Lola Hawkes
On Sunday Hector had made some comment about how nice the weather was for December being one setting of the sun away.
On Monday, the news that Lola listened to when she did her kitchen chores in the morning spoke of being prepared for dangerously low temperatures and ice and snow.
Thanks, Hector.
Monday was fine, but there was an electric kind of tension to the air to speak to the storm that was coming in from the northwest, pressed all the way down from Alaska to rain its fury upon them.
On Tuesday when they woke, it was to winds howling at the log walls of the house and frozen window panes. Thankfully, Lola didn't keep any livestock to worry about gathering and moving into the barn. They had already moved plenty of wood into the house, stacked up near the wood burning stove that warmed their home, so they wouldn't need to go out to chop and to fetch. The snow fell heavily, the winds whistled and howled, and they were content to weather out the storm inside. Lola tried to teach Hector some more Spanish, while he taught her a few chords on an acoustic guitar before switching to coaching her on some effective 'dirty fighting' maneuvers in the open space of the loft upstairs. They made love at some point as well. Though they were creatures that required movement and action and exercise, they fared just fine being snowed in as well.
Wednesday morning Lola woke and bundled herself up, went outside with a heavy bristled push broom and knocked the half a foot of snow off the front and back porches. The snow was still falling, but it drifted down casually, not with the same force that it had been over the past twenty-four hours. It's about 9:30 a.m. when she comes back inside, knocking the snow off her boots, and strips down out of the layers that she'd put on to go complete that task. Though the winds had calmed and the snow had slowed, it was absolutely frigid outside-- we're talking single digits.
So, Lola sat in the kitchen at the counter, on the stool that she liked occupying, having a cup of coffee. She'd poured one for Hector as well. Her fingers were curled around the ceramic of the mug, warming themselves from her time outside. Her cheeks and nose were still bright pink and flushed, but she was healthy and bright and content. Hector may hate the cold weather, but Lola was accustomed to it. It was just as much a part of life in Colorado, up against the Rocky Mountains, as anything else.
"After storms like this my dad'd try and take me and Maria ice fishing," she was telling him. "Because the ponds are frozen over but the water underneath is still warm enough that the fish are awake and active. Once Maria lost her rod through the ice hole and got pissed and stamped her foot-- put a big crack in the ice and my dad acted like it was going to be the end of us all. She didn't go much after that."
It didn't have a punchline or a plot. She was just reminiscing. Remember, she'd make a terrible Galliard.
"I'll bet you've never even seen ice fishing."
Hector Ghosh
They occupied an unsteady span of time after the incident out in the foothills of the Rockies. After they returned home and Hector showered his own blood from his body all either of them wanted to do was rest. The day outside was bright and did not forewarn of the weather that was coming for them.
The radio did that. But Hector was gone most of the day on Monday. He had assigned himself some task that took him away from the Homestead. Had nothing to do with the fact that Lola still quailed inwardly at his presence even if she tolerated his Rage easier than she did the day before. Their lives moved on despite the horror of the day before and when he came home at the end of the day he knew a nasty storm was coming without having been home to hear the radio.
Something like normalcy has returned to their routine even with the piles of snow and the brutal temperatures. Hector does not stir until the sun has begun to rise and even then he is slow to leave the bed because the bed is warm and his woman is with him and wolves do not hibernate the way bears do but winter makes everything slower and more somnolent.
Lola rises first as she tends to do. When she got up to brush the snow from the porches Hector had groaned and rolled over onto his stomach with his arm stretched out over the warm space she left behind. If she was going to be outside brushing off the porches he might as well get his ass up on the roof and shovel the snow off of it. That task needed to happen before the next heavy fall or the next thaw came.
So Hector put on his insubstantial outerwear and dragged the ladder and the shovel out from the shed and shoveled off the roof while Lola brushed. Huge loads of snow fell to the ground around them and she finished before he did. Once he nearly fell off the goddamn roof and for the time she was outside she could hear him grousing about the cold but he came back down using the ladder.
Now they're sat around the counter in the kitchen. Hector looks completely frozen though Garou do not suffer from cold exposure until the cold has dropped into negative temperatures. He'd shaved his face on Sunday that Lola might not find him so terrifying but it wasn't as if the hair he grew provided much protection. If he lives to be a hundred years old Hector will never be able to grow a full beard.
The story of Maria getting pissed off losing her fishing rod in the frozen lake makes Hector laugh a sharp and unexpected laugh. He can imagine the scene with some vividness and no sting of pain comes for him afterwards. Talking about the dead is growing easier for him. Distance helps. They're nearly six months gone from what happened in Winnipeg and the only one Hector still can't stand to talk about is the one who's gone but still alive.
"Sure I have," he says. "... in books. That I read. In elementary school. Nah, I'd never even seen snow until I was... I must've been fifteen, Ma took me and Helen out to see Cassandra. Cass was having a baby shower, she and Vijay were both starting medical school and they figured if they were going to ever have kids they'd better do it then. They live in New York City like a couple of big shots, Ma thought it was just so great--"
His voice takes on a singsong quality as he imitates his mother.
"--oh look they put up decorations in the windows and my gosh look at the lights it's just so pretty with the snow on the ground, everything's all lit up, this is so nice, look Heck there's a snowman--"
He rolls his eyes in begrudging amusement at the memory and takes a long drink of his coffee.
Lola Hawkes
Hector had decided to go up on the roof before Lola had a chance to take the task on herself. It was probably better that way-- they were equally sure of foot, and though Lola had more practice keeping her traction on slick icy surfaces, Hector carried a lot less risk overall if he actually did fall off the two-story tall roof. If he snapped his back from landing wrong he could just heal, and they wouldn't be losing an extra life in the process, after all. Lola swept off the front and back porches both to the melody of Hector's grumbles, half-shouts, and curses up above, and was little more than amused and appreciative of the antics.
Back inside, warming up with coffee, they spoke of winter and snow and memories overall. Hector spoke of the first time he recalls seeing snow and how his mother had crooned about it while they were out hosting a baby shower for his... what? Nephew? Niece? The imitation that he made of how his mother spoke had Lola grinning over the rim of her mug-- a tall and narrow matte black thing that looked inappropriately delicate in her hands, as they were far more accustomed to being seen around the handle of a gun or a tool of some sort. She kept the house in order well enough, but in a functional way. Lola wasn't especially domestic, after all.
The most domestic thing that she really kept up in the house was the dual walls of pictures that made up the living room. Frames of all shapes and sizes could be found, many of them placed there from generations before her. Hector's had plenty of time to examine, but these two walls at the front and sides of the house were a mural dedicated to the history of the Hawkes family. Thanks to these pictures he's aware of the fact that Lola had a boyishly short haircut in the middle of her teenage years, and her father had a big black mustache, and that there are Lupus relatives in the mix somewhere as there's one picture of a young girl-- presumably Lola or Maria, around age 3 with their arms latched along the neck of an adolescent looking wolf that appears to be barely tolerating the toddler at best.
Hector takes a long drink of his coffee, and Lola takes a smaller sip of hers. While she would drink coffee in all different ways, she used to default to black with only a bit of sugar every so often. Today, though, it was laden with cream that she'd picked up from the store.
"I haven't put up lights or a tree since my folks passed away." She cast a distracted glance back to a corner in the living room, no doubt where the tree always went up before. "Didn't see the point, with it just being me here."
Hector Ghosh
At mention of the empty space where the Christmas tree used to live Hector moves closer to Lola under the pretense of wanting to get a better view. He rarely sits at the island counter even when he's eating. The male she's chosen has an abundance of energy that could just as easily have been mistaken as attention-deficit disorder when he was a child were not for the fact that his father didn't believe in medicating young children who functioned just fine otherwise. During this conversation he had been standing. Now he leans in against her as he follows her glance.
She didn't see the point decorating if she was the only one living here.
Hector keeps his hands around his own mug as he rests his chin on her shoulder. She can just about feel him thinking. Their parents' holidays don't have much overlap and the Garou as a whole are an animistic and spiritual people. Their gods are not gods at all but spirits. Their holidays are the passage of seasons. The solstices and the equinoxes.
Diwali came and went without Hector doing anything other than joking about it.
"We could put up lights," he says. "We gotta start doing something around the holidays. Don't want our kids being the only ones in school--"
Oh shit. Then there's that.
"Did you go to school, when you were a kid?"
Lola Hawkes
An excuse is found and nabbed for Hector to come up close to Lola's side, although she hasn't required him to provide excuses in the past few months. He settled against her side, chin on her shoulder, to survey the empty corner that would have been filled up with a tree several years earlier. Popcorn ropes and pine cones were always more commonly used in this house than fragile ornaments and tinsel-- chances were that the rambunctious daughters would have shattered more of the bulbs than a house pet would've accomplished anyways. Lola tipped her head to touch her temple to Hector's and left it there for a moment before straightening up to take another sip of her coffee.
He suggested that they put up lights, and Lola shrugged. She was about to inform him that there were tubs of old Christmas lights and decorations stashed away somewhere up in the loft, and if not there then out in the shed no doubt. Before she had the chance to share this information, though, Hector interrupted himself and asked if she went to school or not. Lola's eyebrows hopped up on her face in moderate surprise, flavored with just a touch of suspicion.
"Yeah. Maria and I went to Littleton for school."
Littleton was also where the majority of needed shopping was done, because it was the nearest 'city' to Roxborough State Park.
"Maria got to end classes early after her Change. I wanted to do the same, but since I never Changed my parents kept me going. Dad was real big on getting that high school degree, even though we both knew I'd never use it for anything." One hand left her mug to rub at the corner of her right eye-- an errant eyelash or something like that was bothering her. A moment of thought passed, then she set her coffee mug down on the counter and rolled her shoulder gently under Hector's chin to get him to move. Once he did, she'd stand up and head to the wood burning stove that was pressed up against the wall in the space between living and dining rooms.
"Why? You worried about if our kid'll be going too or not? Or is there something about 10th grade geography that I have to remember all of a sudden?"
There's only a fleck of sarcasm to the last question, but not directed at Hector so much as her own still-lingering belief that her finishing high school was a huge waste of her time. While she waited for his clarification, she pulled open the stove door and tossed another few chopped wood-blocks into it.
Hector Ghosh
"It's not something I'm really worried about, you know? It's not like the baby's five and we're going Oh shit we'd better get her enrolled if we don't want her going to a ghetto preschool. I'm--"
A thought crosses his mind and for what is not but certainly feels like the first time in their conjoined history Hector flinches and does not let it past his teeth.
She knows he is not a reticent young man. More often than not he blurts out whatever he happens to be thinking. Even nearly three months into their partnership he finds himself embarrassed and near to blushing when the thought he blurts out has to do with Lola. His role within the Nation is to act as a storyteller and a historian but he is not constantly overflowing with praise and flowery language. He is less of a balladeer and more of a raconteur. Where his skill lies in is engaging his audience and making sure they're listening to him.
They have spent more time with each other in the last three months than they had in the three years prior. Much of Hector's change in demeanor has to do with the fact that he was, mentally, still very much in the courtship stage of their relationship when an ultrasound revealed Lola's pregnancy. Trying to act like a gentleman when at his core he was a barbarian. Like Lola has never seen him without clothes on tearing into another living thing with his teeth before.
He lets her move to the stove without shadowing her and doesn't blurt out that he's not entirely sure he'll survive until their firstborn is school-age anyway.
"I mean, I don't know how this is supposed to work. I went to school because my parents didn't know any better, I wasn't sure what normal people do. I was just wondering."
Lola Hawkes
The sentence that Hector cuts himself off from saying isn't predicted-- Lola knows him well, but she cannot assume what he's trying to say unless he leads into it strongly enough. They were talking about their child, whom Hector insisted on referring to as female even though they didn't know the gender for certain. Even if they did, the either of them, want to go back near an ultrasound machine again (and trust that they don't), it would be too early for a technician to tell as well. They were discussing preschool and kindergarten, which would be several years out anyways.
All the same, Lola cuts a glance over her shoulder at him. Her eyebrows lift, but she doesn't press him to come out and say what he was going to say. He corrected himself and continued with his thought process soon enough rather than clamming up and going silent.
It was a legitimate concern that Hector might not live long enough to see his daughter put on her first backpack and go to school with her classmates to begin a long career of wreaking havoc and being a thorn in the sides of her teachers. Truthfully, the cards weren't exactly stacked in their favor on that matter. Garou didn't have a very long lifespan, given the nature of their lives. But this was a concern that Lola shared as well. She didn't think about it often, but she knew that with the duties she took upon herself, the role she'd claimed in the Nation, that the risks were high for her as well.
After all, she'd already nearly died within the past few months. If the doctors weren't quick enough, if Milton wasn't fast enough getting her to the emergency room, she would be gone right now.
When he continues with his thought, Lola looks back to what she was doing. A metal poker was used to stir up the coals a bit, to lodge the new pieces of wood appropriately amid the embers. Then the stove door closed, the poker was hung up on its place to the side of the old metal stove, and Lola straightened up, pushing her hands into her lower back as she did so. This stretch helped with the mild discomfort that she would get in her back every now and again, and it poked her stomach out against the loose chunky sweatshirt that she was wearing today. When she was standing straight, though, the only noticeable sign of change was the changed size of bust.
"Well, everyone that I came up with at the Caern went to school, too. At least up to a point. I know that they took Eddie out of class before his Change, but that's only because they knew it was coming soon, and the Get of Fenris are a more... militant sort than my parents were. Ivan, though? I'm pretty sure that he kept up home school material even after his Change.
"But that's a hell of a ways out from now, anyways." She pulled her lips into a grin, closed-lipped and tinged with teasing humor. For once she was working to lift the mood instead.
"How come you're so convinced it'll be a girl, anyways? You don't actually know and you're not telling me so, do you?"
Hector Ghosh
When she turns away from the stove Lola finds that Hector is leaning easy against the island countertop with their mugs at either of his elbows and his eyes locked on her. Nothing weighs on his mind at all let alone heavy as things tend to do when the moon shines fat in the sky or some unresolved dilemma hangs over him. He is not agitated and aside from the upcoming moot and the mental preparations Lola knows him to be making before seeking out his sisters he has no reason to be agitated.
It's a minor paradox that he seems calmer and happier after their fight on the side of the highway the night Lola spurred on Erich Storm's-Teeth. That night could have ended more than just his life. That he went off on his own to fight something, anything, he hadn't had a Bane in mind when he went to rally himself against a conversation involving his departed alpha but he had gone off on his own and that was enough to spark concern in those within the Nation who learned of the specifics and cared for his well-being.
But those within the Nation consider the Cliath to possess the sagacity of a higher-ranked Garou. Though it seems his strength as a leader grows with each passing night he doesn't boast the battle-hardened mien of one who is expected to boost the morale of other leaders.
If he had died in combat in the midst of summer Hector would walk around shirtless so the world could see the deep scar on his torso. Thus far the only person to see it clearly have been his pack and his woman and the ritesmistress who rubbed the ashes into it when it was still a wound. He does not crow about how badass the scar is and even Lola only has to remember that it exists when her hands find one of its halves.
It aches when the weather changes. If the ache is an actual pain Hector does not bitch about it. Lola catches him frowning and rubbing his ribs or his flank but of all the things he complains about throughout the day his scar is not one of them. That scar means he lived through something that ought to have killed him.
Anyway: Hector smiles when she smiles and pushes back from the countertop when she asks how he's so convinced it's a girl.
"I know the Rite of Heritage and that's about as far as my mystical what-the-hell-are-you senses go. The book says it's not anything yet. You know." He gestures to his crotch with a vague motion. "Plumbing-wise. Blueprint-wise it's whatever, but all babies have the same junk in the first trimester. Even with that, I didn't wanna call it an 'it' the whole time."
Since the last he understood neither of them wanted another ultrasound. They hadn't exactly wanted the first one but they hadn't had a choice. An ultrasound was part of the trip to the hospital that kept Lola alive.
Lola Hawkes
Garou and Kinfolk live lives wrought with war, tragedy, death and hardship. This is a simple fact of life, so basic and true that even Anthony understood it despite his distance from his family. That was a huge part of why he kept at bay, truth be told. He didn't want to try and settle into a life where everyone he knew was going to cycle out and be replaced by new faces after three years had passed. He knew already that his heart wouldn't handle the burden, so he settled down with human women instead.
Hector bore his scar, and it ached to remind him that he's alive and how lucky he is to be that way. When he favored his side and scrubbed it while the storm raged yesterday, it wasn't with bitterness or resentment. He knew that it was a mark of survival, of being stronger than death. Lola boasted no scars to compare. Hell, she didn't have any large or impressive ones to mar her brown skin. But they were there peppered here or there from wounds that healing gourds couldn't be bothered to wash over, or that they weren't powerful enough on their own to heal in their entirety. On her upper right arm is a medium sized scar that Hector's aware of but is easy enough to forget about. It's a mark of when a wolf snapped the bone while she fought it like a fool. There are scrape scars on her knees and elbows from many, many instances of hitting the ground hard. But she's tough, and her bones and joints don't ache for the fast, hard life that she lives. She won't favor any part of her body for old war wounds.
But anyway.
The coffee mugs are back at Hector's elbows, and Lola returns to him to retrieve hers and take a drink of the cream-laden beverage that's rapidly descending to room temperature. She used to be able to better tolerate cool coffee, but that was something that her stomach and sensibilities wouldn't abide by these days. That could change in a few weeks, or it could be a quirk that lingers with her forever. They'll find out in time.
I don't wanna call it an 'it'.
Lola shrugged her shoulders in answer. Clearly she didn't feel so strongly about giving identity to the baby yet. She's read the books too, she knew that it had done quite a lot of its developing by now and looked very much human, but it was still incredibly small and didn't entirely register as its own entity for Lola just yet. She didn't think hard about when that would change, but that would probably come when it was strong enough for her to actually feel it. In the meantime, though, she behaved as usual and dressed in loose clothing rather than showing off the growth that she's accomplished thus far. She glanced thoughtfully out one of the windows in the dining room at the world of white outside and surveyed the treeline out of old territorial habit while she spoke next. Her split focus made her tone sound distracted.
"Fair enough. We'll see, though."
Beat.
"...We've got a lot to do to prepare still. Gotta make the room across the hall--" she meant across the hall from where they slept, of course, "into a baby room. Gotta save up for the shit we're actually gonna need too. We're not gonna need a stroller or shit ton of toys or anything like that, no need for half the shit that they want you to buy up. ...But a car seat's gonna be on that list, too."
She pursed her lips together and looked moderately worried, or bothered, or some mix in between, and lifted her mug up for another sip while still staring half-focused out the window. "....at least medical bills ain't gonna be a worry."
Hector Ghosh
With her back to him all Hector has to gauge her mood is the language used to write her posture. Tension in her muscles or a bracing presentation of her bones.
No one ever has to wonder what Hector might be thinking because Hector has little disconnect between his thoughts and his words. Even when he is not speaking he bristles with energy if he is not calm. For as long as they've lived together Hector has struggled to learn the nuances of his woman's personality.
It's been like loving an Ahroun but for the fact that... well. She isn't an Ahroun. She was born under a full moon and raised up as a full moon and fights as fierce and feral as an Ahroun Cub. But she cannot wear an Ahroun's skin and she cannot regenerate the damage she takes the way an Ahroun could. She has more to fear from life than an Ahroun would but fear is nothing Hector had ever really seen in her before this past weekend.
She wasn't afraid of the Wyrm this weekend. It was an unknown entity that descended upon them and then it was his Rage that kept her tense afterwards.
And Hector can remember how angry he was when he first changed. How he didn't know how to articulate what was bothering him and so he lashed out at people who tried to help him. His Rage overwhelmed him when he was a teenager and no one expected it wouldn't. Of course the whelp didn't know what was going on. His great-grandfather had made well sure that his line would wither away and perish by lying with one of the Wyrmbringer's women and leaving that child to fend for itself. Gaia has an awful sense of humor. Hector was fostered by a proud and insular people and then thrown out into a melting pot. He had to learn to trust Willow and Maria and Glen, to accept and love Tamsin and Corey, when everything he had learned during his fostering taught him not to trust at all.
It's no wonder he sucks at identifying his own emotions or the emotions in other people. He can't identify them and he can't do anything with them. They're just there.
So: she's staring out the window, distracted by a watchfulness bred of not being able to get out there and patrol when it's -8 degrees and the wind is threatening to bury them in what's already fallen. They're talking about their first child and the birth is not a fixed point in time but the closer it comes the more they begin to realize they really don't have much time. That's a fair enough reason to be worried or bothered or something of both.
Hector braces himself on the countertop, heels of his hand by either of his hips, and chews his lower lip before he speaks.
"You don't sound like they're not."
Lola Hawkes
Pictures of wolves hung on the walls alongside frames filled with human faces ranging all through the decades. A couple of the pictures were even in the sepia print of old cameras that were carted across the Western United States before it could even be called 'territories'. The fact that she was related directly by blood to creatures born as wolves couldn't come as too strong a surprise to the Garou that know Lola, for certain mannerisms and habits engrained in her are far more wolf than they will ever be human.
Her territorial tendencies top that list. Yesterday she couldn't go out on her patrols because of the snow storm that had blown in. Today the below freezing temperatures and sharp winds that stabbed like ice picks kept her patrols postponed as well. She would be fine in the house, sure, while Hector was on the roof and she was down on the porches she was gauging the conditions and contemplating if she could make at least one round, how far out she could go, what she would need to bundle herself up in to travel reasonably comfortable and protected from frostbite. That her cheeks and nose and lips were red and starting to chap from the wind in just the time that it took to clear the decks confirmed that it wouldn't be worth the return to go out away from the house, not today.
The fact that she couldn't walk her territory had her displeased, but she pressed through it well enough. She was cheery (for Lola) while making the coffee, relaxed enough while drinking it. Even now as she stood looking out the window, clearly wanting to be out there instead of in here, she isn't stiff or tense. Just displeased, is all.
Still, Hector senses reluctance in her and chews on his lower lip before addressing it. He's picked up on more than just the desire to be outside, somehow, and pulled forward concerns about upcoming preparations and expenses that Lola had simply been keeping at bay and pushing to the back of her mind. It's too soon to worry about that anyways, she'd keep telling herself, but for all she knew they were already halfway through this pregnancy. It was becoming more difficult to just ignore the details like she'd been doing.
He speaks up, and Lola's eyebrows hop up in surprise when she glances back to him. There's a bolt of tension that cuts into her frame, like she was caught doing something that she didn't want to be seen doing. She stared into Hector's face, reading it for information, then after a second she rolled one shoulder in a shrug, and that motion released the tension that had appeared-- gone just as quick as it had come. She turned to face him more directly but didn't cross the dining room to join him at the kitchen island yet.
"Well, not the medical bills. There's no reason for hospitals or doctors or any of that-- we've got this on lock. There's no need for modern medicine with the healing of our people, right?"
But...
"But I'm not sure what to do about everything else. I suppose I'll have to start talking to the Guardians, see if they or their families have anything they can donate."
Hector Ghosh
A small consolation Hector offered to Lola regarding the temperature and the snow that came with it was if it was too cold for their squishy human bodies to stand for longer than a few minutes then it was too cold for most other creatures they would need to keep off the property. The only living things that would serve as a concern would be the things that could come right up to their door and knock.
The weather and the stillness isn't all that's concerning her. For the last two months the concept of a pregnancy had still been nebulous for them. They had an ultrasound printout and small physical changes and that was all they had to go on. For two people who had given little more thought to becoming parents than the conversation that took place the night Hector rescued Lola from the mudslide that wasn't much to go on at all.
Neither of them work. Lola walks the Bawn eight hours a day and she volunteers for patrols and reconnaissance missions and she responds when there is a present danger to those she holds dear and Hector has devoted himself to his auspice. But neither of them perform services in exchange for money.
Hector has never held a human job at all. The occasional open mic doesn't count.
At mention of not needing modern medicine when they have their people's healing Hector nods. Of course he is not convinced that they have this on lock. This whole thing is a question mark in his mind and he has approached it with the thought that they only have to get through this one great uncertainty together. This was nothing that their people haven't been doing for thousands of years.
Their people have also for thousands of years been doing this with ample support from their parents and their siblings and their community. They haven't had to go to the Sept to ask for handouts.
He switches from chewing his lip to chewing the thumbnail on his right hand before he takes what sounds like one of his patented hard conversational lefts.
"If I said I was going to go find my family after the next moot, would you want to stay here or come with me? I don't think flying is such a hot idea, and I don't want to make you sit in a car for that long. But if you wanted to fly and I took moon-bridges between places. You know. That could work. If you even want to. I just--I don't know how my sisters or my parents are even going to react but I was thinking best case scenario, you know, at least one of my sisters wants to stay in touch and my parents haven't gone completely bankrupt in the four years since I went away, they'd be able to help. Cassandra's got to have a ton of baby stuff from when she--"
Nervous talk mode: engaged.
Lola Hawkes
When he'd first expressed doubt in what Lola was saying, that he didn't feel like she wasn't as worried as she tried to make herself out to be, Lola had turned herself to face him more fully. It was a slower motion, more relaxed than typical. Often times when Lola felt a need to present someone with the whole of her front, she also drew herself up as tall as she could be and made her shoulders and chest larger and more imposing-- which was something she was surprisingly good at.
Hector hadn't been there, hadn't seen it, but he's no doubt heard Thomas share the story by now of when he and Lola and a few others had found some teenagers out in one of the suburbs, enchanted to violence by some angry old spirit trapped in a necklace. They're both Galliards, so Thomas is good enough at sharing and Hector's imagination is vivid enough that he can see Lola answering a young man trying to punch her in the face by lifting her cannon and blowing the cheek, ear, and bits of skull fragment and brain matter from his. He can picture the solid, heavy, dreadfully controlled stride that she would have taken to go to the girl that once was the ringleader, reduced to tears by the fact that someone she loved was bleeding from a head wound onto the parking lot. It's an easy and terrible (and, in some circles, impressive) picture to paint of Lola seizing the girl by the hair, jerking her head back, and pressing a still-warm gun barrel to her temple while snarling for information.
Interrogation was a skill more traditionally cultivated by dark tribes and their waning-moon Philodoxes. Lola was a natural.
None of this applies today, though. Her shoulders are relaxed, form made less imposing. She looked less hard and tough this way, and when not trying actively to appear intimidating she looked sturdy and healthy instead. So, it is to a woman who is calm, albeit contemplative, that he presents his word-vomit of a thought process. When his words came out like an avalanche, doing nothing but gaining momentum along the way, Lola knew it was because he was nervous, and often because what he was talking about was something that's been plaguing his mind as well. Usually it would make her grim-faced.
This time, though, her expression brightened and shifted first to surprised, and from there softened into something far more pleased.
Cassandra's got to have a ton of baby stuff...
She could tell he wasn't going to stop on his own, and that if he was left to just keep going and going he could very well get himself all wound up-- yes, that happens even under the new moon, she knows. So she moves slow-not-swift across the space of the dining room, past the modest square table and chairs to meet Hector where he stands at the kitchen island. She doesn't shush him or put a hand to his lips to stop the stem of words. Instead, she lays a hand gentle but firm on the top left side of his chest. She aimed to still his nerves, but not necessarily to silence him. No doubt, he realizes that he's rambling and takes a break and a breath all the same. In that moment of quiet Lola took up speech instead.
"I'm glad you came around to deciding to seek them out. And if you'd have me there with ya, then I'll go." She didn't say as much, but her reasons for going spanned just a bit beyond her own curiosity to know what his family is like and her own sense of wanting to know more about him. She wanted, in some base animal way, to be sure that this family knew who she was since it was her life that his was twining so closely with now.
Even more than that, though, she knew that the stress of this reunion could put great and terrible strain on Hector-- more to the point, on his control over the beastial Rage. Kinfolk served greater purpose than just financial support and reproductive agents. They could withstand the Rage that Garou carried because they were meant to ease the burden of it. She could already foresee a tense moment where Hector's father has a snapping, stressed and emotional moment while Hector tries to lie about where he's been.
"....I'll talk to Anthony. He's got a car that he could probably let me borrow. It'd be better than asking for money for plane tickets anyways."
Hector Ghosh
Normally when he gets himself this wound up it's over something that's bothering him. During brighter moons his imagination starts to get away from him and the threat of a frenzy lingers underneath his energy but this time of month he's calmer. He's almost chill most days. Cracking jokes and playing the guitar and haranguing whichever of his friends and compatriots happens to be nearest to him.
He's not a difficult person to get along with. Lola doesn't turn towards him with the intent to shut him down or intimidate him into changing the track of his thoughts.
And she used to intimidate him. He came into her life as a skinny teenage boy with no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He had to have thought she was Garou from the way she acted at first. Back then she was still raw and angry and jilted.
Hector hadn't been there any more than he had been there the night the group of teenagers found a necklace whose spirit rider filled their minds with dark urges. Even based on scant details given to him by people who do not consider themselves storytellers he can imagine it. He is not intimidated by her anymore.
More like he's grateful she's showing a trend of calming down as she grows older and matures. Whatever rare bad dreams wake him up out of sleep at night he keeps to himself but it wouldn't take a psychic to posit that he's dreamt of something terrible happening to her.
Their conversation is not about dark things. Uncertain and stressful things but not dark things.
A hand on his chest reminds him to take a breath and so he does. Draws it in slow and lets it out and reaches up to cover her hand in his own.
And if you'd have me there with ya, then I'll go.
He takes her hand off of his chest to press a kiss to the backs of her knuckles and her palm and her wrist as she finishes her thought. Nods at mention of a car trumping a monetary loan and kisses her wrist one two three more times before releasing her.
"You're okay with leaving after the moot, then?"
Lola Hawkes
The affection that he lays onto her hand is watched with fondness etched into her face. This was something that Hector got to see, but no one else really knew was possible. Before this last month, really, the only expression that seemed to lay on Lola's face was one of hard readiness, or moderate negativity in some way shape or form. Even in the first month or so of Lola sharing her bed with Hector, while she would still be close to him and tuck herself under his arm or press kisses to his face and hair and shoulder, there was still something warrior-like about her the whole time, like the war was forever there in the back of her mind, like she had something to prove even to him.
This was still the case with almost everyone else. Hell, even around Tamsin Lola was brusque in mannerisms and a bit rigid in the muscles. She needed to be tall and impressive and prove that she was capable of standing among the Garou that she fought alongside as though she were their equal.
She has little more to prove to Hector, though, when it comes to her own strength. He's likely the reason that the Sept speaks of her as it does, that they know her prowess in battle now. She's killed things that would have killed him, and suffered no scars or wounds or poor health to show for it. She killed a Fomori with a hunting knife that she stole away from the seizing body of her lover. For him, she doesn't need to be hard anymore. So instead her expression is relaxed and pleased still while he asks when she'll be okay to leave. He kissed at her wrist and palm and she curled her fingers to the line of his jaw and nodded.
"Where will we go? San Jose? And shouldn't we wait long enough that the moon is thin and dark while we're out there?"
Hector Ghosh
"Yeah, I mean, we should?"
He's thought about this enough that he can talk about distances and moon phases. As much as he's traveled in the last four years Hector has come to have a clear enough sense of what the moon is like to be doing after a certain number of miles but that doesn't mean he has an innate sense like some of their ilk possess.
His right hand comes up to comb hair back from her brow. Rare as her moments of softness are they do not surprise him. Might be they never did. Though his awkwardness and his blurted-out bits of affection this summer hinted at a depth of feeling she did not then possess Lola was the first one to tell the other with words that they were loved. Shocked as she was to feel and say it she did say it and Hector still grapples with an overwhelming sense of contentment when she touches him or murmurs something true without provocation.
In public they act as if they are both soldiers in the same battalion. Humans are not kept at so far a distance but at the Sept or when their people are near the closest they get to displaying their bond came at the warmoot: Hector had put his arm around the back of his chair and sat splay-legged without touching her while waiting for the proceedings to start. He has not stood up at any moot to declare her to be off limits and he does not hold her hand or put his arm around her waist around other Garou.
Sometimes he sets his teeth into the meat of her shoulder when they're lying with each other but that is not to mark her that others might know he was there. He doesn't break her skin or hurt her. If it's not his teeth he buries his face in her shoulder. Hector is not a shy lover but everyone in earshot doesn't need to hear him.
Right now he is not trying to seduce her. That may very well change knowing as she does how a young man's mind works but right now he just wants to touch her. He feels his own surge of fondness when Lola the proud strong no-shit-taking warrior woman relaxes when he strokes her hair.
"But I figure: I want to see my sister in person. So she can... I dunno. I don't really look like I did when I disappeared. The last picture any of them have of me I was sixteen. Plus if she can see me in person and know I'm not tied up in a basement somewhere with a gun to my head she might call ahead for us? Warn my parents we're coming? And then I can swing back through and we'll jump in the car and go to San Jose. The moon should be pretty thin by then."
Lola Hawkes
By way of conversations that she has with Wolves about the Sept, and simply because Hector hasn't said anything about it yet, Lola knew that he hasn't stood up to claim her officially before the Nation. Some more staunch traditionalists would cry danger in this scenario. She was carrying his child, after all. The Uktena tribe was a very old one, twisted up in ancient and dark ways. They weren't the most progressive-minded bunch of people-- not like the Children of Gaia or the Glass Walkers or Bone Gnawers. A good number of them still thought of pairing and mating in stark and matter of fact ways. At any point a higher ranked Uktena could roll through, see the breeding riding Lola's bones and the evidence of her fertility and set forward a challenge to claim her. Since there was no official claim on her already, Hector would have to rise to fight. If he lost, the consequences could be heartbreaking. The child would be left with Hector, at best, while Lola was taken away.
But even in this terrible scenario, Lola would see no trouble with killing the unwanted Garou while he slept and returning to Hector. It would just be preferable if the situation didn't rise in the first place, was all.
However, Lola said nothing on the matter. Not once has she mentioned the subject to Hector or pressed him to make his move and lay claim. This was a ball she would leave firmly in his court. When he was ready, then he would bring it up. Until then, they would rely on one another's faithfulness and the respect of the Sept they lived in to keep that problem at bay.
He said he wanted to see his sister in person, and Lola's brow furrowed only the tiniest bit when she realized the distance and the amount of driving that he was talking about. When she asks for clarification, it wasn't with a tone of reluctance. It was more like bracing for something that she was already willing to do. "So.... We're going to New York?"
Jesus, she sure hoped not.
Hector Ghosh
"Do you want to get arrested for punching a cab driver in the face?"
It's rare that one of his smiles shows his teeth. Usually it's only when he laughs and when he laughs it's because he can't convince himself it's a bad idea. His smile affects his entire face. Just about closes his eyes. More often he smiles and it's a lopsided thing.
Times like this he just lifts his eyebrows and lets the smile show in his eyes. He thinks he's being funny. His hand pauses in its travels through her hair to brace the back of her neck.
"Nah, I found a mailing address and a phone number for Helen. The Internet says she's in North Carolina doing a residency in pediatrics at Duke or something. So I figure if I start there I can find her. If we can avoid going to New York that'd be great. My older sister's kind of..."
He wrinkles his nose and glances up at the ceiling like that's going to help him find a nicer way of phrasing this.
"Maybe she's gotten better now that she's a doctor and has a kid and all that. But when I was in high school she was like my dad, only without the accent and the gray hair. And more uptight. Somehow."
Lola Hawkes
The comment about asking if she wanted to get arrested was met with a laugh and a shake of her head. Lola's laughs weren't typically boisterous things, and that held true today. She didn't throw her head back and laugh from her stomach, but a grin did split her face and crinkle the edges of her eyes, and a sound that was more than a chuckle by a few degrees bubbled out of her throat. Hector's hand brushed through her hair, which was left down for the sake of warmth and ease, and found the back of her neck. She was dressed in what was becoming more common for her, and probably was going to continue to be throughout the winter and spring. A simple black floor-length dress with three-quarter sleeves that she pushed up past her elbows anyways, with a wide and low neckline (because a girl has to show some skin, she wasn't a nun for chrissakes). The waistline of the garment was cut high, so it allowed plenty of space for her stomach to be comfortable. Over the top of this was that chunky knit sweater for the sake of warmth. She was in stocking feet, boots abandoned to dry at the door.
Her hand moved from his chest to touch the outside of his arm, the forearm to be precise, but not to guide him away-- quite the opposite, in fact. Standing there, held like he was prepared to pull her in and kiss her, they continued their conversation about reconnecting with his family.
North Carolina, he clarified, and Lola breathed relief.
"Good. I only managed Las Vegas because I was shitfaced." She somehow manages to mention that trip without letting any sort of hesitancy or caution into her voice, and feels no pang of guilt that he can see either. She glazes right over that and continues on. Fingers stroked his forearm through his shirt, and her tone took on a more searching quality, slightly more matter-of-fact. She was information gathering in a way that wasn't ferociously unlike how she did when trying to help with concepts for battle plans.
"Is... your dad gonna be a problem we're gonna have to worry about?"
Hector Ghosh
Aside from traveling out to Houston and reenacting the stunt he'd pulled when he found out Milton had nearly taken Lola's body out of that building instead of bringing her to the hospital nothing Hector can do can give him a sense of resolution over what happened in Las Vegas beyond his own refusal to give a shit. They were not together when she went to the Weaver-congested city and even if he had thought it an infuriating reason at the time the fact that she had gone down there to try and fix him was as noble a reason as any.
She says she was shit-faced and that's why she managed the city. Hector snorts an unamused but forgiving snort. When she starts to run her fingers along the arm beneath the flannel shirt he'd swapped for his sweat-sodden hoodie when they came back inside he draws a breath like that's going to be the transition away from the conversation he was looking for.
But Lola is approaching this like a battle. She's right. Hector's middle sister is a potential commodity and beyond that her life is in danger if something else catches wind of what she is and pulls her out of her normal life. His mother deserves to know what she is and what became of her family. And his father--
Hector is just leaning in closer to her to tip their faces together when Lola asks if his father is going to be a problem.
The Galliard groans like she just asked the worst question in the entire world and wilts onto the kitchen stool behind him. Such agony! Much woe! Oh the humanity! He takes his hand off her face to put both arms around her waist and haul her in so he can bury his face against her sternum and groan more.
"YES," he says like he hadn't thought that far ahead.
Lola Hawkes
If Lola weren't so resolved and semi-stoic a thing by nature, she would have laughed outright at the dramatics that Hector threw himself into.
He'd been leaning forward to kiss her, and if she didn't feel the need to express these concerns and be prepared for what was to come while they were on the topic, she would have leaned forward to meet him partway in that kiss. For the sake of warmth and killing time and simply being with him, she would have coerced him to the couch or the bed-- hell, she might even have let him get carried away and put her up against the counter in here. But instead, when his nose was coming near to hers, she asked about his father.
Hector let go of her head, sank onto the stool, and wrapped his arms around her middle so that he could press his face into her shirt, just below her chest. She blinked, moderately surprised at his reaction moreso than his answer itself, and placed both of her hands on his head. Fingers combed through his hair, pushing it back from his brow and behind his ears, smoothing it slow and distracted and comforting. But that's not to say that she lets the subject die, or that her tone changes in any way at all when she continues.
"Well," she states at first, "it's a good thing we're timing it so we get out there when the moon's thinning." It's almost painful how matter-of-fact she is about the fact that Hector's Rage could snap and cause him to wreck the family that he was trying to reconnect with.
"What kind of 'problem'? Because Hector, I'll do my fuckin' best to sit on my hands, but it'll be hard as hell not making him swallow his goddamn words if he gets real fuckin' lippy."
Hector Ghosh
At least Hector gets some sort of release out of acting like a diva during moments like this. It helps him recenter himself when Lola does not laugh at him or call him names the way Tamsin would have. Maria would have goaded him. Maybe climbed over top of him like she was going to be able to calm him down by forcing the air out of his lungs.
Maria didn't have time for theatrics. She was a woman on a mission nearly every waking moment. If they weren't getting into trouble they were wasting time.
Yet he does soothe at the presence of her fingers in his hair. Lola can feel him haul in a breath through his nostrils and turn his head so his cheek is against her ribs instead of burying his entire face between her breasts and muffling his words. When he exhales again he secures his arms around her waist and grazes the small of her back with his fingers in a thoughtless pattern.
Could be almost painful but Hector needs that in his life. He's at a strange place right now where he doesn't know how to act when he has to be out in public. In a few nights' time he will stand with two Fosterns and a Ragabash and the Fosterns will treat his opinion as they would have an equal and he will not know what to do with himself.
It's almost as if he's trying to stay a Cliath as long as he possibly can and no one is going to indulge him. Straighten up and fly right, kid.
"I haven't told you much about my father," he asks without looking up at her, "have I?"
Lola Hawkes
There's something mutually calming about soothing a person. While Lola straightened errant hairs into line and gentled out any tangles that she could locate, she was less concerned about the trees outside that were going unwatched. The weight of Hector's head against her ribs, his arms about her middle and fingers at her back, up under the hem of her sweater so they could trace wandering, thoughtless paths through the thinner material of her dress, all soothed the need to be out, to be dutiful. It focused her in on what was inside the house instead and put her at rest.
His face turned so his cheek pressed against her now, the option to bury his face a bit higher between breasts ptassed up for the time being. Down from below her chest Hector asks about how much he's mentioned about his father. Lola glanced up, eyes finding the window, but only to look at the snow whipping along on the wind, not to seek anything past it. She was thinking, trying to recover information shared. Her memory was good in ways, but it was nothing compared to what Hector could boast.
She tries anyways, and relays what she's able to summon.
"Not specifics, no. He moved here from India and is stern as fuck. Physicist or surgeon or something like that. I'm just guessing since you'd mentioned how hardassed he is that he'll be..." She trails off, and her fingers still in his hair for a second. Her brow furrowed as she tried to sort out how to word what it was she was trying to say. She expected that he would yell, or maybe slam the door in Hector's face, or maybe give them hell over the pregnancy, or possibly even react to the Rage with violence as she knew a few humans would do.
What she landed on was: "...difficult."
Hector Ghosh
"They never found out what happened to me."
It's hard to tell a story that hasn't got a proper ending. It isn't a story then. It's an episode out of his life. He tends to compartmentalize stories born out of his early life because he knows the people in the story went on without him. That's what people do when someone they love dies or vanishes or runs away. They wait for the wound to turn to scar tissue and to fade and then they move on with their lives.
"My grades started tanking the year before Lara and Naima found me. The cub hunters. My grades were never super hot, but my father's really smart. Like, people ask him to come speak at international conferences about some surgical technique he invented smart. And my sisters were good in school and got into awesome colleges and he expected I was going to do the same thing. But he started getting on my ass in middle school, you know? How I wasn't applying myself, all I wanted to do was screw around and chase girls. My mother isn't Indian. She converted to Hinduism for him. It's not like he's super traditional and would really give two shits about--"
He takes and releases another deep breath.
"He's not an asshole. He's just human. And I don't know what I'm going to tell him or how he's going to react. It's not like I can shift in front of him and be like Sup, Dad? This is why I vanished junior year. Sorry I haven't written or called. You're gonna be a grandpa again, isn't that awesome?"
Lola Hawkes
He tells the story of his father's intellect and how his sisters followed in his footsteps by performing in school and getting into colleges. Lola knew both of his sisters were doctors-- or, well, one was a doctor, the other was studying to become one. She wrinkled her nose a little as the story went on, but wasn't surprised to hear that Hector didn't quite perform academically like his father and sisters did, and that his parents got on his ass about it. These were normal human complaints that Lola didn't connect with, but she understood.
You see, Lola's grades weren't very good either. She barely got her diploma, and had a ferociously bad grade point average. Her attendance was so poorly that she almost didn't graduate. But her parents didn't care about her grades as much as Hector's father probably did about his. They knew what to expect, their daughter was supposed to be an Ahroun after all. And even when that changed, Lola was sixteen and it was too late to change habits like that. Her father was just happy that she graduated at all. In some photo album tucked away in the loft somewhere is a picture of Lola in her graduation gown, hair at approximately shoulder length, looking surly as usual. But in that picture her father is smiling hard enough that his crows feet almost replace his eyes and his big black mustache is twisted up to show the face-splitting smile underneath. He was happy about it, at least. Lola only walked with her peers to please him.
"Well, no, you're not gonna shift in front of him. He's human," she repeats this, stressing the word like there's more meaning to it than the simple fact that he can't know about his son being a werewolf. Like she expects that his brain works differently and that he wouldn't be able to make certain conclusions and leaps of logic and faith like those who have seen and interacted with the Spirits have.
"....You could tell him that you went out to the world It's stupid, but it would work. Kids did it all the time in the seventies.." She paused, then went on. "That would explain how you found a woman in a cabin out in the Rocky Mountains. And why you're so different. I mean, if you found your way to other countries and lived there that would give you a different vibe. They don't know what Rage or Spiritual Essence is, can't define it."
She's just spit-balling ideas here. Lola isn't a story weaver, but she's sharp at least.
Hector Ghosh
"Yeah..."
He's soothed but he isn't a font of wisdom or knowledge at the moment. Hard as he's thinking he has several other hurdles to jump over before they even get to his parents' house. They have to make it from the Rocky Mountains to the east coast without either of them getting into a roadside brawl or mouthing off to the wrong person offering them refuge.
Among the photos of her lupine relations and her smiling living parents he has seen the ones of Lola that look as though she could be on her way to school. The one of her in her cape and gown has yet to come across his eyes. If he had ever seen it he would not have needed to ask if she went to high school. That conversation seems distant though it only took place a few minutes ago.
This conversation is immediate and necessary. But he's leaning heavy on her now. Not physically. This isn't anything he could have done alone and he was told her true just now. He doesn't know how to approach this. His sisters and mother he can handle but his father he can't.
"Maybe I can convince them I didn't join a suicide-bomber extremist youth cult or have some sort of psychopathic mass-murdering tendencies they never found out about if I sit up straight at the dinner table."
Lola Hawkes
Lola chuckled at what Hector had to say, and the sound was reassuring more than anything else. She patted his head again, then put her hands down to his arms, reaching behind her to find his wrists. As she did this, she spoke.
"Look. You don't need to come up with your story on the spot. We've got until the Moot has passed, and that's nearly half a moon cycle away, right? Give your sister a call after you've got your story-- and I know you'll come up with one. It's what you're made to do-- stories, right?"
With her fingers about his wrists she dissuades his hands from where they gathered at the small of her back, redirects them to hold her hips instead. Fingers splay on top of his hands and encourage him to grip. Assuming this gets him to look up at her, he'll find her looking down at him with her eyebrows lifted and a small, half-wry grin at her lips. She leans down just enough to touch her lips to where the hairline starts on his forehead, and moves her hands from laying overtop his to his shoulders instead.
"In the meantime, I'm pretty sure you were gonna kiss me before you threw yourself down in despair."
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