Earlier that day, a pair of Uktena had fought in the hallway of the Hawkes Homestead and gone their separate ways with nothing resolved-- one out the front door with no shoes and just his Rage to burn him through the chilly landscape, and the other out the back with shoes but no Rage. They each needed to burn off steam, for similar reasons but with different weight and potential tragedies if their tempers were to snap and they were to do something they regret.
For Lola, she might strike Hector or say something that she couldn't take back. She might put her foot in her mouth, or devolve into a juvenille display of pettiness and venom-spitting.
For Hector? He could very well kill his kinswoman. The moon was swollen, a waxing Gibbous, and he had done nothing to burn off his supernatural tempers before coming to check on the lonesome Lola. He hadn't anticipated that he would walk into a showdown, after all.
But since then, hours had passed. Afternoon shifted to early evening, and while typically the dark wouldn't roll in until 8pm, it was now just after 5pm and the world was a dark gray splotch of shadows and blurred lines. Because natural disasters aren't headline worthy unless they are as terrible as they can be, a new storm front had rolled in, as big and black and full of rain and thunder and lightning as can be. Strong winds kicked up two hours ago, thunder had rumbled on the horizon, and it was around that time that Hector had made his way back to the house.
At five, it began to rain, and all at once. There was perhaps two minutes worth of simple patter-patter raindrops on the earth, but now it was pouring as though someone had taken a knife to the bellies of the clouds. Thunder didn't rumble, but roared, and lightning cracked like a coach-driver's whip.
Hector could watch this from inside the house, as the doors were almost never locked. But there was reason to worry, because Lola was still out in the middle of this, and with the land already flooding the possibilities of Something Bad happening were exponentially higher each quarter of an hour that passed without her return.
Hector Ghosh
He started out sitting in the bed of the truck because it was off the ground and even if it wasn't exactly dry he could ensure he wouldn't track dirt into the house rolling around in the mud more than he already had. Running across the property in his wolf skin tearing at prey and Wyrmlings locked a lot of dirt onto his skin. No sign of Lola around the property or inside the house by the time he'd gotten the running and tearing out of his system.
Then the clouds opened up and he conceded defeat to Gaia the same as he had to Lola and ran to stand on the porch. Kept an ear open for the backdoor.
Five seconds into the downpour was enough to spike his concern but then fifteen minutes passed and he decided he'd had enough. Words carry more weight than his shoulders do and the last ones he'd said to her were You can do whatever the hell you want.
Thick clouds over everything but they shift. This far outside the city limits no pink pollution pushes at the atmosphere. Hector steps down off the porch and shifts into his wolf skin again. No point cursing her for taking off in the middle of record goddamn flooding. He circles around the property to find the place where he knows she leaves her shoes.
At least she took a pair of shoes with her.
He sniffs at them to lock her scent into his stupid brain and trots off towards the ridge where the pack used to while away their restful hours.
Lola Hawkes
When Hector had seen Lola last she was red in the face and ill-equipped to go running off into the wilds. She had jeans and a quarter-sleeve tee shirt, but no socks or anything. He might have glimpsed her hastily pulling on a pair of shoes that she'd left on the back porch, but aside from that she brought nothing with her. Now, Lola wasn't an average girl. She grew up on these lands and patroled them every day. She knew the area like the back of her own hand. She knew how to avoid getting lost, how to un-lose yourself if you manage to get turned around anyways, and what to do in case of emergencies.
But she was in a temper, and flooding like this hasn't happened... well, in history, if you believe the news reports. She certainly hadn't planned on being gone this long, and the safest place to be in weather like this would be there at The Homestead, as she couldn't have traveled quite quite far enough to reach the Caern proper, or other establishments that were peppered about the area.
So Hector went looking, because he worried (of course he did), and because at the end of the day Lola was his responsibility as far as the Nation was concerned, and if she were swept away in the floods due to his not going to look for her after a fight? Well, that certainly wouldn't look good now would it?
As well as the shoes there was a hooded sweatshirt hung over a chair on the back porch, so while the shoes were gone he could pull her scent from that. It was a struggle to track her with the rain washing everything off the lands, but Hector Ghosh finds a way. It's arduous going at first-- he's lost the scent more often than he has it. But it continues in the same direction-- a straight path from the back of the house, down the sloping ridge and toward the most photographed part of Roxborough State Park-- the ravine with the jutting rocks that shoot from the ground between pompom tree tops.
And when he does find her, finally, some twenty to thirty minutes of hard going searching later, he'll find that she's gotten herself into a bit of a situation indeed. She isn't down in that ravine, she wasn't stupid enough to find the lowest ground possible in the promise of rain. But, the sad truth is that she wasn't too far off. She'd walked a familiar path, letting her feet take her, and found herself near the edges of the steep angled walls that dropped down into it.
Maybe intending to look at the damage, to check and see what the floods had done here, Lola hovered about. She saw the clouds rolling in, but figured she had more time. She wasn't ready to go back yet, and let her own pride and anger and wounded sense of self override the tingling static charge in the air telling her to go back.
The rain started all at once, and while Lola was making her way back the earth had simply... given. A mudslide crashed the slope that she was climbing, and everything under her feet lost its grip on the hillside and started tumbling backward. It wasn't large enough to engulf, but the mud was slick, impossible to get purchase on, and Lola was left seizing a jutting ledge of rock from the hillside.
This is where she's been for close to an hour now. She was sitting on the rock ledge, which could maybe fit four people sitting together in a tight circle if you were careful about not jostling each other. Her arms were wrapped around her chest, hands in her armpits, and her knees were up to her chin with her head down. She was trying to maintain body heat while waiting the storm out, and hoping the water didn't get too deep and savage below because she couldn't find any way to get out by climbing back up.
Hector Ghosh
She cannot see him come up over the ledge not because he isn't a huge beast but because he comes from the same direction she did. But she can hear him. Everything else went to ground hours ago, or up a tree, or else hunkered someplace high where they and their young would not be swept away. Birds at least can fly a distance to stay ahead of the storm or have the sense enough to go someplace where the wet will stay off them.
In his lupine body the Galliard has a coloration that does not match the translation of the same genes into a human body. His fur is not dark. Along his legs and belly it is tan and along his spine it runs gray to red. At least when it isn't wet. Right now he's soaked down to his skin and looks miserable but determined. First sight of him his nose is to the ground and he's hauling ass like he expects to find her down at the bottom of that ravine.
Even if she didn't listen to the story as he told it Hector did still tell it. Part of the reason his performances stick to the memory as they do is the life he pushes into them. Like he's reliving the moment even if he wasn't actually there.
His nose fails him at the ledge and he looks across the gap and then he works his way down. His senses are sharper in this form even without the gift of their tribe's totem. After a matter of seconds he spots her and his nostrils flare and he starts to pace one way and then the other working out how to get her up from there.
If he makes a noise the distance is too great for her to hear it. It isn't until he shifts to his birth form with a crackling of bones and tendons that Lola can rest assured it's him and not some foul creature come to pluck her off. His tone is wary but not panicked.
"What're you doing down there, you weirdo?"
Lola Hawkes
The rock that Lola had ended up on was just shy of twenty feet down a hundred foot fall. This was the distance between Hector's snout when he first comes up to the edge of that steep hill that has since fallen away to fresh dirt that's still washing toward the bottom, and the top of Lola's head.
The rain is loud and heavy. The thunder even louder. With her head down the way it was, she didn't even realize that he had come after her, that he was there until he shouted. As soon as the first syllable was thrown against the storm into the air her head popped up and she twisted, looking around and back up at the top of the hill. He looked soaking wet and miserable in both forms, and Lola looked the same in the only skin that she could wear. Her jeans were heavy with rainwater, her shirt wet and sticking to her back and arms (red, thankfully, not the white one that she pushed aside in favor of this one). Her hair was glued down her back and to the sides of her face, but she pushed it away and wiped her eyes free of the water that dripped into them.
He couldn't see it very well from this distance, but her skin was tight on her muscles and peppered with goosebumps. She had stopped shivering from the cold when she wrapped in upon herself, but was still tense in defense of it. Now that she was all unwrapped, body leaned back from where her torso was pressed into her own thighs, arms unfolded so she could hold the rock and twist around while staying on hands and feet-- not risking standing just now.
He asked what she was doing and called her a weirdo, and all that she could think to shout back was:
"I was angry and wrong."
And then:
"The ground gave out. It's too slick to climb back up and too risky to go down."
Hector Ghosh
[str + athletics: let's see how embarrassing of a jump this is going to be in hispo]
Dice: 8 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
Hector Ghosh
[lol wait you don't add athletics for a straight-up jump derp]
Dice: 6 d10 TN3 (4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Hector Ghosh
In his man-skin Hector is still barefoot and bare-chested and his hair is drenched. Steam plumes out of his nose and mouth for the pace of the run that brought him here and the cold of the air around them and she can't exactly hear him panting from twenty feet up. Can barely make out the impression of him through the driving rain.
"You're gonna tell your grandkids how badass I looked saving your ass off this ledge, right?"
It doesn't matter what she says. He's coming down for her either way. This is his weakest form but it's also his lightest. He considers the possibility that he's going to fracture something even if he slides down easy and the possibility that if he comes down weighing any more than he does that another mudslide is going to start.
"Listen, if I fuck this up like I fuck up everything else, I'm sorry for what I said earlier. And I'm glad I came back, even though you've been a jerk pretty much the entire time."
He would joke in the middle of a goddamn flood.
"Okay, I'm coming down. Watch your head."
Lola Hawkes
Below the waters weren't quite visible through the trees and the brush, but the rushing noise of constant water was audible through the cacophany of the storm as well. While they couldn't see it, they both knew that the bottom of that ravine was flooded. Though they couldn't tell with their eyes, they both knew full well that a rush of gray-brown water was churning and racing itself down below, dragging branches and dirt and brambles along with it. They couldn't guess at how deep it was, but if you knew anything about a flood you knew that anything higher than your shins could present a problem.
Hector yelled down at her, joking and making sincerities mingled together. As he was telling her to watch her head, she appeared to be preparing herself. She braced on her knees with the toes of her rubber-soled sneakers on the rock as well. She was leaned forward, gripping the rock with one cold hand, the other hand hovering in the air. She appeared prepared to catch him and help him onto the rock when he made his way down.
"If you pull this off," she joked back, "that might have to be our grandkids. And don't be sorry, asshole, I'm the fucker here.
"Now come on, I'll catch ya."
Hector Ghosh
For the first time in their lives Lola sees Hector hesitate before he does something dangerous. He spent his entire young adulthood hiding Willow's athame and slapping Corey's cheeks and keeping pace with Glen while drinking and pulling Tamsin's hair. Silently challenging Lola's sister with who could pull the most outlandish pranks.
She's heard stories of him walking over coals in his human skin and jumping onto cars driven by other packs in countries with nonexistent DWI laws and goading sludge-skinned monsters the size of a bus into chasing him so his packmates could come in from the rear. She's seen him talk shit to a Fomor with more teeth than bones and charge in through the front door of house where a creature with a second face in his gun pointed a gun.
He's brave and stupid but this time he's doing something that could impact his kinswoman's life. Not acting isn't an option. But he does hesitate and the drop and the outcome if he misses the ledge veer up in front of him.
Fuck it.
The Galliard boosts himself over the side of the slope and he goes as far as he can go bracing himself on the edge and then he comes sliding down after her. Probably bruises his tailbone. Ends up muddier than he already was. She doesn't have to snag him but he's picked up momentum by the time he's halfway down and her arm around his waist or a hand grabbed onto his arm keeps him from losing his balance at the bottom.
So much adrenaline coursing through him that he isn't even shivering by the time he's there.
"You're so..." he says and puts his hands on her shoulders to hold her still and make sure she's not hurt. Stops himself from saying or doing anything else. This isn't the time or the place. "Okay: I'm gonna shift. Get on my back and hang on."
Lola Hawkes
Hector steadied himself on the muddy ledge, careful at first with where he placed his rump and his hands and his heels. Trying to find balance on the slick edge of earth while lining up his shot down. Soon enough he's slipping down the steep edge-- something that could be climbed if you were sure about your footing and strong in your limbs while dry, but impossible to scale with no purchase allowed. He hits a few rocks on the way down and bruises his ass up, but is just fine.
When he gets down to that rock ledge, though, it occurs very quickly that the rock there is just as wet as everything else, and his momentum could have potentially sent him slipping right off that as well.
But there's Lola, crouched down like an animal, hands and feet and knees anchoring her weight to that flat slab of rock, one arm out and hovering in the air, dense black hair hanging in a heavy sheet on either side of her face. When he comes down and slips his way onto the rock, she wraps an arm around his middle and pushes her weight forward. This stopped his momentum, and while one of her legs slipped this did little more than cause her face to bump into his shoulder.
Neither fell to the waters below, and for now they were just fine. Lola shivered and straightened up some, but still did not stand. Hector's hands found her shoulders, and he started to say something-- accuse her of something, perhaps? But he cut himself off, this aided by a sharp crack of lightning that illuminated the sky and their faces alike.
She nodded and moved around behind him, hooked her arms over his shoulders but didn't put her weight on his back directly just yet. She would adjust that once he'd shifted-- as his weight and mass grow she'll clamp her legs to either side of his back, hugging the curve of his rib cage, and clench her arms over his shoulders with her hands wrapped up in his fur and her face pressed tight.
Before he starts the change, though, she advises him with a tone that was pure gallows humor: "Don't slip."
Hector Ghosh
"Backseat driver..."
And Hector can still slip so he pauses to look up at the ledge and gauge the distance he's going to have to jump. All he can focus on is that point over their heads where the water splashes as they look up at it and the pressure of her arms around his shoulders. Lola's heart slamming into his spine.
He punches straight from his birth form to his dire wolf form and it's more violent and consumes more of his Rage than a slow slide would. Bones and blood crying out like a house being knocked down and building itself back up. She sits astride his back like a warrior woman out of their tribe's mythology back in the days before the Caern decreed Kinfolk to be too valuable to ride into combat bearing weapons they knew they could wield.
If she spends any amount of time talking to other Garou around the Bawn or at the Sept itself she knows the Elders think him slightly foolish for telling tales of her at the Moot. But he hasn't told her that himself. There's nothing badass about looking like a dolt in front of your people because of a girl.
That breathless hung-forever moment just before the drop and then his muscles tense and they're shooting into the air ten twenty thirty goddamn feet way overshooting the ledge but he manages to get his legs beneath him and catch the ground without spilling her from his back and put distance between the both of them and the ledge. Doesn't just stop there. Took him half an hour to find her and the ground is sloppy and it's getting worse.
He takes them all the way back to the Homestead on four legs and until the porch is close enough for her to put her feet on Hector doesn't shift. When he does he's wild-eyed and breathing hard and he stares at her like he doesn't know what to do with her now that they're on solid ground not shouting at each other.
Lola Hawkes
Hector found his four-legged form instead of the one with two legs, as she had originally expected. She adjusts to this all the same and clenches her thighs around his back as though there were some imaginary saddle there amid all the fur. She leans forward so she's laying flat against the rest of his considerable spine, but with no shoulders to grab on to she just grips around near his shoulder blades with her arms and grips his mane and lays her head against it as well.
They shoot into the air, higher than she could have thought possible, and he'll feel her grasp on him tighten that much more while they're soaring through the air. Her face turns, hidden away in his fur, as the rain and the wind and the cold air whipping around them was painful and blinded her when she tried to look through it.
They hit the ground, and she'd expected that he would stop there and let her off and that they would walk back through the thunderstorm, sopping wet and grumbling but safe. But no, the storm was worth running from, and god knows where the earth will give way next-- it could be half a mile uphill from them, and though the slope might be mild on this part of ground it would still be enough for a makeshift dam gone broken to send another rush of water coming at them.
No, Hector maintained his Hispo form and his Kinswoman on his back, and Lola had no reason to argue. It was uncomfortable going at first, but she found his rhythm after the first thirty seconds of that long-legged loping run and was able to adjust to ride along with it, so that his vertebrae didn't jam so uncomfortably into her pelvis and tailbone and chest.
Much quicker on the way back than on the way out, they arrive at the back porch of the property soon enough. Hector tipped his weight to help Lola down off his back, and she swung one leg away from him and slipped down off his back, but did not step up the two squat stairs onto the porch itself just yet. She stood in soggy clothes, up to her ankles in mud, and watched him turn back to his birth form. He still was barefoot, dressed only in his jeans, clearly not equipped for the soft brown man-skin he wore now, far more prepared for that mottled gray-tan-red pelt.
They looked at each other, him wild-eyed and panting from the run still, her far steadier in her breathing. She didn't appear full of energy, wild and animal as he did in that moment. She looked stubborn still, as always, insisting on standing out in the downpour with him. But she looked unsure, uncomfortable. The confidence that usually spilled over from the woman was gone because this wasn't a fight anymore. There was nothing to battle or combat, nowhere to point her guns or lay her fists.
The fighting was over, and her anger was sapped. Hurt was there still, residual and lingering though she knew that it shouldn't be-- it wasn't his fault after all, remember? Just a chain of unfortunate events, one after the other, and that's no one's fault at all. But with no one to blame the blaze of emotions she'd felt earlier had nowhere to go, and when that force of anger had fizzled itself out all that was left behind was a lack of direction.
"This is where I say I'm sorry, right?" Said finally, because the silence that roared behind the storm was getting to be too much.
Hector Ghosh
Blame it on the fact that his moon is pushing against the clouds and his blood and his Rage are the only things keeping his stringy body warm right now and Lola just scared the bejesus out of him.
Even as they fought earlier Hector had had the presence of mind few of his rank do to hold back and not say or do something he would regret later. She saw the beast gnashing against its restraints but he did restrain it. Did not tear apart her bathroom or demolish her hallway or bat the front door off its hinges as he staved off and fled a confrontation. Knew her well enough that he did not follow her while she raged at the pain inside the truth of what happened.
None of it, from the time two Uktena argued fruitless with a Glass Walker to the time the Glass Walker left, was anybody's fault. They are creatures who run on instinct and their instinct leads them well most times but the time it did not it cost them. Tamsin still has Glen's sister and her Sept and Corey still has his mother and her Sept. They both find it easy to connect with other people and rely on them and call them Family.
These two don't.
So she asks if this is where she says she's sorry and he blows out a breath meant to mask an eye roll. Exasperation and adoration rolled up in one. And earlier he did a good enough job of acting like he was capable of controlling himself but he doesn't bother right now.
Hector climbs the back porch steps and grabs her by the shoulders like he did earlier. Kisses her right on her stupid mouth like he didn't do earlier.
Lola Hawkes
Corey had his Sept back in Houston and some real, biological family to go back to when shit hit the fan and failed to survive the shredding blades. Tamsin had a fallen packmate's family to visit-- they were Tribe, and they were close, and Nora's family was an open, blossoming, welcoming thing. This was an easy place to retreat to for Tamsin, and they accepted her with open arms.
Hector and Lola, they didn't have these things; instead they had each other.
She broke the silence, unsure of what else to do, preparing to apologize for herself once again. Hector exhaled and his breath clouded in front of him and he rolled his eyes at her, but didn't seem angry like he had the last time she bombarded him with apologies. What he did instead was take an impulse and ride it, because he felt it in his bones and muscles and it howled in his blood like his Rage and Gnosis all swirled up and steaming off his back toward the moon.
Apparently Lola had been sitting on that same impulse, uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with it, because the moment he's closed distance and put his hands on his shoulders and looked at her not like he was going to speak but like he was going to act, Lola rose to meet him.
Hands grasped either side of his face and guided it down the moderate gap in height, and she shut her eyes and kissed him back, breathing in a sharp inhale close to his face and pressing herself nearer to him. Nearer, for he was hot where she was not. Nearer, for with him cutting the red tape that had gone up when she rejected him the first time assured her that there was a path there-- permission to try again without being accused of hipocracy.
Given how hard she kissed him back, the pair of them looking like some scene from a Nicholas Sparks novel all soaking wet with rain and out of breath, she seemed willing to take a chance on being unsure.
Hector Ghosh
If Hector had cared for her less or felt more anger towards her or been at all at ease with the notion of walking out of her life for the rest of it Hector would have sat out there for longer. Would have thought the chill barrage of a world revolting against the abuse wrought against it by the ones entrusted with its future to be punishment and not warning.
It's going to scare her. The force with which he kisses her at first is nothing. This is what he does. Lola has seen him throw himself at Willow and Glen and Corey: Garou capable of stomping him into the ground but they knew the source and the cause of his affection. Of course he was going to latch himself onto them when he'd smoked enough grass or drank enough of the Fianna's whiskey. Hector knew healthy physical love as a human boy and they knew he was slow to accept that he was not a human boy.
Some will tell tales of how he grabs Tamsin after fights, her jaws having dealt the killing blow, and presses their bloody mouths together. Kissing doesn't mean shit to him.
This is different. Strangled in that moment on the ravine's edge where she had kept him from dropping into a raging stream was not the time to grab Lola's face and force this onto her but Hector does it now. They're safe. If he had come there later or if she had not grabbed him when she did the outcome could have been less finite yet here they are. Could doesn't mean much more than his kissing his packmates on the mouth or his sharing a bed with them. A number of his stories veer towards this: <i>Lola was there.</i> Lola ran back towards the truck to grab her gun when he needed her to. Lola came in through the backdoor with her gun when he needed her to.
He wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for her. Make of that what you will.
He pushes his mouth against hers with the foresight and the knowledge of one who has been here before and been denied. Were not for him she might have died out there tonight. She might have found a way back up and fallen ill and died days later because her lungs can fight off bacteria and fungus half as well as his. Not so glorious an assist as decapitating a Fomor meant to aim at her but: he knew when she did not come home. He worried for her. He loved her. He came for her.
No concern for hypocrisy here yet Lola denied him twice already. They could have torn each other apart tonight. He could have given himself up to frenzy or she could have thrown at him words that would have made him leave forever. He wanted fists and if he could not have fists he wanted sharp words. She denied him that too.
Good.
The last two times he kissed her Lola could have tasted the hesitation in him. The isthisokayisthisnotokayidontkn
That Rage meant he was more than just a string uncertain young man. It brought him out to her and got her up from that ledge and now they're here and he can do nothing with that Rage that he does not want to do with it. He wants her and he has wanted her for a long time and now he kisses her and for the first time she grabs onto him and pulls him closer. She hears the surge of his breath in and feels the flare of the heat up through the center of him into his chest and arms and the air gone back into her.
The hardest thing to bear in kissing him is what she feels when he takes his hands off of her shoulders. Above her neck he could pass off the touch as camaraderie. When she kisses him back he freezes at first but then it keeps on and the rain keeps falling down around them and it isn't going to stop.
His hands move down from her shoulders to her elbows. His dominant right hand leaves her elbow to find her hip. Finds it warm and kneads it. Moves up her torso to her ribs and grips her there and they're both frigid and muddy and scarier than anything they've met tonight is the pulse she hears in the heightening presence and weight of his kiss:
I love you I love you I love you.
She hasn't pulled away from him yet. Cold rain beats their shoulders and steams their breath but he isn't the first to pull away. He does steer her up the steps and towards the backdoor. Water is the quickest way to warm human flesh and the shower waits inside. He is locked into his own heart's beat now and words are beyond that but if Lola doesn't pull back to speak they end up in the bathroom again.
Lola Hawkes
Lightning and thunder continue their barrage against the land, far from quieting or calming. This was a big storm-- it stretched west to the horizon and would not be ending soon. It had just begun, and tomorrow morning Lola would need to go out and survey the damage. She'd need to note where the flood were, what it had done to the landscape, and then she would no doubt want to go to the Guardians and ensure that everyone was accounted for. If there were search parties to be formed then the Hawkes woman would certainly need to be at the front of it, for this land was in her blood and flesh and, in her opinion, no one knew it better.
Tonight, though, search parties weren't the concern.
Lola had known affection before. Her parents loved her, and though her mother was distant it wasn't for lack of love, it was simply what happened when you were a Crescent Moon that didn't die young. She was almost more spirit than she was flesh near the end. Her sister loved her, and they had shared a bed for much of their youth until they both became too big for that to work any more. She'd been friends with cubs at the Sept that she grew up with-- Ivan and Eddie in particular, she had known them longest. They would tussle as pups do, but in some serious moments they were steady for one another, with hugs and rubs and comforting.
She knew how to be physically affectionate, but romance was another story entirely. This may be why, perhaps, she could find no way to get past Hector's hesitation the first two times they did this dance. She didn't know where to go herself, she was uncertain of what to look for, what to do, and so she pulled back from the hand that would not guide her in.
Now, though, this was different. Here they stood, pulled close to one another with mouths that didn't want to part. Hector had taken a chance, taken a dive that he wanted to plunge into out on the land, on that rock jutting out of the hillside. When Lola did not push him away or wait for it to end, and when she instead held his face and kissed him back it was a green light for both parties. Hector dropped his hands lower, the left cupping her elbow and the right taking the opportunity to feel at her hip. He'll find it warm beneath wet clothes, solid with muscle but padded healthily none the less. She probably would have been a more voluptuous woman if she hadn't trained her body to be so strong. He's happy with what he finds there anyways, and after giving the hip a good squeeze he holds higher up her side and keeps her near.
Lola wasn't good with expressing herself, and relationships were even more difficult because while she had healthy ones, they were still few and far between. She'd never 'gone steady' or existed in a relationship before, so plotting the steps to take to get there was as foreign as trying to barter with a street vendor in Thailand. Instinct and impulse, though? These were things she was better at. Heat sparked between them, and that set embers under what men and woman know to do by nature.
He'd start pushing her back, guiding her up the steps and to the back door. Lola, fearing loss of momentum, does nothing to halt or question this. They weren't foolish, they weren't children. They knew where this was headed.
Into the bathroom, into the shower. Somewhere between clothes being strewn over counter and linoleum floor, Lola breaks away just long enough to splay hands over his chest and tell him: "Oh my god, Hector, I love you." She speaks the words like they are a revelation to herself, something that she has just discovered, a formula that she has cracked after months of study and research and testing. More importantly, though, she means them, as she's conscious of what she's saying and not just sputtering out what seems right, what sounds right in that moment.
Under the hot water together, she'll ask him not to wait.
It's easy to understand if he complies.
Hector Ghosh
He'd told her he would not hold against her the rejection they knew would come when she goaded him last month. The Cliath had shown no bitterness over anything she had done and yet her apologizing afterwards did something to him. Healing cannot begin until one acknowledges the wound and scars will linger even after this night but their society and their culture reveres scars. That first scar borne by a Garou who fell in battle and rose again is a sign of ferocity and courage.
Never in the four years since his First Change has Hector fallen during a fight and needed his Rage to bring him back up over the cliff that plummets down into permanent darkness for those whose spirits will not wander back towards the Homelands eventually. Her hands find no old wounds clawed into his chest or his belly. She's seen the way he fights. He is not a large creature but he boasts a power belied by the leanness of his build. When he shifts into a form meant for tearing through throats and bellies he hits hard. Lola has only seen him need to hit a foe more than once when his intestines were blown out of his body.
But he did keep fighting. Nothing to dull the pain but for the others in the fight with him. They had hit out at each other earlier but whatever damage done was already there. Words hit wounds not yet begun to heal on their own for they had never spoken of what happened after her sister's death. No point dwelling on it now. Neither of them know what it is to while away their time in ruminating on the past.
He doesn't have to coax her back inside. Too cold out here and too damp anyway. He knows this house better than he has known any other place in his life as a Gaian and he does not pull away from her as they go. Moves a hand to the back of her neck and kisses her hard and walks backwards until they're in the bathroom but he is not the one who pulls away. Only takes his hands off of her to spin on the water and he's barely dressed as it is.
His knapsack sits on the sink with a sweat-soaked inside-out t-shirt balled up atop it and his boots and socks are on the floor from where he abandoned them earlier and as the water warms behind them the Galliard starts to peel off the soaked-through clothing from Lola's chilled body. Careful with her but not gentle. She is not a human woman and he isn't going to break her.
Then she puts her hands on his chest and Hector halts his unwrapping of her with his Rage-warm hands on her waist and close to him like this she can feel his heart beating beneath her palms. Lungs working for air. Dark eyes scan her own and find no lie in them and he can do nothing to keep from laughing. Delight in it, not derision.
"Oh my god," he says and he's teasing but his voice has gone husky from kissing her. Teasing, but he pushes strands of cold damp hair back from her face and holds her gaze. No throwaway echoing of her words but she can see her confession's other half in his eyes when he leans in to kiss her again, feel it in the stoked-up fire of their hands finding each other.
Divested of everything else they stand beneath the water and Lola asks him not to wait. If she expects him to push her up against the wall next that does happen. But then he starts at her ear and kisses his way down her body and goes to his knees before her.
Lola Hawkes
He'll tease her, parroting back the words she chose. But their meaning comes across clearly enough, and after he searches Lola's eyes to find authenticity there he kisses her again.
Into the shower they go, and the hot water flowing from overhead quickly warms their skin and rinses away much of the mud and dirt that had become caked to them. Lola gets enough time, barely, to thoroughly rinse her hair between kisses and caresses. She gets carried away quickly, easily, and stretches her lean body against his and tries to snap his patience. Hector has plans of his own, though. He'll give, but not that much, not just yet. This was The First Impression, and the young man was going to make it a lasting one. He acquiesced, but only to a point, and rather than leaning heavily into her he supports her against the shower wall and trails his way downward.
Lola is quick to catch on and eager to comply. Legs and hips will shift to his direction, and it won't be long before a hand finds and laces into his hair.
True to their individual characters, Lola's patience doesn't go so far as Hectors. She is the elder between them by a year, but he's lived more life. Hector has traveled farther, experienced and done more than anyone so wrapped up in their own territory could hope to have. He can make her wait, tease and touch and imply, but only for so long. She will sooner than later cut the water and coerce him to take her back to the bedroom.
There, they will do as Garou and Kinfolk are meant to.
--------------------------
Some time later, two dark-skinned and strong, lean bodies lay stretched together on top of a bedspread. The storm has not abated, not by much. The thunder and lighting have settled down some, but the rain kept pouring down. Lola had her arms over her head, fingers lazily curled together. Her knees were bent together, toes pointed toward the bed. She was flushed at her cheeks and breast, and her hair was tussled and spread out over the comforter. Not on any pillow, those were tossed off the bed for they did nothing but get in the way.
With a puff of breath toward the ceiling, she'd turn her head to look toward Hector and smile. It's no dopey love-stricken expression, but more of a breathless grin.
"Man, why didn't you do that sooner?"
He would be justified in swatting at her for the question, and the stronger turn that her grin took said she knew it full well.
Hector Ghosh
When they lie separate from each other again he has not gone far from her. He's on his back beside her, atop the still-made bed he was reluctant to come to once his animal brain awakened in the shower. Like he couldn't understand why they couldn't just stay right where they were.
He might have just taken her to the floor or decided the wall in the corridor was just as good a place as any but she's strong as he is in some ways and stronger in others. Lola is a fighter but she isn't a brute. He lies next to her and doesn't do anything to restore his modesty in the afterglow. He left everything besides the earring punched through his upper ear where it fell in the bathroom. All he can manage now is to turn his head and roll back towards her at that Man and then the rhetorical jest of the question.
No immediate violence but he tightens his jaws and widens his eyes at her in warning. The tightening isn't to control himself but to keep from laughing so he can maintain the stern expression he had failed to secure in place at the outset.
"Someone," he says, and leans in closer so an elbow anchors itself on the opposite side of her body than he's currently on, "said kissing me was like geometry."
Lola Hawkes
The grin evolved to something more toothy. The stern expression that he wore was clearly a poker face, there not out of true seriousness but rather for the sake of continuing the banter and selling the joke. He had been laying beside her previously-- when they'd parted from one another at last they had settled where they landed, Lola on her belly and Hector on his back beside her. She'd waited, still and swimming in the daze that he'd left her in, and after a few minutes had passed she'd flipped herself over to lay on her back as well.
She had no sheets pulled over her, hadn't even attempted to find any dry undergarments to pull up over her hips. Modesty was gone out the window, abandoned in the bathroom along with her muddy shirt and jeans. She appeared completely comfortable there, belly and legs exposed to the air and breasts uncovered.
Hector had rolled nearer, lifted his torso enough that he could plant an elbow on the opposite side of her body than where the rest of him lay. She didn't squirm deeper into the mattress, nor did she push herself up to meet him. She breathed deep and without putting thought into it she curved her back and tightened the muscles between her shoulders to raise her chest toward him. This was a reaction carried over from having been so close and constantly touching just before, and she made no attempt to hide it or play it off. Why would she, after all? It was in comfortable confidence that Lola found herself best suited, so she would take no action to change that status-- the happy suspended-time sense of laying in bed together after sex.
"Well, it had been," she said in her own defense. She took no time in following that thought up, though, and reached up to brush his still-damp hair from his face, then touch her hand to his jaw, neck, and collarbone in succession.
"But the time wasn't right, I think. Ya weren't certain yet, that's all."
Hector Ghosh
Hector possesses no government identification beyond a learner's permit he sat still long enough to earn when he was 16. She has seen it and likely more than once because his packmates used to like to show off the relics of their past lives. Of all of them Corey had the most. He was and still is active in human society. Not only was Hector's an expired card but he looked so young in his picture. Young and angry like he would not be above killing the person taking the picture for flashing the light too sharp in his eye.
But that learner's permit expired when he turned 18. Lola first met him shortly after that milestone. His 21st birthday showed itself after Willow died. Sometimes he acts more like a teenager than a Cliath but Lola at least has some basis for comparison. Young as he still is he is closer now to being a Fostern than he ever has been.
Worse than being young: his moon hangs in the sky outside. He's already hunted and he's already killed. Lain in bed with the kinswoman who waited three moons to hear a proper explanation of what befell not only her sister's spirit but the pack once bound to it he is content if he isn't sedate and his eyes do not wear the hooded threat of sleep they get when Hector is ready to throw a blanket over his body and call it a night. He'll grow restless again soon enough.
Held up on an elbow over her he does not try to assert physical dominance or rekindle the fire now banked as coals. He lets his eyes fall shut when Lola's fingers find his hair and his face and then he adjusts his body to fit hers. Slips his arm up past her shoulder and rests the heel of his hand against his temple. Lets his chest lie against hers, a knee between hers. With the fingertips of his free hand Hector traces Lola's brow and her cheekbone and her jawline, her lips.
"Yeah," he says, "I was..."
And lain this close she can feel his breath against her skin. Can see his frown cast different than it is when they're stood in darkness. Pensive rather than afraid. He lets that wandering hand rest aside her neck, its thumb high up on her cheekbone, and his eyes stay warm on her face.
"Not certain. About anything. I knew I needed to be here, but that was about it."
Lola Hawkes
As is the case with most Garou and the Kinfolk to them, Lola is well aware of the phase of the moon outside. She has her suspicions that the growing Gibbous moon had a hand in what transpired tonight. Hector had been a wiry boy made heavy with Rage, and he didn't quite know what to do with it. It had frustrated him and made him erratic at times. The past couple of months, though, while his Rage had grown, he had grown along with it. With his Rage becoming more comfortable a part of it, she believed that it had its hand in pushing Hector past that line of 'i-don't-want-to-do-you-wrong' uncertainty and into the shower and bed with her tonight.
Oh Lola, don't be so awkward.
She can sense the energy returning to Hector as he hovers overtop of her. His eyes are alight, not hooded with a sense of drowsy satisfaction. She knows the moon will keep him roused, and that before long he may no longer be content to just lay in the bed. The alarm clock on the night stand (one of those old fashioned numbers with bells on the top) claimed the time to be still early in the evening-- to early for bed.
They would rise soon enough, put on clothes and wait out the floods there in the house on top of the mild hill.
Hector's weight settled on top of her, his chest pressing against hers, stomach hovering close to hers. His arm twined past hers so he could rest his head in his hand, and when his knee hitched up between her legs she jerked a little, like she expected he was going to slide higher and initiate a tangle of limbs once more. The knee stopped between hers, though, and instead was used to support his weight. He touched at her face-- eyebrow, jaw, mouth. She kissed and nipped fingertips when they passed her lips, and his hand settled at the side of her face to rest. She was content to let him cradle her face, huffed a satisfied little breath past his wrist, and looked back up at him.
"Well, you were right about that, I think." That he needed to be here. "You seem more certain now, though. Not just here with this--" and clearly she meant their relationship, "but with the city, the Septs, and the War. I think you should really talk to the Elders about that recon mission."
But here in bed, feeling warm and happy and right, she didn't want to spend too much time with talk of business. She wrapped one arm around his where his elbow supported his weight, traced fingers along the lines of his forearm, and her other hand tucked behind her own head to support it where she rested.
Almost abruptly, but without any sharpness or seriousness, she changed the subject.
"I plan on sharing my bed with you when you want it, Hector. When you ain't in town or off on missions, and... well...."
Oh Lola, don't be so awkward.
"There's no birth control right now. I need to know if you think that should change."
Hector Ghosh
Though he looks away from her as she slips in mention of meeting with a spirit-talker Hector does not argue with her. The decision to concede to weakness and speak to those higher than him in their hierarchy isn't anything he has considered beyond hollering at her. If she traces the path of his gaze she sees he's looking at a shadow in the corner. Through it. Not really looking at it at all but conferring with his own thoughts.
Lola would not bring up the topic again if it meant nothing to her. Another truism he has had to accept. Her mother was revered among their people and her wisdom shone through in both her daughter's knowledge of things the rest of the Nation assumed was something all Uktena are born with. Their affinity is a safeguard for the tribes that do not bother with investigating dark things.
Their fingers on each others' flesh is idle now and when she pulls him back to the conversation he takes his hand off his own temple and lowers his face to her neck. In the calm she can feel his chest rise and hear the air as he breathes deep from her skin and her hair. Toys with the thick hair drying at her crown as the other hand leaves her face to rest over her sternum.
She's so awkward.
He lifts his head up at the statement and the request.
"Uh..."
The Sept of Forgotten Question's Moot Talesinger, ladies and gentlemen. He frowns again and clears his throat. Looks deep in thought and trying not to laugh at the same time.
"Well, I mean... Tamsin kind of likes having nieces and nephews."
Lola Hawkes
She'd move her head, tip it to the side some so her chin and jaw rose, lifted to give his head more room to settle at her shoulder. He breathed in from her neck, just under her ear, and she sighed quietly and settled a hand to the back of his head when it came to rest. One hand toyed with her hair, thick and dark and still damp, and the other rested between them, squarely on the flat of her chestplate between her breasts. She would probably have closed her eyes and relaxed, reveled in the feel of the Galliard staying so close and holding her breath and pulse under his palm. But, instead, she waited for his response.
This was a topic that they would need to be certain to be on the same page as one another, after all.
Hector's answer was to frown thoughtfully, lifting his head from the crook of her neck to do so. He gave an 'uh...,' as he mulled the data over in his head and searched for words. But then he cleared his throat and looked somewhere between mirthful and contemplative.
The answer he gives wins him a smirk and a low chuckle that he feels under his palm more than hears from her voice.
"Oh, well, so long as Tamsin wants children around."
But she reaches for his face with her one free hand, the one not tucked under her head, and holds her hand to his cheek and jaw. Stomach muscles flex so she can bring herself up to meet and kiss him again. This time the gesture is more assured. There's no fever to the kiss as there had been earlier, and it didn't search for anything either. It was something that would become more familiar, easier and thoughtless as time went on.
"Good," was her conclusion, though, when her lips parted from his. "Frankly, I didn't much want to start taking pills anyways."
Hector Ghosh
Her hand on his face stills him and his eyes close before their eyes meet. Lola is happy to lie atop the bed and hold each other. Hector does not seem unhappy with this calling and he does not stir anew and wanting with the kiss. But his blood still runs hot. His heart is beating restful and content but he will only remain distracted so long as his body is moving, or his mouth. Once his mind starts going it's all over. He's easily wound up and he will continue to be easily wound up until Luna has waned again.
At least the Moot will come in a few days time. He'll go into the Caern's heart with his pack and his people and they'll talk and sing and run through the woods in their wolf skins. He'll come home bloody and alive and not entirely spent and they'll do this again. Hector has not once let himself into her room without her prior consent and now he has her invitation and the expression of her love. Though she may not grow accustomed to it he will soon make a habit of climbing into bed with her at the end of the day.
They come apart again for her to voice her gladness at not having to add prophylactics to her routine. Hector smiles a smile that would have been a laugh were they further apart and adjusts the fall of his lower body so he's between her knees again. Not to gear her up again but because he wants to lie with his head on her shoulder, his hand still flat against her sternum. His heart beating against her belly.
He keeps moving his other hand through her hair. A rhythm reveals itself as he rakes his fingers slow.
"I'd be worried if you started taking pills," he says. Trying to be funny. "That's something urrah do. All that time in the city last month might've gotten to you."
Lola Hawkes
"Mmm, you might be right. All the more reason to stay the fuck outta there, then."
He settled on top of her once more, but not so that they were hip-to-hip. Rather, her thighs framed his sides instead, and his chest settled across the center of her torso so that his head could settle on her shoulder. She adjusted to his shifting about, looped the arm whose shoulder he rested on downward, out of the way. Legs parted to make room for how he wished to lay, and one leg twined with his so that her heel rested behind his calf.
Pills were the creation of men-- humans, not Werewolves. The ones she was talking about, birth control, were a luxury afforded to a race of beings that were overpopulating the world. They were the tool of humans.
Hector wasn't a human. He didn't fit in very well when he was one, and he hasn't done much looking back since. He was born of two legs, but embraced his heritage well the more he grew into it. Lola was closer to human, but had never believed herself to be a part of that society. She didn't go to public schools, she didn't hold a job. She didn't interact with regular humans at all, as a matter of fact, save for the occasional run-ins with the forest rangers, and even then most of the time it was a Kinfolk that she would speak with instead.
Family planning was something deemed smart, practical, responsible. But when your race was dying out, and especially for Lola when a long and proud family name was left on your shoulders alone, missing the opportunity to extend the line seemed less responsible at the end of the day. This wasn't something that they needed to speak on much-- the matter was as settled as they were right now.
Time will tick by on that alarm clock's face, and eventually they will untangle from one another and roll from the bed, called off the sheets by restless energy. They'll dress, they'll eat dinner, and hell, they might even get a little stoned because there was no way either of them were going places tonight. Even a Garou could be swept away by flood waters, and by this point who knew how high the flood that interrupted the road had grown? It might have surpassed the sandbags, but in this moment it would be unsafe to go check. They would let Nature do what damage it will, and in the morning Lola would worry about running a damage report and making a plan for what work needed to be done.
For tonight, though, they would revel in new found familiarity and motivation, each with a new light of something worth fighting for, and when enough time had ticked its way through the night they would return to that bed, but find their way under the covers this time around.
