Calden White
It's the second-to-last day of the 108th
annual National Western Stock Show, one of the largest and
longest-running livestock shows on the planet. By now most of the stock
has already been shown. The auctions have been held, the sales
finalized and finished. What remains on these final two days are the
crowd-pleasing events, the ones designed for families and tourists and
kids: the stock dog competitions, the magic shows, the miniature
Hereford exhibitions, and of course: the rodeos.
That's where
Saturday, 3pm finds Calden: at the stock show's Coliseum, where a
rapidly growing crowd's noise rings off the rafters. It's a shockingly
warm day for mid-winter, though rainy and wet outside, but the indoor
stadium is brightly lit by dozens of overhead floodlights. Hawkers are
roaming the stands with corndogs and bottles of coke. Kids are running
up and down the bleachers, riding their parents' shoulders, waving
colorful little flags and pennants.
For his part, Calden is exiting the backstage area, calling a good luck!
over his shoulder. The lack of a number tacked to the back of his vest
excludes him from the ranks of the rodeo cowboys, but someone he knows
must be in the competition. He fits his stetson back on his head,
looking about to get his bearings -- and then he starts up into the
stands, taking the steps two at a time.
Lola Hawkes
Sitting
up in the stands is Lola Hawkes. She was never involved in the rodeos
herself, despite having grown up in rural Colorado. She existed in a
culture where animals were supposed to come to be spooked by her after
she passed a particular point in a young werewolf's pubescence. While
many of her classmates participated in rodeo events, Lola herself did
not.
Calden had discovered her at the goats and sheep exhibit. She
was dressed for the warmer weather in a wool poncho with traditional
southwestern colors and patterns on it, a fitted white T-shirt
underneath, and a pair of blue jeans tucked into ankle-height boots.
She was wearing a wide-brimmed brown hat on her head to keep the rain at
bay, hair in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She was there by
herself, Hector was off doing other things tonight.
He caught her
attention somehow, perhaps by approaching, and Lola wound up keeping
along with him for the rest of the day. He'd asked if she'd eaten, and
she'd said she was about to find food, so they went together.
Want to go to the rodeo?
Sure.
So,
she now sat in the stands with her hat hung down at the back of her
shoulders, dripping rainwater near the feet of the people behind her.
She was taking a sip from her bottle of water when Calden reached her.
It was offered to him after he'd sat down.
"Your friend's up next?," she'd asked.
Calden White
Tonight's
rodeo is the biggest of the entire two-week stretch. Broncs and mutton
and even that bastardized and bloodless and barrel-filled version of
bullfighting the rodeos call freestyle. The stands are going to
be packed to the rafters for that one. This one, the 3:30pm show, is
comparatively less crowded. Twenty minutes before showtime, there are
still plenty of empty seats.
Calden stops on the way up to buy a
couple bottles of coke, plus a handful of corndogs. Making his way back
to Lola, who one supposes is either his friend or his acquaintance or
at least sort of a colleague in the whole ranches-and-farms business, he
hands her one of the drinks and a couple of the 'dogs.
"Thanks,
I'm good," he says in response to her offer of water. "Nah, I think
he's going to be up a little later, with the rest of the steer
wrestlers. My cousin Jimmy, actually. Works on the ranch with me.
Just look for Number 63 in a blue shirt.
"What about you? You know anyone in the show?"
Lola Hawkes
Truthfully,
whether Calden realized it or not, more people were looking at them and
assuming they were some kind of couple. After all, what they were
seeing was a handsome man somewhere in the ballpark of his thirties
walking to sit beside a woman who was undeniably pregnant-- not very far
along, only twenty weeks or so, but visbly apparant none the less,
bringing food and drink to share. Lola could pick up on this from a
woman in her sixties two rows back smiling down at them. She ignored it
in favor of soda and corndogs, though.
"No, I don't. I was just
here checking out the livestock. I have half a mind to get a goat, for
the milk, but I wouldn't stake shit on the poor dumb thing surviving
past four moons before some idiot kills and eats it." These were the
hazards of living so close to the Bawn. Lola had to worry about some
Garou coming and killing any livestock she had on her land while still
riding the high from the Revel.
"I just thought I'd tag along.
Haven't seen ya in a while-- not since I found ya at that Silver Fang
lady's house." Calden's a perceptive man. Even though the woman on the
bench to his left was looking down at the corndogs in her hand and
distractedly situating where the coke and water bottle were sitting,
there was a weight to her last sentence that would probably prickle the
hairs on his skin.
"Thought we could catch up." Following the first bite of her corndog, she added: "Thanks for the corndogs."
Calden White
"Even up north, I can't say I haven't lost a steer or two to one of the ... Cousins."
Calden says this with a blend of resignation and amusement. "My tribe
knows me, and they know they'll find a warm welcome, a meal and a bed
at my house if they need it. Sometimes I guess they can't make it as
far as the house before they decide they have to eat. Usually the next
morning there'd be a bottle of scotch on my doorstep with a sadface
smiley on a note or something, though."
Silver Fang lady's house.
A new weight in Lola's tone, and a certain shifting of the mood.
Calden, who has until now been watching the happenings down-below with
idle interest, glances sideways at his companion.
"Avery," he supplies the name. Maybe there's just a hint of returned weight there too: that Silver Fang lady
had, after all, introduced herself. Still; he's willing to let the
matter slide and rest. As for the corndogs, "No problem. What's a
rodeo without junk food."
Lola Hawkes
What's a
rodeo without junk food? he asked. Lola took another bite of corndog,
chewed and swallowed before answering: "Just a fucking spectacle."
Under
the poncho, the long sleeves of Lola's tee shirt were pushed up to the
elbow. The poncho edge rubbed her forearm a little when she reached or
moved her arm. While Calden had corrected her with inflection she
didn't miss, Lola cast her dark brown eyes his way, but didn't snap at
him or throw shade along with her gaze.
"Yeah, Avery," she'd
simply agreed. "You know, she sent me a fuckin' apology package with
all these treats in it? Like, apologizing for correcting my tone."
Something about the way she told the two sentence anecdote made it seem
as though she'd almost forgotten that it happened in the first place.
Frankly, between the first few weeks of December and now, a lot had
happened to push that particular memory to the back of her mind.
Lola
picked up the soda cup and took a drink, then finally settled back with
the heel of her hand on the back edge of the bench. She leaned her
weight through her arm and cast her eyes down on the rodeo ring, waiting
for the next event to begin.
"Look, man, I don't wanna rain on your parade or nothing...."
It
was probably the worst start to a sentence she could have chosen. It
was a guarantee that she was going to be doing exactly that.
"...But you two ain't being fucking subtle or anything. And you know it's gonna cause contention."
Eva Illeshazy
Down
in front, near the barricades surrounding the ring, a dark haired woman
leans forward, her elbows resting on the metal fencing. Unlike most of
the fans in the colliseum, she is not dressed casually. She does not
wear boots, let alone cowboy boots, nor does she sport any sort of
chapeau. Glossy black hair is pulled back from her features and twisted
into a loose chignon - which is distinctly formal for the venue and
distinctly casual for the woman - and a dark, tailored suit jacket is
stretched across her shoulders.
She is in close conversion with a
dark-haired man, who seems rather intent on the stock at just that that
moment. Who gestures voluobly in the direction of the chute. He is
dressed rather more appropriately for the venue and - yet - somehow he
does not quite fit.
There is no reason for Lola or Calden to mark
the pair of strangers in the crowd, except when the woman turns her
head to the side and she is visible in profile, her winged brows lifting
in the sketch of an inquiry that drifts past his shoulders, up the
metal steps, past the marching rows of folding seats toward the boxes
high above. She's taking in the crowd too, a glancing survey that rises
past Lola and Calden without fully registering them. Something,
though, pings her radar because her eyes drift back down, searching.
If she catches Calden's eyes, she offers an ironic curl of a half-smile and a tip of her head.
--
Soon
enough the stranger at her side turns away from the stock, and the pair
of them are climbing the steps from ground level, a path that will take
them right past Calden and Lola.
Calden White
Ah.
So the topic of Avery was not to be left undisturbed after all.
Though Lola fixes her eyes on the rodeo ring, Calden is now looking
rather directly at her. She doesn't want to rain on his parade. He
laughs a little at that, dryly, because: yes. It's about as auspicious a
start to a sentence as no offense, but...
A moment later
he follows her eyes down the ring after all. The dirt has been raked
flat. The first contestant is already behind the gate, checking the
tack on his horse one more time. The overhead loudspeakers pop loudly
enough to make the kids in the crowd flinch. Then, pretty much without
warning, they start blasting good old American rock 'n roll.
They're
amping the crowd up. They're turning the excitement up to eleven, and
in response a cheer goes up from the stands. Whistles, applause,
stomping feet.
Amidst the controlled chaos, Calden is a focal
point of calm. He takes a bite of his corndog, mullingly, and then
turns back to Lola. "I won't say the possibility of controversy never
crossed my mind," he says. "My family's been with Stag longer than we
can remember, and Avery is a pureborn Silver Fang.
But I suppose I've
just decided to cross the bridges as they come. And so far, you're the
only one who's raised the issue -- at least to me.
"Which leads me to ask: are you going to be the source of contention, Lola?"
--
A
beat of a held gaze. Then he looks down the stands again, and here is
where he catches sight of Eva Illeshazy, who -- in her suit jacket, in
her lack of flannel and denim and chapeau -- is as singular a figure as can be.
His
smile back is perhaps a touch strained. But wry. And as Eva and her
companion start climbing the stands, Calden tips his hat back on his
brow and straightens a little in his seat.
"Have you met Eva Illeshazy?" he asks Lola.
Lola Hawkes
She
flinched along with children when the loud music started, and scowled
at the fact that it had started her heart to thump too hard in her chest
once or twice. The baby flip-twisted at the loud sound as well, and
Lola tucked an arm under her poncho to push at her stomach with the heel
of her hand a little. Through the noise, Calden turned to fix a stare
on her and explained that they would cross the bridge when they got
there.
The question that followed had Lola's brow flexing into a
frown in the Fianna Kinfolk's direction. He held her gaze, and
naturally the Kinfolk refused to be the first to blink. When he looked
down again, Lola kept her eyes on the side of his head, at cheekbone and
ear, and wrinkled her nose a little before answering. "If I were
Trueborn, I would be. Given that this ain't the case, no one will hear
me if I yell about it anyways."
There's bitterness there to her
words, but Calden will get the feeling that she's still trying to find a
way to not let that stop her anyways. He may need to worry about her.
But
then, there's a well-dressed Shadow Lord Kinfolk that both of them
recognized, walking up the stairs with a man dressed the part but not
rough enough looking to really fit the scene. Lola looked at the both
of them, then nodded to Calden's question. "Yeah, a couple times."
She'd raise a hand to hail a greeting to Eva, but didn't say anything to verbally greet.
Eva Illeshazy
It isn't that her companion is not rough looking. He is
rough looking. He's just not cowboy-rough. Not range-rough: no, her
companion's roughness has an entirely different sort of cast. A
dark-haired main with a blunt and mildly pockmarked face. Round but not
childish, with a pair of heavy dark eyes and the sort of mouth a
certain kind of author might call sensual, while another would
characterize as cruel.
He is turning to say something over his
shoulder to Éva when his phone rings, and he starts to pat down his
pockets seeking it out. A blackberry comes out of his right breast
pocket, old school shit, complete with its full qwerty keyboard and his
pressing to answer it with a blunt thumb, shrugging his way into an
explanation or apology. Éva settles a hand on the small of his back to
catch his attention before he barrels off up the steps, and indicates -
quietly and non-verbally beneath the blasting of Kid Rock to be followed
by Skynyrd, no doubt, because what is a rodea without Free Bird - that
he should go.
That she will catch up.
And off he goes,
seeking some relief from the thunderous music, the roar of the crowd
higher up. She follows at a more leisurely pace, crisp in a pencil
skirt and black suede pumps, pausing at their level, stepping into the
aisle from the stairs so as not to block traffic.
"Calden." A
sketch of her dark eyes over the tension evident in his shoulders.
Perhaps even in the set of his mouth. "Ms. Hawkes."
Calden White
"She's
kin to the Shadow Lords," Calden says. Just a hint of an edge there --
as though in a more immature moment he might challenge Lola to complain
about his choice of friends as well.
Then Eva is there, and Eva's
somewhat disreputable looking friend is seeking a stronger cell signal
and a refuge from Kid Rock, and Calden rises to his feet in the presence
of A Lady, or perhaps just to let the lady slip in past his knees to
take a seat.
"Eva," he returns, some of that tension ebbing into
warm humor, "fancy seeing you here. I can't even begin to make sense of
your presence. Or, for that matter, why you're dressed for court."
Lola Hawkes
"I
know what tribe she is," she shot back at Calden, and the unspoken
curse words that she nearly flavored that statement with were caught at
the back of her teeth. She sounds impatient, and looks it too, but then
the Fianna was standing to greet the business woman, and the Shadow
Lord was greeting the both of them.
Lola nodded her head to Eva to
return the greeting. "Eva." A name, simple and plain, to match the
'Ms. Hawkes' she'd been met with. Lola hasn't once tried to pronounce
the Shadow Lord's surname, and had no plans in trying. She was
fortunate that Hector's father had a short and simple last name, she
would've had a very difficult time learning to say 'Bhattacharyya'.
Whatever
tension there was that was fizzling in and out between her and Calden
was left to the side for now. She let herself slide back into quiet to
let the other two catch up.
Eva Illeshazy
She
does slip past his knees to take a seat, turning as she does to drop the
leather attaché case she is carrying on her right shoulder to the
rather sticky aluminum beneath their collective feet. It has already
accumulated a skin if discarded peanut shells and spilled co-cola, which
will only worsen as the night lengthens.
"Don't try." Éva
counsels Calden, when he remarks that he cannot begin to make sense of
her presence or her wardrobe. There is still that ironic twist to her
mouth as she lowers herself to the molded plastic seat beside the pair.
Conveniently empty still, even as the crowd of spectators begins to
thicken. "I'm on the clock, though. And when I'm on the clock I try to
dress the part."
A lingering glance from Calden to Lola, and
back again, before she drops her gaze to the rodeo ring. "Do you both
have - " a mild gesture down toward the groomed floor, which is rather
charming in its helpless wordlessness. " - animals entered?"
Calden White
"Yeah,"
Calden quips, "I've got Ian in the running." And -- at her likely
blank look -- "Remember that Fianna shindig last year? He was the one
with the white hat. And the really over the top Western get-up."
Because
of course he was. Why else would he be hurtling himself off horses
onto steers? Though, coming from Calden -- in boots and hat, jeans and
vest -- the gentle ribbing of his cousin's over the top get-up hits just
the slightest note of irony.
"What about you? Your client a fan of rodeos?"
Lola Hawkes
When asked if she had any animals entered, Lola shook her head and stated, simply: "I don't keep livestock."
Though
the man that Eva was with didn't seem to fit in the crowd, Lola wasn't
concerned with where he had gone or why he had brought the Shadow Lord
Kinfolk here on work. That was their business, as far as she was
concerned. Provided no monsters tried to make their way out onto the
rodeo arena, Lola probably wouldn't be getting up out of her seat for
the next little while.
Calden had mentioned that Ian was entered,
and Lola smirked a little to herself but didn't say anything. She
remembered Ian from the night spent out at the White ranch. She liked
the guy.
The Fianna was a better mouthpiece than she was, so Lola
contented herself with finishing the corndog she'd begun eating and
shifting her eyes back out to the arena to watch the show. Her ear was
keened in on the other two Kinfolk, though.
Eva Illeshazy
Ian in the running
does indeed draw a blank look, and the lilt of a mildly arching brow.
Éva's gaze skews sideways to double-check the Calden's eyes for a glint
of humor to suggest that he is having her on, but no. The guy in the
over-the-top Western get-up.
"Ahh," recognition sparked with
bemusement. Naturally, she remembers him. Naturally, her dark eyes
touch with delicate precision on Calden's stetson and Calden's boots.
Again, the edge of her mouth is curved with a quietly supple humor. "He
was dressed quite stylishly over Labor Day, as I recall.
"And my
client," a brief glance back over her shoulder, and up the long flight
of stairs climbing toward the skyboxes. "finds himself quite enamored
of the Western lifestyle. I suppose he is the living embodiment of the
cliché when in Rome."
Eva Illeshazy
Then, to Lola, " - no livestock? I thought you owned a ranch?"
Calden White
"Well, he's dressed stylishly today too," Calden replies -- equal measures affection and wryness.
His
gaze skates up the long incline to the skyboxes again, then back. "Not
a local, then?" Humor downright twinkles in his eyes. "I would have
never guessed. And -- though I suspect you're going to tell me it's
attorney-client privileged and also none of my damn business -- I
just have to ask you what that guy did. Because right now, my
imagination is filling in the blanks with concrete shoes and
paper-wrapped fish arriving by bike courier."
Eva asks Lola about
her agricultural practices, then, and Calden takes the momentary lull on
his end of the conversation to take a big bite of his corndog. And
also, just maybe, to stew a little more on the previous topic.
Lola Hawkes
On
the surface, Lola appears to have let the topic that she and Calden
were butting heads at go. It wasn't appropriate for company, and she
wasn't going to shame herself or her friend (and yes, she would call him
that, rough and prickly though her relationship with and behavior
toward him may be). Of course, in her mind she was probably still
ruminating on it a little-- keeping her temper consciously low and
plotting her next manner of approach.
Eva inquired about the land
she owned, and Lola looked up at her and blinked, then shook her head.
More rainwater that was caught in the brim of her hat splashed on the
floors behind her. As far as she figured, she was doing the sticky
surface a favor.
"No. If I tried to keep animals the poor dumb
things would probably die within a year. I live too close to the
mountains, if you know what I mean." Her home was right along the edge
of the Bawn, and some of the property in her name crossed into it as
well. She's never tried to keep animals before out of a sense of
practicality and frugality alike. She glanced up at Eva and Calden both
to speak, but now cast her eyes down to the arena once more.
She then added:
"I've been entertaining the idea of owning a goat, though. For the milk."
Eva Illeshazy
"Technically,"
Éva returns with a quiet equanimity that sparks a certain grim humor in
her eyes. "I am representing his son. And it is a matter of public
record that Raul has been charged by the United States Attorney with
racketeering and felony murder. Since you could easily read that in the
paper, I'm comfortable in asserting that naming the actual charges is
not covered by attorney-client privilege.
"Everything else, though."
--
Then
Lola explains that she doesn't keep animals. Éva lifts her brows in a
show of reciprocation: yes, she's listening. She understands, the
non-verbal response, though in truth Lola's unspoken, half-spoken
considerations about the dangers of having livestock near the Caern
would not have occurred to Éva, and even beneath the supple thread of
kin-code, she does not precisely grasp the nature of Lola's concern.
Just makes an interested noise, a sort of polite placeholder, which is
repeated when Lola remarks that she is thinking about getting a goat.
For the milk.
This time, though. "Ahh."
Éva has never considered getting a goat. For any reason.
And
she might go on making small talk about goats, except - there is Calden
biting his corndog like that and Lola beside them and the strange,
unstudied tension she sensed earlier, from down below.
"Excuse me
- " she says then, quite frankly and quietly to the both of them. " -
did I interrupt something? If I did, I'm happy to leave to you it and
kill time by picking out a few souvenirs for the children," which is
followed by a brief aside to Calden, "Ellie wanted to come but I'd
rather men like that not know that I have family."
Calden White
There
is, indeed, a certain tension beneath the surface. It puts a touch of
restlessness into Calden: one knee bouncing up and down as he gnaws on
his corndog, scans the dirt arena below for some sign of the show's
start. He's even forgotten to offer one of the corndogs -- there are
two or three more -- to Eva, even after she's taken a seat beside them.
To
the goats, which is surely a topic he has more expertise in than either
of his companions, he has only a single comment: "They're pretty easy
to keep. They can be hard to milk, though. Testy."
And then a
sort of appraising glance up the stairs at Eva's client as she reveals
-- to the limits of privilege, anyway -- the nature of her business with
the man and his son, and his laundry list of sins.
"I don't blame
you." Less distracted, that. He does understand that, and better than
most. The loyalty to one's family. The desire to protect. The
protection of anonymity. All that. "Maybe you could bring her
tomorrow. They've got magic shows and another rodeo planned."
A
beat, then. A hesitation, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he
squints in thought. Then a quick shake of his rather shaggy head --
beard-bristle untrimmed today, thick auburnish hair getting to the point
of desperately-in-need-of-a-haircut. A decision in the form of
information:
"You didn't interrupt. Lola was just ... reminding
me that certain less liberal factions might find my association with
Miss Chase objectionable."
Lola Hawkes
The
question posed about interrupting was left fielded to Calden. Lola
didn't answer, but she did look sharply up at Eva first, then to the
Fianna kinsman that she had spent the afternoon tagging around with.
Instead of speaking, she picked up her cup and took a drink of the Coke.
When
Calden decided to state openly enough what he and Lola were being
prickly at one another about, the Kinswoman's dark eyebrows rose in mild
surprise and consideration. She huffed a little and leaned back so she
could openly, unabashedly adjust the waistband of her jeans where it
was sitting low on her stomach.
"Just lookin' out," she followed up, as though she had to defend herself.
Eva Illeshazy
"She
might have more fun with you," Éva remarks, quietly, back to Calden.
"If you're headed back this way. You might actually have more fun with
her, too."
A brief glance at Lola; it is not precisely
conspiratorial, though were they better acquainted it could be read as
such. There is humor beneath it, but that humor is banked and supple
and difficult to read in the quiet reflection of her dark eyes. Unless
one knows her well enough to have read it there before. "I like to lend
my children out now and then, to friends. All the pleasures, none of
the responsibilities.
"Calden if you ever have a hankering to see a Disney film in the theaters - "
Then,
Calden explains precisely the current of tension between the two of
them that Éva sensed beneath the surface. Tasted like the metallic hum
of a still-live nine-volt battery against the tongue.
And Lola says she was just lookin' out.
Éva
arches a brow, glancing back to Lola from Calden as she inhales, low
and quiet. "Just looking out? Or perhaps expressing some more personal
concerns?"
A glance back at Calden's rugged profile, a moment of
silent consideration. Beneath the road of the sound system, the blare
of some bizarre country rap-rock song, they have plenty of privacy for
their conversation, and Éva's voice is pitched to carry just to the pair
of them.
"Ellie's father was not my blood. I don't regret her for a minute."
Lola Hawkes
"Ya
don't regret 'em after they happen," Lola explained to Eva curtly. Her
nose had wrinkled, and her expression had gone quite sour. The
remaining two corndogs that were in the little paper basket were
abandoned on the bench when Lola stood up. The soda was left behind
too. The Uktena mountain woman did pick up her bottle of water as she
rose, though, and fixed a look onto the older woman that was flavored
with stubborn resolve and only a hint of offense taken, however
unjustified it probably was.
"But this ain't a people of much
forgiveness. And we stick to the laws that we have. It's stirrin' up
trouble, and that's gonna come right down on Tamsin's head for not
looking out for you." Some point in the brutishly borderline-forceful
manner of speaking, Lola had switched from directing her words at Eva to
looking straight at Calden, as though she had every reason to be upset
with him.
Even though it really was none of her god damned business.
"Excuse me," she said curtly to the pair, and made her way to the aisle to see herself on out.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Let the Ices Thaw - 1.22.2014 [Hector]
Hector Ghosh
When they got home from the bar Sunday night Hector did not just launch himself out of the Forester or launch himself at Lola like he had no idea what had happened in there. His Rage shimmered like too much heat rolling off of summer asphalt. If Lola's nerves were frayed it would have sent her back from him. He hasn't seen her like that since the afternoon a monster they could not identify took out his throat.
That isn't what happened when they got home from the bar.
He did step out of the Forester but not as if the passenger-side door had offended him. Not as if he intended to hurt it or anything else that got in his way. It was an effort to control himself but it was an effort that he made. He shut the door gentle as he could and he waited for Lola to get out too. Waited as long as he had to and when she was out in the night air with him Hector came around the side of the car.
Her behavior wasn't a mystery and it never has been. When he held her that night he held her tight against him. Like he wasn't assured of their safety even now. Though he hadn't spoken in the car on the way home Lola knew if he was angry at her he would not be able to keep it to himself for long. One arm around the small of her back and the other around her shoulders. A hand at the back of her head.
Nothing said about the fight. Nothing to say. All he did was hold her and the way he held her and the way he stroked her hair: Lola had known him long enough to know he was trying to comfort her. Like she was the one who near frenzied tonight and needed soothing.
---
That was three nights ago.
Lola Hawkes
Sunday night Lola had been quiet. Granted, she often was, but this was different. She behaved like she didn't quite trust Hector's calm-- not as though she was afraid that he would snap and hurt her, but as though she didn't believe he wasn't upset with her. She kept waiting for a sudden sound-- a slap of hands on a flat surface or a fist against a wall or piece of furniture. She kept waiting for him to yell, to bellow at her that she didn't need to fight women at the bar because they were looking at him. She didn't want any of it, but she kept waiting for the night to turn into a fight about loyalty and trust and territorial habits.
But it didn't. Eventually they'd gone to bed, and only when sleep overtook her did the tightness finally go out of her muscles.
----------
Monday and Tuesday came and went, the same as any. The days had been warm, and Lola had been taking advantage of this. Much of the snow had melted, brown-tan-green grass showed in the bare patches burnt away by the sun. She'd been outside often, breaking away from the house not for the sake of avoiding Hector, but specifically to breathe cool air and feel the sun and breeze and to walk her land.
Wednesday afternoon she could be found outside, but near to the house this time at least. It was two in the afternoon and she had just stepped out of the standing shed/garage that she kept all terrain vehicles and 'disposal equipment' holed away in. She wasn't wearing a coat, but a flannel shirt instead. The sleeves had been rolled up to her elbows so that her forearms were bare to the elements. She had jeans on, but the button had to be held with a rubber band for she couldn't do her pants up properly any more. Typically, she would wear loose clothes, but when those ran out and needed to be washed she'd default to things that don't quite fit anymore-- such as the thermal shirt that she was wearing under the flannel.
Thick hair was done up in a ponytail, and licks of it stuck to her face, glued by a thin sheen of sweat on her brow and neck. She'd been practicing with a machete and a post of wood that she'd marked with the height of an average man -- paint lines indicating where head, neck, chest, belly, groin, and knees would be. These days she was alternating between that and the bow that Hector'd made.
As the snows projected to come weren't supposed to be there until later that evening, Lola had left a thermos and a book out on the table between the two chairs on the front porch. This was where she was circling to now, wiping her hand on the back of her neck before adjusting her sleeves so they were rolled back down to her wrists.
Hector Ghosh
By now Lola knows Hector falls into habits based on what the moon is doing. Unpredictable as he was Sunday night she could predict this: he would either snap at her eventually or he would peel himself away from her and go out into the night once she was asleep and he would not come back until he had slaked that blood-thirst that never really goes away.
Monday morning he did not crawl into bed until nearly seven o'clock in the morning and Tuesday he fell asleep in his coat and boots on the couch instead of coming to bed. She knows he's been around because she saw the lump beneath the covers that his body made yesterday. But when he rose Monday and Tuesday afternoons Hector went out of the house without showering or scavenging in the kitchen or saying a word to her before he left. Unless Lola moved it his guitar still lies where he chucked it in the backseat of the Forester.
Last night he didn't come home at all. His army jacket was draped over the washing machine this morning but his sweatshirt and his blazer were gone.
If she had to guess Lola could hit near enough to the meat of things. He is more perceptive than others give him credit for being and loving Lola has honed an ability to read people that was dull as ore when he first came back from Winnipeg. When that dancing-flame Rage inside him has stoked itself into an uncontrolled blaze or when Lola is too drained to tolerate the way he is normally it's her tension that upsets him, not anything she may or may not have done to have caused a flaring-up of his Rage in the first place. He can handle Lola when she yells or hits him but not when she flinches away from him or starts to cry.
Sunday night she went to bed unassured of his steadiness.
Hector Echoes-of-the-Lost is not a complicated creature.
When she circles around the side of the house to return to her drink and her reading Lola finds her mate sitting in one of the chairs. He's wearing his boots and his jeans, sweatshirt hood up and hands plunged into the pockets of his blazer. He's staring out at the driveway when her footsteps crunch the gravel and she can feel the weight of his eyes when they shift from their staring to watch her approach.
Hector looks tired to the point of sadness. He doesn't rise to greet her.
Lola Hawkes
As she came around the side of the house into Hector's view, head down and eyes focused on re-buttoning the cuffs of her flannel at her wrists, the Galliard would be able to see that for every bit tired he probably felt, Lola was precisely as healthy and full of life. This was the point of the pregnancy where she seemed to glow health, for there was extra blood in her system and the baby was not yet large enough within her to be so much a toll on her body. Her stomach was larger each passing couple of days, and seemed exaggerated more so by the fact that her thermal shirt under the open flannel was stretched tight across it.
At least she was carrying maternity well. Lola could be thankful for that in lieu of everything it (was supposed to have) prevented her from doing.
She felt Hector before she saw him, his presence something that niggled at her mind and nerves and heart. After getting high and thinking about it for a long while with Ivan, she'd finally managed to explain that she could pick people who were Garou out of the crowd-- not something that many Kinfolk can do, or hell, even a lot of Garou.
"I can just feel them. It's the Rage, I think, and the Beast," she'd explained to him with smoke curling away from her lips, carrying words along with. "Think of stepping into a dark unfamiliar room, and then you get the sensation that something's standing behind you, and your heart jumps up and your hackles do too and you spin around but nothing's there. That paranoia-- that feeling of being hunted. That's what it feels like when you all are around, and that's how I know one of you when I see you."
Ivan had suggested she become a Cub Finder with that talent. She'd scoffed and proclaimed that the Sept would burn down if she wasn't there to keep it safe.
So, Lola knew Hector was there before she saw him, and she knew to expect him when she rounded to the porch stairs and walked up onto the wood planks. She paused for a moment when she saw her mate, looking exhausted and sad and like he could fall asleep in the chair. He looked like his limbs were filled with lead. Her brow creased, and she paused mid-stride, but only for a second so that she could appraise him.
When she passed in front of him to sit in the chair to his left, Lola touched her fingers to the top of Hector's head in a brief, welcome-home show of affection. She didn't flop as casually into these chairs as she did in the summer. Accommodating to the extra ten or twelve pounds she's gained and the stomach out front she sat into the rocking chair with more control.
"You alright...?"
Hector Ghosh
His mindset during the waning gibbous moon is harder to gauge than it is possibly any other time of the month. Coming off the full as they are Hector is not as melancholy or introspective as his brethren born beneath such a moon but it still impacts him in a way he's learning how to weather being in close proximity to someone who can't just wrestle him into the ground when his mood swings.
Some would argue Hector is only really himself when the moon is thin but that's not really the case. All the time Hector is himself. He's getting better at being himself the older he gets. Hector is wild and passionate and strong. He's also used to being in a big pack where he was not the alpha. He's used to being a Cliath without a woman. He wasn't used to his Rage until recently.
Hector spent more time wild during the time between one gibbous moon and its bookend than he's been an alpha and a mate. Lola forged ahead through her formative years thinking claws and renown awaited her on the other side and all she had to show for it were two dead parents and her only sister cremated in another country where strangers had to howl for her. Their losses have twined into each other. Without each other both their lines were doomed.
They remember this without talking about it.
When her hand finds his head Hector's eyes slip shut and he nearly slides down in the chair. Before she can go too far from him one ring-heavy hand grasps her fingers in a loose hold. He puts the backs of Lola's fingers against his lips and opens his eyes again at the question.
First he thinks about it. Then he nods and ducks his head to press his brow against Lola's knuckles. His Rage is drained but she knows it will swell up hot again when the moon rises tonight. The scent of old blood clings to the beard growing back in on his jaws but he doesn't hold himself like he's injured. That's all the answer that question sires.
Lola Hawkes
The Kinswoman didn't get so far as to sit after all, and instead wound up standing to the side of Hector's chair, her hand caught up in his and fingers being kissed. She turned her hand to show him her wrist and palm, where the skin was thinner and scent and sensation both more strong. Hector was still Hector from one Gibbous moon to the next, but Lola had become well atuned to how his behaviors shifted through the moon phases. When the moon was thin and dark, Hector was more a man with an animal riding his bones. When the moon was plump and bright, he was a beast barely contained within the skin of a man. How she behaved with him would shift subtley with the moon and his temperments as well.
When he'd ducked his head and rested his forehead to the back of her hand, Lola trailed her hand back around his head, touching with fingertips across his face as she went. Her hand would settle at the back of is neck and shoulders, where thumb and fingers started to rub and massage.
No one was around to witness this. Again, no one may believe him if he tried to explain how she was when they weren't around.
"You look like you fought a mountain," she said, second hand coming to touch his beard and rub some of the dry blood loose from it. That blood was rubbed between her fingertips and flaked away, examined. She figured it belonged to a deer or something of that like. "Did something happen?"
Hector Ghosh
Though the hand at the back of his neck kneads the tension out of the muscles Hector looks up at Lola like they're stood across a field from each other. Like maybe he actually is fighting an mountain. Like maybe they're never going to figure out what that pit is and they're never going to be able to take down Beloved Horror and all they're going to spend the rest of their lives doing is fighting one threat after another until one side or the other runs out of bodies and the only side running out of bodies so far is theirs.
This is a hard reality for young Garou to accept. This particular young Garou has spent the last six months rallying his peers to run onward into greatness and glory. Don't fear the darkness united we're stronger than them what you do here now will ring on after you're dead. Rah rah rah. Don't lose hope you sons of bitches we're going after them.
"No," he says. "Nothing. I let He Who Waits For Dawn hijack my body and ran all over the country visiting other Septs and spend more time staring at that goddamned pit than I do doing just about anything else and I still had to stand up at the moot and say 'Yup. No fucking clue what it is, friends. We're working on it even though the elders who haven't all been punished don't have a fucking clue what it is. Here's what I did over winter vacation though!'"
He leans his forehead against her ribs. She can hear him exhale hard when the realization that he's resting his face alongside her belly hits him. Tension starts to crackle through him and Lola can tell he's about five seconds from standing up and seeking out solitude again.
"I don't think I can do this."
Lola Hawkes
Collective stress that had gathered over the past several weeks was summarized while Lola rubbed at his neck and shoulders. The frown on her face creased to something more sympathetic. The air was warm for January, but still cool-- hovering in the mid-forties. The sweat that had beaded on her brow has since dried and her hair fell in wisps free from its ponytail to hang about her temples and ears, along the back of her neck. She didn't know exactly what he did at the Sept of Cold Crescent when he went there, she didn't ask him the standard 'How was your day?' upon greeting him after they both have come home. She could see the toll of the pit on him, though, that he struggled against it and sought the answers but thus far could find none.
When he pressed his head to her ribs and lay his cheek to her stomach, Lola's hand stilled. She felt the crackle of Rage and tension, and he felt her stiffen just a little beside him. Not as though bracing herself, but rather with notice and readiness. She didn't want him to lean back away from her, so her hand left his neck and instead cradled his jaw and cheek, kept his head close against her stomach.
He said he didn't think he could do this, continue as he was. Lola's frown turned to a bit more of a scowl, as though she was offended by what she'd heard, but she didn't move away from him or make firm her hand against his skin.
"Of course you can. Just because there's no traction now doesn't mean there ain't gonna be. Let the ices thaw and it'll be easier to dig, you know? Don't stop watching for the chance to move, by any means, but if it ain't workin' now-- if that pit ain't moving or doing anything, then ya gotta wait."
Hector Ghosh
With her hand on his face Lola can feel Hector flinch with the quick-sharp pain of accepting love. It's the easiest thing in the world for him to take himself away from her and his pack and the rest of the Nation when he has a task to complete or a misery to ride out. He's done it the last three nights. Gone away from her because he was scared and nearly frenzied for being scared and she didn't trust him when he played at stillness afterwards.
It's hard for him to put himself in her shoes. He'd never known werewolves existed when he was still fragile. By the time Lara and Naima found him he was hours away from his First Change. The Garou who would drag him through his fostering were there when he shifted and lost control for the first time.
He was alone when Rage dragged him away from Death the first time. To hear Thomas tell the tale he shuddered and breathed wet red breath in the snow but did not rise again the second time.
Though she scowls at his words Hector cannot see her face. All he has are her words and the strong hand against his face. He rests like this as she rebukes his uncertainty. At the metaphor a smile twitches against her stomach. It wants to be a laugh and a warm one but all Lola gets is a rush of warm air and his hands leaving his pockets that his arms might link around her hips.
He nods vigorous and accepting against her ribs. His right hand slides around her back to feel its way around to her belly. If the baby has given any signs of movement he hasn't been around much the last few weeks to witness them. Splayed palm rests there anyway. His left arm doesn't leave its place around the small of her back.
"Willow never doubted herself," he says, "And Corey, you know. If he stops fucking up he'll be Grand Alpha of Unending Horizon one day."
That's the first time he's talked of his former best friend in the present tense. Up until now it's always been the past. Like he hoped he would stay there.
"He would just bitch, you know, or straight-up ask for advice. He'd ask me for advice all the time but not because he really didn't know what he was doing. I never heard either of them say they really didn't know what they're doing and if they did, you know, not know what they were doing. They didn't say it in front of me."
Get to the point, Hector.
"It was alright, at first, when it was just me and Tamsin and we were the same rank." The cadence of his speech slows down now. He runs his thumb up and down the midline of Lola's belly. Throat and mouth near as they are their baby can hear his voice. "I know we're going to get through it. We've gotten through everything else. It just... I really, right now, don't know what I'm doing. About anything."
His thumb keeps moving. He presses a kiss to the apex of her belly.
"I also... really appreciate you. How strong you are and how little shit you take. Even if it means you--"
A genuine laugh now.
"I cannot believe you flipped that chick's chair over." His eyes lift now and he tilts his head to try and find her face. "Are we going to keep on pretending that didn't happen or are you going to tell me what she did?"
Lola Hawkes
The first time Lola's felt the baby move was in the past twenty four hours. She was laying down to sleep last night, while Hector was away still. She wasn't sure of what she was feeling at first, not for sure, but after pressing flat palms against the firm extended points of her stomach she'd verified that it was the baby, stretching and moving about. Babies are more active at the point in the night when their mothers lay down, according to the baby book.
All the same, while Hector tensed at first, he relaxed and let his head stay there against her ribs and stomach. An arm was behind her back and hips, and his other hand splayed on the opposite side of her stomach, touched and stroked. Lola's mouth pulled into a small smile that he wouldn't get to see, just as he didn't see the scowl that was just chased away. Hector's voice was deeper than Lola's, certainly and easily, and it resonated as such when he spoke. The baby stirred, faintly but undoubtedly.
Lola didn't interrupt the conversation to point it out, though. As far as she was concerned it was just another thing-- just like when she'd started showing and had to adjust her wardrobe. She wasn't one for making a fuss over landmarks, anyways. Instead, she smirked down at Hector when he turned his head to look up at her, laughing, asking about the woman at the bar that Lola had put on the ground. All that he'd said about the alphas before was left alone for now, though she would get back to that no doubt.
"That bitch," Lola started, and wrinkled her nose up in distaste. Apparently she was fine talking about it, now that Hector had approached the subject with a laugh. Back when Celduin was younger and Hector was too, Lola would tell stories of the brawls she got into, show off scrapes or healing wounds and exclaim proudly what the other guy looked like. Most of these stories were shared with cheering on from Glen and her sister frowning sourly but keeping her quiet. When given the pass, as she was now, Lola would talk.
"She and her friends were eye-fucking you, which was fine. But that one got it in her head to come up to ya after your time on stage, it seemed. So I warned her not to-- figured I'd save her the trouble and me the territorial scalding. But she took it as a challenge. She disrespected me, and I wasn't about to let her keep walking around with her nose in the air all night. Put her back in her place."
Hector Ghosh
This will probably be one of the last times Hector puts a conversation with Lola ahead of attending to their child.
They occupy an uncomfortable point in time now. No certainties in their lives at all but even fewer in the one they share. Her cousin's fears are all rooted in a world where women run a significant chance of miscarrying in the first trimester. Where women as active as Lola could take a hit or overexert themselves and lose the baby this far along. Hector had tried to tell Anthony he had the same fear that Lola would go off and he would lose both of them but before they'd gone out there and afterwards he had told her the contrary. That was bullshit. He trusts her.
Trust as they do each other this is their first time waiting out a pregnancy. They don't even have a guarantee that Hector will still be alive in the summertime when they get to meet their child, let alone that the child itself will survive. Or that they won't lose one in the future. If they know nothing else though Lola knows that Hector wants this baby. That he wants a big family. He hasn't come out and said it yet but he's hoping for Kinfolk. If they don't have a single trueborn child Hector will still be proud and happy.
Once the baby is in their arms and has a name things like this won't happen anymore. But his brain is slow to catch up with the rest of his senses. That fluttering beneath his palm has to wait.
He turns his face to her palm to press a kiss into her wrist and buries another quiet laugh in its flesh.
"Damn," he says, "and there I was hoping I'd get to shoot someone down just to show off for you."
His thumb stops moving but his hand doesn't leave her belly.
"Did...? Hang on."
With his forehead back against her ribs Hector clears his throat and speaks in the same tone at the same volume as he had been earlier.
"Did you feel that?" he asks Lola before his audience changes: "Are you eavesdropping? Huh? Cover your ears, you don't need to hear about Mom getting into a bar fight."
Lola Hawkes
The days today weren't quite what they had been one or two hundred years ago-- or, hell, even less than that. Lola observed that packs of wolves and entire Septs were more progressive now. With talk of the Apocalypse drawing nigh, focus shifted more on the here and now and the battle front and code cracking. Though others may not dwell on the thought of continuing the race, this was something that Lola had been aware of even before she found out she was a Kinfolk. She never necessarily planned or thought hard about children in terms of when or how many, but she always planned to continue the line. When news of Maria's passing reached her this summer, it occurred to her that she was the last member of her family left. Just as was the case for Hector, Lola needed this baby to continue her line. She needed Hector to help-- they needed each other. This bound them as many other things did, and would no doubt continue to do until one or both of them laughed their last laugh into Death's face before being taken away from this life.
Hector's comment about showing off kept that small smirk on her face, but didn't get any real answer. He had noticed the flutter as she had, and started speaking to a baby that, according to the chapter in the baby book that Lola was about to read, could actually hear now.
Her hand shifted from cradling his jaw to resting at the back of his head and brushing lightly at his hair.
"That started up last night, while you were away. There'll be plenty more to come, I'm sure." Her head then nodded to the book that's been patiently waiting for her to come back to it on the table. "According to that, I'm probably anywhere from eighteen to twenty weeks if we're feeling things now."
Hector Ghosh
With the conversation shifting away from what had him looking so defeated and onto what brightness they had to look forward to Hector draws a deep breath and presses another kiss to the top of her stomach. It jars him how he can go away for a few days and come back and she's grown even more.
He takes his hands off of her to brace himself on the chair that he will not use her to get himself to his feet. Once on his feet Hector can see right into her face. The dried sweat curling her hair against her brow and the lingering sheen on her skin. She does not literally glow these days but her body is producing more of everything. When he looks at her sometimes a daze comes over him.
Stood up now Hector brushes some hair back from her face and seeks out her eyes before he presses his lips to her mouth.
He'd rinsed his face and mouth in the creek after he'd fought whatever he'd fought and Lola can taste the metal tang of how long he's been outside in the cold clung to his breath. His Rage down to the dregs, all he has left is his own adrenaline. Hunger deepens the kiss but he does not set upon her as if to devour her.
His fingers bury themselves in the hair at the nape of her neck and he pulls away long enough to say, "Let's go inside, huh?"
When they got home from the bar Sunday night Hector did not just launch himself out of the Forester or launch himself at Lola like he had no idea what had happened in there. His Rage shimmered like too much heat rolling off of summer asphalt. If Lola's nerves were frayed it would have sent her back from him. He hasn't seen her like that since the afternoon a monster they could not identify took out his throat.
That isn't what happened when they got home from the bar.
He did step out of the Forester but not as if the passenger-side door had offended him. Not as if he intended to hurt it or anything else that got in his way. It was an effort to control himself but it was an effort that he made. He shut the door gentle as he could and he waited for Lola to get out too. Waited as long as he had to and when she was out in the night air with him Hector came around the side of the car.
Her behavior wasn't a mystery and it never has been. When he held her that night he held her tight against him. Like he wasn't assured of their safety even now. Though he hadn't spoken in the car on the way home Lola knew if he was angry at her he would not be able to keep it to himself for long. One arm around the small of her back and the other around her shoulders. A hand at the back of her head.
Nothing said about the fight. Nothing to say. All he did was hold her and the way he held her and the way he stroked her hair: Lola had known him long enough to know he was trying to comfort her. Like she was the one who near frenzied tonight and needed soothing.
---
That was three nights ago.
Lola Hawkes
Sunday night Lola had been quiet. Granted, she often was, but this was different. She behaved like she didn't quite trust Hector's calm-- not as though she was afraid that he would snap and hurt her, but as though she didn't believe he wasn't upset with her. She kept waiting for a sudden sound-- a slap of hands on a flat surface or a fist against a wall or piece of furniture. She kept waiting for him to yell, to bellow at her that she didn't need to fight women at the bar because they were looking at him. She didn't want any of it, but she kept waiting for the night to turn into a fight about loyalty and trust and territorial habits.
But it didn't. Eventually they'd gone to bed, and only when sleep overtook her did the tightness finally go out of her muscles.
----------
Monday and Tuesday came and went, the same as any. The days had been warm, and Lola had been taking advantage of this. Much of the snow had melted, brown-tan-green grass showed in the bare patches burnt away by the sun. She'd been outside often, breaking away from the house not for the sake of avoiding Hector, but specifically to breathe cool air and feel the sun and breeze and to walk her land.
Wednesday afternoon she could be found outside, but near to the house this time at least. It was two in the afternoon and she had just stepped out of the standing shed/garage that she kept all terrain vehicles and 'disposal equipment' holed away in. She wasn't wearing a coat, but a flannel shirt instead. The sleeves had been rolled up to her elbows so that her forearms were bare to the elements. She had jeans on, but the button had to be held with a rubber band for she couldn't do her pants up properly any more. Typically, she would wear loose clothes, but when those ran out and needed to be washed she'd default to things that don't quite fit anymore-- such as the thermal shirt that she was wearing under the flannel.
Thick hair was done up in a ponytail, and licks of it stuck to her face, glued by a thin sheen of sweat on her brow and neck. She'd been practicing with a machete and a post of wood that she'd marked with the height of an average man -- paint lines indicating where head, neck, chest, belly, groin, and knees would be. These days she was alternating between that and the bow that Hector'd made.
As the snows projected to come weren't supposed to be there until later that evening, Lola had left a thermos and a book out on the table between the two chairs on the front porch. This was where she was circling to now, wiping her hand on the back of her neck before adjusting her sleeves so they were rolled back down to her wrists.
Hector Ghosh
By now Lola knows Hector falls into habits based on what the moon is doing. Unpredictable as he was Sunday night she could predict this: he would either snap at her eventually or he would peel himself away from her and go out into the night once she was asleep and he would not come back until he had slaked that blood-thirst that never really goes away.
Monday morning he did not crawl into bed until nearly seven o'clock in the morning and Tuesday he fell asleep in his coat and boots on the couch instead of coming to bed. She knows he's been around because she saw the lump beneath the covers that his body made yesterday. But when he rose Monday and Tuesday afternoons Hector went out of the house without showering or scavenging in the kitchen or saying a word to her before he left. Unless Lola moved it his guitar still lies where he chucked it in the backseat of the Forester.
Last night he didn't come home at all. His army jacket was draped over the washing machine this morning but his sweatshirt and his blazer were gone.
If she had to guess Lola could hit near enough to the meat of things. He is more perceptive than others give him credit for being and loving Lola has honed an ability to read people that was dull as ore when he first came back from Winnipeg. When that dancing-flame Rage inside him has stoked itself into an uncontrolled blaze or when Lola is too drained to tolerate the way he is normally it's her tension that upsets him, not anything she may or may not have done to have caused a flaring-up of his Rage in the first place. He can handle Lola when she yells or hits him but not when she flinches away from him or starts to cry.
Sunday night she went to bed unassured of his steadiness.
Hector Echoes-of-the-Lost is not a complicated creature.
When she circles around the side of the house to return to her drink and her reading Lola finds her mate sitting in one of the chairs. He's wearing his boots and his jeans, sweatshirt hood up and hands plunged into the pockets of his blazer. He's staring out at the driveway when her footsteps crunch the gravel and she can feel the weight of his eyes when they shift from their staring to watch her approach.
Hector looks tired to the point of sadness. He doesn't rise to greet her.
Lola Hawkes
As she came around the side of the house into Hector's view, head down and eyes focused on re-buttoning the cuffs of her flannel at her wrists, the Galliard would be able to see that for every bit tired he probably felt, Lola was precisely as healthy and full of life. This was the point of the pregnancy where she seemed to glow health, for there was extra blood in her system and the baby was not yet large enough within her to be so much a toll on her body. Her stomach was larger each passing couple of days, and seemed exaggerated more so by the fact that her thermal shirt under the open flannel was stretched tight across it.
At least she was carrying maternity well. Lola could be thankful for that in lieu of everything it (was supposed to have) prevented her from doing.
She felt Hector before she saw him, his presence something that niggled at her mind and nerves and heart. After getting high and thinking about it for a long while with Ivan, she'd finally managed to explain that she could pick people who were Garou out of the crowd-- not something that many Kinfolk can do, or hell, even a lot of Garou.
"I can just feel them. It's the Rage, I think, and the Beast," she'd explained to him with smoke curling away from her lips, carrying words along with. "Think of stepping into a dark unfamiliar room, and then you get the sensation that something's standing behind you, and your heart jumps up and your hackles do too and you spin around but nothing's there. That paranoia-- that feeling of being hunted. That's what it feels like when you all are around, and that's how I know one of you when I see you."
Ivan had suggested she become a Cub Finder with that talent. She'd scoffed and proclaimed that the Sept would burn down if she wasn't there to keep it safe.
So, Lola knew Hector was there before she saw him, and she knew to expect him when she rounded to the porch stairs and walked up onto the wood planks. She paused for a moment when she saw her mate, looking exhausted and sad and like he could fall asleep in the chair. He looked like his limbs were filled with lead. Her brow creased, and she paused mid-stride, but only for a second so that she could appraise him.
When she passed in front of him to sit in the chair to his left, Lola touched her fingers to the top of Hector's head in a brief, welcome-home show of affection. She didn't flop as casually into these chairs as she did in the summer. Accommodating to the extra ten or twelve pounds she's gained and the stomach out front she sat into the rocking chair with more control.
"You alright...?"
Hector Ghosh
His mindset during the waning gibbous moon is harder to gauge than it is possibly any other time of the month. Coming off the full as they are Hector is not as melancholy or introspective as his brethren born beneath such a moon but it still impacts him in a way he's learning how to weather being in close proximity to someone who can't just wrestle him into the ground when his mood swings.
Some would argue Hector is only really himself when the moon is thin but that's not really the case. All the time Hector is himself. He's getting better at being himself the older he gets. Hector is wild and passionate and strong. He's also used to being in a big pack where he was not the alpha. He's used to being a Cliath without a woman. He wasn't used to his Rage until recently.
Hector spent more time wild during the time between one gibbous moon and its bookend than he's been an alpha and a mate. Lola forged ahead through her formative years thinking claws and renown awaited her on the other side and all she had to show for it were two dead parents and her only sister cremated in another country where strangers had to howl for her. Their losses have twined into each other. Without each other both their lines were doomed.
They remember this without talking about it.
When her hand finds his head Hector's eyes slip shut and he nearly slides down in the chair. Before she can go too far from him one ring-heavy hand grasps her fingers in a loose hold. He puts the backs of Lola's fingers against his lips and opens his eyes again at the question.
First he thinks about it. Then he nods and ducks his head to press his brow against Lola's knuckles. His Rage is drained but she knows it will swell up hot again when the moon rises tonight. The scent of old blood clings to the beard growing back in on his jaws but he doesn't hold himself like he's injured. That's all the answer that question sires.
Lola Hawkes
The Kinswoman didn't get so far as to sit after all, and instead wound up standing to the side of Hector's chair, her hand caught up in his and fingers being kissed. She turned her hand to show him her wrist and palm, where the skin was thinner and scent and sensation both more strong. Hector was still Hector from one Gibbous moon to the next, but Lola had become well atuned to how his behaviors shifted through the moon phases. When the moon was thin and dark, Hector was more a man with an animal riding his bones. When the moon was plump and bright, he was a beast barely contained within the skin of a man. How she behaved with him would shift subtley with the moon and his temperments as well.
When he'd ducked his head and rested his forehead to the back of her hand, Lola trailed her hand back around his head, touching with fingertips across his face as she went. Her hand would settle at the back of is neck and shoulders, where thumb and fingers started to rub and massage.
No one was around to witness this. Again, no one may believe him if he tried to explain how she was when they weren't around.
"You look like you fought a mountain," she said, second hand coming to touch his beard and rub some of the dry blood loose from it. That blood was rubbed between her fingertips and flaked away, examined. She figured it belonged to a deer or something of that like. "Did something happen?"
Hector Ghosh
Though the hand at the back of his neck kneads the tension out of the muscles Hector looks up at Lola like they're stood across a field from each other. Like maybe he actually is fighting an mountain. Like maybe they're never going to figure out what that pit is and they're never going to be able to take down Beloved Horror and all they're going to spend the rest of their lives doing is fighting one threat after another until one side or the other runs out of bodies and the only side running out of bodies so far is theirs.
This is a hard reality for young Garou to accept. This particular young Garou has spent the last six months rallying his peers to run onward into greatness and glory. Don't fear the darkness united we're stronger than them what you do here now will ring on after you're dead. Rah rah rah. Don't lose hope you sons of bitches we're going after them.
"No," he says. "Nothing. I let He Who Waits For Dawn hijack my body and ran all over the country visiting other Septs and spend more time staring at that goddamned pit than I do doing just about anything else and I still had to stand up at the moot and say 'Yup. No fucking clue what it is, friends. We're working on it even though the elders who haven't all been punished don't have a fucking clue what it is. Here's what I did over winter vacation though!'"
He leans his forehead against her ribs. She can hear him exhale hard when the realization that he's resting his face alongside her belly hits him. Tension starts to crackle through him and Lola can tell he's about five seconds from standing up and seeking out solitude again.
"I don't think I can do this."
Lola Hawkes
Collective stress that had gathered over the past several weeks was summarized while Lola rubbed at his neck and shoulders. The frown on her face creased to something more sympathetic. The air was warm for January, but still cool-- hovering in the mid-forties. The sweat that had beaded on her brow has since dried and her hair fell in wisps free from its ponytail to hang about her temples and ears, along the back of her neck. She didn't know exactly what he did at the Sept of Cold Crescent when he went there, she didn't ask him the standard 'How was your day?' upon greeting him after they both have come home. She could see the toll of the pit on him, though, that he struggled against it and sought the answers but thus far could find none.
When he pressed his head to her ribs and lay his cheek to her stomach, Lola's hand stilled. She felt the crackle of Rage and tension, and he felt her stiffen just a little beside him. Not as though bracing herself, but rather with notice and readiness. She didn't want him to lean back away from her, so her hand left his neck and instead cradled his jaw and cheek, kept his head close against her stomach.
He said he didn't think he could do this, continue as he was. Lola's frown turned to a bit more of a scowl, as though she was offended by what she'd heard, but she didn't move away from him or make firm her hand against his skin.
"Of course you can. Just because there's no traction now doesn't mean there ain't gonna be. Let the ices thaw and it'll be easier to dig, you know? Don't stop watching for the chance to move, by any means, but if it ain't workin' now-- if that pit ain't moving or doing anything, then ya gotta wait."
Hector Ghosh
With her hand on his face Lola can feel Hector flinch with the quick-sharp pain of accepting love. It's the easiest thing in the world for him to take himself away from her and his pack and the rest of the Nation when he has a task to complete or a misery to ride out. He's done it the last three nights. Gone away from her because he was scared and nearly frenzied for being scared and she didn't trust him when he played at stillness afterwards.
It's hard for him to put himself in her shoes. He'd never known werewolves existed when he was still fragile. By the time Lara and Naima found him he was hours away from his First Change. The Garou who would drag him through his fostering were there when he shifted and lost control for the first time.
He was alone when Rage dragged him away from Death the first time. To hear Thomas tell the tale he shuddered and breathed wet red breath in the snow but did not rise again the second time.
Though she scowls at his words Hector cannot see her face. All he has are her words and the strong hand against his face. He rests like this as she rebukes his uncertainty. At the metaphor a smile twitches against her stomach. It wants to be a laugh and a warm one but all Lola gets is a rush of warm air and his hands leaving his pockets that his arms might link around her hips.
He nods vigorous and accepting against her ribs. His right hand slides around her back to feel its way around to her belly. If the baby has given any signs of movement he hasn't been around much the last few weeks to witness them. Splayed palm rests there anyway. His left arm doesn't leave its place around the small of her back.
"Willow never doubted herself," he says, "And Corey, you know. If he stops fucking up he'll be Grand Alpha of Unending Horizon one day."
That's the first time he's talked of his former best friend in the present tense. Up until now it's always been the past. Like he hoped he would stay there.
"He would just bitch, you know, or straight-up ask for advice. He'd ask me for advice all the time but not because he really didn't know what he was doing. I never heard either of them say they really didn't know what they're doing and if they did, you know, not know what they were doing. They didn't say it in front of me."
Get to the point, Hector.
"It was alright, at first, when it was just me and Tamsin and we were the same rank." The cadence of his speech slows down now. He runs his thumb up and down the midline of Lola's belly. Throat and mouth near as they are their baby can hear his voice. "I know we're going to get through it. We've gotten through everything else. It just... I really, right now, don't know what I'm doing. About anything."
His thumb keeps moving. He presses a kiss to the apex of her belly.
"I also... really appreciate you. How strong you are and how little shit you take. Even if it means you--"
A genuine laugh now.
"I cannot believe you flipped that chick's chair over." His eyes lift now and he tilts his head to try and find her face. "Are we going to keep on pretending that didn't happen or are you going to tell me what she did?"
Lola Hawkes
The first time Lola's felt the baby move was in the past twenty four hours. She was laying down to sleep last night, while Hector was away still. She wasn't sure of what she was feeling at first, not for sure, but after pressing flat palms against the firm extended points of her stomach she'd verified that it was the baby, stretching and moving about. Babies are more active at the point in the night when their mothers lay down, according to the baby book.
All the same, while Hector tensed at first, he relaxed and let his head stay there against her ribs and stomach. An arm was behind her back and hips, and his other hand splayed on the opposite side of her stomach, touched and stroked. Lola's mouth pulled into a small smile that he wouldn't get to see, just as he didn't see the scowl that was just chased away. Hector's voice was deeper than Lola's, certainly and easily, and it resonated as such when he spoke. The baby stirred, faintly but undoubtedly.
Lola didn't interrupt the conversation to point it out, though. As far as she was concerned it was just another thing-- just like when she'd started showing and had to adjust her wardrobe. She wasn't one for making a fuss over landmarks, anyways. Instead, she smirked down at Hector when he turned his head to look up at her, laughing, asking about the woman at the bar that Lola had put on the ground. All that he'd said about the alphas before was left alone for now, though she would get back to that no doubt.
"That bitch," Lola started, and wrinkled her nose up in distaste. Apparently she was fine talking about it, now that Hector had approached the subject with a laugh. Back when Celduin was younger and Hector was too, Lola would tell stories of the brawls she got into, show off scrapes or healing wounds and exclaim proudly what the other guy looked like. Most of these stories were shared with cheering on from Glen and her sister frowning sourly but keeping her quiet. When given the pass, as she was now, Lola would talk.
"She and her friends were eye-fucking you, which was fine. But that one got it in her head to come up to ya after your time on stage, it seemed. So I warned her not to-- figured I'd save her the trouble and me the territorial scalding. But she took it as a challenge. She disrespected me, and I wasn't about to let her keep walking around with her nose in the air all night. Put her back in her place."
Hector Ghosh
This will probably be one of the last times Hector puts a conversation with Lola ahead of attending to their child.
They occupy an uncomfortable point in time now. No certainties in their lives at all but even fewer in the one they share. Her cousin's fears are all rooted in a world where women run a significant chance of miscarrying in the first trimester. Where women as active as Lola could take a hit or overexert themselves and lose the baby this far along. Hector had tried to tell Anthony he had the same fear that Lola would go off and he would lose both of them but before they'd gone out there and afterwards he had told her the contrary. That was bullshit. He trusts her.
Trust as they do each other this is their first time waiting out a pregnancy. They don't even have a guarantee that Hector will still be alive in the summertime when they get to meet their child, let alone that the child itself will survive. Or that they won't lose one in the future. If they know nothing else though Lola knows that Hector wants this baby. That he wants a big family. He hasn't come out and said it yet but he's hoping for Kinfolk. If they don't have a single trueborn child Hector will still be proud and happy.
Once the baby is in their arms and has a name things like this won't happen anymore. But his brain is slow to catch up with the rest of his senses. That fluttering beneath his palm has to wait.
He turns his face to her palm to press a kiss into her wrist and buries another quiet laugh in its flesh.
"Damn," he says, "and there I was hoping I'd get to shoot someone down just to show off for you."
His thumb stops moving but his hand doesn't leave her belly.
"Did...? Hang on."
With his forehead back against her ribs Hector clears his throat and speaks in the same tone at the same volume as he had been earlier.
"Did you feel that?" he asks Lola before his audience changes: "Are you eavesdropping? Huh? Cover your ears, you don't need to hear about Mom getting into a bar fight."
Lola Hawkes
The days today weren't quite what they had been one or two hundred years ago-- or, hell, even less than that. Lola observed that packs of wolves and entire Septs were more progressive now. With talk of the Apocalypse drawing nigh, focus shifted more on the here and now and the battle front and code cracking. Though others may not dwell on the thought of continuing the race, this was something that Lola had been aware of even before she found out she was a Kinfolk. She never necessarily planned or thought hard about children in terms of when or how many, but she always planned to continue the line. When news of Maria's passing reached her this summer, it occurred to her that she was the last member of her family left. Just as was the case for Hector, Lola needed this baby to continue her line. She needed Hector to help-- they needed each other. This bound them as many other things did, and would no doubt continue to do until one or both of them laughed their last laugh into Death's face before being taken away from this life.
Hector's comment about showing off kept that small smirk on her face, but didn't get any real answer. He had noticed the flutter as she had, and started speaking to a baby that, according to the chapter in the baby book that Lola was about to read, could actually hear now.
Her hand shifted from cradling his jaw to resting at the back of his head and brushing lightly at his hair.
"That started up last night, while you were away. There'll be plenty more to come, I'm sure." Her head then nodded to the book that's been patiently waiting for her to come back to it on the table. "According to that, I'm probably anywhere from eighteen to twenty weeks if we're feeling things now."
Hector Ghosh
With the conversation shifting away from what had him looking so defeated and onto what brightness they had to look forward to Hector draws a deep breath and presses another kiss to the top of her stomach. It jars him how he can go away for a few days and come back and she's grown even more.
He takes his hands off of her to brace himself on the chair that he will not use her to get himself to his feet. Once on his feet Hector can see right into her face. The dried sweat curling her hair against her brow and the lingering sheen on her skin. She does not literally glow these days but her body is producing more of everything. When he looks at her sometimes a daze comes over him.
Stood up now Hector brushes some hair back from her face and seeks out her eyes before he presses his lips to her mouth.
He'd rinsed his face and mouth in the creek after he'd fought whatever he'd fought and Lola can taste the metal tang of how long he's been outside in the cold clung to his breath. His Rage down to the dregs, all he has left is his own adrenaline. Hunger deepens the kiss but he does not set upon her as if to devour her.
His fingers bury themselves in the hair at the nape of her neck and he pulls away long enough to say, "Let's go inside, huh?"
Barroom Brawl - 1.19.2014 [Hector, NPC College Girls]
Lola Hawkes
After a week of settling in, Lola's explanation that things had slowed and quieted down for the time being was experienced by Hector first hand. No word from Eddie Luske of the Forgotten Question Guardians about politics or plans or actions at the Caern-housed Sept. Lola didn't keep an ear to the pulse of the Spire Sept quite as effectively on her own, for lack of contacts. She relied on the news that Hector would bring home for that. The Kinswoman had continued her standard routine of patroling the land, walking across snow that tried to melt with the temperature remaining above freezing for the last several days and dressing in her canvas jacket because the heavy wool cloak was too hot for this weather.
After bringing his nose up out of a baby book that he'd been reading chapter-by-chapter along with the progression of pregnancy, Hector suggested she come out with him. He was going to try to scratch up some extra money for them, perhaps with funding a particular purchase in mind. She should come with him, get out of the house, see the world away from The Homestead for a night. They were supposed to go out and do something together this week anyways, according to the book.
Lola had agreed, and that's how she wound up leaned up against a pillar that supported the open floor of some bar that Hector had picked out. She looked like she had no business being there whatsoever, truth be told. She was pregnant, drinking from a bottle of water, with one arm crossed over the top of her stomach to hold onto the opposite arm.
Most people tended to wear casual clothes to a place like this-- it was a bar, not a club after all. Lola herself wore a dress that rode a little high on her thighs for the seasons, with stockings that reached almost but not quite to the dress's hem. Over that, a big heavy red cardigan with sleeves that she'd pushed up to her elbows. Her dense black hair was twisted into a loose braid that fell over one shoulder. Black ankle-high boots seemed clunky in contrast to everything else she wore, but seemed to make sense given how she seemed to glower when left standing alone.
She wasn't there to be social with the humans around her. She was there for the Galliard who was scheduled on stage that night.
Hector Ghosh
Though he and Tamsin play together on the regular he hasn't done much performing on his own. He hasn't done much of anything on his own since they came back from Winnipeg. Hector is a social creature in spite of the ferocity of his Rage and the further he reads in the books Anthony gave them the more he realizes their lives are going to change once the baby is born.
They didn't have much of a courtship phase before finding out they're expecting a baby. Young couples tend to have more time to do things that don't involve processing unexpected news and preparing a childless home for the first of what will be many babies if fate is kind and the father does not get himself killed.
As much as the book guides him in not knowing what to expect in the coming months it serves more as reassurance that just because Lola is pregnant they shouldn't live their lives any differently. They're young, damn it. Young people do things like go out and party.
Even if one of them isn't so much a young person as he is a Fostern of the Garou Nation and ridden with a curse that frightens most people back from him if it doesn't lure them in. A certain breed of human finds the Rage alluring. He doesn't understand it. He also doesn't cater to it. He's only had eyes for Lola since he staked his allegiance with Forgotten Questions and he sure as shit isn't about to stray now that they're together.
For the hour or so that they watched the other performers he kept an arm behind and around her. Though his liver did not appreciate it Hector still drank a weak domestic lager from a bottle held lazy between his fingers and when it was time for him to go up he kissed her on the corner of her jaw and picked up his guitar case and wandered up.
Lola cuts an alluring figure despite the height of her stockings and the hem of her cardigan. Hector is dressed just about the same as he always is in work boots and black jeans. It was warm today. He wears a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a dark t-shirt and his hair is down. His rings glint as he adjusts the microphone stand.
"Oh," a young feminine voice says, "my god."
Not far from the pillar upon which Lola leans sits a table of college-age women. Six altogether. Four of them with pale northern European skin, one of Chinese descent, the last of them dark with hair pressed to chemical straightness. One of the light-skinned girls was the one to make the exclamation. Their voices are lost beneath the din and Hector is nervous enough to be up there by himself that he loses their bantering under his microphone-mumbled introduction.
"What?" asks another voice.
"Babe alert," says the first voice.
Lola Hawkes
While they waited together watching the other performances, Lola was tense at first but eased into comfort with Hector at her side and his arm about her waist. She could learn to ignore those around her with help, and that Hector would comment on this or tell a small anecdote because the guy that passed them looked like this Ragabash he knew kept her distracted long enough for her to relax.
By the time it was his turn to go up on stage and he'd departed with a kiss to her jaw, Lola had acclimated to the bar enough that she stood easy even after he was climbing up onto the stage and adjusting the microphone stand as he needed. She leaned comfortably against the pillar, chin high and shoulders strong but easy under the heavy knit cardigan she was wearing. Confident enough in her place in this world that she could just watch Hector and plan to call him a ham or show-off when he was finished.
Then:
Oh, my god. Babe alert.
Lola blinked at the words that caught her ear and turned her head to look and see where they'd come from. Her eyes fell across the women at the table, briefly skimming, before landing on the two that were speaking. She glanced back to Hector while he was setting up on the stage, and found herself realizing (as though it were a surprise to her) that he did suit the part of sexy musician perfectly well. The long hair and rings sold it.
Instead of being proud of her catch, though, Lola's brows flicked into a minor frown-- a brief one, really, before it smoothed out again and she brought her water bottle to her lips to take a drink. Though she said nothing and didn't change posture, Lola now found herself paying just a bit more attention to the college girls (probably came down from Boulder) than she did Hector.
Hector Ghosh
[how are we playing tonight, anyway?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Hector Ghosh
After a few seconds of introducing himself - Hi my name's Hector this is my first time up here and, uh, I'm not up here to talk, so... - he taps his foot on the raised wooden stage a few times to set the song's tempo and starts to strum the guitar. It's a cover just to warm up the crowd. Every other band up here tonight has done a mix of covers and original songs. One woman was up here singing a nine-minute ballad she had written about an ex-boyfriend who left her for a man and everyone looks as if they're ready to start rioting if they hear one more crooning love song tonight.
Hector decided to play a song by a band whose lead singer blew his own head off before Hector was even two years old. And though he doesn't play like some otherworldly creature come here to feed off of their dazzlement for someone who has very little experience playing solo it's good. The notes are clean and resonant and by the time he gets around to singing it's clear he knows how to pick cover songs. His singing voice is raw. The audience can hear the leashed anger in it and with the distance and his channeling himself into playing it amplifies his performance.
The girls all but sigh themselves into puddles beneath their chairs. The littlest of them flips her thick black hair off her shoulders and leans in to whisper something to the blond girl who'd declared a babe alert.
"Shh!" says the curly-haired friend on her other side.
"What?" asks the littlest one.
"I think I'm in love," says the blonde.
The two women sat furthest from the epicenter both shake their heads and turn their attention back to their drinks.
"Keep it in your pants, Lacy," says the girl sat beside the littlest one.
Lacy says nothing. She's sat back in her chair watching Hector sing. Hector, Lola will notice, alternates between bowing his head and shaking his hair back from his eyes to find Lola in the crowd. It means he has to look over the table where the half-dozen young women are sat to find her behind the pillar. This gives the women a good look at his face every time he does this.
"Leave her alone," says the curly-haired friend. "She's in her bunk."
Lola Hawkes
Hector's glance out from under the mane of hair that kept falling into his face had him finding Lola watching him, at first. The first time he'd found her eyes from the stage with his fingers strumming notes and his mouth up close to the microphone, he'd been greeted with a small grin and a raise of her water bottle to him, as though it were a beer. Cheers, Hector.
But every so often he'd find her watching the table of girls attentively. Not staring like she wanted to lunge, oh no. Violence isn't written into the woman's bones or stance. Instead, it seems like she's interested in them. Listening to them. Another time he'd glance up and she was watching him again, that was probably reassuring. He had to see the way the girls were eyeing him and know a storm was brewing.
But then, Lola's attention was staying on the table of college aged women. She was near enough to be able to hear them clearly over the speakers. Near enough that it would be acceptable, or understandable, if she were to lean over and throw her two cents into the conversation. Or, at least, it would be if she was going to join in with an 'Oh my god, I know, right?'
But that's not how Lola makes herself known. Instead, she raises her chin a little and speaks just loud enough to draw their attention, then drops the level subtly so that she's speaking simply loud enough to be heard clearly after the first two or three words. She wasn't shouting at them, after all.
"Should be careful of him. He'll be more trouble than you could handle."
Hector Ghosh
Between the patrons slamming back beers closer to the bar where they can listen without paying attention and those gathered closer to the stage bent in towards each other so they can comment on the performances as they happen the noise level is enough that Hector is cocooned by the din. All he can hear are the notes come out of the guitar's strings and his own voice hurled out into the crowd.
His glances over to Lola are brief and sightless things. Just enough to assure himself of her being where he left her without locking in on her gaze. Once he looks over to see she's not paying attention and after that he starts looking further out into the tavern. Locking in on the glinting liquor bottles and the half-attentive bartender bustling around behind them.
So he misses when Lola addresses the table of young women. No future is riding on this exactly but songwriters go to open mics to prove they can hold an audience's attention and gauge if anyone in it would be willing to pay money to own hard copies of the music. Thus far he has the audience's attention.
And Lola snags half the women's.
The girl the others called Lacy looks back over her shoulder. Her glossy hair spills over her shoulders in a flat-ironed waterfall and though her eye color is occluded by the light in here Lola can read freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose. She must have spent part of winter break in a sunnier clime. Cubic zirconium studs glint in her earlobes and a tinier one graces her nose. The littlest of them also has to turn to look at Lola but the curly-haired friend only has to tilt her head to see around the pillar.
"What was that?" Lacy asks. Like she didn't hear her properly.
Lola Hawkes
"I said, you should be careful."
Though one girl was leaning to try and see her around the pillar, Lola did nothing to bring herself into better view for the whole table. She stayed precisely where she was, boots crossed at the ankle, hips and back and shoulders against the pillar to help support her weight while she leaned. One arm crossed over the top of her stomach, throwing the fact that she was halfway through her pregnancy into relief. She kept the water bottle with her free hand, dangling between fingers not unlike how Hector had been holding his beer earlier.
Though her posture is comfortable and unmoved, there's still a sense of someone always trying to assert power about her. It was just the way she held herself and looked hard and direct at people when she addressed them, as she was doing with the Lacy girl now.
"He--," she rolled her head to nod up toward the stage but didn't take her eyes off the girl. She's looking direct and hard, but her expression isn't a scowl or a frown. Her brow is smooth, her mouth is relaxed. She just seems... Superior. That's what it is.
"--is more trouble than you can handle."
Hector Ghosh
Though the girl was previously having a good time with her best friends during their last week of true freedom before returning to class something about Lola's effortless dominance has her near as intrigued as she had been by the young man currently up there singing.
Halfway through the song comes a guitar solo that serves as a backdrop to the women's confrontation. The lyrics will become a chorus that will repeat itself once before ending altogether. He probably won't ever sing this song again if Lola's in the audience. A chord change and tempo variation will keep the last minute or so from becoming repetitive.
Nobody else is bored but the girls are all watching to see what Lacy is going to do about the dark-haired pregnant girl giving her shit.
At the assurance that he's more trouble than she can handle a lopsided grin of accepted challenge cuts across the girl's lips. She's an attractive woman. Hard to tell what she's studying or what she intends to be when she grows up but her gaze does not have the vapid doe-eyed quality one might expect from a skinny rubia with a nose piercing.
"Oh, yeah?" she asks after holding Lola's gaze for a good four seconds. "Good to know."
She turns back around.
Lola Hawkes
There were only a few number of humans that Lola got along with when directly interracting. There was a fifty-something year old man that she used as a mechanic, and given the truck she was driving before the Subaru she was there frequently enough to address the man by first name. Anthony's girlfriend got a pass, barely. If that girlfriend turned into a fiance then all hell would break loose, but they haven't gotten that far yet.
Fewer humans actually had Lola's respect. The person who topped that short list was Hector's father.
Were it not for the fact that Lola lived out in the middle of nowhere and grew up knowing not only what Garou are but believing that she was one, the situation might not have needed to happen at all. Lola could have just kept to herself and let Hector shoot down any of the young women on his own. But that wasn't the case, and due to several circumstances surrounding her creation and upbringing Lola didn't have much regard for human kind in general.
It was just a merciful thing that she cut straight to the chase while breaking through social etiquette.
"Hey." That to catch her attention and make sure she had it, as well as eye contact, before she continued. Lola wasn't standing up straight yet, because she wasn't trying to physically intimidate or start a physical fight. Still against the wall, but staring sternly this time-- no jokes anymore.
"That wasn't an invitation for you to try. More like a warning for you not to. He's spoken for, understand?"
Hector Ghosh
Hey.
That single syllable does catch the younger woman's attention and jerk her head back before she can completely turn around. Cornsilk hair ripples as she braces her arm on the back of the chair like she's steeling herself for this conversation to go on longer than she had initially intended.
Her friends are all holding themselves tense and quiet like they're just waiting for this to blow over. Guilt by association and their having egged on their friend within the woman's earshot. It's obvious they're pregnant and they can all guess whose baby is in her belly based on the quiet possessiveness keeping her leaned against the pillar.
Lacy doesn't appear to care even if it is obvious. Even if Lola isn't fucking around.
"If he's spoken for you I guess you don't have anything to worry about, then," she says in a saccharine tone before she makes a second attempt at turning around.
The song ends. Stronger applause than met the nine-minute ballad and a whoop from someone who looks like they could be a diehard fan of the original band. Hector laughs at it and mumbles a thank you into the microphone before he starts to adjust the frets. He's looking over at Lola again. She can see him squint like to ask her what the fuck is going on before he looks back down at the guitar's neck.
Lola Hawkes
At least this could be said about the majority of the women at the table: they were impacted by Lola's words and presence in precisely the way she had hoped they would be. They got the picture-- Lola was pregnant, speaking to them only when it came to the topic of the man that was up on stage. She was drinking water, not beer, so she was obviously here supporting someone performing, not because she just felt like ruining her fetus with alcohol.
This Lacy girl, though, didn't seem to give a shit. Lola saw intellect in her eyes, she saw that she got the picture. However, the tone with which she had answered Lola and the fact that she didn't relent put the Kinswoman's hackles up.
Immediately following the comment, the song ended and applause filled the room. No doubt some of the girls chose to start clapping too, even though the tension between their friend and the Mexican woman in the red cardigan had strung up even tighter with each passing second. Maybe the applause would break it, the fact that any words that Lola could shoot back would be swallowed up by the sound would stop anything from continuing.
Hector looked out at Lola and squinted at her. The expression could have been a warning as much as it was an inquiry, but Lola only answered by rolling her eyes up and closed and tipping the bottle of water into her mouth.
While Hector was busy tuning up his guitar for the next song, while the claps started to die down, Lola pushed away from the pillar. Her movements were slow and calm, didn't draw a whole hell of a lot of attention as a result of that. She also didn't need to move much more than two or three steps to reach her destination. That was all it took for her to be close enough to reach out for the back of this Lacy woman's chair and pull it back and down-- hard.
Lola Hawkes
[Lola's a Dick: Strength 3 + Athletics 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
[dex + ath: WHOA]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hector Ghosh
[lol frenzy check gibbous moon diff i don't think he has to take a -1 because he's waxing?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
[DOESN'T MATTER]
Hector Ghosh
What bystanders can claim to have witnessed the incident will likewise claim the blond girl was just minding her own business when the Hispanic-looking woman grabbed the back of her chair and pitched her backwards onto the floor. The bartender doesn't have a hawk's eye on the place but she can see Lola was stood back from her and the girl was turned around to talk to her. Doesn't know who started the conversation or what all the half-dozen college kids were talking about. All of them were legal drinking age and hadn't been loud or really doing anything but who knows what brought it on.
Might've had something to do with the kid who was up onstage performing. Everybody who saw the pregnant woman whip Lacy and her chair down faster than Lacy could escape the inevitable could surmise that Hector looked back over there only when he heard Lacy shriek with surprise and anticipated pain.
The tumble doesn't hurt her. She'd known it was coming and had tried to brace herself on the table and get herself to her feet. But the woman is faster. In a matter of seconds her seat goes from stood on four legs to cracked onto its back. Lacy does not hit her head on the floor but she skims her bare knees on the table on the way down. Kicks the underside of it as she lands and jars the glasses sat upon it.
Hector rears back from the microphone as if it has just thrown sparks at him. Nobody is paying attention to what he's doing because all eyes in the place are on the chair that just touched down on the floor with the girl still inside it. A rippling of consternation and confusion comes up from the epicenter of the outburst and only those closest to the stage can feel a foreboding. Like a lion just walked into the room and drew a breath in preparation to roar.
He yanks the amplifier cord out of the base of his guitar as he clamps down onto himself to keep from frenzying here in a room full of humans. But he comes very close. Blame it on his nerves or the reaction of the crowd or the presence of so many bodies when the moon is still so fat.
Lola has only a few seconds before Lacy gets to her feet and Hector comes down off the stage. Everyone in the place is looking right at her.
Lola Hawkes
Twenty weeks worth of pregnancy did nothing to slow Lola down or sap her strength. This, she would say, was a matter of good breeding plain and simple paired up with the fact that she was a solid, sturdy, healthy speciman in general. Lola had always been in good health. She'd always been strong and athletic and able to take hits better than any other pup growing up with her. When she got in fights at school she would take whatever hits rained upon her as though she couldn't feel them. Needless to say, fights didn't happen much after the first few. The last one she had was in high school and she'd broken some poor boy's fist by taking a punch to the top of her skull before she broke his arm pinning it so savagely behind his back.
So when she decides that she's had enough of Lacy and that her message needs to come with a bit of force, Lola pulls hard on the back of the chair and throws it onto the ground with the woman still in it. Lacy had shrieked and the music had cut. Eyes were turned upon them, but Lola has never been one to give much of a shit about who saw when she had altercations with people. Not even humans.
Lacy was trying to get back up onto her feet and Lola was standing near to her head, leaned down with her left hand on the front of one thigh, clamping the hem of her dress down against her leg. The other hand was pointing at Lacy's face while she leaned forward to address her.
"I get the feeling you ain't catching the fucking drift--...," she'd started her threat here, but stopped when the amplifier made an unpleasant sound when jerked hastily out of the guitar. Lola's attention went to Hector instead, and a heavy scowl flooded her face when she saw him coming at her like he was.
Anyone on the outside, impressed by the storm of Rage that the man kicked up, would have to think that he might be coming over to beat his woman into submission for interrupting his performance. But Lola doesn't look at him with fear, not like many of the humans in the bar do. She looks at him not like she's afraid or already cringing away from what he might say or do, but rather like she's upset that her own fight got cut short.
No more words for Lacy, not yet. Instead Lola straightened up and pulled on her red cardigan so that it was held closed together in front of her.
Hector Ghosh
He's still learning to be rational in the face of his Rage.
Whatever the sight of his pregnant mate flipping some helpless human's chair onto the floor is what sparked his fury. Had nothing to do with her interrupting him. He'd have probably had the same reaction if he'd been stood down there next to her. Powerlessness and fear are tangible causes of a frenzy but they also occur on a subconscious level.
He feels powerless in a lot of situations. Afraid of a lot of things. Going out to spend some time with his woman in a setting where she can see what it is he and Tamsin do when they go out for open mic nights wasn't a setting where he thought he would have to worry about controlling himself.
Didn't think he would have to worry about Lola controlling himself either but at this point he can't say it surprises him.
He oughtn't have let himself feel so crowded in by humans that he let himself prepare to have to fight all of them. But that's what happened. Lola flips over a chair and the entire bar turns towards him and they're a unit. They came here together and he'd kill anyone who tries to hurt her. So many people start to bristle with the injustice of an outsider attacking an innocent girl that Hector all but heard the intent in their voices. What the hell is going on and There's a fight echoing around them.
If Lola had been here alone this wouldn't have happened but if he doesn't get down off the stage right the fuck now and do something it would be as if he isn't here at all. This isn't going to resolve itself. He can feel violence coming.
So that amplifier screeches and Hector swallows down hard to keep himself from shifting wild in front of the crowd and in a matter of seconds he has recovered and swung his guitar around so it's across his back and not his front. Lacy is on her feet and red-faced and turning towards Lola like to start that fistfight the stranger so craves.
It never happens. Hector steps between the two of them and says "Come on!" in a voice big in spite of its lack of volume. Latches onto her shoulders with one arm slung across them that if she offers any resistance he can hook her arms back against his body and pick her up and physically carry Lola out of here.
Lola Hawkes
For half of a second, Lola was ready to throw a punch. Lacy had gotten up to her feet, red in the face with indignance and hurt pride and aching knees too. This gave the Kinfolk the impression that the woman would yell back, perhaps take a swing. She would have welcomed it.
But the bar was staring hard and muttering and Hector was a monster in their midst. He pushed himself in between the woman with straight cornsilk hair and the one with the dense braid of black and barked a command for her to come on. Lola's nostrils flared, eyes locked onto Hector's instead of the woman's when he blocked her view, but soon the Galliard had his arm around her and was guiding her toward the door.
If she fought, Hector would just pin her arms with his body and carry her. It would be a struggle if she were to fight back against him, but none of that came to be. She let herself be hauled in to Hector's side and dragged along toward the door. The same as she had done with her fight with Erich and his Kinfolk packmate, Lola abandoned this confrontation for the sake of leaving with her mate.
He Rage scalded her side and made her chest tight, but she weathered the storm like a champion. It was only with conscious effort that she prevented herself from shooting glares of challenge at people who stared at her and Hector. Instead, she glowered at the door they approached and kept her eyes in front of her once they were outside.
Hector Ghosh
If she has ever seen him like this Lola will be slow to call it to mind. Like he's become Rage. Like if he weren't as strong as he is or as accomplished as he is or as unwilling to jettison his safety and the safety of the woman the entire Sept knows to be his mate Hector would have just given himself over to it. That moon hung above is not strictly his but he feels the nearness of oblivion in its glow all the same.
He grabs her shoulders hard enough that he is a few pounds of pressure away from causing her pain. It isn't anger at her that's causing him to haul her outside though.
Hector doesn't like to run away from confrontation but they can't win this one. He's left his guitar case inside. That's just as well. He can replace the guitar case. He can't replace Lola.
When they reach the heavy oak door that leads to the gravel parking lot outside Hector slams it out of the way. Bats it like it's no more substantial than a beaded curtain and then pushes it again and harder when it swings back at them. Growls like it did anything to him other than react to his anger and then the cool free air of the outside replaces the stale beer and human pheromones of the inside.
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" he asks and she can feel the frayed control in his voice even as he's steering them nearer the door. "Lola, you can't DO SHIT LIKE THAT."
Someone's loud voice sounds out in the foyer they just left. Another right behind it. Hector looks back with wild-wide eyes and lets go her shoulders to grab her arm. Urge her faster without urging her to run just yet.
Lola Hawkes
Even if the hand actually was causing her pain how it grasped her shoulders, Lola wouldn't have said a word and wouldn't have shrugged him away. She's never been shy to pain-- even when her leg was bleeding out enough blood to threaten life she gritted her teeth and performed first aid on herself and gave directions to a hospital for Milton to follow best she could. When she gave in and passed out, it wasn't from pain or shock, but from loss of blood instead.
Once outside, boots crunch cravel and the heavy wooden door is slapped shut when it tries to swing open again. Hector hollered at her, and the Kinswoman didn't flinch but a wolf like him can sense the adrenaline that spikes and how her muscles jump and go tight.
She wasn't about to answer him, not just yet. When he shouted that she couldn't do what she just did and demanded an explanation, all he earned was a sullen, bland look in his direction. Even if she did have words to say, they would have been interrupted when both of the Uktena glanced over their shoulder to the loud voices behind them.
"Jesus fuck," Lola managed to get out before Hector released her shoulders to seize her by the arm instead. His fingers gripped uncomfortably just above her elbow and he urged her to walk faster. Thankfully, Lola had long legs and strength to them at that. She keeps up so that he doesn't have to drag her. As they went, she switched the topic to instead ask incredulously:
"What the hell are they gonna do, lynch us?"
Hector Ghosh
"I DON'T KNOW."
They are both of them lucky he has not completely lost his shit yet. With his back to the front entrance and the voices threatening to give way to a kicked-open door and Gaia knows what else. Must be the owners or the bikers or someone just itching for a fight was following behind to make sure they left. Maybe get a better look at the two of them for when they filed a police report.
If they file a police report. Everyone saw Lola attack that girl but even she can admit that she was provoking her. She thought the kid who was singing was cute and she said so and then this woman she'd never seen before starts telling her he's trouble and he's spoken for. She was just screwing around. She didn't think it would come to that.
At the Forester Hector escorts her all the way to the driver's side and then he stands feet planted and body turned towards the threat. Chest heaving with bloodlust that will not actualize and the anticipation of it coming towards them from outside their world.
"Start the car start the car start the car," he says and he doesn't leave her side until the door is open and she's started to climb inside. Only then does Hector spring around the front of the car and haul open the passenger door and sling off his guitar. It goes into the backseat harder than he means to move it and then he jumps in and slams the door shut.
He kicks the floorboard beneath the glove compartment once and hard like it's his fault shit went south like this and then he sinks low in his seat and snarls as the aftershock of a tamped-down frenzy hits him.
Lola Hawkes
Patience has been the lesson Lola's been trying to learn. The theme of her lessons lately. But it's still a young muscle, sometimes overworked, and it's stretched and stressed by the situation that she created for herself and her mate.
When they get to the door Hector virtually swings Lola toward it by her arm, but doesn't do anything to cause her injury or harm. She didn't collide with the car or anything like that, but scowled heavily all the same and fished into the pockets of her cardigan to pull out the keys.
She was locating the vehicle ring amongst others and getting it between her fingers while Hector urged her over and over to start the car. This caused a snap in Lola, and for a moment she flashed teeth and peeled lips to shout right back at him: "I'M FUCKING WORKING ON IT HECTOR, OKAY?"
Working on it becomes accomplishing it, and soon enough Lola's behind the wheel of the car and Hector has dropped himself into the passenger seat. Tires churn gravel and Lola peels out of the parking lot, gets them onto the road, and speeds away hopefully before anyone can nab her license plate. As she maneuvered this Hector snarled and kicked the floorboard and writhed his way lower in the seat. Lola cut a glance his direction, but swallowed the lump in her throat and gripped the steering wheel tight enough that her knuckles went white.
She looked forward and set her jaw and simply drove. She knew that she couldn't let Hector sit there and stew-- that he'd need a release of some kind or another, but she didn't think bringing him back to words was the best choice just yet. She'd like to at least get them out of Castle Rock before that happened.
Hector Ghosh
Now that they're inside the car and away from the others and Lola has put distance between themselves and the scene of the crime Hector deflates but she is right to worry that that deflation is not dissipation of tension but tightening of already strung-tight muscles in preparation to snap.
That was what he'd told her was his fear on nights like tonight when his appetite grew insatiable and if he was not out running the land and tearing his teeth into things he wanted to have her thrown down on the bed beneath him. Months ago he was fearful of what his savagery would do to her. Not as if he cannot control himself. He does control himself. But he told her true: he lives in fear of snapping and tearing her to ribbons.
Lola goaded him with a hand around her throat then and he'd pled with his eyes for her to stop. They might have thought it a baseless fear then. Here they are though. His Rage feels like a growing and furious entity pressed inside the space with them and it doesn't help that he's breathing loud and panicked like he can feel himself about to snap.
He does not snap. That gasping gives way to panting and he finally makes a low moaning noise like that was an ordeal for him. Eyes glassy afterwards but not with tears. He stares out the window like he doesn't realize what just happened. Everything between the near-frenzy and his return to his senses blurred through with red.
"Fuck," he says in a huff. His head rocks back against the seat and he pushes himself to sit up. Runs his hand down his face now glowing with perspiration. "I'm alright. It's alright."
Lola Hawkes
A little while ago Hector had confessed fear for losing control of himself and ending her life. Not only hers now, but their child's as well. She'd challenged him to test him, to prove to him that she was right when she told him not to worry because she herself was not. She'd tried to get a rise out of him at that time, spark flint to the furnace of his Rage and let him prove her right for himself when he'd snarl and gnash but still not leave so much as a bruise on her.
She believes that he has control of himself, that if he didn't he would have lost his shit while they were still in the bar, still surrounded by everything that threatened them. But that didn't mean that he couldn't ratchet himself back up to that level in the same night. Especially now, with all of that fury unspent in his breast, the wrong word could provoke a terrible response from him.
Finally, when they're out on the highway just past city limits, where trees and plains dominate once more, Hector scrubbed his sweating face and straightened up and expressed that he was alright. Lola was still tense, though, still grasping the steering wheel so her hands would ache when she finally released it. She knew the conversation that would come, and was sure that it would follow their usual rhythms and get loud and defensive again.
But, she had to do it sooner than later. So, from where she sat stiff and pressed back in her seat, Lola said, almost cautiously: "I didn't mean for it to cause that big of a fuss. I'm sorry, alright?"
Hector Ghosh
Historically they have been unable to resolving a disagreement without veering off into another one soon if not right on the heels of the precipitating problem and yet Hector has not taken that as a sign that they ought not still try to discuss whatever it is that has them bristling at each other as they tend to.
Walking away from each other only tends to make things worse and it isn't an option right now. On either side of the vehicle is wilderness hefted back and out of the way by the Weaver. Unless she pulls over now there is nothing they can do for the discomfort of arguing in a moving vehicle. Maybe even not then. The last time they had to pull over to argue Hector barely came back alive.
As the immediate danger passes Lola realizes that Hector's control over himself is thinned. He's drained from performing in public and drained further from staving off a frenzy.
His eyes are closed now.
"It's alright," he says again. Reaches across the car to find her thigh with his sunlight-warm hand. He flinches at something he doesn't say and she can feel it in a brief tensing of his fingers. His voice is taut as over-wound guitar strings but it does not break. "It's alright, love, just keep driving."
After a week of settling in, Lola's explanation that things had slowed and quieted down for the time being was experienced by Hector first hand. No word from Eddie Luske of the Forgotten Question Guardians about politics or plans or actions at the Caern-housed Sept. Lola didn't keep an ear to the pulse of the Spire Sept quite as effectively on her own, for lack of contacts. She relied on the news that Hector would bring home for that. The Kinswoman had continued her standard routine of patroling the land, walking across snow that tried to melt with the temperature remaining above freezing for the last several days and dressing in her canvas jacket because the heavy wool cloak was too hot for this weather.
After bringing his nose up out of a baby book that he'd been reading chapter-by-chapter along with the progression of pregnancy, Hector suggested she come out with him. He was going to try to scratch up some extra money for them, perhaps with funding a particular purchase in mind. She should come with him, get out of the house, see the world away from The Homestead for a night. They were supposed to go out and do something together this week anyways, according to the book.
Lola had agreed, and that's how she wound up leaned up against a pillar that supported the open floor of some bar that Hector had picked out. She looked like she had no business being there whatsoever, truth be told. She was pregnant, drinking from a bottle of water, with one arm crossed over the top of her stomach to hold onto the opposite arm.
Most people tended to wear casual clothes to a place like this-- it was a bar, not a club after all. Lola herself wore a dress that rode a little high on her thighs for the seasons, with stockings that reached almost but not quite to the dress's hem. Over that, a big heavy red cardigan with sleeves that she'd pushed up to her elbows. Her dense black hair was twisted into a loose braid that fell over one shoulder. Black ankle-high boots seemed clunky in contrast to everything else she wore, but seemed to make sense given how she seemed to glower when left standing alone.
She wasn't there to be social with the humans around her. She was there for the Galliard who was scheduled on stage that night.
Hector Ghosh
Though he and Tamsin play together on the regular he hasn't done much performing on his own. He hasn't done much of anything on his own since they came back from Winnipeg. Hector is a social creature in spite of the ferocity of his Rage and the further he reads in the books Anthony gave them the more he realizes their lives are going to change once the baby is born.
They didn't have much of a courtship phase before finding out they're expecting a baby. Young couples tend to have more time to do things that don't involve processing unexpected news and preparing a childless home for the first of what will be many babies if fate is kind and the father does not get himself killed.
As much as the book guides him in not knowing what to expect in the coming months it serves more as reassurance that just because Lola is pregnant they shouldn't live their lives any differently. They're young, damn it. Young people do things like go out and party.
Even if one of them isn't so much a young person as he is a Fostern of the Garou Nation and ridden with a curse that frightens most people back from him if it doesn't lure them in. A certain breed of human finds the Rage alluring. He doesn't understand it. He also doesn't cater to it. He's only had eyes for Lola since he staked his allegiance with Forgotten Questions and he sure as shit isn't about to stray now that they're together.
For the hour or so that they watched the other performers he kept an arm behind and around her. Though his liver did not appreciate it Hector still drank a weak domestic lager from a bottle held lazy between his fingers and when it was time for him to go up he kissed her on the corner of her jaw and picked up his guitar case and wandered up.
Lola cuts an alluring figure despite the height of her stockings and the hem of her cardigan. Hector is dressed just about the same as he always is in work boots and black jeans. It was warm today. He wears a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a dark t-shirt and his hair is down. His rings glint as he adjusts the microphone stand.
"Oh," a young feminine voice says, "my god."
Not far from the pillar upon which Lola leans sits a table of college-age women. Six altogether. Four of them with pale northern European skin, one of Chinese descent, the last of them dark with hair pressed to chemical straightness. One of the light-skinned girls was the one to make the exclamation. Their voices are lost beneath the din and Hector is nervous enough to be up there by himself that he loses their bantering under his microphone-mumbled introduction.
"What?" asks another voice.
"Babe alert," says the first voice.
Lola Hawkes
While they waited together watching the other performances, Lola was tense at first but eased into comfort with Hector at her side and his arm about her waist. She could learn to ignore those around her with help, and that Hector would comment on this or tell a small anecdote because the guy that passed them looked like this Ragabash he knew kept her distracted long enough for her to relax.
By the time it was his turn to go up on stage and he'd departed with a kiss to her jaw, Lola had acclimated to the bar enough that she stood easy even after he was climbing up onto the stage and adjusting the microphone stand as he needed. She leaned comfortably against the pillar, chin high and shoulders strong but easy under the heavy knit cardigan she was wearing. Confident enough in her place in this world that she could just watch Hector and plan to call him a ham or show-off when he was finished.
Then:
Oh, my god. Babe alert.
Lola blinked at the words that caught her ear and turned her head to look and see where they'd come from. Her eyes fell across the women at the table, briefly skimming, before landing on the two that were speaking. She glanced back to Hector while he was setting up on the stage, and found herself realizing (as though it were a surprise to her) that he did suit the part of sexy musician perfectly well. The long hair and rings sold it.
Instead of being proud of her catch, though, Lola's brows flicked into a minor frown-- a brief one, really, before it smoothed out again and she brought her water bottle to her lips to take a drink. Though she said nothing and didn't change posture, Lola now found herself paying just a bit more attention to the college girls (probably came down from Boulder) than she did Hector.
Hector Ghosh
[how are we playing tonight, anyway?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Hector Ghosh
After a few seconds of introducing himself - Hi my name's Hector this is my first time up here and, uh, I'm not up here to talk, so... - he taps his foot on the raised wooden stage a few times to set the song's tempo and starts to strum the guitar. It's a cover just to warm up the crowd. Every other band up here tonight has done a mix of covers and original songs. One woman was up here singing a nine-minute ballad she had written about an ex-boyfriend who left her for a man and everyone looks as if they're ready to start rioting if they hear one more crooning love song tonight.
Hector decided to play a song by a band whose lead singer blew his own head off before Hector was even two years old. And though he doesn't play like some otherworldly creature come here to feed off of their dazzlement for someone who has very little experience playing solo it's good. The notes are clean and resonant and by the time he gets around to singing it's clear he knows how to pick cover songs. His singing voice is raw. The audience can hear the leashed anger in it and with the distance and his channeling himself into playing it amplifies his performance.
The girls all but sigh themselves into puddles beneath their chairs. The littlest of them flips her thick black hair off her shoulders and leans in to whisper something to the blond girl who'd declared a babe alert.
"Shh!" says the curly-haired friend on her other side.
"What?" asks the littlest one.
"I think I'm in love," says the blonde.
The two women sat furthest from the epicenter both shake their heads and turn their attention back to their drinks.
"Keep it in your pants, Lacy," says the girl sat beside the littlest one.
Lacy says nothing. She's sat back in her chair watching Hector sing. Hector, Lola will notice, alternates between bowing his head and shaking his hair back from his eyes to find Lola in the crowd. It means he has to look over the table where the half-dozen young women are sat to find her behind the pillar. This gives the women a good look at his face every time he does this.
"Leave her alone," says the curly-haired friend. "She's in her bunk."
Lola Hawkes
Hector's glance out from under the mane of hair that kept falling into his face had him finding Lola watching him, at first. The first time he'd found her eyes from the stage with his fingers strumming notes and his mouth up close to the microphone, he'd been greeted with a small grin and a raise of her water bottle to him, as though it were a beer. Cheers, Hector.
But every so often he'd find her watching the table of girls attentively. Not staring like she wanted to lunge, oh no. Violence isn't written into the woman's bones or stance. Instead, it seems like she's interested in them. Listening to them. Another time he'd glance up and she was watching him again, that was probably reassuring. He had to see the way the girls were eyeing him and know a storm was brewing.
But then, Lola's attention was staying on the table of college aged women. She was near enough to be able to hear them clearly over the speakers. Near enough that it would be acceptable, or understandable, if she were to lean over and throw her two cents into the conversation. Or, at least, it would be if she was going to join in with an 'Oh my god, I know, right?'
But that's not how Lola makes herself known. Instead, she raises her chin a little and speaks just loud enough to draw their attention, then drops the level subtly so that she's speaking simply loud enough to be heard clearly after the first two or three words. She wasn't shouting at them, after all.
"Should be careful of him. He'll be more trouble than you could handle."
Hector Ghosh
Between the patrons slamming back beers closer to the bar where they can listen without paying attention and those gathered closer to the stage bent in towards each other so they can comment on the performances as they happen the noise level is enough that Hector is cocooned by the din. All he can hear are the notes come out of the guitar's strings and his own voice hurled out into the crowd.
His glances over to Lola are brief and sightless things. Just enough to assure himself of her being where he left her without locking in on her gaze. Once he looks over to see she's not paying attention and after that he starts looking further out into the tavern. Locking in on the glinting liquor bottles and the half-attentive bartender bustling around behind them.
So he misses when Lola addresses the table of young women. No future is riding on this exactly but songwriters go to open mics to prove they can hold an audience's attention and gauge if anyone in it would be willing to pay money to own hard copies of the music. Thus far he has the audience's attention.
And Lola snags half the women's.
The girl the others called Lacy looks back over her shoulder. Her glossy hair spills over her shoulders in a flat-ironed waterfall and though her eye color is occluded by the light in here Lola can read freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose. She must have spent part of winter break in a sunnier clime. Cubic zirconium studs glint in her earlobes and a tinier one graces her nose. The littlest of them also has to turn to look at Lola but the curly-haired friend only has to tilt her head to see around the pillar.
"What was that?" Lacy asks. Like she didn't hear her properly.
Lola Hawkes
"I said, you should be careful."
Though one girl was leaning to try and see her around the pillar, Lola did nothing to bring herself into better view for the whole table. She stayed precisely where she was, boots crossed at the ankle, hips and back and shoulders against the pillar to help support her weight while she leaned. One arm crossed over the top of her stomach, throwing the fact that she was halfway through her pregnancy into relief. She kept the water bottle with her free hand, dangling between fingers not unlike how Hector had been holding his beer earlier.
Though her posture is comfortable and unmoved, there's still a sense of someone always trying to assert power about her. It was just the way she held herself and looked hard and direct at people when she addressed them, as she was doing with the Lacy girl now.
"He--," she rolled her head to nod up toward the stage but didn't take her eyes off the girl. She's looking direct and hard, but her expression isn't a scowl or a frown. Her brow is smooth, her mouth is relaxed. She just seems... Superior. That's what it is.
"--is more trouble than you can handle."
Hector Ghosh
Though the girl was previously having a good time with her best friends during their last week of true freedom before returning to class something about Lola's effortless dominance has her near as intrigued as she had been by the young man currently up there singing.
Halfway through the song comes a guitar solo that serves as a backdrop to the women's confrontation. The lyrics will become a chorus that will repeat itself once before ending altogether. He probably won't ever sing this song again if Lola's in the audience. A chord change and tempo variation will keep the last minute or so from becoming repetitive.
Nobody else is bored but the girls are all watching to see what Lacy is going to do about the dark-haired pregnant girl giving her shit.
At the assurance that he's more trouble than she can handle a lopsided grin of accepted challenge cuts across the girl's lips. She's an attractive woman. Hard to tell what she's studying or what she intends to be when she grows up but her gaze does not have the vapid doe-eyed quality one might expect from a skinny rubia with a nose piercing.
"Oh, yeah?" she asks after holding Lola's gaze for a good four seconds. "Good to know."
She turns back around.
Lola Hawkes
There were only a few number of humans that Lola got along with when directly interracting. There was a fifty-something year old man that she used as a mechanic, and given the truck she was driving before the Subaru she was there frequently enough to address the man by first name. Anthony's girlfriend got a pass, barely. If that girlfriend turned into a fiance then all hell would break loose, but they haven't gotten that far yet.
Fewer humans actually had Lola's respect. The person who topped that short list was Hector's father.
Were it not for the fact that Lola lived out in the middle of nowhere and grew up knowing not only what Garou are but believing that she was one, the situation might not have needed to happen at all. Lola could have just kept to herself and let Hector shoot down any of the young women on his own. But that wasn't the case, and due to several circumstances surrounding her creation and upbringing Lola didn't have much regard for human kind in general.
It was just a merciful thing that she cut straight to the chase while breaking through social etiquette.
"Hey." That to catch her attention and make sure she had it, as well as eye contact, before she continued. Lola wasn't standing up straight yet, because she wasn't trying to physically intimidate or start a physical fight. Still against the wall, but staring sternly this time-- no jokes anymore.
"That wasn't an invitation for you to try. More like a warning for you not to. He's spoken for, understand?"
Hector Ghosh
Hey.
That single syllable does catch the younger woman's attention and jerk her head back before she can completely turn around. Cornsilk hair ripples as she braces her arm on the back of the chair like she's steeling herself for this conversation to go on longer than she had initially intended.
Her friends are all holding themselves tense and quiet like they're just waiting for this to blow over. Guilt by association and their having egged on their friend within the woman's earshot. It's obvious they're pregnant and they can all guess whose baby is in her belly based on the quiet possessiveness keeping her leaned against the pillar.
Lacy doesn't appear to care even if it is obvious. Even if Lola isn't fucking around.
"If he's spoken for you I guess you don't have anything to worry about, then," she says in a saccharine tone before she makes a second attempt at turning around.
The song ends. Stronger applause than met the nine-minute ballad and a whoop from someone who looks like they could be a diehard fan of the original band. Hector laughs at it and mumbles a thank you into the microphone before he starts to adjust the frets. He's looking over at Lola again. She can see him squint like to ask her what the fuck is going on before he looks back down at the guitar's neck.
Lola Hawkes
At least this could be said about the majority of the women at the table: they were impacted by Lola's words and presence in precisely the way she had hoped they would be. They got the picture-- Lola was pregnant, speaking to them only when it came to the topic of the man that was up on stage. She was drinking water, not beer, so she was obviously here supporting someone performing, not because she just felt like ruining her fetus with alcohol.
This Lacy girl, though, didn't seem to give a shit. Lola saw intellect in her eyes, she saw that she got the picture. However, the tone with which she had answered Lola and the fact that she didn't relent put the Kinswoman's hackles up.
Immediately following the comment, the song ended and applause filled the room. No doubt some of the girls chose to start clapping too, even though the tension between their friend and the Mexican woman in the red cardigan had strung up even tighter with each passing second. Maybe the applause would break it, the fact that any words that Lola could shoot back would be swallowed up by the sound would stop anything from continuing.
Hector looked out at Lola and squinted at her. The expression could have been a warning as much as it was an inquiry, but Lola only answered by rolling her eyes up and closed and tipping the bottle of water into her mouth.
While Hector was busy tuning up his guitar for the next song, while the claps started to die down, Lola pushed away from the pillar. Her movements were slow and calm, didn't draw a whole hell of a lot of attention as a result of that. She also didn't need to move much more than two or three steps to reach her destination. That was all it took for her to be close enough to reach out for the back of this Lacy woman's chair and pull it back and down-- hard.
Lola Hawkes
[Lola's a Dick: Strength 3 + Athletics 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
[dex + ath: WHOA]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hector Ghosh
[lol frenzy check gibbous moon diff i don't think he has to take a -1 because he's waxing?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
[DOESN'T MATTER]
Hector Ghosh
What bystanders can claim to have witnessed the incident will likewise claim the blond girl was just minding her own business when the Hispanic-looking woman grabbed the back of her chair and pitched her backwards onto the floor. The bartender doesn't have a hawk's eye on the place but she can see Lola was stood back from her and the girl was turned around to talk to her. Doesn't know who started the conversation or what all the half-dozen college kids were talking about. All of them were legal drinking age and hadn't been loud or really doing anything but who knows what brought it on.
Might've had something to do with the kid who was up onstage performing. Everybody who saw the pregnant woman whip Lacy and her chair down faster than Lacy could escape the inevitable could surmise that Hector looked back over there only when he heard Lacy shriek with surprise and anticipated pain.
The tumble doesn't hurt her. She'd known it was coming and had tried to brace herself on the table and get herself to her feet. But the woman is faster. In a matter of seconds her seat goes from stood on four legs to cracked onto its back. Lacy does not hit her head on the floor but she skims her bare knees on the table on the way down. Kicks the underside of it as she lands and jars the glasses sat upon it.
Hector rears back from the microphone as if it has just thrown sparks at him. Nobody is paying attention to what he's doing because all eyes in the place are on the chair that just touched down on the floor with the girl still inside it. A rippling of consternation and confusion comes up from the epicenter of the outburst and only those closest to the stage can feel a foreboding. Like a lion just walked into the room and drew a breath in preparation to roar.
He yanks the amplifier cord out of the base of his guitar as he clamps down onto himself to keep from frenzying here in a room full of humans. But he comes very close. Blame it on his nerves or the reaction of the crowd or the presence of so many bodies when the moon is still so fat.
Lola has only a few seconds before Lacy gets to her feet and Hector comes down off the stage. Everyone in the place is looking right at her.
Lola Hawkes
Twenty weeks worth of pregnancy did nothing to slow Lola down or sap her strength. This, she would say, was a matter of good breeding plain and simple paired up with the fact that she was a solid, sturdy, healthy speciman in general. Lola had always been in good health. She'd always been strong and athletic and able to take hits better than any other pup growing up with her. When she got in fights at school she would take whatever hits rained upon her as though she couldn't feel them. Needless to say, fights didn't happen much after the first few. The last one she had was in high school and she'd broken some poor boy's fist by taking a punch to the top of her skull before she broke his arm pinning it so savagely behind his back.
So when she decides that she's had enough of Lacy and that her message needs to come with a bit of force, Lola pulls hard on the back of the chair and throws it onto the ground with the woman still in it. Lacy had shrieked and the music had cut. Eyes were turned upon them, but Lola has never been one to give much of a shit about who saw when she had altercations with people. Not even humans.
Lacy was trying to get back up onto her feet and Lola was standing near to her head, leaned down with her left hand on the front of one thigh, clamping the hem of her dress down against her leg. The other hand was pointing at Lacy's face while she leaned forward to address her.
"I get the feeling you ain't catching the fucking drift--...," she'd started her threat here, but stopped when the amplifier made an unpleasant sound when jerked hastily out of the guitar. Lola's attention went to Hector instead, and a heavy scowl flooded her face when she saw him coming at her like he was.
Anyone on the outside, impressed by the storm of Rage that the man kicked up, would have to think that he might be coming over to beat his woman into submission for interrupting his performance. But Lola doesn't look at him with fear, not like many of the humans in the bar do. She looks at him not like she's afraid or already cringing away from what he might say or do, but rather like she's upset that her own fight got cut short.
No more words for Lacy, not yet. Instead Lola straightened up and pulled on her red cardigan so that it was held closed together in front of her.
Hector Ghosh
He's still learning to be rational in the face of his Rage.
Whatever the sight of his pregnant mate flipping some helpless human's chair onto the floor is what sparked his fury. Had nothing to do with her interrupting him. He'd have probably had the same reaction if he'd been stood down there next to her. Powerlessness and fear are tangible causes of a frenzy but they also occur on a subconscious level.
He feels powerless in a lot of situations. Afraid of a lot of things. Going out to spend some time with his woman in a setting where she can see what it is he and Tamsin do when they go out for open mic nights wasn't a setting where he thought he would have to worry about controlling himself.
Didn't think he would have to worry about Lola controlling himself either but at this point he can't say it surprises him.
He oughtn't have let himself feel so crowded in by humans that he let himself prepare to have to fight all of them. But that's what happened. Lola flips over a chair and the entire bar turns towards him and they're a unit. They came here together and he'd kill anyone who tries to hurt her. So many people start to bristle with the injustice of an outsider attacking an innocent girl that Hector all but heard the intent in their voices. What the hell is going on and There's a fight echoing around them.
If Lola had been here alone this wouldn't have happened but if he doesn't get down off the stage right the fuck now and do something it would be as if he isn't here at all. This isn't going to resolve itself. He can feel violence coming.
So that amplifier screeches and Hector swallows down hard to keep himself from shifting wild in front of the crowd and in a matter of seconds he has recovered and swung his guitar around so it's across his back and not his front. Lacy is on her feet and red-faced and turning towards Lola like to start that fistfight the stranger so craves.
It never happens. Hector steps between the two of them and says "Come on!" in a voice big in spite of its lack of volume. Latches onto her shoulders with one arm slung across them that if she offers any resistance he can hook her arms back against his body and pick her up and physically carry Lola out of here.
Lola Hawkes
For half of a second, Lola was ready to throw a punch. Lacy had gotten up to her feet, red in the face with indignance and hurt pride and aching knees too. This gave the Kinfolk the impression that the woman would yell back, perhaps take a swing. She would have welcomed it.
But the bar was staring hard and muttering and Hector was a monster in their midst. He pushed himself in between the woman with straight cornsilk hair and the one with the dense braid of black and barked a command for her to come on. Lola's nostrils flared, eyes locked onto Hector's instead of the woman's when he blocked her view, but soon the Galliard had his arm around her and was guiding her toward the door.
If she fought, Hector would just pin her arms with his body and carry her. It would be a struggle if she were to fight back against him, but none of that came to be. She let herself be hauled in to Hector's side and dragged along toward the door. The same as she had done with her fight with Erich and his Kinfolk packmate, Lola abandoned this confrontation for the sake of leaving with her mate.
He Rage scalded her side and made her chest tight, but she weathered the storm like a champion. It was only with conscious effort that she prevented herself from shooting glares of challenge at people who stared at her and Hector. Instead, she glowered at the door they approached and kept her eyes in front of her once they were outside.
Hector Ghosh
If she has ever seen him like this Lola will be slow to call it to mind. Like he's become Rage. Like if he weren't as strong as he is or as accomplished as he is or as unwilling to jettison his safety and the safety of the woman the entire Sept knows to be his mate Hector would have just given himself over to it. That moon hung above is not strictly his but he feels the nearness of oblivion in its glow all the same.
He grabs her shoulders hard enough that he is a few pounds of pressure away from causing her pain. It isn't anger at her that's causing him to haul her outside though.
Hector doesn't like to run away from confrontation but they can't win this one. He's left his guitar case inside. That's just as well. He can replace the guitar case. He can't replace Lola.
When they reach the heavy oak door that leads to the gravel parking lot outside Hector slams it out of the way. Bats it like it's no more substantial than a beaded curtain and then pushes it again and harder when it swings back at them. Growls like it did anything to him other than react to his anger and then the cool free air of the outside replaces the stale beer and human pheromones of the inside.
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" he asks and she can feel the frayed control in his voice even as he's steering them nearer the door. "Lola, you can't DO SHIT LIKE THAT."
Someone's loud voice sounds out in the foyer they just left. Another right behind it. Hector looks back with wild-wide eyes and lets go her shoulders to grab her arm. Urge her faster without urging her to run just yet.
Lola Hawkes
Even if the hand actually was causing her pain how it grasped her shoulders, Lola wouldn't have said a word and wouldn't have shrugged him away. She's never been shy to pain-- even when her leg was bleeding out enough blood to threaten life she gritted her teeth and performed first aid on herself and gave directions to a hospital for Milton to follow best she could. When she gave in and passed out, it wasn't from pain or shock, but from loss of blood instead.
Once outside, boots crunch cravel and the heavy wooden door is slapped shut when it tries to swing open again. Hector hollered at her, and the Kinswoman didn't flinch but a wolf like him can sense the adrenaline that spikes and how her muscles jump and go tight.
She wasn't about to answer him, not just yet. When he shouted that she couldn't do what she just did and demanded an explanation, all he earned was a sullen, bland look in his direction. Even if she did have words to say, they would have been interrupted when both of the Uktena glanced over their shoulder to the loud voices behind them.
"Jesus fuck," Lola managed to get out before Hector released her shoulders to seize her by the arm instead. His fingers gripped uncomfortably just above her elbow and he urged her to walk faster. Thankfully, Lola had long legs and strength to them at that. She keeps up so that he doesn't have to drag her. As they went, she switched the topic to instead ask incredulously:
"What the hell are they gonna do, lynch us?"
Hector Ghosh
"I DON'T KNOW."
They are both of them lucky he has not completely lost his shit yet. With his back to the front entrance and the voices threatening to give way to a kicked-open door and Gaia knows what else. Must be the owners or the bikers or someone just itching for a fight was following behind to make sure they left. Maybe get a better look at the two of them for when they filed a police report.
If they file a police report. Everyone saw Lola attack that girl but even she can admit that she was provoking her. She thought the kid who was singing was cute and she said so and then this woman she'd never seen before starts telling her he's trouble and he's spoken for. She was just screwing around. She didn't think it would come to that.
At the Forester Hector escorts her all the way to the driver's side and then he stands feet planted and body turned towards the threat. Chest heaving with bloodlust that will not actualize and the anticipation of it coming towards them from outside their world.
"Start the car start the car start the car," he says and he doesn't leave her side until the door is open and she's started to climb inside. Only then does Hector spring around the front of the car and haul open the passenger door and sling off his guitar. It goes into the backseat harder than he means to move it and then he jumps in and slams the door shut.
He kicks the floorboard beneath the glove compartment once and hard like it's his fault shit went south like this and then he sinks low in his seat and snarls as the aftershock of a tamped-down frenzy hits him.
Lola Hawkes
Patience has been the lesson Lola's been trying to learn. The theme of her lessons lately. But it's still a young muscle, sometimes overworked, and it's stretched and stressed by the situation that she created for herself and her mate.
When they get to the door Hector virtually swings Lola toward it by her arm, but doesn't do anything to cause her injury or harm. She didn't collide with the car or anything like that, but scowled heavily all the same and fished into the pockets of her cardigan to pull out the keys.
She was locating the vehicle ring amongst others and getting it between her fingers while Hector urged her over and over to start the car. This caused a snap in Lola, and for a moment she flashed teeth and peeled lips to shout right back at him: "I'M FUCKING WORKING ON IT HECTOR, OKAY?"
Working on it becomes accomplishing it, and soon enough Lola's behind the wheel of the car and Hector has dropped himself into the passenger seat. Tires churn gravel and Lola peels out of the parking lot, gets them onto the road, and speeds away hopefully before anyone can nab her license plate. As she maneuvered this Hector snarled and kicked the floorboard and writhed his way lower in the seat. Lola cut a glance his direction, but swallowed the lump in her throat and gripped the steering wheel tight enough that her knuckles went white.
She looked forward and set her jaw and simply drove. She knew that she couldn't let Hector sit there and stew-- that he'd need a release of some kind or another, but she didn't think bringing him back to words was the best choice just yet. She'd like to at least get them out of Castle Rock before that happened.
Hector Ghosh
Now that they're inside the car and away from the others and Lola has put distance between themselves and the scene of the crime Hector deflates but she is right to worry that that deflation is not dissipation of tension but tightening of already strung-tight muscles in preparation to snap.
That was what he'd told her was his fear on nights like tonight when his appetite grew insatiable and if he was not out running the land and tearing his teeth into things he wanted to have her thrown down on the bed beneath him. Months ago he was fearful of what his savagery would do to her. Not as if he cannot control himself. He does control himself. But he told her true: he lives in fear of snapping and tearing her to ribbons.
Lola goaded him with a hand around her throat then and he'd pled with his eyes for her to stop. They might have thought it a baseless fear then. Here they are though. His Rage feels like a growing and furious entity pressed inside the space with them and it doesn't help that he's breathing loud and panicked like he can feel himself about to snap.
He does not snap. That gasping gives way to panting and he finally makes a low moaning noise like that was an ordeal for him. Eyes glassy afterwards but not with tears. He stares out the window like he doesn't realize what just happened. Everything between the near-frenzy and his return to his senses blurred through with red.
"Fuck," he says in a huff. His head rocks back against the seat and he pushes himself to sit up. Runs his hand down his face now glowing with perspiration. "I'm alright. It's alright."
Lola Hawkes
A little while ago Hector had confessed fear for losing control of himself and ending her life. Not only hers now, but their child's as well. She'd challenged him to test him, to prove to him that she was right when she told him not to worry because she herself was not. She'd tried to get a rise out of him at that time, spark flint to the furnace of his Rage and let him prove her right for himself when he'd snarl and gnash but still not leave so much as a bruise on her.
She believes that he has control of himself, that if he didn't he would have lost his shit while they were still in the bar, still surrounded by everything that threatened them. But that didn't mean that he couldn't ratchet himself back up to that level in the same night. Especially now, with all of that fury unspent in his breast, the wrong word could provoke a terrible response from him.
Finally, when they're out on the highway just past city limits, where trees and plains dominate once more, Hector scrubbed his sweating face and straightened up and expressed that he was alright. Lola was still tense, though, still grasping the steering wheel so her hands would ache when she finally released it. She knew the conversation that would come, and was sure that it would follow their usual rhythms and get loud and defensive again.
But, she had to do it sooner than later. So, from where she sat stiff and pressed back in her seat, Lola said, almost cautiously: "I didn't mean for it to cause that big of a fuss. I'm sorry, alright?"
Hector Ghosh
Historically they have been unable to resolving a disagreement without veering off into another one soon if not right on the heels of the precipitating problem and yet Hector has not taken that as a sign that they ought not still try to discuss whatever it is that has them bristling at each other as they tend to.
Walking away from each other only tends to make things worse and it isn't an option right now. On either side of the vehicle is wilderness hefted back and out of the way by the Weaver. Unless she pulls over now there is nothing they can do for the discomfort of arguing in a moving vehicle. Maybe even not then. The last time they had to pull over to argue Hector barely came back alive.
As the immediate danger passes Lola realizes that Hector's control over himself is thinned. He's drained from performing in public and drained further from staving off a frenzy.
His eyes are closed now.
"It's alright," he says again. Reaches across the car to find her thigh with his sunlight-warm hand. He flinches at something he doesn't say and she can feel it in a brief tensing of his fingers. His voice is taut as over-wound guitar strings but it does not break. "It's alright, love, just keep driving."
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