Brat. [Lukas, Gabriela]

And this isn’t actually the Mile. This is about three blocks off the mile, in a slightly shadier part of town where the nightclubs and the lounge bars reside in great big concrete block-buildings — ex-warehouses and ex-shipping centers. Most of them are shut down for the week, hibernating until Friday night.

One’s still open though. There’s no sign out front, no decorations, no indication whatsoever that this is not, in fact, yet another boarded-up warehouse that no one uses anymore. No indication, that is, except for the line out front, the multihued spotlights that paint the plain concrete building surreal and unearthly colors; the bouncers at the door with their velvet ropes, and the lungshaking bass rolling out through the walls.

Lukas is not in line. He’s already been inside and now he’s back out. He’s off to the side, perhaps twenty feet from the door, and there are stamps on the backs of his hands — from this club and perhaps half a dozen others. He’s in deliberately rumpled jeans and a vertically ribbed, sleeveless zip-front top. He’s smoking. He never smokes. It’s not a cigarette, anyway.

The Ahroun looks unfriendly and badtempered, like the moon was getting the better of him. He looks bored out of his fucking mind. He looks … well; he doesn’t look like he’s in pieces, shattered, broken, fucked up.

He just looks mean.

Tonight she roamed, a slave of public transprtation by choice, and had wandered off the Magnificent Mile itself for a change of pace and, perhaps, a touch of danger. Stupid girl.

Danger seemed to come, tonight, in a heavy wave of Rage that slapped her in the side of the face unexpectedly when she passed a line to a building that must be a nightclub, judging by the low thump of bass that resonated even through the thick warehouse walls. She paused, her wedge-sandals quiet on the cement sidewalk as it was, and turned to look around, only to find Lukas manifesting from the shadows some seven feet in front of her. She hadn’t seen that shirt before. Hadn’t ever seen him smoking, either.

Eyebrows flew up in curiosity and a smidgen of concern, and she approached him, hands in the pockets of her denim capris, dressed in a thin and dainty blouse that was a cream-color with capped sleeves, with thin and intricate patternwork of vines and little pink flowers weaving throughout the top.

“Lukas?”, she asks. “What are you doing here?”

So she walks. She’s well used to covering many miles, despite the fact she’s semi-settled here in the city, at least for a while. She’s unsure why she decided to hear toward the Mile, as there is no real direction behind the placement of one foot after another. She just has need to move, so does so.

There’s one club still open in the not exactly high end part of the Mile, with a line out front the pound of music barely muffled, the bouncers and the velvet ropes. Not much of a club type – even if she could convince the bouncer she was of age – she is passing it by, her shoulders hunched a little bit, the hood of that familiar sweatshirt pulled low to bathe her face in shadow, her hand shoved deep into the roo pocket of the hoodie. Her jeans are threadbare, and barely held together in places, often patched and mended, and her boots have seen far, far better days.

She feels Lukas before she see’s him. The press of a pissed off Full Moon is not easily dismissed, and it causes a hitch in her steps as her gaze lifts and she looks for the source. That’s the first thing. The second is the scent of smoke that isn’t a cigarette. Another step falters, slows, then completes itself, as she watches – and recognizes the source, just as Gabriella confirms his name.

When the girl nears, though, he straightens a little. Regains two inches… four.

The blue of his eyes are almost gone; his pupils are huge in the darkness. His eyes are an animal’s when he studies her, coolly, rather impersonally. A single blink. Then he looks past her: the street, the brighter, safer parts of the Mile in the distance — skyscrapers rising above the urban sprawl, the lights that glow off the clouds overhead.

“A bit past your bedtime, isn’t it?”

…Not standing outside a nightclub by himself smoking a joint. She was beginning to learn what marijuana smelled like. That Hispanic girl that said nothing to anyone at The Brotherhood smelled like it a lot of the time.

She moved a little nearer, standing close to the wall but not leaning against it as he was doing, just barely outside of or within arm’s reach, she wasn’t sure which one it was. “…I answered you. Will you answer me?”

All the things Maija is not.

The checklist isn’t something malicious so much as automatic. Jr. High was not kind to Maija. High School probably wouldn’t have been much better, had she attended. Either way, it is not a sense of jealous, but of rather self-preservation and checks all these off, and more. Lukas gets the same kind of once over, but it’s very very fast, and is summed up in one word.

Dangerous.

She walks toward them anyway, intending to simply slip past them.

“There’s still Caleb,” he reminds her, carelessly. “Our very own N’awlins royalty. Besides which, everyone knows Gabriella Bellamonte’s a little mouse. In bed at 9:45. Lights out at 10. Fucking frills and lace. That’s not your sister or your brother’s influence, little girl, that’s all you. Christ; don’t you get bored with your life?”

There’s an offhandedness in this. Impossible to say if he even knows he’s being cruel. He drags a hit off the joint, which smells like it may have cost somewhat more than what the hispanic girl smokes all day. Then again, Gabbie wouldn’t know.

The Ahroun rolls his head back against the concrete wall for a moment, closing his eyes. When he exhales, he does so with a faint, faintly satisfied sigh. And no. He doesn’t answer Gabbie. He passes her the joint instead — if she hasn’t already left in a huff.

What she guessed was that this was because something drastic had occurred, or someone had actually wounded him, though she couldn’t figure out who or what would have. Maybe there was a death? Oh Gaia, not someone in the Pack, she hoped.

He mentioned Caleb, and her lips pursed together, but she didn’t speak. He wasn’t in the mood to hear about her spat with Caleb and how she wasn’t going to listen to or acknowledge him from yesterday on out. He continued on to insult her, calling her a mouse, insulting her lifestyle (like she had a choice in it), and asking her with a tongue sharp as razorblades if she ever got bored of her life.

“Matter of fact…,” she murmered, and stared at him incredulously. A scuffing of shoes sounded, and she glanced over her shoulder at Maija. She didn’t recognize the girl, couldn’t pinpoint Kinfolk like Garou seemed able to, so she didn’t stop her or say anything to her. She just paused, then looked back to Lukas when she realized he was holding the joint out to her. She looked at it for a moment, then shook her head. No thank you.

“….Certainly you know–…” She started a thought, but cut it off, thinking twice about going down that path. Instead, she asked in perfect honesty: “Who died?”

Her voice is soft, though she expects it carries just far enough. “S’Lukas, right? Ya know Mrena.” She saw them together, after all, that first night she met the woman who currently helps pay her few bills, and also terrifies the living shit out of her. Hesitance, then, softly in a rush. “Look, I ain’t got no hookup here in town yet, ya got another one o’those i kin buy off ya?” Presumably the joint, of course.

And he looks at Maija. Perfect. Just perfect. The little gawker from the kitchen. He remembers that well enough. A beat. Then he takes another hit, the tip of his joint glowing angry red, before he hands it over to the scrawny little brat.

So Lukas told her to finish her sentences, coaxing her into being a smartass, and passed the joint to the scrawnier teenaged girl instead. With a soft scowl, more at Lukas than at Maija, she spoke in a low tone of voice.

“Certainly you know of how bored I get with my life. This is why you’ve had to track me down for Katherine, why the fuss with Sam and I was stirred up, and why, no doubt soon, you’ll be hearing complaints from Caleb,” the rat bastard, “about my more current indescretions.”

She lifts it to her lips, taking a long, practiced drag, and holds it as she passes the J back again. She doesn’t come any closer than needed, as she’s not completely without a sense of self preservation.

If she has any reaction to what Gabriella says about indescretions, there’ not visible.

“Gabbie. Stop. Right now, I don’t give a fuck about your sex life, or what Caleb thinks about it. Go ahead. Act out. Fuck around. Be a little slut if you think that’ll help make your life more interesting, or prove how rebellious and different and memorable you are. Only, do it somewhere where you aren’t bothering me. Okay?”

A beat.

“And take the brat with you.” He means Maija. Whom he addresses, all magnanimous and shit, “Keep the fucking joint.”

But then he interrupted her.

And Christ did what he had to say sting.

At first her eyes widen a little, insult and offense sprawling across that pretty freckled face of hers, and her mouth opened slightly, as though she might have something to say. But then he finished talking, and she remained positively silent. Her mouth closed, her jaw worked some, and expression slid off of her face like how the egg will slide off your toast in the morning if you’re not careful. Eyes that had, briefly, shown hurt and outrage went dull, flickered and went blank like a light bulb that just died.

“Enjoy your evening, Lukas,” she finally says, the tone of her voice bland enough to match the mannequin-blank face she wore. She then turned, not even casting so much as a courtesy glance to Maija, and started walking in the same direction she had originally been– away from Lukas and Maija, and through the crowd in front of the club to disappear behind the mass of bodies.

He tells the other woman to fuck around all she wants, and take Maija with her, and the other woman walks off. Maija? Doesn’t.

Not yet. In fact, she only moves another foot, or two away, and finds a prime piece of wall to lean against. “s’Maija. not Brat. For the record, n’shit. An’thanks.” The last for the joint, of which she promptly takes another hit.

“Welcome,” he says, the most half-assed stab at courtesy possible. He heads back inside, bypassing the line and flashing his hand-stamp at the door.