When Lola had pulled away from the alleyway battle against Shadow Things, she was quick to climb into the truck, start the engine, and drive. She wasn't the most streetwise person, see. She wasn't in the city very much. She didn't quite realize that people might not care that gunshots were fired, that they may ignore them and go about their jaded lives, in favor of not getting involved with something outside of their own walls. She simply assumed that if people lived that close together, statistically speaking someone was likely to call the cops out of everyone that would have overheard them that night. So she and Hector, whose shirt was shredded and was left only in his jeans, shoes and jewelry, had briskly exited the alleyway and left.
Lola didn't tear away from the scene in her getaway truck-- the thing was too old to peel out anymore anyways. The big white metal vehicle just rumbled to life and rocked on its suspension as she pulled away from the curb, made it to the next intersection, and turned.
She wasn't particularly familiar with Denver as a whole, but she had a decent understanding of the Downtown area now, having spent the last week here. She'd only gone back to The Homestead long enough to refresh her clothing and guard the Bawn so that the Garou could have their Moot. She never stayed in the motel room where she laid her head. When she woke, typically around noon or so (since her patrols stretched through the night), she took just enough time to shower and dress before leaving. Then she would be gone all day, return sometime around dawn, and go to sleep. While she was gone she was walking or driving the streets. When she walked she had her pistol with her, tucked away under an overshirt or hoodie depending on how unforgivingly warm the night was. She kept it, but kept it hidden. When she drove, there was the rifle in the truck. She was always armed, always ready, because the city was in a state of deterioration and anything could happen.
Otherwise, she wouldn't be here.
Hector could tell that the city wasn't doing well for her. Even with her cheeks still a bit pink and her adrenaline still running a little high from the victory that they had that evening, with not a single one of them taking so much as a black eye or a busted lip, she was uneasy. There wasn't a moment of relaxation to be found here, surrounded by brick and cement and steel. There was an almost electric sense of discomfort that hummed on her skin, a current that wouldn't abate until she was back on her land. It was an odd trait she shared with her wolf-born cousins, inherited no doubt through generations of rather exclusive Garou-blooded breeding.
At a stoplight, with one arm slung out her rolled down window, she advised Hector: "This is my last night in that motel room, I think. Tomorrow I'm headed back out to The Homestead. I'll be back, but I don't think I can outright stay anymore. This place is fucking shit."
Hector Ghosh
Sometimes he thinks his pack is going to disband not because he is a terrible leader or because more death will befall them but because one of them hates leaving the city and another one hates going to the city and one of them feels torn between the two. The danger of packing with a Bone Gnawer, perhaps. But they'd had no problem letting a Glass Walker tag along with them for so long as they had. Corey wasn't tied to the city like Jack is.
He left the scene with Lola and did not argue with her prudence or her paranoia. So far as he can tell the people dwelling in this place have the number for emergency services on speed dial. Or gunfire activates the number on its own. Some sort of automated Bat Signal.
Into the truck. He doesn't buckle his seatbelt. The wind tugs at their hair but it isn't the fresh free air of the country. He doesn't like to breathe too deep when they're out walking and some days it seems as if he can't relax enough to draw a breath. When he hasn't been with Lola he hasn't been lounging around the motel, either. He staked out all of the places in this city where a relatively clean-looking homeless young man can loiter without drawing attention to himself but the longer he stays out here the less he wants to return to those places.
Besides: he was born beneath a waxing gibbous moon and after that came the full moon and it's bad enough having poor impulse control and hot blood to begin with. Occupying the same space as a kinswoman who knows damned well he's smitten with her when he feels as if he's a moment away from crawling out of his own skin wouldn't have been good for either of them. He's calmer tonight than he has been in a week, drained from fighting that infinite shadow as he is, and sitting beside each other in the cab now Lola can almost convince herself it's a human boy sat beside her and not a Galliard.
But even tricksters leave the humans feeling uneasy. As a Cub he frightened other people. With the sliver of Rage left within him he could not lose himself to frenzy but he has not looked up at the moon tonight.
Red light washes over the hood of the truck and Hector looks over at her when she speaks.
"You're like a poet," he says, and then offers his own line: "This place sucks."
Lola Hawkes
Lola chuckled a little and nodded her agreement to Hector's contribution: "Fuckin' A."
The light changes, Lola shifts gears with the long shifting stick that stuck up from the floor-- you know, the type you basically have to straddle if you're going to sit in the middle. The truck rocks some and they're off again.
For the most part, Lola is quiet on the drive. It's a short one anyways. Five more blocks, wherein there had been one left turn, took them to a motel on one of the more traffic-heavy streets in the city. It was an ugly, broken down thing. The kind of place business men bring hired girls and people meet just long enough to purchase a drug, get a little high, and be on your way. The doors were all outdoor entry, so Lola parked the truck in front of her own ground-level room and killed the engine.
After unbuckling, but before opening the door, Lola turned in her seat to face the Galliard. One hand, the left, was still absently clinging to the steering wheel. The right hand gripped the top of the seatback in the center, holding her torso turned sideways as it was.
"I'm worried. First the crows, then these shadows. What happened to the Gauntlet? Did it get weak somehow? Is the Wyrm, like, disrupting the Weaver's strength as well as our own?"
Hector Ghosh
His mood isn't an erratic thing but he always seems to be in a fairly lofty one until Something Happens and then he's all frowns and focused gaze like he doesn't know how to just listen to another person without giving her the whole of his attention. One moment they were talking about how much the city sucks and now they're onto her consternation.
And it could have been any city they were bitching about but this goes beyond a dislike born of preferring to hear birds and burbling creek water in the morning. Of not being jostled while walking on one's own property. Being able to sit outside and drink coffee in the morning without worrying about a homeless man shambling up and asking for spare change he's trying to catch the bus.
This one ties in with current events and she's lucked out tonight. The two Fosterns welcomed her to the fray and did not berate Hector for allowing his kinswoman to fight alongside them. She was capable and willing and she did more damage than he did, at the end. Since returning having made her sister a promise the Galliard has not kept anything from her.
Well. One thing. That cat's been out of the bag for a while, now.
So she worries but not that he will lie to her or tell her to mind her own business. When she turns towards him Hector knits his ring-heavy fingers together and rests his wrists - thick black leather band on one, mala beads and a macramé friendship bracelet on the other - between his knees. Slouches down a bit to make himself comfortable. Better to talk out here than in the room where the walls are thin and they'd have to compete with amorous neighbors and way-too-loud television sets.
"At the Moot," he says, "Keisha made it sound like..." He pauses and starts over. "One of the Guardians, Champion of Honor, was a Fianna Philodox. The Dancers captured him, right? But a few Garou got him back and he was just... I don't know, comatose for a while. They kept him at Cold Crescent and then one night he woke up and he wasn't him anymore. Sounds like he was possessed by a Bane, the story I heard was Caleb lopped off his head and he still kept trying to kill everyone."
This, they went over at the war moot. It isn't new information.
"The Moot got pretty hairy." He scoffs at the understatement. "We're going to figure it out. There's got to be a reason why the urrah didn't do anything to protect their own Sept. Maybe what happened to Champion of Honor was part of it."
Lola Hawkes
Hector filled Lola in on what had been discussed at the Moot, and provided more detail behind what atrocities had happened at the Cold Crescent Sept. The Kinswoman's face became more and more disgusted looking as he went on, and by the time he was finished she looked like she was ready to spit in an effort to get the bad taste out of her mouth. Instead she shook her head, ground her molars a little, and squeezed the steering wheel for a second before relaxing again.
Not actually having Rage made it easier to calm herself back down, that was one benefit of being Kinfolk instead.
"Man, this Sept really is tits up. The whole thing should've been disbanded when the debate over whether it should summon up its own Caern or not was going on."
She chewed on her thoughts for a moment, processing what details she'd been provided and what it could mean for the road ahead. After a minute she turned back so she was facing forward again and, after a pause, removed the keys from the ignition. These were kept held in a loosely closed hand, and she turned her head to look out her window back toward the road. "This is gonna be a Big Damn Deal. And we need to be prepared for it."
The city really did suck the fun right out of her. Here everything was serious, all news hit heavy. She felt vulnerable, like she was out in the trenches, and wanted very much to return to home base and make sure her home was safe, both the walls that she lived in and the land she lived on-- lived for.
Finally, with a bit of a sigh, she added: "I think I want to stay back at Forgotten Questions. This doesn't feel right-- I'm sure they're causing all of this madness within the city to keep us busy here... Keep us distracted, you know? They're re-directing our focus and I'm worried they're gonna hit Forgotten Questions hard. I wanna be there when it happens."
Not if.
When.
When.
Hector Ghosh
"There's, um..."
He draws a deep and somber breath and unhooks his hands from each other. Pushes himself upright and if she's watching him she knows he takes his eyes off of her then. Looks through the windshield at the concrete breezeway running between the rooms. Down one dark stretch glows a pair of vending machines. One of the lampposts guarding the parking lot flickers like it's trying to warn them. Insects bounce off of the casings and Hector looks as if he's staring into a crackling fire and not at a misaligned metal door number.
Hard to hold so many pasts in mind all at once and still look forward. The only way he can rally his brethren to fight harder is by reminding them of all the times they've fought and prevailed. Their race has been at war since the first breath told the first story. He can't lie and say they will win because for all he knows the Dancers will descend upon the city and swallow it whole tomorrow. All he can do is remind them that there is a reason Gaia chose them, Kinfolk and Garou both.
"There's something... The freaking urrah Theurges don't know their asses from their elbows. Ehh, the Dancers are eating hearts and babies and shit and it's making them stronger, how could that--" Abrupt stop. "And I'm all tied up with this stupid Bane waiting room pretending to be a church. I gotta stay here, a little longer."
Ugh. He doesn't want to. Even when he stood up at the Moot and said he'd stay and help the spirit-talker pack sort out what they're up against everyone could tell he did not want to. It isn't that this is too big for him or that he worries about what will happen. He wants to be at the Homestead near the Caern. That's the first place Willow and Glen and Maria took him when they scooped him up in Arizona. If he had to claim a home it would be Forgotten Questions.
And he sighs again and reaches out a lazy hand. Aims for Lola's shoulder but gets her skull. Whatever. Hector rests his palm there like he meant to do that and the pressure and warmth of it against her hair is like he's trying to draw the worry and the frustration and the rage out of her. A laying on of hands for pagans such as they are. Eventually he looks over and takes his hand off of her head.
Lola Hawkes
Hector expressed that the city Spirit Talkers didn't know what they were doing. Lola wasn't surprised. She had no idea how they could become fluent with the spirits and the Reflection around them if it was such an exhausting, impossible task every time they wanted to cross over within their home of skyscrapers and sewage. He looked forward to stare at the door in front of them, and after a few verses of silence had passed between them he reached over and set his hand on the top of her head, palm curling to the curve of her skull.
Without hesitation or thought, the Kinswoman rested the weight of her head against Hector's hand. It was warm and comforting, even through the hat on her head.
Quietly, like she were confessing to a preacher, she said: "I'll be back. I want to protect the Caern, but I can't just sit on the sidelines."
When he moved his hand away she sat up straight once more and cleared her throat. With a weak grin that flashed teeth she made an attempt at humor: "So, we can't check the motel room out and just go back home now, can we?"
Hector Ghosh
She's trying to be funny. Either Hector is playing along with it or he is actually and silently working out the logistics of going back to the Homestead tonight and then coming back up to the city in the morning by himself. It wouldn't be too big of a hassle. He's becoming quite adept at sneaking onto the light rail when he's short on cash. Which is pretty much always. Hector doesn't have his own guitar and as much as his stoned freestyle rapping gets him sympathy busking money from bored 20-somethings walking to the station from their grind in the evenings that isn't a sustainable source of income.
"Do you want to?" No. He decides to be responsible and sits up straight as he can go. Rhetorical question, do not answer. "No, let's just... we'll both stay here tonight. Then, uh. You know. We'll get you heading back home bright and early in the morning."
False cheer on that last sentence.
Lola Hawkes
He began to indulge her, to express that maybe she could just make that hour and a half drive back out to her home that night. But, no. It was late into the night, and by the time they got to The Homestead dawn would be but a whisper away and Hector would just need to get himself back into the city anyways. So, no, they would stay the night.
The tone on his last sentence didn't go unnoticed, and Lola swung the heavy metal door of the truck open as she said: "Yeah, alright."
Now it was difficult to shake the gloomy sense of impending doom that hung in the air thick like the spiritual energies that kept wafting across through the barrier that didn't quite want to do its job anymore. She made a physical effort to do so anyways, sucking in a deep breath that would fill her lungs and stretching her arms high above her head, fingers laced together and elbows locked upward, once she was outside of the truck. She dropped her head from one side to the other, popping her neck twice, then swung the door back closed and crossed to the front of the truck.
She had her hands in her pockets. She'd been reaching for the key to the room but hadn't finished the job yet, and was looking up at the sky.
When Hector rounded to join her, she sniffed a bit and dropped her eyes in his direction without moving her face from where it was aimed to the sky.
"You gonna be alright cooped up? The Moon, I mean...."
Hector Ghosh
At least inside the truck he couldn't look up at the sky. Buildings choked out the line of it and it is not a clear night. The stars are swept behind clouds. They move though and this high up from the sea they don't seem quite so thick. In time Luna will show her face and if Hector gazes on it he'll be back to where he is on a normal night.
And the young man has a good grasp of it for it burning so hot as it does but right now in the wake of combat at the side of his kinswoman its absence is a relief. With other girls he would feel a sense of anxiety perhaps at being so drained. She can handle herself though. Even when he steps in front of her Lola does not hide behind him.
So they leave the truck. He does not look up. Lola sniffs and looks to him and with the question he remembers how fat the moon still is. He grimaces like he'd completely forgotten but of course he hadn't. He was not born beneath the waning moon but it calls to him anyway. His stories are darker when it's like this and he thinks before he opens his mouth.
Now that grimace disappears and Hector holds his hand up to his brow like to shield his eyes from a noonday glare. He smiles, or tries to.
"I'll be alright. If you're not, I can go. It's okay."
Lola Hawkes
"I'm not worried about me, Hector."
The sentence comes out as kind of a lilt, and that was due to the moderate amusement behind it. She knew that Rage shouldn't be something taken lightly, but she was interested in it-- largely because she was promised she would have it fueling her through War but never got to experience it. She was drawn to it as a result, intrigued and almost comforted by it like the oppressing force of a Wolf with high Rage was more a protective presence than a dangerous one.
Smart, cautious Kinfolk knew better, and they left their Garou alone during their Moons, especially during the Full one.
Lola, though, was drawn in closer.
Granted, Hector had burned through his supply during combat. He found relief by exhausting the fuel in that ever-burning furnace until it burned as nothing more than a pilot light, a simmer just below the surface. He was easier to be around now than he had been in the past (the uncomfortable truck ride when she first picked him up from the train station, when he'd told her about Maria), more relaxed, but they both knew that could change at the drop of a hand shielding eyes from its place atop a brow.
"I'm more concerned about you. You gonna be alright, or are you gonna be all twisted up inside? If it were me, and it were my moon, I imagine I'd want to run until I couldn't and sleep under the sky." Again, she looked up at the moon, and looked almost wistful. "I'll be alright. I'm not worried about you taking my throat out in the middle of the night in a nightmare-induced Frenzy or anything like that."
Hector Ghosh
It goes both ways here: he is not used to humans, even Kinfolk, wanting to be around him when they know on the cognitive level that Lola knows he does not want to be inside. He does not want to be in the city even. That is inside enough for someone who prefers to see Nature around him as he lopes along in his wolf skin.
She says she's want to run and sleep under the sky and Hector laughs a sad half-a-laugh because he'd talked himself out of that. Came up with a more responsible course of action. Nowhere to run out here unless he leaves her alone and he isn't afraid to leave her alone but they are supposed to be a "we" until tomorrow morning. That was his call if not his word and Hector does not bow away from his words.
"Okay."
That ought to settle it. He goes on anyway.
"Not trying to sound corny or anything but I'd rather be with you tonight than running around the city."
Lola Hawkes
Finally, Lola retracted her hands from her pockets. She left the truck keys in one pocket, but her other hand came out with the room key. The key was attached to a small plastic tag with the room number carved into it.
"Be with me, huh?" She wagged her eyebrows at him, grinned, and stepped across the cement sidewalk that wrapped around the U-shaped motel building's front. She put the key in the doorknob, turned, and opened it up to step inside.
Inside the room was precisely what you would expect-- threadbare carpet in some bland and forgettable color, a bathroom immediately to the right, and the bed in the open space just beyond that. It was a queen sized bed, alone in the room with the headboard against the wall, and a simple television set set up on top of the dresser on the opposite wall. There was a mirror on one of the walls, and boring watercolor prints in frames here and there. The nightstands on either side of the bed each had a lamp, and one had a digital alarm clock, one of the cheap old brown plastic kinds.
Lola immediately took off her ball cap and tugged her hair free from its ponytail when she stepped into the room. The elastic band was snapped habitually around her wrist and the hat was tossed on top of the dresser. She promptly sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to untie her shoes. If she was going to crash for the night she may as well get comfortable about it.
"You can get in on that shower action if you want to."
Hector Ghosh
He hovers by the doorway once they've stepped in side. Doesn't have any interest in the art hung on the walls. As far as he's concerned the only things that matter are what lies outside their locus of control and the fate of the Caern to which he's sworn his allegiance and the pack he's taken on the burden of leading though really it was just Tamsin deciding not to go with Corey when Corey broke it off. The woman settling down on the edge of the single queen-sized bed in the room.
His back is to the door but he does not lean against it. The bathroom is a small affair and glares white through the doorway even with the lights turned off. Cheap appliances and even cheaper tiling.
In the light without his shirt on Hector looks more powerful than he does fully clothed. He looks gawky and childish wearing band t-shirts and flannel. And Lola knows he liked to walk around shirtless around his pack for the joking and the cat-calling and the ribbing that would transpire when Glen and Maria and Tamsin saw him strutting around like he was a much bigger deal than he actually was.
It was funnier when he was fresh out of his Rite of Passage because he was 18, 19 years old and couldn't grow the half-assed peach fuzz he wears now and unapologetic when he's too far from a proper bathroom to shave his face. Had no definition to his physique. He has made a point of not baring his flesh in front of Lola even from the moment he stepped off the train though and now that they're shut inside he's aware of the fact that he's half-nude in front of her.
"What, you trying to say I stink?" Humor is still a refuge for them. They both know he stinks. He's a boy. "I'll, uh. Yeah. Good idea."
He slips into the bathroom so fast he just about leaves a Hector-shaped cloud behind him. The door closes in his wake but the lock does not engage. He turns on the shower before he's had enough time to unlace his boots.
Lola Hawkes
"Nah. But you should be sweaty after fighting like you did." The first sneaker that she'd managed to unlace was tossed under the nightstand on the side of the bed on which she sat-- there it wasn't in danger of being tripped over in the darkness. Currently the room was plenty bright enough-- the stark light in the center of the ceiling was on. But there were no windows (save for the tiny one above the toilet in the bathroom), so the place was dark like a cave when the lights were out.
The second sneaker was flipped off and sent to join the other. She may have been about to say something more, but the bathroom door was smacking closed and Hector was gone behind it. After a second of thought, she laid back on the bed and took the remote from the nightstand and started flipping through channels.
Hector's given enough time to wash his hair and start at the rest of his body before there's a tapping at the door and it cracks open. Lola called from the crack generated in the door, through whatever steam had started to build in the enclosed space:
"Is it way too awkward if I talk to you while you're washing? There's nothing on the TV and my brain won't slow down."
Hector Ghosh
Hector might have washed his hair if they had encountered a beast that bled on them. The secret to healthy hair is not to strip it of its oils, man. He keeps that shit tied back if he thinks he might encounter danger. The band snapped when he shifted so the ends soak up water as he does whatever it is he does in there while Lola is on the bed occupying herself.
When the door cracks he isn't paying attention. Her voice jolts him out of wherever his mind went when he thought he was alone though. Through the opaque but form-blurring shower-stall door she can see the Galliard startle and nearly slip.
"HOLY--!" he says but then quiets down as Lola asks her question. Stands up on his tiptoes to peer at her over the metal frontier at the top of the door, confidence restored by the knowledge that he looks like his entire body has gone through an FCC censorship blur-out through the Formica.
The theatrics never stop around here.
"Uh... by 'talk to you' you mean 'stay fully clothed and sit on the sink or something while we discuss light, inconsequential things,' right?"
Lola Hawkes
She didn't flinch or fear when Hector startled and slipped a little in the shower. Even if he did whack his head (although she would feel bad for him) he would be just fine. He could heal things like bumps and bruises and cracked bones just by shifting. That was the grace of being a Garou. She just let her temple rest against the door frame and waited for a yay or a nay.
Instead, she got a question. It was answered with a low chuckle and, though Hector couldn't see, a single shouldered shrug. They met eyes over the metal top of the shower door, and she raised her eyebrows in question and bobbed her head toward the inside of the bathroom. If she got permission, she would slip inside but leave the door cracked open to let the steam out. She didn't like making bathrooms into saunas, it made her feel like she couldn't get enough oxygen after a while.
"Well, yeah, for the most part."
Except rather than sitting on the sink she sat on the closed toilet lid. The clothes definitely stayed on, and she leaned forward to comb her hair out with her fingers, taking the tangles and knots out with practiced plucks and pulls. She sat like this, leaned with her torso between her opened knees, hair flipped over in a dense black curtain that shrouded her face. From beneath it she kept on talking.
"I'm torn, Hector. I want to protect Forgotten Questions, but I want to stay and fight with you, with our Brothers. The two from tonight? They didn't have a damn thing to say about me being Kin. At that War Moot? They considered what I had to say. I'm part of this army, and now I've got Duty here too, you know?"
Hector Ghosh
And he didn't expect the most part to include her stripping and climbing in with him so before she even sits down Hector juts out his lower lip and nods his consent. If she leaves the door open it is of no consequence anymore. He'd closed the door in the first place so she didn't get a show as she lay on the made bed pretending to watch the news or The Weather Channel or whatever is playing this time of night.
That settled he rests on the flats of his feet again and the smell of cheap motel soap wafts up beneath the lukewarm water as he scrubs his skin. All of his rings and bracelets and necklaces are lain in a heap on the toilet tank. The only thing he hasn't removed is the captive bead through the helix of his ear.
Some silence as he thinks about what she's said. He rinses off before he comes up over the top of the shower again. Now his hair is flattened against his scalp and neck. Droplets run down his scalp and over his brow and cheeks. He'd blindly swiped off the growth of I-haven't-been-near-a-shower-
"It's not a black-and-white situation," he says. "If we're operating under the assumption that Beloved Horror targeted this Sept knowing that it's not a true Caern but still boasted a high concentration of Gaians and, being removed, means the Guardians would be weaker, and it would be easier to find the gaps in their armor, and cause division amongst the ranks and infighting and distraction and so on and so forth... like if that's what's going on right now, and Forgotten Questions has the same Elders and Kinfolk as it normally does where Cold Crescent is down like, twenty-thirty bodies..."
He holds up his right hand: "The more bodies from Forgotten Questions, the less bodies at Forgotten Questions, it's more susceptible to attack."
He holds up his left hand and lowers the right: "You're one of the strongest fighters Forgotten Questions has and if you come out here on their behalf then that means they have to pull fewer people from Forgotten Questions. Of course people are going to listen to you. You put down that Fomor with the thorns coming out of her body and kept me from getting my ass handed to me. You're kind of a badass."
Hector makes a weighing motion with both hands and then steps back down to clean up the rest of his face.
Lola Hawkes
When Hector popped the top half of his face up over the top of the shower door and started to talk, Lola turned her head so she was looking at him sideways, with her right ear aimed directly at the floor. She kept combing her fingers through her hair as he spoke, though the motions slowed so the sound of pulling dragging hair wouldn't hinder her ability to hear Hector's voice over the spray of the shower.
As he offered the 'left hand' side of the argument, she smiled genuinely to him, apparently a bit flattered by what he had to say.
"Oh stop. I have guns and a mean right hook, and that's plenty enough in a lot of situations. But I can't go Across. I can't heal like you guys can either. You bastards shake off bites and shrug off bullets.
"I'm not arguing that I'm not good at what I'm doing. I'm just saying-- there are others that they would probably want to send in. I think the Elders may at least hear me out, to an extent. Because of what my family's done, and what I've been doing. But I'm sure I won't be replacing anyone."
He disappeared back behind the shower door, and Lola flipped her hair back and sat up straight again. Her hair was a curtain, combed out and soft and clean from being washed in the shower earlier this morning. Eyes wandered over the jewelry on the back of the toilet for a second, then landed absent-mindedly on Hector's shape through the blurred shower door. Her back rested against the toilet tank and her hands came to rest on the tops of her thighs, left to rest for the moment.
"I think... I'll be back in town when I need to be. No more patrolling here, but I'll be back for planned things. I'm gonna help with what we talked about at the War Moot-- gonna try and see what happened in that apartment they were keeping that Fianna in. Try to figure out what's going on with those Beloved Horror Spirals, why they can do what they can do. I'll call up cousins, there's gotta be a Theurge in the family somewhere. I mean, they won't be Mom, but maybe they'll be close."
Maria and Lola's mother had been a Uktena Theurge. She was lost to a Great Slumbering Bane, out on a mission that her husband had argued her too old to handle. She was helping a Bane Tender keep the Great Terrible Thing sedated and deep below ground. She had sacrificed herself to ensure the monster didn't rise anytime soon. She would have been a great resource in knowing what was happening with Beloved Horror, but... alas.
Hector Ghosh
Instead of popping up over the side of the shower again the Galliard just finishes what he was doing while Lola talks. All a shower really is is rinsing bacteria and dirt from the skin. She can see he is not just standing under the water pretending to clean himself off. After he's done with his face he scrubs the coves of his body and squeezes the water out of his hair. Has no cognizance of the fact that her eyes land on him even if her attention is elsewhere.
They won't be Mom, but maybe they'll be close.
And the faucet squawks. He stands dripping behind the door a moment. No towel is nearby for him to snatch up. He didn't think that far ahead.
The Galliard pops the magnet holding the shower stall closed and leans his head out. He looks younger without the dark down on his face and his hair is slicked back off black as spilled ink and he wrinkles his nose. The desire to go to her when she's talking about her mother beaten back by his jaybird-like nakedness.
No words of comfort when she mentions her mother for he doesn't know what to say. Both of his parents are alive and well in San Jose. They think he's dead. They've thought he was dead since the day he didn't come home from school but they thought well... maybe he isn't dead, just someone picked him up, the cops will find him. He's a good kid, a little hyperactive, mouths off sometimes, isn't going to go to Harvard or anything but he wouldn't run away. If he was going to run away he'd go to one of his sisters. That's not running away.
Cops don't go looking for 17-year-olds regardless of their sex or ethnicity because they assume in the absence of compelling evidence that the young adult did in fact run away. He could have been a blond-haired white girl and gone missing the cops wouldn't have looked for him.
He was 20 years old before he let go of his parents enough to eat a cheeseburger for the first time. They are not Garou and he does not talk about them.
"Thanks, Lola," he says, and his countenance loses its uncertainty. "It's gonna be alright. Dancers aren't new. We'll get to the bottom of this."
Lola Hawkes
The Galliard's head poked out of the shower. He'd felt a twinge of sympathy for the young woman. She was older than he was, though not by any significant amount (a year? perhaps even just a little less?), but it was difficult sometimes for Garou to remember that Kinfolk might have more experience than them. Sometimes, just in the grand scheme of things, they seemed like things that needed protecting. After all, wasn't that a major topic in so many Moots? Who protects this Kinfolk now? Who do you need to go talk to if you want to even think about holding that Kinfolk's hand? So, though Lola had plenty of life experience under her belt (and so much left to still figure out at the same time, on the other hand), and although she had lost her parents a couple of years back, Hector still wanted to check on her and was kept from going to lay comfort upon her only by the fact that he was naked.
Lola appeared fine, though, when he looked out at her. She wasn't staring wistful or looking sad at the mention of her mother. Rather, she looked back at him, grinned just a bit and touched her own upper lip to indicate his newfound lack of a mustache. "I dunno, Hector, the facial hair kinda worked on you." She was teasing, of course, and stood from where she'd been seated.
A clean towel, rough but surprisingly absorbent, was snatched from the rack it had been hung from, and passed over to Hector where he peeked from between the shower door and the wall.
"Dancers aren't new, no. These ones? They were here before, but how they've come back, and what they're doing? That's new. Stopping a fucking minivan with your hand is pretty new."
She didn't hover, and instead went to the door, intending to give Hector privacy so he could dry off and put his dedicated pants back on. She'd paused long enough to add a thought before she stepped out into the motel room and shut the bathroom door behind her. That thought was:
"I am curious to know what would happen if I got a bullet in his eye socket, though."
Hector Ghosh
Since he'd planned on crashing here he's left his duffel bag in the closet. Nothing in it he can't survive without but it does contain changes of clothing. Things that aren't dedicated and will shred if he wears them out. Most of his clothing ends up shredded. She rarely sees the same t-shirt on him twice for how quickly he fucks up the things that he owns. Those jeans will fall apart within a year.
Hector tries and fails to suppress a smile at her assessment of what the scruff does for him. Turns into a tooth-bearing half-a-laugh that he doesn't give higher-ranked or lupus wolves. He's had his ass kicked enough times to know the rules but it isn't in his nature.
Like as not giving advice to someone as seasoned as she is isn't in his nature either but the Nation is waiting for him to step up and become a leader instead of floundering through the rest of his life as a Cliath. He takes the towel from her and wraps it around his hips so he can at least step out onto the towel like he's seeing her out of the door.
She's curious to know what would happen.
"Uh," he says and then does what he does best: blurting out the first thing that comes into his head. "I'd probably propose to you." Shit. Backpedal recovery! "On the spot and everything. And then it'd end up on the Internet, because we are surrounded by Glass Walkers, and they are bastards."
Lola Hawkes
The backpedaling, of course, was caught for exactly what it was. Lola raised her eyebrows at him through the half-closed door, quirked half of a grin at the corners of her mouth, and the door latched closed.
"Don't apologize for something that hasn't happened," he says.
When Hector was good and ready to leave the bathroom he'd find that Lola had somehow managed to change clothes-- halfway, at least. The tank-top was still the same, but her jeans and socks had been shed and replaced with a pair of basketball shorts. She'd been alternating between these and some shorter running shorts to sleep in for the past few days. They were clean enough, just a bit crumpled and lived in. She was settled on the bed because, well, it was the only piece of furniture in the cheap motel room. She had two of the four pillows propped up behind her and was sitting up leaned back against the headboard with the pillows to cushion her back.
The television wasn't on, she'd given that up. She was still staring at it, though, somewhere in the middle-distance within that blank black screen. Her knees were up, bare toes on top of the comforter, and her forearms rested atop her knees. The posture wasn't the most feminine thing, but who cared?
When Hector walked out, hair wet and face clean, wearing whatever it was he intended to clothe himself in, Lola's head twitched in his direction but her eyes didn't quite follow just yet-- they stayed unfocused for the time being.
"I've got a question for ya. It's gonna put you on the spot, and I'm sorry in advance for that."
Hector Ghosh
He isn't in there any longer than he needs to be. Long enough to get the water off his legs and out from between his toes so he doesn't track it everywhere. Slings the damp towel up on the rack so it will try. Makes sure he hasn't left hair on the soap.
Though Lola is on the bed he carries on with his night like they're roommates and she's just sitting there watching something brain-numbing and welcome on the television. But it isn't on. Not until Hector crouches down and yanks his bag out of the closet so he can stash his jewelry and find something to sleep in does she speak. Her eyes don't focus.
His do. They widen actually and he stands up having abandoned whatever he was going for in his duffel bag. The expression on his face is somewhere between amused and terrified.
They were in her kitchen, the first time he came by to give her pot and bourbon and a secondhand book her sister had bought for Hector to commemorate their anniversary as packmates and tease him for not speaking Spanish. The kin-fetch talen. He'd lied in that omission-of-information way of his when she asked if he had ulterior motives that day.
He'd apologized in advance for any mess that Jack might make, in the wake of the incident at the White ranch. And she said what he says now:
"That just means you know it shouldn't happen but intend to let it happen anyways."
Lola had not been kidding that day. Hector kids. An attempt to soften the blow of whatever spotlight she's about to aim at him but he has no idea what she's about to say.
Lola Hawkes
He was quoting something she'd almost forgotten she said to him, and that drew her attention more sharply onto Hector. Eyes cleared free of the clouds of thought, and she looked at the Galliard with mild surprise before smiling. The expression curled and softened her face without showing teeth, and she settled back more comfortably into the pillows behind her. Arms stayed up on her knees, except they were balanced by the wrists now rather than the elbows.
"Touché," she offered, clearly pleased with his summoning her own words back from the impossibly detailed depths of his memory to play back at her.
He still looked very nervous, so she didn't make him wait any longer for her to continue.
"I'm not the most... romantically inclined woman, I guess you could say. I don't know how to approach these things or handle them. But that doesn't make me ignorant or blind, and Hector, I know you know that too. You're not ignorant either.
"I know you're trying to respect my space and be a gentleman and all of that, but this game of pussyfooting around the topic of 'us' and what we are, or could be, or want to be, or will be? Our lives are both probably way too short for that bullshit. So my question to you comes in two parts:
"Are you going to make your move? And if it ends up just... not meshing. If the chemistry doesn't really seem to be there... Are you gonna be bitter about it?"
Oh Lola. So forward.
Hector Ghosh
"Was that the whole thing, or...?"
Yes, Hector.
The Galliard stands with his back to the corner. He doesn't intend to make himself look smaller or harmless or young but with the room encroached by shadow where the overhead bulb doesn't reach and his chest still bare and his stupid puppy-dog eyes all wide with thinking he could guess what was coming and not knowing what to do if it happened - he at least looks harmless.
But she knows better. If he had glanced up at the moon tonight he'd be an exposed nerve. He would be bristling and choking back raw answers and if he weren't trying to respect her space and be a gentleman and all of that Lola like as not would not have wound up in the bathroom with him in the first place.
If he were teeming with that Rage that burns hot as it does because he was there when half his pack died because of something he thinks is his fault then she was right. He would be out burning it off somehow. Getting into a fight with someone twice his size or picking up a nameless older twenty-something with loose morals and an appetite for cute boys with soulful eyes who don't drink when they go to bars.
Now that the question is asked Hector relaxes and visibly. Doesn't come out of the corner yet but he does breathe again.
"Nah," he says. "If it isn't there it's not worth getting angry about. Things would just go on the way they are now, but without me being all. You know."
He makes a borderline-incomprehensible gesture with his hands encompassing her like she's very close to him though she's across the room on the bed and he's frowning and baring his teeth like oh shit what am I supposed to do and this is how he tells stories when people are actually expecting a story out of him. Uses his whole stupid body. His hair is a prop at Moots.
So he drops it.
"And I was waiting for you to be like 'Ugh Hector you're such a babe when are you going to stop being a pussy.' Last time I kissed you without warning you first you were like--" He throws up his hands and waves them around. "--'the Litany, motherfucker, do you speak it?'"
Lola Hawkes
This, more than anything, was why she asked if he would be bitter if things didn't quite work out. Hector had always been pretty easy to talk with and get along with. Maria's pack had, by one extension or another, felt like family. Like a substitute for a pack that she could have had but never got to. She shoved and rough housed with Corey, she was comfortable enough with Tamsin to hug and catch up and talk easily about everything on her mind. Hector she never felt worried about how he would react to what she had to say. She didn't have to fear repercussions or bruised feelings when being frank and honest with him.
She liked his companionship quite a bit. She was just worried that this thing without a label might not even be entirely romantic-- that they were figuring it was supposed to be since he was a Garou and she was a Kinfolk and they were both of the same Tribe and knew each other and he was her Guardian (technically) and... Well, those blocks all fell into place. It was downright textbook. That was how it was supposed to be, but was it how it was? That's what she sought to find out.
So when he said he'd been waiting on her she chortled some and shook her head at him. She clucked her tongue, disapproving but still in good humor, and explained:
"Man, I'm terrible at this and even I know that's not how it works. I've read books and seen movies. It's not a 'wait for the permission slip to be signed' kind of a deal. It's a testing waters thing. And last time, I'll have you know, I wasn't trying to shut your ass down necessarily. I was just making sure you weren't one of those Wolves who lives by the code strongly enough that just because he climbed the mountain he thinks he needs to put a flag in it and build a moat, you know?"
Hector Ghosh
From where she sits Lola can see he's about to fire back with something throwaway and glib but as he's opening his mouth to do it he sees that this is actually something she gives a shit about. He doesn't know a hell of a lot about the world or how it or the people who live in it work but he recognizes at least that he knows very little.
Knows more about the Wyrm than some of the Elders around here. No one has asked why that is. He's Uktena. That's reason enough.
And the rest of the Nation has to assume that she is his. Flat-out. Not that he is her tribesman or that they share anything but that she is an extension of him by virtue of her being female and Kin. He doesn't describe her like that. When Hector describes her she is the last bastion of a line that has guarded the Bawn for generations. A Serpent-killing machine. She's so great.
Anyone else would have gone soft over her too but plenty of other wolves would have gone for her loaded for bear. He's happy just spending time with her, so long as he ignores what his insides are doing.
Hector rakes his damp hair back from his face and sighs and lopes over to the bed where she sits. Sits down not directly next to her but on the edge of the mattress.
"I'm... with the what are we thing, I mean it matters to me but the fact that it matters to you the way that it does, I wanted to hang back until I thought..."
He sighs again and looks back at her.
"Fuck it." He scoots back on the mattress so he's sitting next to her but it isn't a settled thing. "If it's calculus or something instead of chemistry just push me off the bed."
When Hector puts his hand at the back of her head this time it's to hold her still while he leans across the mattress and kisses her not to shut himself up but because he's wanted to again since she stopped him the last time.
Lola Hawkes
Hector had a knee-jerk reaction of greeting things thrown his way with humor-- be it snarky, genuinely amused, or dark. She could see the wit rolling about in his mind, building up on his tongue, but then he swallowed it back and pushed his wet hair away from his face, slicking it back along the curve of his skull instead. His clean-limbed stride carried him over to the bed and he sat on the same side of the mattress that she occupied. They weren't hip-to-hip, he wasn't crowding her, just sitting with his feet on the floor still and a shoulder pointed in her direction.
He explained himself, or began to at least. Soon, though, his words trailed off and he hefted a heavy breath of... what? Exhaustion? Cleansing? Resolve? He faced her, scooted nearer, and went for it.
Lola was ready and waiting.
If she were a creature more coy, one would think this was her plan all along.
If she were a creature more coy, one would think this was her plan all along.
His hand, free of jewelry for a rare moment, cupped the back of her head firmly enough to keep her still and pressed his mouth to his. The Kinswoman answered, pressing to discover more. Her mouth softened to his, lips parting enough to offer invitation. She loosely held the forearm that carried the hand he had in her hair, and the other hand was still, uncertain for a moment before feeling him out, first finding his chest then sweeping up past his neck to touch the ends of his still-wet hair.
This was a journey both physical and emotional. She wanted to be certain, to know her reactions to him and have an idea if this could, would, should be right.
Hector Ghosh
Hector rarely has to guess what Lola is thinking because she speaks the way she shoots: straight and without flinching.
Of all the things they've spoken of recently the only things that give her pause are the state of the city and the state of their relationship. Even if they discover they have no physical spark and stay friends they exist in a dyad. But she knows because Hector struggles not to disguise the truth as jest that he feels for her more strongly than he would feel for her if they truly were friends.
But their friendship and his feelings trip him up every time because definitions are not his thing. Lola needs to know exactly what is happening when it is happening because surprises could jeopardize her birthright. Waiting for the Garou to sort their elbows from their asses and definitely end the threat that has already rocked the mistake that was the Spire-Sept is bad enough.
He is not stupid enough to think she has been waiting for him but it would not surprise him if she had been. They're both Uktena. If they are not actually conniving little freaks they can at least keep up the appearance in public.
None of the surprise that met him in the kitchen that day during the storm and he is not tense and close to retreat when he eclipses her. His free hand comes across her lap to rest on the mattress beside her and he leans his weight on it. Muscles spring up in his back and his anchoring arm, his neck. Transient living and physical exertion and a slew of Hindu-by-way-of-California dietary restrictions - he doesn't consume cow flesh or milk, he doesn't eat pork, he doesn't eat fast food or high fructose corn syrup or refined sugar or or or - have left the young Galliard stringy but strong. No hair on his chest and she cannot feel the hot-hot burn of Rage within him like she would have on a normal night.
He shivers when she slides her hand up his torso.
The kiss is soft in its nascency and when she joins him Hector draws a hard breath through his nostrils but does not surge ahead like a pheromone-dizzy teenager. Nothing about the kiss is juvenile. She is thinking of what it does and ought to and might mean. If Hector is thinking he keeps quiet about it for a change. He winds his fingers into her hair and kisses her deeper and kneads the back of her neck like flesh and not like dough.
Lola Hawkes
There were seldom times in Lola's young life where she'd found herself in a situation deemed romantic. She's had awkward teenage fumblings, of course, and a short-lived fling with one Wolf who passed through the Sept, but that was all. Aside from those two specific instances, all other 'romantic encounters' she's had were advances that she'd fended off. She was approached every so often by a Garou that didn't know better, and they would try to sweet talk her or show off for her. It didn't impress, and so it never worked. That one poor Silent Strider that had seized a kiss away got hit hard, and he didn't try again.
So here on the bed, with Hector's strong and lean arm on the bed beside her to support his weight overtop of her, with his fingers in her hair and rubbing at her neck, she was on unfamiliar ground. She didn't know where her hands ought to go, anyplace she thought of putting them didn't seem quite right. He kissed her more deeply, and so she closed her eyes and rolled her tongue to his.
The kiss was nice, it made a small stir within her, and the fingers rubbing at her neck through her hair actually felt quite nice. Hector wasn't clumsy-- hell, he seemed better at this than she did. But even so, with his mouth on hers and his naked torso leaned over her, with the smell of him and cheap motel soap in her nostrils... She had no idea what to do.
That, the uncertainty in and of itself, brought her to her conclusion.
She tipped her head forward so her forehead touched to his. This caused their mouths to part, but in a gentler and less abrupt way than simply pulling back and leaving him hanging. She would give him a second to adjust to the change, to catch his breath if need be. The hand that had touched his chest and moved on up to settle uncertainly against his shoulder brushed his wet hair back from his face in a broad stroke of the palm, and she smiled at him.
The expression wasn't wistful and enchanted.
It was perfectly clear, and borderline apologetic.
"I'm sorry," she said in a quiet voice, just a touch breathy (but not husky, mind you) and soft considering the typical edge and energy to her tone on any given day. "I think it's geometry."
Hector Ghosh
And he knows what she's going to say when she pulls back from him. Doesn't take the sting away but if he hadn't come over here and kissed her they would have never answered the question lurking in the back of her mind, head reared whenever Hector dropped a clause that gave away the fact he thinks of her in the way she does not think of him.
His eyes are closed and she sees they stay that way until she starts to talk. Trying to catch his breath with his heart already slamming harder than hers. He who can stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and talk at the top of his voice and reenact stories of hot blood and lunacy and oily darkness without feeling the physical effects, only losing his breath at the end for the anger welled up inside of him.
This does not anger him. He cannot lie worth a damn and he did not lie to her earlier. Disappointment does not come into the darkness of his eyes when Hector does open them. Still so close she can smell the ghost of unscented toothpaste on his breath and the unnatural motel soap on his skin.
"It's okay," he says and his voice is low as hers. A bit choked for the part of him that reacted to her leaning into the kiss. He'll calm down. Until then or until she pulls away entirely he leaves his forehead against hers. "Geometry sucks anyway."
Lola Hawkes
Patient wasn't a word that came to mind when you thought about Lola Hawkes. But it was advice that her father had imparted upon her often, and with him gone and her resentment for his fleeing this mortal coil so soon after her mother drained dry and grown stale with age, his words were now recalled for the wisdom that they carried rather than the frustration that they caused.
Then:
"Look, with the moon and everything, this timing is awful. I wanted to know what this--" and a finger lifted from her hard, muscle-toned stomach to gesture quickly between their two bodies, "--was, but I should've probably found a better night for that. It was a dick move on my part, Hector."
She was startled, and this was reflected in the rounding of her eyes and the quick upward jerk of her eyebrows to form an expression of surprise. She was taken aback-- where the hell did that come from?
Almost immediately the surprise was replaced with something harder, and in a move of what some may call sheer idiocy (way to provoke) she reached up and smacked Hector's cheek.
The strike was quick without being hard or damaging. It wasn't nearly enough to rock his jaw or turn his head, but the way that her three fingers landed on his cheek was sharp and made a smack!sound on impact.
Again there was a shutter-snap of reaction-- quick apology, regret, what-the-hell-did-i-just-do-
"No, Hector, you stop. Just because you lived doesn't mean you fucked up. Would you rather you and Tamsin be dead too?"
"I don't know how to help you. I think it's something you need to do yourself. Maybe you need to talk to a Spiritualist? Or an Elder, would probably be better. But what you're doing now to cope clearly isn't working. And you owe it to you and her to make it work."
But the solid glare full of hot anger that was terribly impotent in comparison to even the sliver of Rage that remained in the man before her.
A couple dozen seconds ticked by before she stopped chewing her tongue, unfolded her arms, and held her fingers splayed and still at her sides. She was trying to be calm, but the balance between mellow and supportive wasn't one that Lola had learned how to keep just yet.
So, instead of being the rock in the storm for her Garou when she spoke, Lola was more like an unhelpful lighthouse that was blinding the skipper captain instead of guiding it to shore.
"Then do nothing about it. Just be pent up and snap at the handful of people that care about you out of fuckin' nowhere. Just tryin' to help, and you're doin' nothing but throwin' it in my face. What the fuck do you want me to do, huh?"
There was quiet for a while, Hector at the desk and Lola standing in place. Finally she raked her fingers back through her hair, twisted that mass of black into a knot near the nape of her neck, and secured it with the elastic she kept around her wrist. She was level again when she finally broke the silence.
"I didn't think that you needed the apology. I just thought you deserved it. I am sorry I smacked you, though. Don't tell me off for apologizing for that."
Be patient with him, he had told her many times before.
Now she was old enough to put it into practice. At least, in this moment she was.
She heard the depth of Hector's voice and knew where it came from still. She sensed from how he breathed and how warm his forehead was to hers that his pulse was probably still erratic, and internally she flinched some to remember the moon overhead and how poor Hector was probably doing. Everything that Fate dictated should happen (same Tribe, a opposite sexes, a Kin and a Garou, this should work) wasn't going to, but that revelation didn't downplay any of the comradery or care that she had for the Galliard.
So, slowly, in the show of patience we just mentioned, Lola put her hands on either side of Hector's head and held it from moving forward along with her when she moved her head back. Her forehead parted from his, her breath stopped mingling together with his own. He was still leaned over her, hand braced on the mattress near her hip, but she didn't push him off or insist that he budge. Instead she took her hands from his head, folded them together over her stomach, and rested her head against the headboard of the bed once more.
"That's what they tell me." She never studied geometry, after all.
Then:
"Look, with the moon and everything, this timing is awful. I wanted to know what this--" and a finger lifted from her hard, muscle-toned stomach to gesture quickly between their two bodies, "--was, but I should've probably found a better night for that. It was a dick move on my part, Hector."
This was followed, in all sincerity, by: "You should take the bed tonight. It'll be a show of accepting my apology. Please."
Hector Ghosh
Slowly, she urges him back. And Hector swallows and nods even though she doesn't say anything. Okay. It's over. They don't have to open that door again. That door will cease to exist given enough time. His muscles may be that of a warrior's but his spirit is still a pliable young thing. He's more resilient than he looks. This won't leave a scar even where Lola can't see it.
But she doesn't push him off the bed like he'd told her to but he swings his arm back over her and swings his feet onto the carpet. Doesn't mean to give her his back but that was where he was a moment ago. No easy segue for them here and Lola takes responsibility for this. Them. The exploration of it. Hector swipes a hand down his face and rakes his hair back but he left the band he uses to bind it back in the bathroom and then she tells him she's apologizing.
Luna still calls to him though he would not look at her and he's trapped in this city and cannot run through the forests with the wind whipping at him with his brothers and sisters with him for he was there when his brother fell and he was there when his sister fell and his other brother left them and he had to come back here and all of that bubbles under his skin all the time because he thinks he can go through life joking about everything.
For the first time tonight he shows he is just as affected by the night as the rest of his brethren are. He draws a hard breath and his nostrils flare and he's not even close to frenzying but that struck something in him.
"God, Lola, stop. We might not have had another time, man." Before she can answer him Hector takes a hard left that she can't see coming because this is what he does, he blurts shit out without thinking first: "We wouldn't even be having this conversation right now if I hadn't fucked up in Winnipeg. This is so not something you did wrong, alright?"
Lola Hawkes
The Kinswoman is always aware of the moon phase. Any smart Kinfolk was, especially if they dealt with Garou on a regular basis. It was damn near daily that Lola was interacting with her Changing Cousins, and a part of her traditionally appointed duties as a Hawkes family member and self-proclaimed Protector of the Sept of Forgotten Questions that she know when the Moots were. So, of course she knew that the gibbous moon was shrinking back toward half in the sky tonight. That's already been evidenced.
But even still... Even though she knew the moon had Hector's nerves stretched tight as can be and though she knew she put him under additional stress, she fails to respond calmly and patiently (sorry, Dad) when he whips about and snaps at her about the loss of his pack.She was startled, and this was reflected in the rounding of her eyes and the quick upward jerk of her eyebrows to form an expression of surprise. She was taken aback-- where the hell did that come from?
Almost immediately the surprise was replaced with something harder, and in a move of what some may call sheer idiocy (way to provoke) she reached up and smacked Hector's cheek.
The strike was quick without being hard or damaging. It wasn't nearly enough to rock his jaw or turn his head, but the way that her three fingers landed on his cheek was sharp and made a smack!sound on impact.
Hector Ghosh
Hector flinches not because he couldn't have predicted that would be her reaction but because the impact is so loud for not hurting. They have only known each other in a peripheral sense for three years. In a more intimate sense since the end of the spring. She play-fought with he and Corey all the time and never worried she would anger either of them. Yet he has never done anything to piss her off so badly that she attacked him.
One would think he'd stop making comments like that after Tamsin attacked him but grief and guilt don't work like that. Most of the time he doesn't talk about it at all. It's hard to tell he thinks the world would have been better off if he had been the one who died that day and not the other two when he never comes right out and says it.
Unfortunately for him Lola isn't stupid and she isn't self-centered. She picks up on his meaning and she lashes out at it and he doesn't flare up in the aftermath though he does get to his feet and turn to face her. Looks more startled and wounded by the presence of that huge mattress between them than he had by the slap to his face.
And he doesn't answer right away even though she knows what he would say if he were going to just toss one back at her. Breathes hard through his nostrils and rakes his hand through his wet hair again and looks away from her but can't find anything to look at that doesn't piss him off. Crappy water colors and ugly wallpaper and that stupid sleeping television. He has to look at her eventually and she can see he doesn't want to because he's half naked still and he's not covered in distracting jewelry and talking about this is upsetting him but he isn't trying to leave because he wasn't lying when he said he'd rather be with her tonight than out there. Even if being with her means they're arguing.
"Leave Tamsin out of this," he says.
Lola Hawkes
"I'm not gonna."
Her answer was flat and simple. Matter of fact. His eyes hunted for other things to focus on because he didn't like how Lola had lashed out at him for his reflexive and sudden guilt. Everything pissed him off, though, so he stopped staring at the mattress that had served as a sudden barrier between him and his Kinswoman, he stopped looking at the bland and boring decorations because the reminded him where he was and where he wasn't. Instead, he finally looked at Lola.
Her eyes hadn't budged while his were wandering. She was looking at him the whole time, her mouth a hard and unapologetic line on a face that was stern and concerned both.
"I'm no packmate, I'm no Maria substitute. I know that. But I have a right to be invested in you and Tamsin and your pack. If you keep this up, this self-blame and pent up repression shit? You'll lose her. Or she'll lose you. And it won't be anything glorious, either, it'll just leave one gone and another climbing that ladder down the slow sucking hole of Depression.Her answer was flat and simple. Matter of fact. His eyes hunted for other things to focus on because he didn't like how Lola had lashed out at him for his reflexive and sudden guilt. Everything pissed him off, though, so he stopped staring at the mattress that had served as a sudden barrier between him and his Kinswoman, he stopped looking at the bland and boring decorations because the reminded him where he was and where he wasn't. Instead, he finally looked at Lola.
Her eyes hadn't budged while his were wandering. She was looking at him the whole time, her mouth a hard and unapologetic line on a face that was stern and concerned both.
Hector Ghosh
He laughs like this is the most ridiculous thing he's heard tonight and lifts a hand up to scrub his face. Across the mattress she can see his heart is starting to race because he starts to breathe harder to try and compensate for it. Because now that he's pressed her down twice to kiss her she knows what happens to his body when he starts to get worked up. Because he knows how to control himself and even if he's struggling tonight he's still managing.
But so many things she says would have sparked an interruption if he didn't respect her enough to finish: the notion that he wanted her to replace Maria, that he's blaming himself, that Tamsin is going to leave him, that he needs to talk to an Elder, that there's anything wrong for him to have to cope with in the first place.
"Yeah, because that's what we need to be focusing on right now," he says. His tone is sardonic and it doesn't wear well on him. He may be flippant but sarcasm is the realm of the damaged and the discontent and he has not revealed himself to be either of those things thus far. For everything that's happened in the last four years he's normally pretty happy. "Not the Dancers with the weird powers or the fact that the urban Elders are completely useless. Or the Fomori church. Or anything important. Let's talk about our feelings. The Ritemaster will be so happy to have something important to deal with. Oh, sweet Gaia, a Cliath who gets sad and angry sometimes because his pack died horribly right in front of him and it's pretty much his fault! I haven't seen one of those in ages!"
Lola Hawkes
The Galliard's sarcasm is clearly not appreciated. He's right to use it, he's absolutely correct to be frustrated and angry and full of tension that he's not able to release because Lola doesn't want him that way and because he can't tear the room apart with his claws because of the dumb Veil and the stupid Litany that protected it. Even though Lola understood Hector's right to be angry and snappish at her, she still flushed at her face and neck and her strong arms drew tighter over her chest. The muscles in her bare shoulders flexed, and she stood up a little more rigid.
Her jaw worked over her tongue, chewing on words that she wasn't going to spit out because to do so would be hasty and spiteful and cause more damage than harm.But the solid glare full of hot anger that was terribly impotent in comparison to even the sliver of Rage that remained in the man before her.
Hector Ghosh
"I don't know!" He throws his arms out at his sides and more spine into his voice so he sounds what he thinks one ought to sound like when one is angry. Doesn't know how to have an argument that doesn't end in throwing punches. He isn't an arguer. Arguments aren't entertaining and nobody ever learns anything from them. "Let's try raising our voices a little more so people in the other rooms can hear us!"
Their roles reversed, he would have been a rock. He isn't a voice of reason or an heir to anything. He also isn't looking for something to destroy right now. Wasn't reacting to anything other than the slap and the arrows of anger lobbed at him after the slap. As he looks across the bed at her the thought occurs to him and splashes across his face that he is being an asshole. Wasn't just his pack that ended that night. He doesn't keep his voice raised but he doesn't go to her, either. Not until he's sure she isn't going to sock him one.
So he runs his fingers through his hair for the third time in the last however-many minutes and plants his hands on his half-bare hips.
"And you could try not apologizing for something you didn't do wrong. Like..." He takes his hands off his hips. "What, you think I'm that big a neanderthal that you not wanting to... whatever... with me was something you had to feel bad about? I get rejected all the time. I eat rejection for breakfast! You're my friend, dickhead, I wasn't..."
Only now he's upset and she's glowering at him and it isn't her apology that's the issue but how he reacted to her apology in the first place. The out-of-nowhere half-assedly veiled pronouncement that oh it wasn't her fault, if he'd gotten killed in Winnipeg instead of Glen and Maria things would be great.
Which... was... apologizing for something he didn't do wrong.
Oh.
Hector hauls the chair back away from the cheap writing table in the corner of the room and drops himself into it.
Lola Hawkes
There will be humor to be found here later. They'll joke about how they argued like a married couple, and even used the trademark line about raising their voices so the neighbors could hear. It will be funny to look back on their bickering in that motel room, when the potential for romance was abandoned and instead they sank into the sort of behaviors that people facing their twentieth marriage anniversary displayed. From kissing to arguing, all in the span of a minute.
Hector was on the defensive. He felt that Lola's reaction to his grief and scolding her for apologizing was out of line.
Lola was also on the defensive. She felt that Hector's sudden snap to the tragedy in Winnipeg was both unnecessary and worrisome.
In her mind, she was trying to help. She was realizing now that she went about it in precisely the wrong way-- she shouldn't have tried to snap him out of his grieving like she did, even though she considered the smack to be harmless and more of an attention-grabber than anything-- like tossing water on a hysterical person. She especially shouldn't have put the distance between them that she did, as that seemed to hurt him more than anything else. It sent the message that she thought he would get violent with her. She assumed he would know better, that she wasn't afraid of him hurting her, that she was confident she could handle him even if he did lose his temper.
So he half-yelled at her because that's what arguments sounded like, then he talked himself in a bit of a circle before realizing that he was mad at her for doing the same thing that he was doing right now. That realization took the wind out of his sails, and he dropped himself into a poorly constructed chair that went with the similarly cheap writing desk in the corner. Lola stayed standing on her bare feet, toes curled into the threadbare carpet. Her arms were still wrapped snug around her chest, but his backing away from the argument allowed her temper to stop flaring and her hackles to smooth. She almost always accepted a fight ending when the other party didn't want to participate anymore. She wasn't a bully, just a bruiser.Hector was on the defensive. He felt that Lola's reaction to his grief and scolding her for apologizing was out of line.
Lola was also on the defensive. She felt that Hector's sudden snap to the tragedy in Winnipeg was both unnecessary and worrisome.
In her mind, she was trying to help. She was realizing now that she went about it in precisely the wrong way-- she shouldn't have tried to snap him out of his grieving like she did, even though she considered the smack to be harmless and more of an attention-grabber than anything-- like tossing water on a hysterical person. She especially shouldn't have put the distance between them that she did, as that seemed to hurt him more than anything else. It sent the message that she thought he would get violent with her. She assumed he would know better, that she wasn't afraid of him hurting her, that she was confident she could handle him even if he did lose his temper.
Hector Ghosh
"Is that what that was? I thought a window blew open."
Now that she is out of his line of sight the Galliard addresses the wall across the room from the desk. The corner where he'd been standing when she called him out on his refusing to act. Before she'd done it she'd apologized. She's apologized for three different things tonight and Hector has taken the blame for something of his own but not issued so stark a show of contrition as that. He isn't asking for absolution because the closest he has come to owning up to this sickness in the center of him is to imitate the Sept's ranking spirit-talker.
Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness.
He sits in the chair and the spark has gone out of his voice. He teases her the same as he always has but more than deflated he sounds shaky. When one's blood boils only a few things will let off the steam and he will not run through the city alone tonight and he is not lying with anyone tonight and he cannot break anything or scream and he doesn't look like he's about to cry.
"I, um..."
Hector frowns and drums his fingers against the chair arms. Sounds tired where before he had sounded wound up. Like a fuse blew in his brain.
"I'm gonna go back in the bathroom. And, uh, use up the rest of the hot water because I don't know when I'm going to get a shower again after this and it's got really good pressure. When I come back out we can pretend that--" He fans out his fingers and indicates the bed without actually looking over at her. "--wasn't a thing that happened, or we can talk about it, or... I can leave. Whatever you want. But, uh. Yeah."
With that he hefts himself out of the chair and goes back into the bathroom. For the second time he shuts the door but does not lock it. It sounds like he says something (Hey, girl...) to the shower but with the door muffling his voice it could be one of the neighbors. Hector is insane, though. He could be talking to the goddamn shower.
Lola Hawkes
His jokes were flat, without humor. He sat in the chair for a while longer, then announced that he was going to go stand under hot water until it ran out because he didn't know for sure when he'd get a hot shower again. They could either pretend that nothing happened or talk about it when he was done, that was a decision that he was leaving up to her.
As he stood and went into the bathroom, again not locking the door, Lola's eyes followed him. She wore an expression that was both sad and conflicted, but made no motion to stop him.
His shower would go interrupted, however long that may be. He might be able to hear the motel room door open and close a small succession of times from the bathroom, depending on whether his head was under the flow from the shower head or not. By the time he finishes and exits the bathroom, he'll find the motel room empty. The room key is left on the desk, as well as a note. It's written in pencil, and looks like it was erased a couple of times where she wasn't satisfied with the original sentence written.
Hector,
Went out for a walk around. Felt cooped up, didn't like waiting around.
I don't know if we should talk about this or not.
I don't know if we should talk about this or not.
I don't know how to help you grieve.
I'm not good at this shit.
The room's paid, the key's here so you can come and go if you want. You get the bed, and I'll steal a pillow and use the floor if the door's unlocked when I get back.
If you leave, don't worry. I have my truck. I can go home.
If you leave, don't worry. I have my truck. I can go home.
Come see me at Homestead when you want. You're not unwelcome. Let's not break up.
--Lola
Hector Ghosh
Whatever he does while she is gone remains as much a secret as everything else he hasn't blurted out yet.
And forever long it takes for Lola to come back to the room, Hector waits. The truck sits where she left it and the key is tucked into the pocket of his jeans. He will be sitting on the concrete breezeway with his back against the cheap concrete exterior of the motel. Still in his dedicated jeans, wearing a black t-shirt with the yellow Wu-Tang Clan logo on it, barefoot, hair tied back, jewelry off his person.
For a time he will be able to distract himself by writing in a cousin to the leatherbound journal she's caught him scribbling in on past visits. It and a pencil and a battered copy of Tolkien's The Silmarillion will be at his side by the time she gets back but he hasn't cracked it open because he was flipping through entries he'd written months ago. Anecdotes about people who are ashes now.
Stories of dogs stalking the places where their companions used to go haunt him. Corey had read aloud a story about some dog in Japan that did that and Hector couldn't understand why the Glass Walker felt the need to share that shit. He hates hearing about animals hanging around subway station or gravestones like they have nowhere else to go with their friends gone. No idea what hanging around is supposed to accomplish anyway. A gravestone can't keep anyone company.
At least a dog pining for its owner is a message and a memory. People cry over images like that. No one cries for fallen Garou or their lost-ass packmates. No honor or wisdom in hurling oneself into Harano because one did what one is supposed to do in the wake of defeat and survived.
Tucked into the journal is the note she left him. He is a fucking lorekeeper, a historian. His mind is sharper than it appears it ought to be. But he's been puzzling over the note for however long she's been gone and when Lola comes back he gets to his feet but doesn't say anything. He's said plenty enough already.
Like We'll get you on the road bright and early.
And I'd rather stay with you than run around the city tonight.
And You're my friend, dickhead.
Lola Hawkes
Lola wasn't gone very long, really. She wasn't taking herself away on a full patrol, she didn't plan to get into trouble. It was very late, or very early in the morning if you wanted to look at it that way instead. She was tired, and simply didn't have the patience to play hero anymore this evening. She made her way around the neighborhood, paused at a convenience store to buy an over-salted chunk of beef jerky and a bottle of water, and made her way back to the motel room.
Hector would have been waiting outside for perhaps forty minutes before Lola returned. She'd changed back into her jeans, unwilling to wander the city in pajamas, but her hair was left down and unbound. She'd since finished the jerky she bought, but the water bottle was still largely full. She conserved it out of habit. When she was out patrolling the Bawn border she didn't want to carry too much water, so she was accustomed to using less so she could justify not having to carry more than two bottles with her on a good, cool day.
Hector stood up when she started crossing the crumbling tar parking lot, and Lola raised her eyebrows some, but didn't break or change the stride of her approach. Rather, she came to a smooth, natural stand nearby him, up on the sidewalk in front of the room, and held out the water bottle in an offering to share.
"Hey," was her greeting. "I'd figured you'd have gone to sleep."
Hector Ghosh
"I thought about it."
When she offers it he takes the sweating plastic bottle and unscrews the cap and slugs back a mouthful. If he went for a walk while she was gone Hector was mindful of the fact that she would return and did not look up. He likes to think himself in control of his Rage but he could barely stand being inside that small room with the gaudy decorations when he was near enough to drained to pass for an angst-ridden bad boy if he were to pass a normal human on the street.
If he had looked up at Luna while she was gone he would not be here right now. Doesn't mean he's any calmer. That would have required him doing something to burn it off. After the draught Hector screws the cap back onto the bottle and hands it back to her.
"But then I saw your note."
Nice segue, Hector.
"I just..." His eyes flick sideways before coming back to her and he lets a hard breath out. The guy can solve the New York Times Sunday edition of the crosswords puzzle without breaking a sweat and yet this is the part that puzzled him: "Let's not break up?"
Lola Hawkes
She looked a little puzzled when he explained he was going to sleep, but her note kept him awake. Clearly she didn't understand what there was to be conflicted about. So she just accepted the water bottle back when he passed it to her and tucked it under her elbow at her side so that her arms could fold over her chest. This time the posture was more relaxed, more comfortable. It was just a place for her arms to be this time, not a squeezing to keep her hands from lashing and her anger from swelling too much in her chest.
Let's not break up, is the part that puzzled him. Lola blinked once, then let out a single low laugh.
"Oh man. No, I didn't mean that. I meant, like, let's not just stop hanging out. Doing what we've been doing. You and Tamsin and, I suppose Jack too, whenever I meet him.... You guys are important, and I don't want some stupid fucking fight driving you and them by extension away."
She paused, tapped the toe of of her sneaker on the pavement. "I can see how that might not have come across on paper as well as it would've by word."
Hector Ghosh
He looks more confused the more Lola explains. His brow looks like it might never unknit itself from the frown into which it's fallen and his lips purse like he's about to ask What? perhaps one-third of the way through. Without a bag handing from his hip or his books in his arm he stands with his joints loose and his hands unoccupied. Not even a ring to twist while he digests her words.
So he crosses his arms. Makes a creaking sound deep in his throat as he tries to form a response and fails. Licks his lips to banish whatever died before it could coalesce into words and tries again.
"Why would you think I'd want to stop hanging out?"
Lola Hawkes
"Because tonight was going well-- we had a fucking killer battle that both of us should be proud of, and we got to come back to a bed to sleep in and a shower to use. But then we placed a marker on what our relationship could be, and I shot ya down-- and that itself is fine, I ain't apologizing for not wanting to bang you, dude. But tonight was the wrong night for it, 'cause you snapped the subject back to the pack being lost and everyone dying.
"I ain't a great Kinfolk. I'm not good at carrying those emotional burdens. I don't have the right words to say, I don't know how to soothe that kind of ache in ya. I want to help, but I'm really fucking bad at it and whatever suggestions I have are just getting shot down. So I felt like I was just not-helping and not-helping the more we kept talking, and I figured that you would think I was mad at you like how I thought you might be mad at me, and then we would just wait for one of us to say the first word or make the first move to reconciling and it would never happen."
She was keeping her voice at a low, level tone. Like they were just having a simple conversation about a mutual friend or family member that was having some trouble instead. It wasn't a heated or emotional kind of conversation that she was having with him, and so it was nothing that patrons of nearby rooms would poke their heads out to overhear. She didn't smoke, but she felt like having a cigarette would justify standing out here and having this talk a little better. Maybe this is how people start smoking?
"For the most part I know better than that. You're not petty, neither am I, and neither of us are very catty bitches. I just didn't want it to seem like I just... walked away from ya. You know?"
Hector Ghosh
The posture he adopts and maintains even before she answers him is defensive. His frame is long and loose-limbed and for as much as he works at bulking up he will never be a physically imposing figure. If he ekes out another inch before he stops growing entirely it will be a goddamn miracle and he will probably die before he can ever coax his facial hair into becoming a beard. When they load him onto the pyre and sing dirges and tell tales of the shit he did before he fell for the final time to guide his spirits back to the Homeland where Maria will greet him his chest will be as smooth and sunken-looking as it was when he went through his First Change.
Hector does not mean to hold himself as if he is constraining his insides. No fault of Lola's that he slopped them onto the bed between them and she knew not what to do with them. He is a moondancer of their tribe and his eyes are dark as blood-stained earth and he came from parents who knew dick about the lineage of the one who brought forth a true-born child. He feels more and remembers more than many of them can even hint at.
Yet he still looks confused as Lola explains why she thought he would need to read that she did not want to cast him out of her life. Huffs out a touch of laughter as she concedes that neither of them are catty.
You know?
"Yeah..."
But that doesn't answer every question he has. With his arms still locked across his chest he asks, without rancor, like this is the last puzzlement he cannot sort himself, "Why did you shoot me down?"
Lola Hawkes
Surprisingly enough, Lola wasn't mad at his question. She didn't become defensive or uncomfortable with being put on the spot and explaining why she'd rejected him after all.
Instead, she just spread her arms open from her sides, the gesture a helpless sort of shrug that didn't require her elbows to leave her sides.
"It just wasn't there. When we kissed I wasn't getting lost or swept up in you. I was just... really acutely aware of where my hands were and what I was doing with myself. Made me feel awkward. I don't know what "the spark" is, 'cause I haven't felt it before, but I don't think that's what it's supposed to be." One arm wrapped loose around the bottom of her rib cage again. The other stayed out, so she could unscrew the lid of the water bottle with two fingers while still holding the bottle in the same hand. She takes another drink, offers to Hector again, and if he refuses she just screws the lid back on and takes her time to do so. If he accepts she relinquishes the water to him and the lid along with it.
"I'm not very romantic. I haven't "gone steady", like, ever. Maybe it just won't happen. Who knows?"
Hector Ghosh
He'd asked the question expecting Lola would answer honestly and does not rankle or scowl when she gives him what he looked for. No spark.
Like as not he's just not as used to being rejected as he claimed he was earlier. It's also as likely that he does not pursue girls he finds attractive because he spent most of his high school career goofing off and drawing attention to himself and never had to work for attention. Or his attention has been elsewhere since he realized he's a fucking werewolf and has bigger things to worry about than what girls think of him.
She can read in his eyes that he liked the easy physicality of the courtship phase of their relationship, how he could put an arm around her shoulders or hold her hand and not fear it meaning anything more than that. If she thinks back she can remember him leaning into Maria's side or playing with Willow's hair when he was stoned. Not even stoned. Just awake, some days. Even Tamsin would let him rest his head in her lap or drape his arms over her shoulders or sit close-close to her so they were touching but not, and Tamsin was the most physically violent of all of his sisters.
His interactions with Glen and Corey got downright homoerotic at times. That's just how he is. If he likes a person and trusts the person and would lay down his life for the person then he finds a way to link their bodies and it doesn't even have to be sexual.
"Maria used to say you were destined to be with a fifty-year-old Mexican rancher," he says. "You know: five-foot-five, mayyybe five-foot-eight, leathery-ass skin, rug on his chest. And I'd ask if he was fifty when you guys met, or if he was fifty at the time she was telling the story."
Shit, look at him, it hurts just talking about her. He's a fucking Galliard. He's hardly mentioned Maria or Glen at all the last few months, won't even say Corey's name. If he participated in their Gathering ritual he did not lead it. Hector swallows it down so Lola can't call him on being depressed or inching towards Harano or blaming himself but that doesn't get rid of it. Fucking waning moon.
"She'd just be like: 'Both.'"
Lola Hawkes
However Lola had grieved for Maria, it wasn't something that Hector had seen. For all that the Galliard knew, his packmate's sister hadn't grieved at all. She got angry at the news when he'd delivered it the first night, and any time after that she would only regard her deceased sister as though her death wasn't new news at all. Like she'd had as much time to adjust and move on as she had with her parents already.
Lola cried about it when she was alone, when no one was around to try and comfort her and make things worse by awkwardly trying to put arms around her when all she wanted was to get a good cry out without being interrupted, or to spread her arms and put her chest to the sky and yell because she couldn't howl her grief and run until it drained from her bones like sweat from her pores. These were things Wolves did, and that she quietly wanted them to herself still was something that she wasn't keen on sharing.
So, rather than being sensitive to his bringing up Maria's name and voice, Lola just gave a tired, fond kind of a smile and nodded her head, like she remembered all of what he was saying.
"How could anyone dream of anything less? He'll have chest hair I can lose my fingers in." She reached out and patted the side of his shoulder and upper arm, and her arm fell back to her side as soon as she was done. She nodded toward the door next.
"Is it alright if we sleep now? I'll get us coffee in the morning before I drive back home, if you want."
Hector Ghosh
This is how they differ: Lola felt her grief and did not fight it off. She cried when she wanted to cry and she threw back her head and screamed. All Hector did was get into a huge fistfight with the only brother he had left and then come to Colorado to tell Maria's sister they had interred her and he'd make a promise to her the night before. Like Maria was the harbinger of her own doom.
She didn't believe in the Mexican rancher. She painted a vivid picture of him but at the end of the day it was something she used to say to tease Hector. Glen went on to give him a name and a hometown. Look where that got them. Fucking No Moons.
When Lola pats his arm it seems to absolve him. So he couldn't elicit a passionate response from her because he was smooth as a teenage boy. So what. Wasn't like that's all they had to offer each other. He releases his grip on his own thin chest and wrinkles his nose and utters a silent Uggggh at the idea of losing one's fingers in another person's chest hair.
And then it's like he's been waiting for her to ask that question since he left the shower the first time. He actually sags, a silent show of gratitude to a being higher then themselves and then he steps forward and envelops the kinswoman in his arms.
"I'm so tired," he says, like that is supposed to serve as an answer. It's also probably bullshit. He's been wound up all night. "Yes. But you're not stealing a pillow so you can sleep on the floor. The hell's the matter with you?"
Lola Hawkes
Hector's frame sagged, like she'd cut the wire that was making him stay upright when she asked if he was ready for bed. He then stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. He was just tall enough for her to tuck her head under his chin when she looped her arms around his narrow ribcage and hug him back. He'd feel her chest expand against his as she drew in a deep deep breath, and with a small squeeze she let go of him and gestured with a lazy half-wave toward the door.
"Dunno. I don't wanna deny you a bed to sleep on when I'm going home, and I didn't wanna be a total bitch by sleeping in a bed with you but not givin' it up."
Shoot straight.
Speak straight.
Speak straight.
At least you could depend on frank honesty from the Kinswoman, which wasn't something their Tribe was put down in the history books for.
Hector Ghosh
On the off chance that she goes before he does that is what Hector will speak of at her service. Kinfolk do not get Gatherings for the Departed because they do not have spirits that will need guidance. Sometimes Garou spirits come back as Kinfolk but that is it, for Kinfolk. They die and the human world mourns them as much if not more than the Garou Nation does and then they vanish.
He speaks of her honesty and her unflinching valor and her lupine reflexes to their brethren. No one is surprised, having heard him speak of her, that he carried a torch for her. It will surprise them later that they are not bound by something deeper than tribe. When Lola does not begin to show signs of bringing another warrior or Kinfolk into the world people might ask questions.
They are not mates and they never were. His renown will not suffer for being friends with her. That Lola wants to stay friends with him after he smothered whatever semblance of a flame might have been between them is enough for him.
And yet she mentions sleeping in a bed with him and not spreading her legs as if it would be a novelty and Hector rols his head on its axis and groans.
"Dude..."
Something like a facepalm then.
"I sleep in the same bed with Tamsin all the time and she's... I mean okay she's a bitch but that's because she puts cake batter in my hair, not because..." He scowls and opens the door with the key. "You're so gross, did I really have a crush on you? Maybe I am gay."
Lola Hawkes
He calls her gross and says he might actually be gay for having a crush on her. This earned him a punch in the arm. A horseplay kind of punch, nothing that would rock his balance or leave a bruise. She's grinning a little bit when he glances back to make sure she's not fixing to pick another fight. She killed off what was left in the water bottle and would toss it in the garbage can the moment they were back inside the motel room.
"Tamsin's a Garou. That's different and you know it."
Because that's simply the way things are, after all.
There wasn't much left to the rest of the night, really. Hector invited her back into the bed on the grounds that he would be sleeping there too-- Lola was insistent that he sleep in the bed because, like she said before, she got to go home to her own bed the next night, and she wasn't sure where he was going to end up sleeping the next few days. Chances were that it wouldn't be on a bed, at least. So she'd change back out of the jeans and into the basketball shorts in the bathroom, brush her teeth and wash her face as well. Then she would climb into the bed, stretch out until her toes pointed to the foot of the bed and her spine curved, and relax completely with her arms wrapped around the pillow that she was to sleep on.
She wouldn't shrug Hector off if he tossed an arm over her to fall asleep. The boy had suffered enough rejection tonight, and she trusted that he wasn't going to get it in his head that her being in the bed with him and letting him near meant she suddenly changed her mind about how she felt toward him sexually. He was smart and respectful toward her, and she was faithful in him for that exact reason.
The next morning, somewhere around 9:00am or so, Lola would wake if Hector hadn't roused them both already. She'd drive them to a gas station so she could fill the truck up, buy them each a big cup of cheap black coffee that they could sugar and cream to their hearts content at the coffee counter inside (Lola put a ton of sugar in it, burnt ass gas station coffee was unbearable on its own). Then, with a farewell to mark their parting of ways, Lola would leave Hector to the city he was stuck patrolling for the time being, and she would return to The Homestead to be where she belonged.
No comments:
Post a Comment