[Hatchet] It is dinner time for most Chicagoans. Those are the people downstairs in the dining room being served by Jenny’s crew of wayward kinfolk. Upstairs, what meal is eaten depends entirely on the schedule of the Garou in question. As far as Hatchet is concerned, it’s morning now, and that would probably explain the hash browns on the plate in front of him. He’s sitting on the sectional couch, leaning over the coffee table, eating shredded potatoes. There’s a cup of coffee nearby, and the remains of some scrambled eggs. The television is off, the common room is quiet.
[Lee] Lee hasn’t come to The Brotherhood for food, though if she were hungry she certainly could. Her new apartment is just a few blocks away, walking distance really. That’s how she’s come to be here.
It’s why when she reaches the second floor her cheeks are red from cold. Her wool coat is unbottoned, and she’s tugging a scarf free from her throat. Her hands and head are bare, a hat and gloves either not worn or tucked away in her leather bag. There’s a pint of Reuben’s special in her free hand.
When she sees the man seated on the sectional, a corner of her mouth lifts in a grin.
“Hey.” When the scarf is free, she doesn’t immediately shrug out of her coat. Lee sets her glass on the coffee table and digs out a set of keys, working one of them free.
[Rory] You’d think that the days after Christmas would be a good time to forage for change, for food, for leftovers and generous folks. You’d be wrong – which is what brings one extremely shy, unassuming, trying desperately to not attract attention, full of rage under the swelling moon, purebred Fianna mule to the Brotherhood. That, and the need for a shower – don’t ask how long it’s been…
She gratefully takes the food that Jenny shoves on her downstairs, and is shoo’d to the second floor with a plate that’s overflowing with a mishmash of leftovers, including some she can take with her when she goes. She’s wearing everything she owns, and the pack on her back clanks and clatters when she moves, hanging from her shoulders over a coat that’s not near warm enough for the weather outside.
Wen she clears the landing, she hesitates, unsure, then sort of scoots quietly to the opposite end of the couch, and settles to sit on the edge, balancing her plate on her knees so that she can dig in.
[Hatchet] Rory has only met her tribal elder in this city once. She’s seen him at moots — at least one. She knows that he’s tall, that he’s broad-shouldered, that he’s got natural strength that resonates greater than it is because of the touch of his totem. He, though, unlike the other Fianna Fostern in Chicago, hasn’t a trace of their tribe’s genetic and spiritual breeding in his veins. There’s a faint coppery cast to his blond hair, but only in the right light, and he’s not in the right light right now. His beard is slightly reddish, but he lacks the pale skin or freckles that usually mark their kind. His skin is such a golden tan, even in December, that it’s clear it’s his natural skin tone, not the kiss of the sun. His eyes are not a gleaming green but a pale, almost metallic gray.
He smiles when he sees Liadan, who — like Rory — does scream her heritage in both appearance and spirit. She says hey, and since his mouth is full he nods a response, then picks up his coffee to wash down his hash browns. “Hey,” he responds, then looks over at Rory entering. She, too, gets a nod. A bit deeper.
“What’s that?” he asks, indicating the keys Lee is holding.
[Lee] Though she’s facing Hatchet, Lee can see the shock of curly red hair before the rest of Rory follows after it. Her shoulders tense at the increase of rage in the room, at the way it assaults her senses. It stiffens her spine and makes her fingers want to clench, an urge she valiantly resists.
Her hair is free and loose, framing her pale face in waves of vibrant red. Rory gets a glance, and a shift in stance so that she stays in the taller redhead’s peripheral. If they’ve met, if they’ve even seen each other before across a crowded room, Lee has long since forgotten.
When she finally works the key free, she holds it out to Taggart. “I found it when I went to turn over the keys to my condo. I forgot I still had it.” She holds out the key to room 1, dropping the rest of the ring into her coat pocket.
[Hatchet] Hatchet does not take the key to his room. He looks at it in her hands, looks up at her, and tips his head to the side. “I didn’t ask for it back.”
[Rory] When Hatchet nods to her, he’s offered a slight, shy smile that’s hidden behind curls as she ducks her head over her food again. There’s a pile of roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, all the fixings in a heaping portion, and she reaches into a pocket and pulls out a soda too, setting it on the floor by her foot.
As she does so, she peeks at Lee, just the slightest of looks that sears the woman into memory, even as she rips another piece of meat free and shoves it inot her mouth. She eats as if she hasn’t in a week, as if she’s afraid someone’s going to take it away, as if she were a gnawer and not merely packed with them.
…was….packed with them.
A shadow passes through her eyes and she rubs a finger across her nose lightly before resumes eating once more.
[Lee] Lee’sr brow furrows in a frown, but she doesn’t pull her arm back.
“Well, no. But, when you left the city I was still sleeping here, and now I’m…I’m not.” She pulls her arm back, holding the key in her palm, dark eyes flicking to it, then back to Taggart, looking confused. “Do you still want me sleeping here?”
[Echo] Echo had been dead to the world for a while since returning from her shift. The tall, lanky Glass Walker had fallen like a cut tree onto her unmade bed-covers and there she had stayed, one leg dangling off the single bed, one arm hanging so that her fingers tipped into the remnants of week old coffee, left on her bedside table.
[Echo] (Ack! …I so didn’t mean to post that yet.)
[Echo] Echo had been dead to the world for a while since returning from her shift. The tall, lanky Glass Walker had fallen like a cut tree onto her unmade bed-covers and there she had stayed, one leg dangling off the single bed, one arm hanging so that her fingers tipped into the remnants of week old coffee, left on her bedside table.
One blessing for her room-mates was that she didn’t snore.
At least, not loudly.
She had finally stirred about a half hour ago and per her usual method of waking up, the distinct sound of a boxing bag being put through its paces sounded from her room. The door at half mast showed any that walked past the lean figure, her body curled into a boxer’s stance, fists lashing out to hit the sides of the bag.
The No Moon’s foot work was impressive, she did all but dance.
[Hatchet] His coffee mug is half full. He takes it black. His plate is mostly empty now, with nothing but crumbling remnants of breakfast. One eyebrow quirks as she tells him that now she’s not staying here. It goes down a moment later, as does his fork, clinking quietly on the plate. “Don’t I have a key to your place?”
Hatchet can hear the thud of fists onto a punching bag, but he’s far from Room 8. He keeps his eyes on Lee. “Keep the key. I want you to be able to get in whenever you need to.”
[Rory] The sound of someone beating something pulls her gaze in that direction, as if she could watch through walls. She can’t, of course, and soon enough her attention wanders back to Lee, Hatchet, and her food.
She’s not obvious about listening, but then again, they’re not trying to be private either, so it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. She pauses in the midst of her meal, her stomach sated enough that she can slow down, and slides her pack off her shoulders, setting it on the floor beside her feet with a clattering clank. She unzips her coat, and peels that off a minute later, revealing a t-shirt in desperate need of a wash – the top of at least 3 layers.
Laying her coat on top of her pack, she digs in again.
[Lee] Don’t I have a key to your place?
“Um. No, actually. I sold my place, but I’ll get you a key to my apartment,” she says, curling her fingers around the key to Taggart’s room. It gets dropped into her coat pocket to be reattached to her ring of keys later. “Thanks.”
Rory hasn’t been forgotten, how could she be? Lee is still somewhat worn from the club last night. The intensity of Rory’s rage is matched by Taggart’s, sets off the kinswoman’s nerves and puts her on edge more than it would have on another night. But the metis eats and keeps to herself, and the photographer leaves her to it.
Lee lowers her bag to the floor and shrugs out of her coat, revealing a black t-shirt that reads “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” over a dark grey long-sleeved thermal. The coat and scarf are tossed carelessly on top of her bag.
[Alexander] First, the back door of the Brotherhood slams open. Next, pots and pans clatter; cupboards bang open and shut. Then footsteps tromping up the stairs, so heavily that one might expect an olympic weightlifter to show up — but no, it’s just Alexander, coming up in motorcycle boots, his head bent as he scarfs cold stew out of a earthenware bowl large enough to feed three.
His motorcycle helmet hangs from his elbow, his arm looped through the visor. Snow is melting off the shoulders of his red motorcycle jacket, and off the front of his …
… black leather chaps. Which, although surely useful for staying warm while biking in subfreezing temperatures, nonetheless carries certain connotations when seen outside of traditional farm and ranch scenarios.
“Who the fuck left my Xbox on all night again?” is the first thing out of his mouth, seeing the green light glowing from the front of the console. “For fuck’s sake, if I get the red ring of doom I’m making everyone buy me another one.”
[Hatchet] He can’t fault Lee for not telling him earlier that she moved. He couldn’t even tell her himself that he was leaving the city, could only trust that his packmates would let his kinswoman know what was going on and why he couldn’t go anywhere near her. So: Hatchet doesn’t give her a bewildered or dismayed look when she informs him of the change. He just smiles faintly when she tells him she’ll get him a key.
Truth be told, his attitude towards Rory is much the same. She knows where to find him if she needs help, and as far as he knows she has her own pack to attend to, and be tended by. The moon is nearly full, nearly at Rory’s own birth phase, and he hasn’t been bothering her.
That changes.
As Lee gets out of her coat, he turns to the metis. “Ho, Rory. How goes it?” he asks dryly, and eats another — one last — bite of breakfast.
[Rory] Her head snaps up when she hears her name, and then color splashes across her cheeks as she realizes how jumpy she is. She grabs her soda from the floor, opens it, and hastily takes a drink to help wash down the mouthful of food so that she can answer.
He’s the elder. She wouldn’t dare not answer.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and pale eyes flick to Alexander, confused briefly, before she looks back to Hatchet.
“Ok.” Single words are easy. The rest? Not so much, as she looks down at her plate. “Alpha died.”
[Echo] It might have been freezing outside, below it, actually, but inside Room 8 one of its occupants is covered with a fine sheen of perspiration, her bare arms gleaming with it, the tattoo of her tribal affiliation all but dancing on its own as the muscles in her shoulders pulled and flexed the skin. Echo Quinn wore little but what she’d slept in, that being a pair of bottle green slacks tied at the waist and a white wife-beater.
She forwent a bra; there was little there for her to concern herself with sagging.
The sounds of a boxing bag being tortured finish with a decidedly female grunt of exertion and a rather violent thunk of a leg belting into its side. Then, footsteps, and the tearing of tap as the pixie-haired Glass Walker emerges from her room into the common area, wiping her brow with her shoulder as she unlaces her gloves.
Her eyes travel the assembled idly.
Hatchet. Red. Alex… Alex.
Leaning against a wall, she smirks outright. “Oh, precious. Do you need your boo-boos kissed? Nice ass pants, by the way.”
[Ethan] The body coming up the stairs is not large, is not cumbersome, yet while he does not move with Alexander’s bull-in-a-china-closet exuberance, neither does he move with a spirit-like silence or a Ragabash’s refusal to make noise. Boots thump, the distressed wood of the steps groan in places, creak in others, and there isn’t a hint of purity of blood or press of Rage to identify or announce the identity of the man before he actually appears.
When he does appear, it’s without fanfare. One moment all they can do is hear him, and the next there he is, tall and dressed for the shitty, shitty weather. The peacoat he had had on the night of the bonfire was destroyed two nights later, hacked through by a meat cleaver–or, to put it in a clearer light, hacked through by a meat cleaver-wielding madman straight out of some poor bastard’s nightmare–and beyond repair. It had gone in the garbage as soon as he’d gotten home, along with the rest of the clothing that had been on his athletic body that night.
He’d slept in his son’s bed for the first time since they left New York, and by this point the kid has to be realizing that that means Something Bad Happened; he hadn’t asked his father what had happened, but had rather politely requested that he not steal the covers like he did last time and dropped back off.
There is no hint of the injury he had sustained Wednesday, no hint of lost sleep or anxiety. He wears dark boots, jeans distressed by time rather than a machine, and a camel-colored Carhartt jacket. He pauses at the head of the stairs to digest who’s here and where, his eyes briefly moving to the raging owner of the Xbox before they find the man who was introduced to him as Hatchet.
Who’s speaking to a Rage-infused young woman.
Who announces that her Alpha’s died.
A subdued flinch crosses over the kinsman’s features, and the first thing he says is, “I’m sorry.”
[Echo] Echo’s eyes jump to Ethan then, and she smiles at him; pure flirtation.
“Hello, lover.”
[Lee] [I know who you is! percept + alert on Ethan]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Hatchet] His brows tug together as he leans back on the sectional. Hatchet takes up more space than a regular person, just by virtue of the fact that he is bigger than a regular person. He seems to take up more space because of his rage, too, which is — oddly — more controlled these days than it was even when he was in possession of less fury. He addresses Rory first: “I’m sorry to hear that. Who’s leading your pack now?”
And he means it. The sympathy is thin but sincere, as his interest.
Echo saunters in, dressed and sweating like an athlete and flirting with every male kinsman currently occupying the space. Hatchet mostly ignores Alex’s bitching about the Xbox, partly because he’s not sure what in this room is an Xbox, and he does not exactly need to acknowledge Echo’s entrance. She’s his packmate. She’s there in his head even when she’s not there in person, and she hardly needs his advice or leadership right this second.
He does glance over at Ethan. And gives a small nod of greeting.
[Lee] Her recent move is just one of many things Taggart hasn’t known about his kinswoman. Where she was for a month, or even that she left the city at all for one. Unless Lukas found him between last night and now, what she did last night for another.
Taggart turns his attention to the girl with the curly hair, and Lee drops back onto the sectional, not quite beside the Philodox. Then she leans forward to retrieve her glass of beer.
Which is when several things happen at once.
Alex comes upstairs, snow melting to water on his jacket and chaps, ranting angrily about his precious Xbox.
The curly-haired girl announces that her alpha died.
Ethan arrives, and expresses his sympathies. Lee’s dark eyes survey the tall figure, and knows him for who he is rather than confusing him for his brother.
Echo comes in, makes a crack to Alex about kissing boo-boos that makes Lee tilt her head, and calls Ethan her lover.
Lee forces tension from her shoulders and spine, makes it easier for herself by taking a sip of her drink.
[Rory] Ethan says that he’s sorry, and she looks up – and tips her head, her brow furrowed slightly – that’s when she remembers who he is… and who Lee is – and embarrassment stains her cheeks, bright red as drops her gaze, her chin, and fervently hopes they don’t recognize her, that they’ve already forgotten her social ineptitude.
He says he’s sorry, though, and she nods, slightly, and it encompasses Hatchet as well.
She frowns, a furrow appearing across her brow as she contemplates a question that should be easy to answer, but is not. “Chloe, but..” a pause and her fingers, long and thin, pale and fragile looking, curl into a lose fist as she taps her temple. “Hear her. Can’t hind fer.”
There’s an ache in those words, born of adoration of her one true friend, her sister, who’s not been here to grieve with her, to decide what to do. She doesn’t note the words are mangled, either. As always. she hears what she intends to say, rather than what she does.
[Rory] [OOC: Correction – FEEL her, not hear her! Whoops!]
[Ethan] One of the immediate tells, or what ought to be one of the immediate tells, that Ethan is Ethan and not Aaron is how he enters a room. Should that fail, there’s the way he speaks. His accent is watered down rather than beaten into submission, still clings to his vowels and occasionally consumes softer consonants at the end of words. He doesn’t leer at the female populace in whatever room he happens to be in.
He looks horrified when Echo calls him lover. It’s hard to tell whether he’s truly rattled by the flirtation or whether he’s putting on an act, but it dissipates after a breath and is replaced by a good-natured, “‘ello, flower.”
When he feels the Half Moon’s attention on him, even for a second, he looks away from the teasing boxer and catches the nod. It’s returned with a closed-lipped but nonetheless genuine smile, and he reaches up to unzip his jacket. He’s here on a mission, but he doesn’t interrupt the conversation the two Fianna are having. He looks back to Echo.
[Echo] One of the first things you noticed about Echo Quinn upon immediate association with the young woman was that she very rarely cared about the opinion of those around her in regards to her actions. She was loud, and rather brash but she never came across as the type that would push one beyond their boundaries of comfort.
Unless you were evil, and then you were basically fucked.
Right now, the brunette has lowered her face to finish unwrapping her wrists and flex them, stretching out the muscles in her hands. When she’s done, she’s half-tuned in to the conversation her Alpha is conducting with Rory and frowning in sympathy at what she does hear. Then she catches sight of Ethan’s regard, and her eyebrow perks upward in returning cheer.
“You after me?”
[Alexander] For what it’s worth, Alexander’s chaps and jacket are minimalistic in cut, more functional than decorative. There are no fringes, no studs and chains and spikes; nothing but thick supple leather that creaks when he squats down to thumb his Xbox off with an angry jab of his thumb.
Standing up, he grabs his crotch and points at it with his free hand, indicating rather graphically and wordlessly where Echo could plant that kiss. ‘Course, since his free hand isn’t really free — he’s holding a bowl of stew, after all — he’s actually pointing with one finger. His middle.
“Go ahead, Sugarlips, I won’t find you too forward or nothing,” he adds, unzipping his padded motorcycle jacket, starting from the snaps at the throat. Bright, ferocious and dark, his eyes flick over the rest of the room, taking in the pickings tonight.
“Now isn’t that sad.” No one asked him for his opinion on Rory’s Alpha, but he offers it anyway, butting right on in. “I’ll play the world’s smallest drums for you. Christ, who are all you people? Stay off my fucking Xbox.”
[Echo] Echo smacks Alex’s head with one of her boxing gloves.
“Don’t be a dick, show respect or I’ll do more than kiss your crotch, I’ll color it with bruises.”
[Hatchet] A lack of interest in how others see them is a rather common trait in the Sentinels. It isn’t easy to follow a totem so widely regarded as honorless and disgraced as Bear. To do so, sometimes you just have to learn to shrug off the opinions of others, to do what’s right regardless of what they think, to earn your honor despite the fact that the entire Nation is biased against letting you have it. You keep going.
At least they do.
Now, Hatchet doesn’t get up and put Alex’s head through a wall when he suggests that Echo give his crotch a kiss. Nor does he throw a mug of coffee at him for mocking Rory’s grief. Tonight his rage is riding close to the surface, just like everyone else’s. The moon is swelling. Again. He does look at the kinsman levelly, the one he once started to beat down only to have Aidan jump in and tap him into unconsciousness. He watches Echo smack his head.
And then he blinks at her, vaguely horrified at the idea of her bruising a penis. “Ow, woman, what the fuck?”
[Alexander] Alex grabs Echo’s glove with a swipe of his hand; hurls it back at her. Not nice and underhanded but viciously, lightning-quick, like a pitcher throwing a fastball. He aims for her face. “Don’t fucking touch me, bitch, you started it.”
…because that was the mature thing to argue. Yes.
[Rory] Alex speaks, and there’s a confusing reaction in the slender Fianna. Her rage spikes – so close to the surface in this swelling moon – and she says nothing. She just nudges the rest of her food around on her plate, absently, holding her control by thread, but holding it tight and close.
And in their distraction, like as not no one notices when she lifts a hand and swipes along he corner of her eye, then across her nose, before she leans forward to set her plate on the coffee table, unfinished.
[Hatchet] The humor, thin as it was, drops out from Hatchet’s visage like a trapdoor being sprung. He doesn’t move. He still leans back in his seat, and he still watches Echo and Alex with a sort of detached interest — she’s his packmate, and he’s seen this particular kinsman’s delight in provoking their kind — but the tenor of his attention has changed dramatically, and instantly. And everyone in the room can feel it. It’s not a spike of rage. It’s not rage at all, though plenty of Garou would feel their tempers rising.
He’s watching them. Very closely.
[Echo] Echo isn’t phased. She catches the glove without a great amount of fanfare, and laughs at her Kinsman. “Oh, shut it. You only open your mouth to have the whole world listen, don’t get testy with someone when they feed you back the bullshit you spout.”
She gets a little closer; smelling like sweat and Rage.
“Also: I’ll touch you five ways till Sunday, Alex. And if you don’t like it, then you’d better back your shit up with action. But either way, I’ll come out on top, precious, cuz in this food chain, I’m the Dom and you’re the bitch.”
[Lee] Lee’s grip on her mug tightens, the knuckles of her hands turning imperceptibly whiter. She drains the still mostly full glass quickly, easily. She’s Irish, she’s a year and a half out of college, and she would hate to waste Reuben’s beer by dumping it or leaving it behind to go flat.
Echo smacks Alex on the head, and Alex retaliates by throwing a glove in the woman’s face. Lee finishes her beer and rises, gathering up her things to go. He quota for danger has been filled for the weekend.
[Ethan] Echo threatens the gesturing kinsman, beating him with her boxing glove and making a none too subtle threat concerning his crotch, and whereas Hatchet blinks and voices a question, Ethan winces.
And then things start to escalate. The leather-clad young man bops the glove back at Echo’s face, and rather than intercede, rather than clamor for peace or simple knocking-it-the-fuck-off, Ethan draws a breath and waits. Not to see if he’ll have to jump in to keep them separated, oh no; to see if he’s going to have to move to avoid catching an elbow in the face. There are two other Garou in the room, one of them the Ragabash’s Alpha. Whatever it is he’s here for, it isn’t getting involved in a pissing contest.
[Hatchet] Hatchet may be watching Echo and Alex with intense focus, but when Liadan rises to her feet, he says quietly: “Lee, wait a moment.”
He doesn’t have the attention to spare for Ethan just yet, not with his kinswoman balking and his packmate browbeating one of her own and a secondary conversation going on silently, behind the scenes.
[Alexander] Alexander, on the other hand, lives for pissing contests. And while typically one might consider women automatically exempt from such things, in Alex’s worldview possession of teeth and claws and formshaping ability made up for phallic lack. Which is to say:
the compact, muscular kinsman doesn’t wait for an engraved invitation. He shoves the Glass Walker back, straightarmed, hard enough to send your average girl sprawling.
Not that Echo is your average girl.
“How’s that for backing it up with action? And who the fuck lit the fuse on your tampon, Echo?” Just in case she comes back fighting, he turns to put his stew down on the TV stand. “You were a hell lot more personable on turkey day.”
[Hatchet] There’s a bright flare of rage in the room from the sectional couch a moment later, when Alex straight-arms Echo away from him. But the Philodox doesn’t move. He’s leaning on one of the padded arms, his chin against the heel of his hand, watching. He looks calmer than he feels. No one with that much rage, under a gibbous moon, could ever seem truly calm.
[Echo] “Her fucking Alpha died, Alex!” She is shoved backward, and she makes a noise that can’t be mistaken for anything less than a snarl. She jabs a finger in Rory’s direction, though her eyes are blazing on Alex. “You can’t even show her an ounce of respect for that?”
She’s disgusted, frankly, with the room at large.
There’s nothing, nothing that comes back across the totem-link.
“Fucking… waste of goddamn space.” She mutters, turns and walks back into her room, slamming the door.
[Rory] her alpha DIED
Rory flinches, visibly, and then reaches for her pack, and her coat, and stands. Her control is slipping, and she recognizes it, and simply steps back, and moves around the couch toward the door to the hall and the laundry room beyond.
[Lee] Lee doesn’t know that there’s a conversation going on between Taggart and his packmate. All she knows is the tension in the room has spiked, and as much as she’d love to see Alex’s face beaten and bloodied again, she’d much rather be elsewhere if fists are going to start flying.
A word from Taggart has Lee paused in the middle of draping her coat over her arm, the strap of her bag in her free hand. When she straightens, she rests the bag on a cushion of the sectional, and waits.
Whatever altercation might have occurred ends as quickly as it began. Alex shoves Echo, Taggart’s rage spikes, Echo snarls at the kinsman. And then she leaves.
In however brief a silence follows in her wake, Lee turns to Taggart to say, “I’m going home. I’ll bring you a key in a couple days.”
[Alexander] “Oh bullshit if that’s what you’re concerned about!” Alexander yells after Echo. “You started sniping at me the minute I walked in the room. Nice excuse though! A plus for effort!”
[Hatchet] Echo’s gone.
Rory’s out.
Then Lee, because this time, Hatchet doesn’t stop her. He just nods, a muscle in his jaw tightening and then relaxing.
He understands. Bizarrely, because he lacks the background of interaction and socialization that so many of them have, he actually gets it. The chip on Alex’s shoulder, the ache in Echo’s heart, the exhaustion present in every movement of Liadan’s body. That’s what doesn’t come across, no matter how much he actually senses, no matter what insight he actually has. The fact that Taggart sees and understands the people around him so rarely seems to impact what he says to them, how he deals with them.
Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s selfishness. Whatever the motivation for this quirk of interaction may be, that’s how Hatchet is. But that’s all digression. Every female in the room makes a hasty exit, and when they’re all gone, Hatchet exhales heavily and gives a rather obvious roll of his eyes.
“Good fucking god,” he says, and leans over to pluck his mug of coffee off the table to take another drink.
[Ethan] Lee and Rory have the right idea.
As the tension in the room ratchets, as Rage surges like a fire fed by fresh wood, Ethan is not standing gawking at it all as though this is something new to him. This is a man who had planted his feet and fired off bullet after bullet at a Gorehound despite the fact that it could have easily taken his head off in one strike; he had remained calm then, and after, even when four dire wolves set upon the creature’s body and tore it to crimson-splattered shreds, and if he wasn’t calm, if on the inside his heart was pounding and his vision was tunneling and his blood was running cold, he had kept it together.
The Rage of the gathered Garou is not what has him averting his gaze and taking a step back to vacate the room, nor is it the threat of violence. He doesn’t come out and say what it is, doesn’t make an attempt to flag down the attention of any particular person in this room. He watches Echo, and then Rory, stalk out of the common room, then turns to look at the epicenter of the outburst. The expression on his face is muted, hard to tease out. Bemusement is close enough to the truth.
Hatchet picks up his coffee with an exclamation, and the taller of the two kinsman just huffs out a breath of unamused laughter and asks, “Shall I come back another time, then?”
[Alexander] “Hey,” Alexander says, huffy as shit, “all I wanted to know was who the hell left my Xbox on all night. Wears out the DVD mechanism.”
[Hatchet] “I know,” Hatchet says simply, and does not otherwise discuss what just happened. Alex is a Walker. He doesn’t belong to Hatchet.
His attention drifts from the irritable chaps-sporting dickwad and over to the nice man who can face down a gorehound but not hold his liquor. His eyes flick over the coat Ethan’s wearing now, then back up to his eyes. “If you’re waiting for a time to come by the Brotherhood when no one is in a bad mood or threatening to get into a potentially lethal brawl, don’t hold your breath. What’s up?”
[Rory] The door to the laundry room isn’t closed, so much as pushes shut a little. Once she’s sure she’s not followed, though there’s no reason she would be, she lets loose a shaky breath and closes her eyes. A shudder works through her, rage fighting to break free, to destroy, to hurt – and she batters it back, bit by bit by bit.
Her control is a mighty thing – how she learned it is a story she does not tell.
When she’s reasonably sure she won’t break the machine she’s about to use, she pushes from the wall, and sets her pack on the floor by the washer with a clank and clatter – and then she starts to peel off her clothing, layer after layer, and toss it into an empty washer. She has no modesty, no shame in her naked form, all pale, pale skin and freckles that number too many to count, and doesn’t bother to grab a towel from the clean pile to wrap around her slender form until after she’s managed to add soap and start the washer correctly.
Once wrapped up in the towel, she grabs another one, slings her pack over a shoulder, and exits the laundry room – only to follow the hall toward the bathrooms, and the shower waiting there.
[Ethan] Ethan hasn’t travelled too far from the stairwell in the last several minutes. If anything he’d decided that that was the safest place for him to be while tempers were flaring and sporting equipment was being used as a blunt weapon, as though this were an earthquake, some sort of act of God, and not a day ending in Y for the people living under this roof.
There isn’t anything timid about this man. He’s not trying to make himself smaller, or fade into the woodwork. He’s reserved, perhaps, but not shy or terrified. This is a man who had approached a pack of strange Garou and asked if he could drink with them. He’s got something resembling a spine even if he hasn’t got the mouth that the Xbox owner has.
A question, and Ethan answers easily enough, sliding his hands into the pockets of his antiquated jacket.
“I may or may not have been under the influence when I saw you at the pub the other night,” he says. “I seem to recall you saying you still have my flask, though.”
[Alexander] “Yeah, well.” Alexander has a sort of careless way of breaking into a conversation that suggests he’s not even aware he’s interrupting anything. “You going to put your fist through my face again if I give your kinswoman a ride home?” He’s talking to Taggart, of course.
[Joey] When Rory heads into the showers, someone is already in there. Over the splash of water on tile a clear voice sings.
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
That’s all the metis hears before the water is turned off, a shower curtain is pulled back, and a blonde girl with a few less freckles than the Fianna Ahroun steps out of a shower stall. Joey seems unconcerned that she’s being seen in the nude by a stranger. She’s a jock, has spent most of her formative years playing competitive sports. Her own or others’ states of dress or undress while within a locker room or a communal shower doesn’t bother her. The former softball player just plain doesn’t give a fuck about being naked.
That said, Joey in the nude is nothing to write home about. Her figure is compact, athletic, muscular. What curves she has are small enough that baggy clothing can almost completely obscure her gender. Rory, if her eyes stay on the Fenrir, can see the marks of battle on the young woman, the four raking claw marks across her stomach, the slash at her throat. There are other scars, internal ones, that give her grief.
She feels the press of rage, the hint of breeding before she notices there’s another person in the bathroom with her. When she sees that she’s not alone, Joey tilts her head at Rory curiously. “Oh. Hey.” She grabs a nearby towel and wraps it haphazardly around herself.
[Hatchet] “You did not imagine that,” he tells Ethan mildly, and turns to Alex. When he laughs at the question, he doesn’t seem to be forcing it. “No,” he replies, smirking slightly in amusement. “What are you, a friend of hers?”
[Rory] Someone’s singing. Rory doesn’t have to hide her shy smile at that, because no one’s looking directly at her, at the moment – at least not until the singing stops and the water does too, and Joey comes out of the shower. She isn’t bothered about being nude any more than Rory seems to be. Her towel is more for others than herself, which is shown as she finds a shelf to place her backpack on, close enough to the shower stall she chooses to be grabbed if needed, even though it also means it might get wet. In it is everything she owns – and it’s with reluctance she lets go of it even now.
The towels are draped on top of it, the first still folded, the other dropped from her body without a care for being seen. No one would write home about her figure – she’s too skinny from eating so little, her curves are slight, skin pale, freckles eeeeeeeverywhere. There are two scars, one across her flank, the other along her right thigh. Most of her scars, however, are not physical at all.
She starts the water, lets it heat, and then smiles that shy little grin once more, this time in greeting. “Hi.”
[Alexander] “No,” Alexander replies, picking up his stew. “I sincerely doubt that.” Down the stairs he goes again, more noisily than he came up — if that’s possible.
[Ethan] The motorcyclist interrupts, clarifies that Hatchet isn’t going to be pounding his face in if he tries to give Lee–who he sincerely doubts is a friend of his–a ride home, and then disappears with no less thumping and banging than he came up with. Ethan steps out of the way to give him the space he needs to make his exit, then looks back to the Philodox, his gaze more inquisitive than expectant.
[Nate Cross] The diminutive Bone Gnawer known as “Word on the Street” comes up the stairs. One hand wrapped around a take-away container, his other hand holding a pair of chopsticks as he munches on some form of stir-fried noodle. Splatters of a rich dark sauce can be seen over the front of his shirt.
Almost bumped into the wall as an unknown male comes down the stairs. Nate just shrugs as he flattens his back against the wall and lets the man past.
[Hatchet] There may or may not be a reason that Hatchet insists on finishing his coffee before he deals with Ethan over there. It’s cool enough now that he just gulps it down, setting the mug on top of the plate, the fork beside. There’s actually a napkin beside the plate, which he finishes unfolding and uses to wipe his mouth — though there’s no coffee droplets or bits of egg or hash browns stuck to his beard or the hairs on his upper lip. He sets the napkin down on the plate, tucked close to the fork and mug,
and then he looks up and over at Ethan. “How’s your chest?” he asks, nodding at the spot on Ethan that not so long ago got slashed open by a gorehound’s knife.
[Joey] Rory gets her shower ready. Joey heads to the nearest sink. There’s already a kit there, a small plastic vanity bag zipped closed. It’s obviously Joey’s, obviously not because it’s bright colors suggest it would belong to the Rotagar, but because Joey unzips it and pulls out a comb.
She tucks a corner of her towel over top of her left breast, an act that may or may not keep it on her body while she combs her hair, and turns back to Rory. There are dark circles under her brown eyes, and lines cut into her young face that weren’t there a few weeks ago. Joey looks tired where she once would have looked amused.
Curiosity brightens her dark brown eyes as she looks at the redhead. She looks once over the too-skinny figure, the pale skin covered in freckles. “I’m Joey.”
[Rory] If there’s a curtain, she doesn’t bother to close it. The thought simply does not occur to her at all, as she steps under the spray with a soft sound of joy. She’s not bed to live on the street – but live on it she does. She stayed in the Brotherhood for only a night before a prank had her sure they hated metis, and followed her to make her life miserable. Even once assured it wasn’t so, she is still wary, coming only when she can no longer stand her own stench, or her clothing needs washed.
Her own smile comes easy, if very shy and subdued. “Rory.”
Single words are easier.
[Ethan] If there is a reason Hatchet slugs back his coffee before dealing with Ethan, if there isn’t a reason, it doesn’t appear to make much difference to the kinsman. He will and does wait, without lending the dulcet sound of his voice to the atmosphere, without leaning on the doorframe or boring his eyes into the seated Garou.
His gaze is somewhere on the wall behind Hatchet, taking in the announcement board with pinned fliers and notes, when the younger man returns his napkin to a flat surface and asks after his chest. The kinsman frowns, an abject lack of comprehension on his features that doesn’t have long to live; within seconds facts knit themselves together, realization dawns on him, and he understands.
Hatchet was the one who cracked a talen over him four nights ago. It may very well have saved his life. It certainly bought him more time.
“Better,” he says. There are no jokes about it, no comments about scar tissue or destroying his clothing. He had come very close to not making it home that night. There’s an almost imperceptible shift in his tone to color what he says next. There is gratitude where before there had been simple acknowledgment. “Thank you. I’d be in rough shape if it weren’t for you.”
[Hatchet] There are numerous other explanations. Joey was there, and she’s his packmate. Ethan saw her there that night, saw one of the enormous direwolves go over and nudge her with his muzzle, lay a paw on her, a soft blue glow shot through with silver whispering through his fur and suffusing the Rotagar’s wounds. He knows that Joey knows this man, so she could have told him that Ethan got hurt.
It could have been any wolf, but Ethan decides to believe the simplest explanation: that Taggart was there, and in fact that Taggart — the largest of the wolves he saw, the largest person in this room — was the wolf that chomped open a small gourd over him and let water and dust and healing rain down on the wounds he’d taken from the gorehound.
Taggart does not correct him, if there is correction to give. Instead he says: “I’m sorry I didn’t escort you home. Or to your tribal elder. To be honest, I don’t really know who is leading the Gnawers these days or where they are.”
He glances over at the door as Nate comes up, watching him with the alertness of unfamiliarity.
[Ethan] If Ethan recognizes Nate from the pub the other night, it doesn’t show on his face. He recognizes him, period, but not in relation to any particular person or from any particular place; he simply recognizes him for what he is, for what’s inside of him, and despite his quiet, despite his keeping to himself, his Rage and the way he carries himself completely gives him away.
Nate might have a more difficult time recognizing which twin this is: the tall man’s face is clean-shaven tonight. It might become clearer a moment after he emerges at the head of the stairs when the man who might be Aaron doesn’t greet him with any amount of cockiness or frivolity, when he doesn’t greet him at all. He just looks over at the Galliard, looks back back over at Hatchet, and answers him.
“The only Gnawer–” He pronounces it Gnawr-er. “–I’ve met was Elliot.”
Was. Past tense. He’d come in on the tail end of Rory’s explanation of the fate of her Alpha, but adapted to it quickly enough.
[Nate Cross] Nate enters the room and stops when he catches Taggart looking his way. Chopsticks which were halfway to his mouth are dropped back into the container, his mouth already full it takes a few moments to chew and swallow. When he finally does is when he speaks “Umm hi … I’m Nate remember.. you saw me with Lee the other night at the pub. I’ve sorta moved in here now..I cleared everything with Jenny.” he reels off the explanation, obviously nervous remembering the imposing figure Taggart had made tho several nights before.
He walks over the coffee table and plonks himself down on the floor, sitting cross legged as he places his noodles in front of him. Trails of steam waft into the air.
He gives Aaron/Edward… who the fuck could tell.. a curt nod of greeting but nothing more.
[Marrick] [charisma+performance, ladida!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 5 (Success x 1 at target 6) [WP]
[Joey] Joey gives the showering Ahroun an upward nod of acknowledgement, of her introduction or of her refusal to close the shower curtain, or anything.
She turns back to the mirror, continues combing out her hair.
“You movin’ in?” she asks, curiosity driving her to find out why this stranger is here.
[Marrick] Marrick Fisher acquired her first bottle of booze this Christmas. It came in a care package from her brother.
Suffice to say, when the Fury came upt he stairs to the Brotherhood, there was no edge to her voice… except for the fact that Marrick Fisher, ahroun of the nation, can’t sing for shit. She can’t sing to save her life, and thankGaia she never has to, because if she was a Galliard or a Theurge or anyone else who motivated with song she would be in some serious, serious trouble.
“Ding dong merrily on hiiiiiiigh,” she says as she tromps up the stairs. She walks like a man who was four times her size, “in Heaven the bells are riiiiingiiiiiing-”
And, into the common room, she contineus.
“Ding dong verily the skyyyyy, tis… something di something soooomethiiiiing-”
[Rory] Hot water? feels good. Really good. and for a long moment there’s no reply, though she heard Joey’s question. She douses her hair with shampoo – and lots of it, rinsing it free, and then taking the time to work the conditioner deep into those curls in hopes of taking care of some of the tangles in those curls. It’s hopeless, but she tries.
While she does so, she looks over to Joey again, and shakes her head slightly. “Stayed bere hefore. Then pith wack. Now…”
She shrugs. Now she doesn’t know, though she still sleeps in the Forgotten House. Alone. As before, she doesn’t seem to notice the mix up of words, hearing what she meant, rather than what she said.
[Joey] After she takes the time to carefully comb her wet hair, Joey flicks her fingers through it, loosening the wet strands. Her fingers find and arrange her bangs across her forehead. Rory doesn’t answer her question until Joey is turning her head this way and that, making sure her hair is straight.
When she does finally answer, Joey’s face scrunches in thoughtful contemplation. She deciphers Rory’s words easily, like a code to be broken.
“You talk funny. You dyslexic or somethin’?” There are No Moons who are sneaky, with tact, with flair. And then there are ones like Joey, who fight with the ferocity of an Ahroun, who barrel into a conversation with little care to where her words will take her.
[Rory] She talks funny, and she also blushes, brightly when it’s brought to her attention. Some Ahrouns would pound someone’s face in for mentioning it, other’s would stoically ignore it – Rory? Blushes.
She turns into the water, letting the heat and steam hide her embarrassment while she rinses her hair clean. She answers as she attacks the grime on her pale skin, finally.
“Dr. Slaughter… ce shalled it Spoonerism. I… hon’t dear it when it happens, so don’t know what co torrect.”
[Hatchet] [charisma + performance]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Hatchet] [Sorry about the long wait, folks, had to eat!]
No one would mistake Hatchet for normal. Even those who can’t tell he’s supernatural, who don’t believe in such things, would wonder at his sanity, wonder at his safety, just by being in the same room with him. For a veteran kinsman to guess on sight that he’s Garou wouldn’t be much of a feat.
Hatchet doesn’t know that Ethan has a brother. Or a kid. He knows he has a flask, which is currently in his bedroom, smelling of gin. That’s about all he knows, really, other than that Ethan is named Ethan and Ethan is a Gnawer. He doesn’t know Nate from Adam, though, until he’s reminded that he saw him with Lee the other night. Lee, who is currently being followed down the block by a chaps-wearing Walker kin with a mouth and a bad attitude. Lee, who has slept night after night half-encircled in Hatchet’s own arms. Lee, who very nearly broke the hearts of at least two Fenrir, constantly bewildered another Fianna, and curbstomped a Spiral to death.
“Hello, Nate,” Hatchet says, rising to his feet. That’s about the time that Marrick comes in, warbling. And he chimes in, in a rich baritone that is still stiff from having just woken: “– verily the sky is riv’n with angel singing. Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis!”
He leaves it there, turns to Ethan. “C’mon,” he says, and nods his head towards the hallway. He glances down at Nate thoughtfully. “I’ll be right back.”
[Ethan] The nod that the newcomer–he has a name, and he gives it freely, though it isn’t so much shared between the two men currently inhabiting the room as it is given to the Fostern seated on the couch–gives Ethan is neither friendly nor matter-of-course. It’s curt, as though he’s forcing himself through the action with little in the way of motivation or desire to help him through it, and the kinsman has been a kinsman long enough not to devote too much time to trying to puzzle out the motivations of a full blood.
Of course, if he knew that full blood were a Bone Gnawer, if he knew that that full blood knew that he was a Bone Gnawer, he might have something to wonder about. But he doesn’t know either of those things, and so all he has is the way Nate treats him. He treats him like he’s either not all that friendly towards Kinfolk, or as though he has already made the acquaintance of his brother.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be an either/or, and Ethan follows up that nod with a cheerful enough, “Hullo” that is proceeded by a blond teenager belting out a Christmas carol, by an answering belting-out from Hatchet.
C’mon, the Philodox says, and Ethan finally moves further than a step or two away from the stairwell to accompany him into the hallway.
“Nice pipes,” he says.
[Joey] Other Ahrouns would try to break Joey’s face in for bringing what could be considered a flaw, a weakness into the focus of a conversation. If Rory flew at Joey, the Rotagar would fight back, just as she had the day she appeared to mock an Ahroun’s deedname. She might even laugh while fighting.
Rory turns in the shower to let the water and steam hide her embarrassment.
“Oh. Neat.”
Joey zips up her kit, goes to the stall she recently vacated to retrieve a basket full of toiletries, and adjusts her towel. She looks like any college student in a dorm bathroom, except that she’s not wearing shower shoes. She leaves Rory to finish her shower in peace.
The door to room 8 is ajar, but Joey doesn’t enter just yet. Instead she leaves her things by the door, adjusts the towel with all the skill and deftness of one doing so only for the benefit of others, and heads down the hall and around the corner.
“Who’s got nice pipes?” she asks as she steps around her alpha and the kinsman from the other night, heading for the laundry room.
[Marrick] “Y’know th’song better’n me and y’sing it better… Goddamnit, rhya,” she chastises without actually chastising.
She grins ear to ear, with glassy eyes and distinct pleasure. She half swaggers, half saunters over to a book shelf. She looks the covers over and tries not to wobble.
[Nate Cross] A blonde female enters the room singing christmas carols of all things “Aww more Carols?….. what about some Meatloaf or Queen?” his eyes flick to Hatchet as he joins in with his own verse “Not bad at all.”
Nate shrugs at Hatchet when he says he’ll return “No rush.. I’ve gotta finish eatin my noodles anyway” as he proceeds to stir his chopsticks into the bottom of the container obviously eager to collect every last morsel.
He turns to the other male ‘Hey there… I hope you don’t mind the question but which one are you?” he tilts his head as his eyes scan the male trying to find any discernable difference. “Although it seems you don’t know me.. so I guess the obvious answer is that your Ethan? You were at the pub the other night having a meal?”
[Hatchet] “I know a lot of things,” Taggart says mildly to Marrick, passing by her — and by Joey — as he heads into the hallway and across it to his bedroom. “I also do many things quite well.”
He doesn’t thank Ethan, or Nate, for their compliments on his singing voice. They weren’t at the bonfire in summer, when he got up on a wooden stage with Liadan and played and sang so well that it covered even the flubs in the kinswoman’s singing. He made people ache when he sang that night. He made them stop what they were doing to attend to what he was doing, and there’s not a soul that passed through the woods that night that could deny what his pipes are capable of. Or his fingers, when given an instrument they’re practiced with.
He hasn’t gone near the piano since it arrived in the Brotherhood. He seems wary of it.
When Nate asks Ethan which one he is, Hatchet frowns slightly, pausing in the doorframe, looking back. He looks at Nate. Then at Ethan. Then Nate. “Eh?”
[Echo] Echo’s door flies open and the Glass Walker No Moon comes out, a little storm cloud of discontent. She has a towel slung over a shoulder and a toothbrush wedged in her mouth.
She heads for the showers.
[Ethan] Nate calls after one of them, and it becomes clear rather quickly what he’s driving at when he frames the question as he does. The kinsman halts in his movement and turns around to face Nate, patiently weathering the series of questions that come his way, hands still in his pockets.
“I’ve an identical twin,” he tells Hatchet. To Nate: “So you’ve met Aaron, then, have you?”
His tone may as well say: That explains it.
[Rory] She doesn’t take long in the shower after Joey leaves the conversation, cleaning up quickly and efficiently. Soon she’s dried and wrapping one of the towels around her body, and the other around her curls. She grabs her pack, and hugs it tight to her chest, before she slips out of the bathroom and makes her way back toward the laundry room again.
Where she finds Joey. She smiles shyly again, a ‘i’m not following you, really’ smile, and then gets her laundry into the nearest dryer.
At some point, during the time taken to get laundry running, get clean, and return, she’d come to a decision. In battle, she makes decisions quickly, without though, diving in with everything she has in her. She was born off the war, for the war, and that’s something she excels at. Other things, though, she has to work through, carefully and quietly, decide if it’s worth it, when to take a stand, when to let it go, and when the moon is full enough to justify getting back at someone who was an ass.
The latter is something she’s getting used too. Chloe, Elliot – they both teach […taught…] her to stand up for herself, to start fighting back. And so she does. Sometimes.
[shhhh. don’t mind me. dex+crafts d.8 for not breaking it completely -2 for mech aptitude in hopes that she can reverse it later]
[Rory] [helps to actually put in the dice]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5) [WP]
[Hatchet] Something about Nate and Ethan’s interaction makes the Philodox laugh. He chuckles warmly, leaning on the doorframe. “Nate, you just make friends with all the Kinfolk you meet, then?”
There’s an edge there. Not a razor-sharp one. But a definite edge. Sort of like a cliff.
[Ezra Turk] *Prowling. To Prowl – to rove or go about stealthily, in search of prey. Ezra was moving about the brotherhood, seeing what was to be seen about the disaster everyone spoke so much about. Knobby fingers report in a steady rhythm against tile as he cuts through the washroom, eyeing the shower stalls with interest. Rat. Tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat. tat-tat-tat-tat.*
[Nate Cross] He answers Ethan’s question with a shrug and a small grin “Well not so much a meet… more like a collision. Your brother definitely has lots of….personality.”. Finally finished with his meal, he folds the top of the container back over and inserts the set of chopsticks into the corner.
He turns his head to Taggart with a shrug “I guess so… I like to talk or listen, whatever other people prefer at the time. I guess I try to be good company for anyone that wants it.”
[Joey] Joey gives Hatchet a grin, taking his comment to the gutter. There’s a conversation about kinfolk, and twins, and more kinfolk, but by then the blonde is in the laundry room, recovering a load from one of the dryers.
No matter that there are people standing near Hatchet’s door right outside, that the common room holds more, that a red-haired Ahroun is heading her way. Joey lets her towel drop to the laundry room floor and tugs her pajamas from the freshly dried and still warm pile of laundry. When Rory enters, Joey is wearing a pair of yellow and orange plaid pants and is pulling an old yellow t-shirt over her head.
She greets Rory with a close-lipped upward curve of her mouth that passes for a smile. Then she gathers her things and starts to leave.
[Ethan] A sudden laugh bursts out of Ethan’s chest as though it has been trapped in there for a viciously long time and only just now has found its chance to escape. What Nate has to say about his brother strikes the quieter of the twins as amply amusing, though he doesn’t allow himself to express his entertainment for longer than a few seconds.
“That he does,” is all Ethan has to say about that.
There’s an edge in Hatchet’s voice, and Ethan briefly turns to look at him as he speaks before casting his attention back towards the seated Galliard.
[Rory] After she’s started the dryer, she grabs her pack again, and moves past the rest of them in the common room. She doesn’t say anything, though her jaw is set, her face the picture of resolve.
She moves directly to the TV stand, and to what she (correctly) assumes to be the coveted Xbox that the kinfolk was so worried about that he made fun of her loss. She settles to sit cross-legged on the floor, completely unaffected by the fact that she’s dressed only in a towel, and tugs her small tool set out from her backpack and gets to work…
…disassembling the Xbox, setting each piece into a careful little pile, completely ignoring everyone else in the room for the duration.
[Hatchet] “Is that your purpose in life?” Hatchet asks Nate blandly. Or perhaps curiously. “To be whatever who-you’re-with wants you to be at the time?”
His eyes flick to Ethan when he laughs though, and happen to meet Ethan’s. Only because the kinsman is looking at him at the time. It’s coincidence that they happen to look at each other at the same time. It is not necessarily coincidence that Hatchet holds that look for a moment before turning back to Nate.
[Echo] Echo strips down in the showers, and steps under the spray, opening her mouth beneath the beads of hot water and rinsing it of the foul taste her earlier mood had left behind. The Ragabash was comprised of lean lines of muscle and scarring. Her back carried several lashings that almost resembled whip-marks, and her ribcage on the left side carried a brutal set of teeth marks left over from the night her former pack-mates died where the flesh had literally been torn from the bone.
You could imagine it might take a lot to keep End Transmission down, but something had done a hell of a good job, once.
Her lower back was covered in a tattoo, as were both hipbones and her right shoulder blade.
She rinsed herself, then braced her palms flat against the wall beneath the water and bowed her head, gasping for breath as if she were drowning, dragged out in an undertow. The pack can feel it, just for a instant; just for a flash. The torrent of memories and sensations and feelings imprinted on a soul, a string of names and faces and times none save Echo had ever known.
Like the explosion of a bright flash, they burn away into nothing.
[Ezra Turk] *Someone is showering. Ezra won’t be. Not here. Too open. Exposed. He knows just which kin he will be gracing with his most illustrious presence in order to enjoy that luxury. His fingers continue their beat out the bathroom and down the hall, passing silently and with little regard to the people gathered hither and yon. Making for the commons room and slowing upon seeing the half naked red-head on the floor. The one that reeked of fianna breeding. His voice rasps like a whiskey tenor around broken glass.*
Whatcha got there Cherry Bomb?
[Nate Cross] Nate’s shoulders lift and fall in another shrug “I wouldn’t say it’s my sole purpose in life… I’ve got my own dreams and desires just like everyone else. However I find that when you think of yourself as being free, you are able to be whoever you want to be. Whether that’s for yourself or someone else.”
A small smile forms on the Gnawers face as Ethan’s gaze returns to him “I’m sorry if I seemed hostile to you. It’s just that your brother and I got off on the wrong foot.” his eyes briefly flick towards Hatchet “Seems we both wanted the same thing and didn’t want to budge. Anyway… I’m Nate Cross, cliath, galliard and one of Rat’s Brood.”
[Joey] Joey leaves the laundry room before Rory, and so misses when the strange redhead veers into the common room, despite the Galliard and the Ahroun already there, doesn’t see when she plunks herself onto the floor to start dismantling Alex’s Xbox.
She continues down the hall to the large room she shares with two of her packmates. Enough time has passed that she doesn’t so much as glance at the door to room 3. She stops outside room 8 to collect the bathroom things she left on the floor, carries it all in and drops it onto her purple comforter. It’s a while before she emerges again. It takes time to fold her laundry and put it all where it needs to go.
[Hatchet] He hasn’t missed the fact that Rory is taking apart Alex’s Xbox. He knows it’s an Xbox because he finally looked at it closely enough to read that, no shit, it’s written right there on the machine. He knows it’s Alex’s because Alex went over and pushed a button on it. He doesn’t stop her. He doesn’t go looking for Echo when he feels something like a stab of pain go through her across the totemlink. She meant to share that. Nothing is shared over that link that they don’t want the others to know about.
Bear carries their burdens with grace. And Hatchet receives them in silence. He steps out of the doorframe because people are coming and going through it regardless, and watches Ezra — who is a stranger — go over to Rory. He doesn’t steal Ethan away just yet to go get his flask, and he doesn’t argue with Nate right now about his purpose in life. He just met the man, for fuck’s sake.
“What did you both want?” he asks, instead.
[Ethan] When their eyes meet for that moment, it certainly looks to an observer as though it’s a coincidence rather than a connection or a communication between the two of them. Very little passes between them, if anything at all, and while Ethan’s gaze goes briefly curious, the other man’s gaze is not infinitely held. It lasts but a few heartbeats, and then they are both looking back to Nate.
There’s an answer, and then a hint of a smile across the younger man’s lips. Ethan, for as terse as Nate had been earlier, does not seemed closed or walled off even now. His posture and facial expression aren’t exactly open, but he has not completely written Nate off solely based on what the Garou is currently apologizing for.
It would seem as though the apology’s accepted, though Ethan doesn’t hop in to say so himself. He remains quiet as Hatchet asks what the Galliard and Ethan’s brother both wanted.
[Rory] She jumps, and thankfully pulls her little screwdriver away before she does any actual damage, as she looks over her shoulder, and up. There’s no guilt in that look, he just startled her. She lifts a hand and rubs along the side of her nose, briefly, before ducking her head back to her work.
“Xbox.”
She wrinkles her nose, and glances up at Ezra. “Can you so domething for me?”
[Ezra Turk] *Rat. tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat. tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat. tat-tat-tat-tat. Over and over again against the back of the sectional as Ezra regards the redhead. Hatchet looks him over, and Ezra either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t react, instead flashing a sharp toothed smile thats all oily charm to Rory.*
MmmmmmMMmm that would depend on the why and the howfore precious, what is it you want?
*He rattles in a voice better left silent. Black eyes rivet on Rory, a little too cold, blinking a little too slowly, Ezra all cheshire grin at the start he’s caused.*
[Echo] Echo bundles herself in a towel after her shower, and drips her way back through the common room toward Room 8. Damp, her hair is sleek and very nearly black, finger-combed flat against her nape. She doesn’t speak to the assembly of men in the hall but rather glances at them all as if seeing right through them.
The towel drapes low and gives a good visual of the woman’s backside as she closes the door after herself.
Echo doesn’t strike anyone as a modest female. She does pause, just for a moment when she notices that Joey is in the room. Of course Joey knows all that had gone on earlier, connected as she was with Bear. End Transmission’s dark eyes seem dull, and full of anger that is stifled and slowing seeping its way free of her body, leaked through her very pores.
For a Ragabash, her Rage is higher than most.
“Hey,” she says softly, and sheds her towel in favor of ferreting out clean clothes.
[Rory] She nods, and digs into her backpack again, shaking her head as she searches for something, her towel falling from her hair to the floor behind her. She pulls free a piece of paper, and a pen, and then after a moment, or two, waves him closer, so she can whisper her request, instead of broadcast it to the room.
Only when he is close enough does she murmur her request for his ears only.
[Rory] And when he’s close enough that she can whisper, she does “Write mor fe? Write ‘Apologize, and I fix it.'” a beat. “Please?”
to Ezra Turk
[Ezra Turk] *The wildhaired stranger prowls over, feet falling quietly as he approaches. Curiosity taking priority at the moment, he leans down and listens. A crackling chuckle. This gingerkid couldn’t speak if her life depended upon it. A sly grin sharp on prominant vulpine features as he nods and whispers back, voice low and strangely sibilant. Pen and paper in hand.*
[Ezra Turk] A favor for a favor Ruby-Bug.
to Rory
[Rory] She chews her lip, lightly, and then nods, not quite meeting his gaze as she makes sure all the little screws are in one little pile.
[Nate Cross] Nate stands as he looks around for a bin to place his rubbish , and then with a small smile .. knowing the look he had been given the other night and the way Lee had reacted too him.. he finally answered “Oh we just wanted the company of someone and we weren’t prepared to share. In the end she caught a bus home and we both lost out”. Little did he know what that phone call was that Lee received and who it was from, as they had parted company.
[Joey] Joey looks up when Echo enters. Behind closed doors, Joey is even quieter, even more sullen than when she’s out in public. She and the Fostern No Moon share a corner of the room. Given their natures, they should drive their roommate and brother to distraction each night, with their heads so close together. They both tend to be loud and talkative, laughter should resound in this room any time the pair of them are together.
And yet this room stays oddly quiet. Daniel does what Daniel does, Echo keeps a different schedule from Joey, and Joey, when she’s in the room, tends to stay on her bed and read, or work out puzzles, or lay curled under he blankets, arms wrapped around her midsection, trying not to groan. She’s getting used to the things food does to her since she swallowed a mouthful of spiders and died. It helps that she doesn’t eat much anymore.
Echo greets her quietly and sheds out of her clothing. Joey cares about Echo’s nudity as much as she cares about Rory’s, as much as she thinks about her own. There are few in this building who have not seen the young Fenrir naked as she went from her room to the bathrooms or vice versa.
“Hey,” she answers back, folding a t-shirt. “What was that stuff earlier?”
[Ezra Turk] *Knobby fingers write a note in hasty chicken scratch, and turn it over to the red-head. Ezra smirking smugly.*
[Rory] There’s a distinct look of worry as she watches him scratch the note. Worried what he will ask of her, but in the end, it really can’t be anything worse than she’s suffered before. So she simply takes the note back, and murmurs a soft “Thanks.”
Then, using the case of the Xbox, she carefully gathers all the pieces, makes sure they’re all there, and then sets it back on the TV stand with the note on top. “There.”
And then, she looks up to meet his gaze briefly, questioningly, before she packs up her little tools into their case, and shoves them back into her pack.
[Hatchet] The Philodox’s pale eyes have drifted over to Ezra and Rory, whispering and fucking with the Xbox and generally just making his skin crawl. But he hears the word ‘she’ from Nate and snaps his eyes back. By now anyone paying attention knows that he’s… close, somehow, to Liadan. She had a key to his room once that he wouldn’t take back. She was talking about giving him a key to her new place. Alex all but asked permission to go after her — not that he would have held back had Taggart given him any kind of warning.
Then there’s how he acted with Nate the other night, ‘impressively glowering’ as Echo put it and making a nuisance of himself at their table. He straightens slightly, then looks at Nate. He gestures with his hand. “Up.” And beckons, which says Follow even though he doesn’t.
With that, he turns, and heads into Room 1. “Ethan, you too.”
[Ezra Turk] *Ezra’s gaze is not an easy thing to meet. It wasn’t because he had searing rage coursing through him like so much molten hate ready to overflow on some hapless victim. Didn’t. It wasn’t because he was a tall physcially imposing man. He wasn’t. His muscles didn’t ripple with hidden strength or coil in anticipation of violence. No. Ezra was hard to meet eyes with because he looked a little like he was about to crawl inside your head and eat your face from the inside. Malice and cruelty plain to see in twitching black eyes. Malevolant manic energy held at bay by choice and choice alone. His fingers tap a beat on the side of the telivision as he watches Rory stand, and introduces himself.*
Ezra Turk.
[Echo] Pulling on underwear and a pair of relatively clean jeans, the Walker’s lean body is eaten up as she slides a long-sleeved shirt over her head. It was a bright blue color, splashed with black lettering that was near impossible to decipher but was most likely the brand name of the shirt’s maker. She shrugged, a little, as she flopped down on her own purple bedsheets.
“Alex was being a rude asshole to a Garou who just lost her Alpha, y’know Rory, and I told him where to stick his ego. Hatchet disagreed with my tactics with dealing with my Kinfolk.” She’s angry for a flash again, but it abates, and she picks at the threads in her coverlet.
[Ethan] Ethan does not have all the components necessary to put together a clear idea of who this ‘someone’ is that his brother and the Galliard were not interested in sharing, does not have much beyond the fact that Lee looks as though she belongs to Hatchet’s tribe, that Lee has been seen talking to both Nate and Hatchet, that he has seen Lee look at him as though she’s had to think for more than a few seconds before deciding how to respond to him.
So he doesn’t seem as though he has any clear idea as to the motivation behind Hatchet drawing both Nate and himself into his bedroom, his territory. It doesn’t seem as though the motivation really matters. It could be as simple as Hatchet just wants to give Ethan his flask back and send him on his way. Melissa the babysitter would probably be enamored with that course of action.
“Alright,” he says, and follows Hatchet out of the common room.
[Nate Cross] Nate gives a little sigh…as much to say ~oh no..not again~. But stand he does and follows the Fostern out of the room.
[Rory] Her towel slips as she stands, and she doesn’t notice right away. Or care. Her modesty is only for the benefit of others, she simply doesn’t think about it.
Rory is many things – one of which is [wasted] purebred. Another is the fact that she carries no scent of her own. Her rage eclipses that of many, and under the swelling moon burns like fire under her skin. That she chose this course of payback to the asshole says much about her control. That she can’t quite meet Ezra’s gaze says much about her upbringing.
And so, when he introduces herself, her voice is soft, submissive. “Rory.”
[Hatchet] A moment later, the door to Room 1 closes. With three men inside and no Fang Theurge in sight to bang on the door and yell that Gaia knows what they’re doing.
[Ezra Turk] *Rory O’Bryne was like a dog waiting to be kicked. Ezra’s knuckles go white as his hands clench into knobby fists. Logic screamed in the face of madness. This was a garou you did not know. From another tribe. An ahroun or someone who could try and rip your face off. Teeth grind visibly as he bares them in a smile. Gesturing finally to the dismantled xbox.*
Who pissed you off mmmMMmmm?
[Rory] She reaches for her towel and tucks it back around her thin form, her gaze cutting to her plate of food still sitting on the coffee table. The dryer hasn’t buzzed yet, so her clothing is not done, but she doesn’t go over to sit just yet.
She hugs her pack to her chest, and glances at the xbox. “Kin. He mas wean. I was bean mack.”
[Joey] Joey moves on to another shirt, a pair of panties, a bra. Clothing with slashes and tears are set aside, to be mended or tossed or otherwise dealt with later.
“Hatchet said he was disgusted,” she says, her eyes still on her clothing for a moment. Then she has the good grace to look up at the other No Moon. They’re both fresh from showers, hair wet and all but plastered to their skulls, their clothing fresh and clean. “Did you really beat up Alex?”
Not having been in the room at the time, not being witness to the events that transpired in the common room while Joey was in the shower, the Rotagar draws her own conclusions from the totem conversation held between their packs two Fosterns.
[Ethan] [I’m out, fuckers. Thanks for the RP!]
[Ezra Turk] Mas Wean. Bean Mack. You’re misfiring there precious. Gotta glitch in the wiring eh? That Fianna blood’s got your shit scrambled.
*Now wasn’t this the lunatic calling the hatter crazy. A low cackle, Ezra scratchng his goatee. Expression smug as he shakes his head. His teeth open and close on nothing a snap of air as he croaks.*
Daddy smack you a little too hard on the temple after a night of swilling guiness and rolling off kin?
[Rory] She blushes, brightly, ducking her head and hiding behind the slide of wet tangled curls. The red splashes across her cheeks, and embarrassment’s path can be seen sliding down her neck, across her chest and shoulders too. She shakes her head though.
“Dr Slaughter, ce shalled it Spoonerism. I hon’t dear it, so can’t correct.”
There’s a beat, and a shrug. “Don’t know py marents.” For all she knows it could be true – she certainly was smacked around good and hard for a very long time.
[Ezra Turk] Well.. isn’t that a peach. You’re a mule then. MmmmMMM?
*Black eyes trace the passage of Rory’s blush along her neck and shoulders with interest. Something to keep in mind, certainly. Fingers rest easy as he watches her silently for a long while. Grinning like the cat that caught the canary.*
[Rory] “Metis.”
Correction, automatic. Elliot would normally say it for her, would insist, would not let Rory call herself a mule without correcting her. There’s a shadow in her gaze, though he cannot see it, and the press of the sadness that beats through her slender frame. She moves past him to sit on the edge of the couch, and find her soda once more, taking a long swallow.
[Ezra Turk] Thats what I said.
*He states in a tone that rattles with little room for further correction. He follows her like a hound on the scent of a wounded fox, sitting beside her with a creak of the sofa. Leaning into her space. His head moves back and forth as though he’s reading her face like a book, a knobby finger coming to twirl a red ringlette, without permission or manners. Black eyes dare a response, but then, they also glint with cruelty now undisguised. Perhaps a little hair twirl was harmless in comparison to whatever mad thought the shadowlord was entertaining at the moment. The gesture could even, in some bizarre fashion, be considered tender. Such was the slimy charm of the theurge.*
A full moon, little Fianna?
[Rory] He leans into her space and she bites her lower lip, gently, her fingers working the frayed edges of the straps to her pack. She is clearly uneasy with him so close, expecting him to strike, a little lost in how to react, if she should hit him, or push him away, or simply let him be.
In the end, it’s the latter, and she answers his question. “Yes.” Single words are easier.
[Ezra Turk] Mmmmm… Good. We’ll make good on that favor another day precious. In the meantime…
*A slow nod, eyew half hooded, expression smug. He rises to his feet and with a savage snap of his wrist he’s liberated a thin red lock of hair, jerking poor Rory’s head sideways in the process. Curling the scarlet strand around his finger as he rasps.*
Something to keep me warm at night mmmmmmmMMMm?
[Rory] She doesn’t say anything about the favor, just accepts that it’s owed… but then he snaps his wrist to the side, sends her head with it, and actually yanks that curl free from her scalp, she reacts – and she reacts instantly. There’s a snarl of pain as her hand lifts to her head, and the other shoves him backwards – hard.
“YUCK FOU, ASSHOLE!!”
[dex+brawl+ac=8]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ezra Turk] *Ezra’s shoved, stumbling backwards and nearly losing his footing as he cackles. The madman antagonizing the Ahroun in the commons, was laughing. Ruined voice making a mockery of the sound as he clings to the Tv a moment for support. His eyes flash with dark humor as he advances again, head lolling to the side as he bares his teeth in a grin, and stares at Rory with an eyebrow raised. Daring her to try that shit again.*
[stare you down mule! cha/intim/pb vs rorywp = target number sux 8]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 4
[Rory] She’s angry. It takes a lot to make her angry but she’s had a very bad day, and now she’s naked and he’s holding her HAIR and he’s staring at her, glaring at her daring her to DO something – and she can’t look away. She can’t.
So she doesn’t.
[and FUCK you too! – char/intim/pb vs ezra wp = target number suxx 9]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Ezra Turk] *Black eyes bore into Rory’s. Ezra seems to loom, strange presence seemingly advancing when he’s doing nothing of the sort. Cheshire grin growing more pointed, dark ringed eyes seemingly opening wider, harder to meet, harder to hold. All malice and madness and slippery charm as he raises his hand and twirls her pretty hair around his finger. A bob of his eyebrows up in unpleasant jest.*
[and again! 4 more to go!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rory] She’s trembling, her rage spiking in the are around her. It’s another reason she doesn’t like the Brotherhood, another reason she avoids large groups of Garou in any situation. She’s not only fighting Ezra now, fighting to keep his gaze, but fighting the memories she keeps under such control all other times…
[aw come on, Kahseeno! You WHORE.
char/intim/pb 7 vs ezra wp = target number suxx needed 9]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Ezra Turk] *A tsking coming from Ezra. Keep your temper Ahroun. He didn’t want to put a mule down for genuinely attacking him. Because the shove he’d taken in stride. Those claws come out, and he’d have to take action. He could of course. He was Ezra Turk. He was smarter than this one, he was sure. Black eyes glint unpleasantly on Rory’s entirely assured of his own superiority. Why was he tormenting the “metis”? Why.. because thats what she was there for. Who better to torment than the abomination with the red hair and the wasted blood?*
[play it again sam! 2 sux remaining!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Rory] It doesn’t matter why he does this. It matters that he’s the first to do so to such a level since she arrived. She’d felt safer, she’d felt stronger, she’d felt accepted here in ways she never had before.
And with a look, he brings it all back.
Her hands clench into fists, pale and fragile looking and balled tightly as she all out quakes under his gaze…
[OH FOR THE LOVE OF GAIA – GIVE ME SOMETHING HERE!
char/intim/pb 7 vs ezra wp = target number suxx needed 9]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ezra Turk] *She was shaking, fists balled tight. Really getting upset here wasn’t she? He can tell by the subtle shift of her posture in his peripheral that he’s getting to her. Badly. Would she dishonor herself by resorting to violence before they’d established things? The thought nearly distracts him, and the eyes that burn into his flare with fresh resolve. Ezra glares back, the two garou eyeballing each other at length in the middle of the commons. Only one is smiling.*
[hairy eyeball! 2 req!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Rory] He knows he’s getting to her, he knows that she can’t keep this up, that she can’t possibly keep looking at him as he keeps stripping her defenses away until there is nothing left, nothing but the remembered pain in her head, that is so very pale compared to what has happened before, things he can’t possibly know…
…yet exploits anyway. She can’t take it anymore, and there’s a step back as she tears her eyes away, blinking rapidly as a small sound of defeat is heard low in her throat, a throat that she then bares by lifting her chin, and keeping her gaze firmly on the floor.
Submission.
[Ezra Turk] [do not do it. Do not be a dick. WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ezra Turk] *Rory tilts her chin back, exposes her throat to the theurge in submission. Battle of wills over, Ezra the victor. As the slimey Lord knew full well he would be. Rory would feel fingers on her pulse as she blinks at the floor. Her head tilted down, the scruff of a goatee against her cheek before Ezra rests his forehead on hers. Black eyes lock on hers. Had he not had enough? Surely he’d proven his point. To press the issue and force her to stand up to his gaze again was just cruel. He moves back only once she’s raised her eyes to him again. Grinning as he pats her cheek sharply and gives a short gruff. Giving her back some dignity at the very least, now that she knows her place. To see him off with head held high. His good deed of the day done, the cocky little shit twirls her hair round his finger and turns his back on her. Headed down the steps rasping.*
A favor for a favor cherry bomb. Don’t forget eh?
[Rory] His fingers touch her throat, resting on a pulse that is racing wildly. He’s close, too close, and there’s a soft whimpering sound as he forces her gaze to his again. He’s close so close and her hands clench as she trembles, quakes against him.
He steps back and the first breath is like desperation, the sharp rap across her cheek leaving a mark easily in pale skin, and fading almost as quickly. He reminds her, and she says nothing, but she won’t forget.
She won’t forget any of it.
Only when he’s gone does she retrieve her towel and wrap it around herself again, and grab her pack, heading to the laundry room to get her clothing – dry or not.
She hates the Brotherhood.