked away from her out of discomfort. The first being, of course, when she’d removed her shirt. Gabriel wasn’t usually given to avoiding eye contact. Even with an ahroun. He kept his gaze steadily on the other person he was speaking with. Intense people didn’t unsettle him the way they should have.
Neither did flirting, usually. But he wasn’t entirely sure of what to do with someone like Rory. The fact that they were even discussing this was making him feel a little guilty. As if he knew, somehow, that it couldn’t end well.
[Rory] She didn’t exact his answer, though she couldn’t have said what she expected, either. He muses as if he considered every word, and not to manipulate her, but for a sincere wish to answer her question honestly. She doesn’t watch him as he speaks, though she can feel his eyes on her lowered head, but it’s clear she listens. Especially when he gets to ‘walking penis’ and she laughs. It’s quick, and she lifts her hand to cover her mouth as she does so, but the giggle is clearly there.
She’s still smiling, even as teeth worry over her lower lip, her fingertips touching her cheek as she lifts her head just enough to watch him out of the corner of her eye, through a curtain of blood-red curls. “Adorable?” Now there’s something she’s never been called before.
She drops her hand, and rubs it against her thigh, nervously. This has the potential to go very badly, to be a very bad idea, but then again, so did teaching the two Fenrir a lesson earlier in the day. She clears her throat, lightly, and then finally turns her head to look at him again, her head tilting slightly. The next question is achingly timid, almost unbearably shy.
“W….” she doesn’t normally stutter, but she does here, briefly. “…would you?”
She still expects him to say no.
[Gabriel] Gabriel could think of a handful of very good reasons why he ought to say no. She wasn’t a Fury, and inevitably one of his own tribe was liable to want to claim him. He wasn’t emotionally available. Not in the way that someone who was new to relationships wanted or needed. He didn’t want to be claimed. Owned. Not by anyone. And even the kindest, most respectful garou had it in them to want to claim that which was important to them.
He’d never seen Rory when she was angry. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. He didn’t want to hurt her, either.
But he hadn’t lied. He wouldn’t mind kissing her. Not at all. And she evidently wanted him to. There was a long moment of silence on his part as he shifted his gaze back towards her. To look at her. Thoughtfully. Considering. When he finally made up his mind, he put his hand out onto the suede cushion and slid himself forward, so that two of their knees touched. Then he leaned forward and closed the distance slowly, until his lips barely touched her own. His hand came up to touch the side of her face, long fingers trailing along her cheekbone. If she didn’t pull away, he’d push forward a little, kissing her properly this time, lips soft and careful but still a little insistent (as any good kiss ought to be.)
[Rory] There are a thousand reasons why he would say no, why he should say no. There are even more dictated by law and tradition that stated why she should not have even asked, or hoped, or expected anything but disdain, pain, and rejection. He hasn’t seen her when she’s angry, and though she has a good deal of rage, it is unlikely that he ever will anytime soon. He slides himself forward, and their knees touch, and she lower her eyes to take that in for a moment. He’s slow, yet not timid, and gives her every chance to back down, to pull away, to change her mind.
She doesn’t change her mind.
Her breath catches, holding as he leans closer, and that first touch of his lips on hers is nothing short of electric. His fingers are long, his touch gentle, and instead of pulling away there is the slightest of leans into the touch, into his kiss, until it moves into something more proper, more insistent…
She’s trembling, just a touch. It’s new, it’s frightening – but not in a way that she wants him to stop. Her fingers lift, small and fragile looking despite the truth of what strength lingers under her skin, and mirror his touch, fingertips trailing along the scruff of his jaw, as he presses forward.
There’s a moment, in any first kiss, in the first kiss where something breaks, where there’s a line that is crossed, where suddenly it no longer matters that it shouldn’t happen, they shouldn’t do this – and once that step is taken, there is acceptance, and the tension she didn’t know she was holding bleeds from her shoulders, and her hand slides from his jaw around to the nape of his neck, her fingers light through the hair there. Instinct is a powerful thing, and she follows his lead, lost in the thrall of something so foreign, yet natural, and real. Timid and shy still, yet eager to learn, to cause him to feel that same jolt of intensity that she has with this first touch, this first kiss.
[Gabriel] Technically speaking, Gabriel’s first kiss had happened when he was ten years old. But the tentative explorations of children weren’t precisely the same as the romantic and/or sexually charged moments that happened post-puberty. His first real kiss had been with a girl whose name he’d never known, when he was fifteen. But he remembered how it had felt. Perhaps it wasn’t too unlike the way that Rory was feeling now.
And that isn’t to say that Gabriel himself felt nothing, because… that wouldn’t be true. More casual, perhaps. Less intense. Less new. His heart wasn’t fluttering around in his chest, but his pulse did become just a little bit faster when their lips met, and when Rory reached out to touch first his jaw and then the back of his neck, he flared his nostrils and breathed in deeply. It was always easier for him to remain detached when he wasn’t being touched. Being a rather physically sensitive person… pleasant contact tended to distract him from logical thought. Even when it was so very tentative and innocent.
Eventually he did break the kiss though, pulling back slightly and opening his eyes to watch Rory’s reaction.
“Was that alright?” he murmured quietly.
[Rory] He pulls back, eventually, and time has still stopped for Rory. Her eyes remain closed for a long moment, her tongue gathering his taste from her lips as she pulls her lower lip between her teeth, and opens her eyes, to meet his. There’s a shine there, in the depths of green, that shows just how much the tender moment meant to her, seen moments before lowered lashes hides them away, and the color rises in her cheeks again.
Her heart is fluttering, her pulse jumping at the base of her throat, her breath caught and held as he murmurs his question. Her fingers slide through his hair, fingertips brushing the back of his neck as she pulls her hand back, only to slide them along the line of his jaw, and trace his lips with her fingertips. “Oh…” is all she can say, at first, as if she expects him to read her thoughts, even if she can’t quite sort them out on her own. “oh, yes.”
It was more than alright.
It was magic.