…huh? [Kemp]

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Lessa
[Kemp Oates]
Grease ran down his chin making a track through the scraggly stubble that showed he hadn’t seen a razor in what would be weeks for him. About the only place hair liked to grow on him was his head and there it grew long and scraggly, curtaining eyes most of the time.

Another bite of the eggroll and this time it didn’t have time to squirt anything out because the remainder was shoved in his mouth. Jaws worked as he chewed and watched the world pass by as he sat on crumbling cement steps not but half a block down from the place he’d bought the food.
[Maija]
She exits the same eatery where the eggrolls are better than some, worse than others – but at least affordable. And for this streetrat, that’s the key. She digs in the little container as she turns and heads down the street, looking for a place to settle and sit, but unwilling to wait for her chow mein. Looks like she needs it, too – at average height 5’5″ or 6″ or so, if she weighs 110, it’s because she has a brick in both pockets. In fact, the sweatshirt she wears – an oversized gray hoodie with the hood up, hiding much of her face in shadow – possibly weighs more than she does.

Beat to hell boots, and jeans finish the visible ensemble, as the chopsticks disappear into the hoodie as she takes the first bite. And burns her tongue. “shitowhotshit” she says – but it certainly doesn’t slow her down and she follows the first with a second bite right away.
[Kemp Oates]
Both knees shown through faded, threadbare jeans. His knees were wide with a bag sitting between his feet and it was this bag he leaned over as he reached inside to extract another bit of white paper that was nearly transparent with grease. As out of place as it might seem, there was a squirt bottle of Duck sauce next to the bag; a bottle that should of graced the table of a restuarant. A bite and a chew and he paused with the squirt bottle held over his stuffed, opened mouth as his eyes cut towards the swearing for a split second frozen in time. In the next instant the bottle was squeezed and near transparent-orange colored sauce was squirted into his open maw before he started chewing. Jaws working, tendons popping with each chew. It wasn’t until his throat worked on a swallow that he glanced towards the hooded figure again.
[Maija]
The voice was distinctly female, even through the cussing and soft satisfied sound as she chews and swallows. Her gaze flicks upwards, for a search of the area – quick and measured, as if placing everyone within her sight, shrugging away from a passerby so that there’s no chance that they might touch her, might get her food, might knock the hood off, might… well. You get the drift. She’s aware – hyper aware – and as such she doesn’t miss the duck sauce.

Or Kemp.

Her steps falter, hesitating once, before she completes it and keeps moving in his general direction.
[Kemp Oates]
It was more than two years since he’d been part of a Pack. More than two years since he depended on someone other than himself. More than two years since he’d allowed anyone that close to him. And it showed. There was a distance in the depths of his green eyes. A slowly growing wildness that flared at odd times. He was twenty years old in the world of man and ancient with the weight of a soul that held rank, responsibility and an aloofness that came with distancing oneself.

He saw the flinch that came when others passed too close to the eating figure. And he saw the moment’s hesitation in it’s step before it continued in his direction. Female, he figured that much out. Kind of reminded him of a Gnawer, then again some thought that when they first saw his form of dress. Another bite, more sauce and a sleeve was dragged across his chin and still his gaze remained locked on the approaching figure.
[Maija]
He don’t look away. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t notice, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t care. The tension creeps up along her spine, stiffens her shoulders, flexes unseen in the line of her jaw as she chews. She drops her hand and wipes it against her thigh, across her hip with a brush along the back pocket of threadbare, often patched jeans. It looks to be an absent move. It’s not.

She takes up the chopsticks again, and when she’s close enough that she ain’t gotta raise her voice at all, she mutters. “Take a picture, why don’tcha…”

before shoving her mouth full with another bite.
[Kemp Oates]
“Naw, lasts too long. Ain’t seeing nothing I want to remember. Ya eat like a pig.”

He’d seen worse, but he wasn’t giving any ground. Besides she made the opening pitch. He could of just stared and added weight to it but that took effort and he had to give a shit. Instead he showed more interest in his food. Paper rattled, another greasy eggroll unwrapped to be consumed in two bites and two long squirts into his maw.
[Maija]
“Hi pot, I’m kettle, yer fuckin’ black too.” presumably it’s a remark on his eating habits too. This close, she can feel it. This close, she knows what he is, what she felt in the weight of his stare, a stare that marks a target with an intensity that crawls along the spine, and wraps it in cold steel apprehension.

She drops her chopstick into her chowmein, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and tugs the hood lower just a fraction. She ain’t giving him anything but a glimpse of the line of her jaw in the process, the hint of dark eyes, nothing that would help him remember her features at all. She’s been doing this a long ass time – it’s all automatic.

As is the next bite.
[Kemp Oates]
For a moment the wildness rose in his eyes and his entire being went as still as death as the weight of those eyes locked in on the girl. He knew it was a girl from the scent, from the voice from the beat of her heart and how often she blinked even though she tried to hide features. Then ever so slowly his chest expanded as his nostrils flared and he sucked in a deep breath through his nose. Just like a wolf he was drawing in her scent, tasting it, filing it away. It was several long moments before he moved again, drawing his sleeve across his mouth. His voice was a rough low tenor.

“And ya can’t tell colors.”
[Kemp Oates]
to Maija
I’m guessing she doesn’t have any breeding to her?
[Maija]
Hidden, a brow arches slightly, an expression filters along her face and disappears before it can settle, before it can make anything other than a passing expression, even if it were to be actually seen. “What ya ain’t never heard that before?”

She shakes her head slightly, and sidesteps another person walking by, flinching away so as not to be touched, to remain unmussed, and unaffected. That this puts her squarely next to him is an unfortunate circumstance, but she doesn’t have much of a choice. She does, however, maintain a careful ‘out of arms length’ distance, even if she knows by the way he feels that it wouldn’t matter in the long run.
[Maija]
to Kemp Oates
(Not a speck. :) )
[Kemp Oates]
His next words sounded tired, though his attention had pulled away from watching her like he might throat her or jump her. He reached between his feet and picked up the bag, crumpling it.

“Go home kid.”
[Maija]
“Like ya much older than me. Whatever.”

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, just a bare flinch of her shoulder upwards. She takes another bite, and another step. She could say many things, but she don’t. She’s got more control than most, more self preservation than some.
[Kemp Oates]
Most skirted around his little area without thought. Most didn’t step in like this girl did. The way she flinched yet stepped towards him was sending conflicting signals.

“I’m older than ya can imagine and I don’t flinch like a whipped dog everytime someone walks by me.”

Cruel perhaps, but honest.
[Maija]
“Ditto.” to the first, then she finally just stops and faces him, and studies him a long moment from under the shadows of the hoodie.

Then she shrugs and perches on a lower step, and takes another bite. “An’ ya ain’t know shit.” Her accent is one that’s a smattering of everywhere and no where all at once, dominated by bad grammar. “course, if I could go all Hugh Jackman on folks, I like as not wouldn’t flinch neither, an’ other folks’d do th’flinchin.”
[Kemp Oates]
“Ya just counterducted yourself.”

That’s all he said as he put the weight of his regard on her again.
[Kemp Oates]
to Maija
counterdicted too, shit
[Maija]
She smirks unseen, and shrugs. “ditto – i’m older than ya can imagine. The flinchin ain’t so much that as jus’ stayin out the way, and unnoticed. Cept by folk’d do the beatin.”

A beat and a glance his way, even as she tenses under the weight of his gaze. “Folks’at feel like you, ain’t flinch at all. Distant cousins like me are used t’bein kicked.”

Rather calmly delivered, all considered. Matter of fact. “Clear nuff for ya?” The question is asked through another bite, and slurp of a stray noodle into her mouth.
[Kemp Oates]
“First ya imply ya don’t flinch, then ya say ya do. And then ya assume I done sprang full grown from my mother’s womb and weren’t no one in my life that raised a hand to me. That no one beat me, broke my bones or nothing before I could do nothing about it.”

He still watched her like he might give her a big kick in her ass or take a bite out of her

“Clear nuff for ya?”

Throwing her words right back at her.
[Maija]
“So since ya ain’t like t’judge, maybe ya ain’t should judge yourself. Ya ain’t know how many bones I don got broke, or if I lived like a pampered fuckin princess. All I knows is folks like you is related. Distantly. Way distant.”

At least his look is direct. Oddly, that seems to be ok with her. It’s the ones that hide behind lies and fake smiles that make her the most uneasy.
[Kemp Oates]
“And ya have no idea how many I had broke, how many stitches, kicks, how many times I was spit on, abused before I got smart and took things into my own hands. For all ya know, I’m the fuckin Ruler of the Fuckin Universe. Now, ya want to argue and rile someone up, I think ya better go find someone else to do it with cause while I am well saited at the moment, I might decide to have a smartassed dessert.”
[Maija]
She smirks and stands. “Yer a lot like him. Always an excuse.” It ain’t a compliment.

She don’t say nothing else, doesn’t suggest anything of her own background any longer. Guys like him? They too busy with their own excuses, to care someone’s a lot more like them than they’d ever see. She takes a last bite and shoves it in her mouth, before making her way between folks to toss the container into a trashcan, and shove her hands into the pocket of her hoodie and start the walk away.
[Kemp Oates]
“Whatever.”

Once more he gave her words back to her. Immitating her careless shrug as she rose and left. After a moment he too rose and headed off in the other direction.
[Kemp Oates]
to Maija
Thanks for the play
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