Cousin - 11.2.2013 [Hector][Anthony NPC'd by kenna]

Lola Hawkes

It was two days after that phone call fight with her cousin that Lola reached out to him again.  She'd called him back and sat laid back on the love seat in the open living room of the house, feet up on one arm and her head and shoulders propped up on the other.  The conversation had gone as follows:

"Anthony, hey.
"Yeah yeah, get all proud.  Look, I'm sorry I blew up at ya like I did, but frankly that's what you fuckin' get for making me feel like shit about myself in the first place.
"Whatever, anyways.  I was calling to set some things clear and call truce.  Maybe visit-- you haven't even met Hector yet, and you should've done that by now for any number of reasons.
"Is that right?"

There's a pause here, punctuated with a sigh.  Lola moved the hand that wasn't cradling her cellphone and scrubbed at both eyelids with her index finger and thumb.  She hasn't been back to the city since she and Hector left the sterile hospital and the near-death scare behind them.  But Anthony had just told her that he had a session that would probably take him until five thirty or six in the evening and he didn't want to be out driving around that late and his girl was coming over later, so....

"Alright, how about we just meet you at your apartment at, like, six thirty or so?  If you need to kick us out so that Hector doesn't scare your limp-spined girlfriend--
"Fine!  Jesus.  Anyways, we'll see you then.
"Adiós."

She took the phone away from her ear and set it on top of her stomach instead, above the navel specifically, and rested her hands over top of her eyes for another thirty seconds or so before sitting up and calling out to Hector wherever he may be-- if in the house, from where she sits.  If he's outside doing something then she hangs out a door and calls to him before approaching.  Either way, the conversation starts with:

"So, how do you feel about a trip into the city tonight?"

----------------

Some seven or so hours later, Lola and Hector are standing in the Santa Fe Arts District of town, and Hector's Rage was the only thing that kept the dense throng of people that were out tonight from bumping into them.  Lola was dressed in a pair of dark wash jeans that were tucked into a pair of mid-shin height brown boots.  She had a snug green long-sleeved shirt on underneath of her thick wool sweater, buttoned with double buttons up the front.  Her hair was tied back in a haphazard bun, and there was a gray scarf wrapped about her neck to protect from the chill of an otherwise warm (but all the same autumn) night.

They had parked in a public lot about a block and a half away, and Lola now stood reading the faded names scrawled in personal handwriting beside a foursome of buzzer buttons, looking for the one that said "A. Tirado".

"I still don't know how he let it get this long without ever meeting anyone from Maria's pack.  This asshole's reclusive from our kind like I'm reclusive from this stink-hole."

She's referring to the city, of course.


Hector Ghosh

Time was he liked to stay in the city because he thought it helped him retain a hold on his human side but he never really lost touch with it even on quests that took him deep into the Umbra for weeks at a time. Even when Celduin would return from a Realm with no easy way back or a Sept so rural the people there spoke a dialect thick and forgotten Hector would not have to psych himself up to go out on the town with his packbrothers.

Glen liked to go out because Stag's blood ran heavy and hot in his veins and to be around people and spirits at once was a siren call for him and Corey did not mind the cities despite the hotness of his Rage overpowering Hector's. He was the only one who balked and that had less to do with the city itself and more to do with the fact that he knew Glen and Corey only wanted to go out to the bars without their packsisters because they were hunting for girls.

He doesn't have near as much incentive to stay there anymore and since coming back without Glen and Maria and Corey he has had trouble being around anyone let alone humans without reacting before he can give himself the chance to think. For spending his formative years in a city Hector does not like them. They're crowded and his senses recoil from the stink and the promise of corruption and he just seems happier out here away from them.

Yet when Lola hollers his name into the emptiness he comes toward it. When she tells him she wants to go to the city to see her cousin, Hector nods and grabs his coat.

When they climb out of the truck and walk down the sidewalk towards his building he does not clutch her to him or stare menacing and warning out at the world around them. His hands stay in his pockets and he walks beside her without trying to protect her. Before they shared a bed together, before he had conjured up the strength to grasp her to him, they used to walk patrols here together.

Lola leads him to the entryway and the bank of buzzers with her cousin's name and Hector rubs his nose with the sleeve of his coat like to banish the stink of humans from his brain.

"I don't know," he says. "Maria never really mentioned him."


Hector is the one who reaches out and hits A. Tirado's buzzer with his thumb. Not just once to get it over with. He taps out a bastardized Morse code on it.


Lola Hawkes

"I can understand why," she explains, watching as he leans forward and taps repeatedly on the buzzer-- likely until he gets a response from the other end.  Lola smirked a tiny bit to see the spectacle, knowing it would annoy her cousin, but didn't comment or laugh with malice.  "He doesn't have much to do with us, aside from paying the utilities and cutting a grocery check."

And bless his heart for doing that much.

The answer comes some twenty seconds or so after Hector had first started assaulting the door buzzer, and the voice on the other end sounds exasperated and rushed.  "Yeah?  What is it?"  You can practically hear the follow-up of Jesus, man, I was on the shitter.  His voice doesn't sound like Maria and Lola's.  Both of them spoke perfect, fluent English, but carried just a veil of an accent to how some of their consonants clicked and how some of their vowels were rounded.  Their father spoke English just fine, but was always more comfortable with Spanish.  Anthony, though, grew up in the city and was surrounded by schools and neighborhoods worth of children and people that only spoke English.  Whatever accent his mother-- Lola and Maria's aunt -- had, it didn't pass down to her son.

Lola leans forward to answer, bent toward the little bronze looking speaker panel built into the wall.

"It's me, Lola.  I've got Hector here with me."


Whatever Hector may interject, Anthony lets them up-- the speaker box buzzes angrily at them and a latch in the door clicks to indicate that it's become unlocked.


Hector Ghosh

The moon has no sway over him when it's this thin but the way Hector batters the buzzer no one would blame Lola for thinking that for Maria never really mentioning him she'd mentioned enough that her mate already has an opinion of the man they're going to see. That he's weak, or he's secluded enough that rattling his cage a bit isn't going to cause any harm.

They can't hear the buzzer upstairs in Anthony's apartment but they can hear the aggravation in his voice when he finally comes to the door to answer the person bothering him. And Lola can't tell the color of the stories her sister told her mate but she can see he thinks he's pretty funny when he steps back from the entryway and has to put his hand over his mouth to stop from laughing.

Respect the territory of another, Echoes of the Lost.

After a moment, after Lola identifies herself and the both of them, he takes a deep breath and rolls out his shoulders and shoots forward to grab up the front door handle and haul it forward before the magnet takes hold again. Not so often Hector chooses to move fast like this outside of battle but his thin build gives him some benefit in this.

He holds the door open for her and then glances at the buzzer to glean her cousin's apartment number before following her inside.


"His girlfriend isn't here, is she?"


Lola Hawkes

Lola doesn't nudge or scold Hector for his teasing.  He hops back with a hand pressed over his lips to stifle laughter, and she just followed him with her eyes, kept that small grin cracked on her face, and got them entry to the apartment building.  The door clicked and Hector's arm darted out to grab the handle and pull the door away from its frame before it has a chance to lock again.  She passed by him when he pulled the door open and gestured for her to go first.

The buzzer told them that Anthony lived on the fourth floor.  The way the building was set up there was a narrow staircase that hugged the wall, and each floor was its own separate living space.  Lola started to climb the stairs ahead of Hector, and glanced back at him when he asked about the girlfriend that he'd overheard Lola mentioning.

"Nah.  He said that she's supposed to be over when she gets off work, and I guess that isn't until eight, so we've got time."

She's already explained to Hector during conversation on the drive over that Anthony's been dating a girl for about half a year now, and he was taking the relationship pretty seriously.  They weren't living together, but he wasn't seeing anybody else and they spent much of their time together.  She was human, with no connections to their people whatsoever.  She didn't know that Anthony cut some of his income and dedicated it to reclusive family members out in the sticks because they wouldn't hold down jobs themselves.  He had a girlfriend three years ago, when Lola had only just been living alone at The Homestead for a brief while, and that one had gotten into fights with him several times over the fact that he paid for his cousins to live.  Financial arguments was why she moved out and they stopped seeing one another.

The climb up the stairs is tedious due to the fact that the staircase is both narrow and steep.  The building is quite old, it's on the city's historical sites registry.  Lola's using the rail and her pace has slowed by the time they reach the fourth staircase.  She hasn't packed on much extra weight yet, but growing an extra organ is energy-consuming work after all.


When they do reach the top of the staircase she is quick to regain her breath, though, and knocks to be let in.


Hector Ghosh

He'd listened but since they have not met the girlfriend and they can't translate what she does into their own experience Hector has barely taken the pains to hold tight to her name or her age or how exactly she met Anthony. They go inside and all he needs to know is that they're going into the residence of one of the Nation whether the kinsman wants to be that or not and they will have human neighbors upstairs and down and he had better behave himself if they don't want a massive problem.

Not that Hector has problems behaving himself around their own kind but he has not had to behave himself around humans since he was a teenager and when he was a teenager he could hardly claim to have behaved himself. He was 16 years old, maybe 17 when the cub hunters found him and dragged him off. He didn't know shit about behaving himself.

So they take the stairs to the fourth floor and Hector trucked along just fine but Lola has started to slow and breathe heavier by the time they've reached the top. They are the only two people besides the Spanish-speaking maternity floor attending who has done all he could to put the encounter with the two out of his mind who know what is happening in her body to make her lose her wind so fast.


Hector puts a hand at the small of her back and slows his own pace but does not mention the windedness as they approach her cousin's door. Does not keep his hand there either. All Hector does is swipe the cap off of his head and push it into a pocket and dust his hair back behind his ears that he might not look an uncivilized mess as he stands behind Anthony's cousin in the man's doorway.


Lola Hawkes

It doesn't take long for the door to open, and for the man on the other side to glance the pair over briefly before stepping back, holding the door open inside of the apartment, and saying: "Come in."

Anthony appears to be about as average looking a young man as you can expect, at first glance.  He's of Hispanic heritage, of course, he is Lola's cousin through her father after all.  He stands at a middle ground between Lola and Hector's own heights, His hair is dark brown and shaggy, past his ears and licking in soft half-curls close to his jaw and the collar of his shirt in the back, but not nearly so long as Hector's.  His cheekbones are high and cheeks threaten to look hollow, but there's a fresh growth of unshaven hair along his jaw and chin and upper lip.  The shape of his eyes and mouth and how he's starting to wrinkle just a little at the corners of both suggests that he smiles often, though he isn't immediately.

He wears a pair of jeans and socks and a black Henley shirt whose sleeves have been pushed up near his elbows, showing colorful tattoos woven along both forearms, but has no jewelry at his hands, neck, or in his ears.

Inside the apartment is nice without being lavish.  The decorations are simple, he has hand-drawn art in frames on his walls here or there, probably pieces of work either he did himself and was proud of, or things that his friends and fellow artists have given to him.  There are plants in corners and on tables-- he at least likes to keep the place relatively green.

When they first step in they're in a short entryway, beyond which is a large open space that houses the kitchen, dining, and living room set ups.  He'll close the door behind them, and Lola will turn about and gesture between the two men with one hand while the other stays in her jeans pocket.  "Hey, Anthony.  This is Hector.  Hector, my cousin Anthony Tirado."


Anthony isn't as settled with Hector's Rage as Lola is.  This shows in the tightness to his eyes that he can't quite chase away, even though he's offering a polite closed-lipped smile of greeting and holding out his hand for Hector to shake.  "Hey.  Lola tells me you ran with Maria and that's how she knows you.  Good to meet you, man."


Hector Ghosh

Hector gleans a lot of his cues for how to behave in social situations now that he's Changed from how other people react to him. Part of that has to do with the alienness of rank and hierarchy to his way of thinking about the world. As he's had to learn what boundaries lay where it makes sense that he often prefers to hang back and watch the interplay between the people already established before he starts talking.

It sometimes gives strangers the impression that he is a quiet if not brooding young man, if the exchange did not result in him wrestling the nearest cohort male or telling some elaborate and obviously bullshitted story to everyone gathered.

When the door opens Hector is stood behind Lola and somewhat at her side and though he does not stand a full head taller than her he is tall enough that he can see past her and into the apartment without craning his neck. This is the first time he's laid eyes on Anthony and he looks him over with a slowness that speaks of memorization and not mental dullness. Not until he steps back to let them in does Hector take in their surroundings. Before the door closes he glances back over his shoulder to make sure the corridor is still empty and he does not stick to Lola's side like a guard dog.

He picks up on the discomfort in Anthony's spine, around his eyes, and that's what keeps him from doing as Lola might expect him to do. He doesn't jostle Anthony and tack endearments onto him. Doesn't shout at him the way Hector has been shouting at Thomas since long before they served the same spirit.

But Anthony holds out a hand to shake and Lola, at least, can read open warmth in Hector's eyes when he gives the older man a closed-lipped smile before accepting his hand. In contrast to Anthony the Galliard's decorations all come in the form of jewelry. The most prominent besides the rings are the mala bracelet around his wrist and the piercing in his upper ear. Whatever necklaces he wears today hide beneath his sweatshirt.

"Hey, yeah, good to meet you too," he says as he shakes Anthony's hand.


The kinsman may well think he's one of those Rage-heavy Garou who can't handle conversation. Lola knows him well enough by now that she knows he's only silent because he's not blurting out the first thing to come into his head and he's decided the second and possibly third aren't really appropriate either. So he releases her cousin's hand and steps back enough that the two can talk without him looming.


Lola Hawkes

Anthony doesn't deal with Garou very much-- that is quite clear.  The closest True Born relative that he had was Maria, up until she passed.  The next closest True Born relative that he had was his deceased great-uncle.  The Tirado side of the family came from a long line of Kinfolk.  Much of Lola's tribal bearing and pure breeding came from her mother, who Hector had never met.

So when Anthony shakes Hector's hand his somewhat smaller hand grips Hector's mitt firmly, like he feels that he needs to draw himself up and compare to the Werewolf standing in his entryway.  But the actual exchange is pleasant, polite, and easy enough, and Anthony claps his hands together in front of him and switches his gaze from the tall lanky Indian kid (he didn't see that coming, honestly) to Lola instead.  The hands that were held together almost in a praying gesture pointed forward, through the entryway and into the open living space.  "Well, let's go sit down, then.  Anything to drink?  Hector, a beer maybe?"

Lola was already unbuttoning her sweater and moving into the apartment, even before Anthony had opened his mouth to suggest they do so.  Her hands worked to unbutton the top few buttons on her sweater, opening it up and pulling the scarf looser around her neck (without taking it off completely) so that she wasn't quite so warm.  She tended to make herself at home in new areas without being asked to do so-- she figured being invited through the door was being invited into that person's turf, which meant she didn't need to wait for a second invitation to move ten feet further along.  She had done the same thing with Thomas's house upon first arriving there, too.

She leaves Hector to either accept or decline Anthony's offer for a beverage (probably decline the beer, anyways, he's making a point of not partaking while Lola can't either) and cuts into the kitchen for herself.  Much as was the case at Thomas's house, Lola finds the cupboard with cups easily enough and digs around in the fridge until she locates the milk carton.  When the Kinsman and Galliard come around from the entry way to join her, they'll find her sniffing the carton suspiciously.

Anthony, seeing this, calls to her:  "It's just fine, I don't keep sour food you know."


Lola's answer is to look up at him flatly.  "Bachelors don't keep fresh dairy products after they've graduated from eating only cereal."  But she pours the glass of milk for herself anyways.  The sniff test had been a success.


Hector Ghosh

Hector laughs at the assertion that bachelors don't know what to do with expiration dates and he just holds up his hands as if to show he's both unarmed and staying out of this. In family matters he fancies himself to be analogous with Switzerland.

He doesn't keep dairy products at all. Four years gone from his parents and she knows he still feels a twinge of guilt whenever he eats anything that came from a cow. Milk derived from plant products have been making appearances in her refrigerator since he showed up at her place and even then he treats things like coconut and almond milk like extravagant splurges and not something normal people consider to be part of their diet.

And he did decline the beer without any sense of sacrifice or hesitation. In the past he's taken beer as freely as he's taken water but Lola knows he gets drunk just as easy off of beer as he would a shot from a secret stash Glen produced from his trench coat.

By the time the other two have procured their beverages the lone Garou in the room is left without anything in his hand and he doesn't look as if this bothers him. He glances between Lola and Anthony. Were not for the fact that he is abstaining from anything - ignore the fact he drank Javed's Wild Turkey the day they went to Thomas's to celebrate for he did not realize the Iranian metis was raised by Muslims and he thought it would be an affront to Raspberry Sky's memory to pour the drink anywhere other than his throat; he sobered up quick enough - he would have taken a beer.


Now though he claims he's fine and doesn't want for even water. He is the first to wander off towards the living room and he doesn't sit himself down. He puts his back against the wall and starts to twist the metal nut he wears around his third finger. Were not for the jewelry he'd pick his nails, his cuticles. Lola can see he's a bit nervous just from a glance but when he catches her seeing he shuts it down.


Lola Hawkes

The apartment is a nice little find, a historical building sectioned off into apartments on each floor.  There's radiant heat and the wood molding is impressive.  He owns the place-- this is clearly not rented property.  The appliances are updated and the walls are painted a sandstone hue that doesn't match what rental properties would call a 'light, neutral tone'.  In the living area Hector finds a large television mounted on the wall, nice black leather furniture and a glass coffee table.  There are a couple of tattoo-centric table books on the coffee table.  There are doors here and there-- this was a two bedroom one bathroom home.  All of the doors were closed, though, so you could only venture to guess which was which.

There's a door, not sliding glass but a regular door with a large glass pane in the center of it.  This leads out onto a half-moon balcony that overlooks the busy street below.  The lighting in the home is more warm yellow than it is stark white halogen.  It's in the middle of the city, but Anthony makes it comfortable enough.  Hector wanders away from the kitchen with nothing in hand and leans against a wall.  Lola glanced toward him and raised one eyebrow at him, but his fidgeting lessened and his demeanor straightened into something less uncomfortable and anxious under her gaze.  She had remained standing in the kitchen, behind the stout little island with only enough room on the other side to house three stools crammed close together.  Anthony passed behind his cousin to reach the fridge, taking the milk carton from the counter along with him and exchanging it for a bottle of beer.  Her attention shifted to the other Kinfolk when he started to speak, breaking the quiet that was threatening to settle in the room.

"I'm sorry there's not much more of a celebration for both of you," he explained, his voice carrying through the space easily enough as a clear tenor.  He cracks the lid of the beer bottle off with an opener he produced momentarily from the drawer, then ushered Lola out of the kitchen with a half-impatient wave of his hand at her.  Lola wrinkled her nose at him (something that Hector remembers her doing often with Maria when told to do something by her elder sister), but complied and carried the glass of milk with her into the living room.  She would drink the soy or coconut stuff that Hector brought home, and because she knew that he had some aversion to dairy and beef (a cultural thing that she didn't grasp but didn't question) she wouldn't bring milk home from the store.  But man, it sounded satisfying after that climb up the stairs.

Lola wouldn't sit, but instead she'd poke around the walls looking at pictures and peeking at books on shelves, being generally nosy of the environment her cousin lived in.  Anthony at least behaved like he didn't mind the two rural Tribemates remaining on their feet.  He'd settle himself onto one side of the couch and cross his legs and drink his beer anyways.


"But, congratulations anyways.  I think."  The 'I think' is added cautiously with a sideways glance at Hector.  He didn't even know that Lola had been staked claim over by anyone-- she hadn't mentioned anything about a romantic relationship to him, and then two days ago he came to learn that some stranger (no, Anthony, not stranger, you just never bothered to meet Maria's pack) was responsible for a second cousin that was already on the way.


Hector Ghosh

It's an easy enough assumption that Hector would be anxious if not upset to learn he was going to become a father and Anthony can draw more than a few conclusions as he lines them up beside each other as to why that would be.

Plenty of other people have to have thought the same thing. Their heritages don't share a continent and it seems obvious from looking at him that he was adopted by this tribe and not born into it. If anyone would have willingly taken him it ought to have been the Children of Gaia. That is where his dark hair and skin say he belongs. Not until he starts to talk about the powerful spirit-talker who served as the last brick in the wall of his lineage does anyone begin to gain an understanding of how on earth he ended up in Uktena's tribe.

Yet he's standing against the wall worrying his adornments because Anthony is as close to a male father figure as he's going to have on Lola's side. She is an orphan and he can empathize because his parents are gone from him but it isn't the same as having to have lived and learned himself knowing that they're gone forever. Anthony doesn't have any sway insofar as his love for Lola or the trajectory of their family goes but he's never had to do anything like this before. He never even went to prom. He was gone from the mortal coil by then.

So Anthony adds the I think and Hector's eyes widen like the next words out of his mouth are going to be What the fuck did you just say?

He's smarter than that but he doesn't talk himself down fast enough to give Lola's cousin that impression. He stops worrying his makeshift ring and peels his spine from the wall and frowns.


"What do you mean, you 'think'?"


Lola Hawkes

If Hector would have ever needed to meet Lola's father for reasons such as this, it probably would have been only a matter of minutes before Hector relaxed.  The Uktena kinsman, Anthony's uncle, had been known for being a broad-backed and strong-handed man with a hard to read face but a voice and eyes that were warm and friendly.  He probably would have clapped a hand to the Galliard's shoulder and taken him off for a one-on-one talk, and whatever was discussed would have ended with a sense of approval and welcoming.  Lola's mother would have watched cool and distant, said something semi-prophetic, and then been gone through the shadows of the night while the others went to sleep.

Anthony is the closet that he has for introducing himself to a male figure in Lola's life.  He's older than the both of them, but he's pretty much the same age as Maria had been-- just a fistful of months older really.  He's not yet out of his twenties, which makes him a peer rather than an authority figure.  He's not an intimidating man by any means, but it's difficult to get a firm read on him.  He seems like he could be pleasant enough, but his expressions didn't display the same warmth that the shape of his face suggests that it ought to.

Hector straightened up with a frown upon catching two syllables that could lead down a path that divides, or maybe even ends this visit early.  Lola had paused at a bookshelf and turned about to scowl, but her attention was shifted to Hector instead.  This was his impression to make on Anthony, their chance to meet and talk.  Lola knew both of them just fine, and she knew that they had to get their lines drawn in the dirt for anything else to happen communication and cooperation-wise.  So she says nothing and watches with her hand on the spine of a book that she had been slowly pulling off the shelf.

Anthony is interrupted from a sip of his beer by Hector's voice, and looks over to the younger man.  The beer bottle is set on the coffee table in front of him, on a coaster that was left out from the stack of others.  He didn't stand or rise to meet a challenge, nor did he look defensive.  He kept his expression flat and clasped his hands together between his knees and explained:

"Look, I don't mean anything insulting by it.  But I didn't even know that you two were an item, and Lola here--" he jerks his head back toward his cousin without removing his eyes from Hector, "is pretty closed lipped on the matter."  Lola huffs quietly in the corner of the room and pushes the book that she'd been inspecting back into its space on the shelf.  "I'm not sure if you guys are 'just trying to make it work' now, if this is something that you even want people to be talking about...."  His sentence structure had started to fall apart.  Though his tone was level, he wasn't used to having creatures with Rage directing hard stares and scowls in his direction.  He didn't flinch or cringe away like humans would, but he found himself more easily made flustered, more conscious of his words than what he would be with any regular human that he interacted with-- which was really what he was so much more accustomed to.


"It's just, the way I'm used to it people are together for a while before they start trying to have kids.  If you two are happy, though, then congratulations.  I just wasn't sure."


Hector Ghosh

The way Anthony is used to it.

Lola examines a bookcase but keeps her eye on her man in case he manages to slip loose his bindings in spite of the dark moon hung outside. Whenever she has seen him in a social setting it has been in an instance where he has felt free to speak his mind for he had already fought with or heard of the other Gaians in his midst. She has not yet seen him interact with another Kinfolk anywhere other than the Sept.

Though he could be a terrifying entity within their people's mythos by the time he is Anthony's age right now the two look at him in his nascency. By the Nation's standards he is almost ready to challenge a higher-ranked Garou for the second rank. Cliath moondancers have to be monsters in battle and sources of inspiration for their people but they do not have to protect those weaker than them or treat humans as creatures to be saved.

Hector is considered as honorable as a Fostern warrior. He is held to a higher standard than others of his moon because he has thus far conducted himself in a manner befitting someone who knows the difference between right and wrong.

Beneath his Rage and his attachment to the woman stood at the bookshelf Hector knows Anthony's place and he knows what he is trying to say. Above everything else words are his instrument. That doesn't stop him from bristling when the kinsman doesn't just get to the goddamn point but they can both see him drawing a deep breath and swallowing his defensiveness and thinking before he speaks.

"We didn't try," he says. Flicks an apologetic glance to Lola before he goes on: "It's not like..."

There's no sting in it. This is just how he knows it to be true: Lola would not take him to bed because she was not ready to bear his child before the night it happened. But her cousin doesn't need to know that Hector held off for both of their grief and tried to tell her how he felt in July. How he tried again in August and showed her his Harano-bound heart and not the passion that took her over a month later.

But he sighs instead of spilling all of that out.

"I love her, man. And she fought me off for a while, after her sister died, but... we both kind of knew what we were getting into. You know?"


He scratches the back of his neck and wears an uncertain expression for a moment.


Lola Hawkes

What Hector has to say is sincere.  They weren't necessarily going into this planning to have children right out the gate, but that didn't make this sad news to tell or anything to be ashamed of either.  He explains that he loves Lola, and that she had fended him off for a while but he won her over... or something like that.  While the Galliard scratched at his neck and looked uncertain and asked if Anthony knew what he was trying to say, the Kinsman looked like things were made murkier by what explanation Hector had given.  "Uh huh...," was all he had to answer with right away.

Lola joined the conversation, introducing herself to it with a shake of her head and by moving to the living room again, picking up the glass of milk that she'd abandoned for the moment on the coffee table.  As she straightened back up, glass in one hand and the other hand tucked beneath the opposing elbow, she spoke.

"The precursor is irrelevant, and personal, Anthony."  Her eyes narrowed at him a little, but the expression relaxed almost right as soon as it had been delivered.  "And your congratulations is appreciated."

She drinks deep from the cup, swallowing back the milk for three, four gulps in a row before setting the half-finished glass back down and easing herself into a sit on the opposite side of the couch from where Anthony was.  He picked his beer back up, and Lola leaned back and continued.

"We didn't come here to bring challenge and war to your door, man.  I'm not trying to disrupt what calm you've got yourself right now-- though one of these days that's gonna change whether you like it or not."  Anthony looks like he's going to speak against what Lola just said, but she plows on ahead and doesn't give him the chance to.  "But I do want you to see us-- how we're doing, that we're doing just fine.  So that way you know for yourself how things are going, and so you don't send any women with medicine bags out to check on me.  Because we've got this under control."


Anthony sipped at his beer and looked at Lola for a long and hard moment, then scrubbed at his scalp with his free hand.  "For now, yeah.  But what happens when you need to make sure the baby's growing okay?  Or when you have to deliver?  Just letting someone come check you out every couple of weeks or so won't do anyone any harm.  I get that people popped babies out in log cabins for a long time before hospitals became common practice, but how many women died struggling with a breech baby, huh?  How much of this have you even read about yet?"


Hector Ghosh

This moment will enter into their conjoined history for the fact that Lola has to jump in and save Hector from sticking his foot in his mouth or damaging relations with another person. Were the two men alone Hector could have explained that they did not go to bed with each other until Anthony's cousin was ready or that they weren't just lying together because they had nothing better to do. That as they understood it no point existed in lying together unless they were both willing to weather the bullshit that came along with it.

He had told his packsister if an Athro of their tribe came along and decided to claim Lola as his mate that Hector didn't care, he'd fight him. Thus far that hasn't happened. Maybe the Athros of their tribe are afraid of Echoes of the Lost. Like as not they're afraid of Lola.

Hector cannot fend off this line of questioning for long and Lola saves him. He looks over at her as she speaks and neither of the Kinfolk are paying attention to him so the nuances of his expression are swallowed up by the ether but when Lola does look back at him he looks happy. Pleased. Proud, even. They do not dwell on this but he could have chosen several other kinswomen to ride along with him. He's chosen to settle down with Lola.

But Anthony continues on with the same line that had set up Lola's back on the phone and Hector draws a deep patient breath and he watches him and he does not react until the end. Then it is not a reaction. He's only responding.

"How far away from help do you think we are?" he asks. A frown creases his brows. "No, wait--how ignorant do you think we are? Dude, babies..."

He's going into moondancer mode. Lola can see it. His hands form the approximate shape of a human womb at full term and he situates it at his navel that Anthony might visualize what he's talking about.


"You realize deaths from breech births are mostly caused by lack of education, right? People who can't deliver a breech birth also can't read, and neither can the women having the breech births? Those women also tend to form fistulas after delivering because the people telling them what to do only tell them to lie on their backs and wait for the doctor and they end up in labor for like three days? You know what fistula is, right?" He drops the visual aide but keeps addressing Anthony. "Look, I've never done this before. It scares the shit out of me that Lola could go off on her own and something could happen and I could lose both her and the baby and not even be there. This is all I think about anymore. I went with eleven other Gaians into this... pit. Not that far from here. And I helped fight off an attack from a pack of Abominations that was so... fucked up I don't even know where to begin describing it to you. I don't scare easy. Is what I'm trying to say. And I don't know what I'm doing here. All I've got is faith that Lola's smart enough and strong enough to keep herself safe until the baby comes and if something goes wrong a spirit-talker is only a few miles away and I can howl pretty goddamn loud. Alright?"


Lola Hawkes

This is a line that Anthony walks, and it stresses the poor man so that white hairs will soon sprout prematurely in his beard.  The world that he grew up in and continued to live in and was most comfortable with was one where women had bi-monthly checkups until their third trimester and then they had weekly checkups following that.  It was a world where things like 'gestational diabetes' and 'preeclampsia' and 'breech births' are things that need to be tended to by doctors and medicines.  The world that he was a part of due to his genetics and his mother's side of the family, which was distant and didn't visit often, was so different that he still didn't understand it entirely even though he fed money to a cousin to continue supporting that world's success.

He listens to Hector go off, and the way he chews uncomfortably on his lower lip suggest that no, he has no idea what a fistula is.  But he is still, and he doesn't argue with what Hector has to say.

The beer is killed off and Anthony stood up off the couch.  Lola finished her milk when her cousin prompted with another hand gesture, and she passed her empty glass to him for him to deliver to the kitchen.  He'd relocated there on the excuse of getting rid of empty bottles and dishes, but hovered there with his hands on the counter top, splayed out in front of him.  The moon was dark, but distance from the Rage was more comfortable than being in the same room as it.  From there he spoke again.

"I get ya," is what he tells Hector, and glances toward Lola again.  "That's a part of what we were talking about the other day.  I heard what happened, what got you landed in the hospital--" this is directed to Lola, and she holds her chin high and looks like she's challenging him to naysay her accomplishments alongside Milton the Glass Walker that night.  He doesn't, and instead focuses his speech more upon Hector again.  "She's been in battles since her mom agreed to her owning a gun and my uncle taught her to shoot.  She's had near-death encounters before, too, and keeps going back for more.  Part of what we were fighting about is that particular habit."

Before she can explain that she can take care of herself just fine, or before Hector can defend her prowess by telling tales of the battles she's turned the tide in or won, and walked away from without a single scratch, Anthony continues.  "But that'd just be me preaching to a choir that isn't even my congregation, wouldn't it?  So, alright, fine.  I won't send anyone out.  But Lola," and again he turns his eyes to his cousin, exclusively on her for now.  She stayed on the couch, one arm hooked up over the arm of the furniture, the other rested with her wrist on her lap.


"You've got to keep me up to date on what goes on, okay?," he asks/requires of her.  "Otherwise I can't know how to help.  I'm not involved much, but the help that I can give--" his money, that is, "--is there specifically to be given, and it's an arrangement that's worked, huh?  So I'll stay out of your hair, but for the love of God tell me if things happen or if I need to come visit or something."


Hector Ghosh

It isn't the mention of Lola's landing in the hospital or even the thought of what got her there in the first place that has Hector's nostrils flaring. The brushing-aside of the significance, maybe. That she was attacked by something they can't identify and survived by the teeth of her bared teeth and was still ready to shoulder her rifle and get back out on patrols as soon as her legs would hold her after the release of the Water gaffling: that Anthony is not there any time and was not there the night of the judgment let alone the night of the warmoot, the night Lola was hurt.

She can see it in his eyes because she has seen Hector's eyes when he's been wrenched with pain beyond anything he could even describe, because she's seen his eyes when he's been so happy all he could do was throw his arms around the other person and twirl them around the room, because she's seen his eyes when he's been inside her and can't catch his breath let alone form words and yet all she could hear in the breath escaped from him was his love for her.

She sees he's furious to hear her prowess contested by someone whose contribution to the War consists of sending checks once and a while. And she sees him check himself. The Hawkes line isn't just humans. Her mother's side boasts lupus wolves.

Checks mean money and money means easier exchange of goods and services. But... fuck.

Stood against the wall as he is Hector still looks scared. Alone in this, maybe. He can love Lola and support her all he wants. He may be the only one there and the only one who has an inkling of what to do when the baby comes. But his love for her won't mean a thing if their baby doesn't survive.

His greatest secret is that if anything were to happen to Lola whether it were right in front of him or a hundred miles away, if she were to just disappear or if she were to come back in ribbons, Hector would survive. It hurts him to even think the thought and it hurts him worse to think the truth, but the truth is he would survive. He would also survive coming back from death with an arm off and having to go through the rest of his natural life without it. Doesn't mean he hopes to hasten such a fate.


"Do you only want to visit if there's a problem?" he asks. So innocent a question come from the mouth of someone renowned for his ferocity in battle.


Lola Hawkes

The question that's presented is a heavy one, but Anthony doesn't buckle under it.  Instead he spreads his hands out in front of him in a 'what do you do?' kind of gesture.

"I want to be notified if there's a problem so I can be there.  I would like to visit more--" and Hector might guess, but Lola already knows that half of this is a lie.  Not the whole thing-- because whenever Anthony had come out to visit before he'd wound up having a perfectly relaxed time bonding with the family that he likes to forget.  But half of it is, because she knows that he's uncomfortable with his Werewolf heritage and he's worried that if he spends too much time out there he'll get wrapped up in the world and won't be able to come back to what he's comfortable with, what he's worked hard to build.

"--but I don't get much spare time as it is.  I have a business to run."  And it sounds almost like a crutch, and a familiar one at that.  Something that he uses frequently to excuse himself from being places or holding to expectations.

Lola stands up off the couch and stretches her arms up above her head, then drops them at her sides again.  She looked over to Hector, where he stayed hovering at the wall, and hooked her thumbs into the empty belt loops of her pants (because she didn't need a belt to hold them up any longer-- and in the next week she wouldn't be able to button them at all).  "I know, Anthony.  I ain't mad at it either.  We all serve our roles."  And from her tone of voice, it's a reassurance she's been delivering her cousin when his chest and throat get tight with anxiety and pressure to do more as a Kinfolk.  Normally she lays that pressure down on him, but she's also on a number of times let him off the hook from it.  He's still family, after all.

"Hector?"  She asks after him, and nodded her head.  "Shall we?"
It's not like he was ever going to sit down and get comfortable anyways.

And as Lola indicates that she's ready to leave if Hector is, Anthony looks somewhat at a loss-- perhaps a bit dejected.  He didn't have any idea how this visit was going to go or how long it would last.  He knew that they stood on opposite sides of a line drawn in the sand, but he didn't know how to cross that line and make things solid instead of simply steady between himself and his more feral cousin and her new... boyfriend?  husband?  Mate?  Wasn't that the word they used-- mate?  Like they were animals or something?

"Well, hold on," he says.  "I've got something for you guys before you go."


And unless interrupted, asked a question, or stopped, he heads back into one the bedroom that he treats as an office instead.


Hector Ghosh

When he'd asked the question Hector had not had an answer in mind. Like his woman's cousin he had no notion of how this visit was going to go and he might have sat down if Anthony had bid him sit down. If he had asked Hector about himself or the Sept instead of going straight for the matter of the unborn baby.

They're only two weeks gone from learning of the pregnancy and Hector has weathered and absorbed other less happy news before. He adapts quickly. They talked about this earlier: how he believes in Lola's strength. But rather than sitting and talking with Anthony about the older kinsman's businesses or his own role within the Nation or what Anthony remembers about the parents Hector will never get to meet, the Galliard let his back get up.

Anthony ducks into one of the bedrooms to grab something for them and an expression of contrition comes across Hector's features now. He runs a hand over his hair to push back the disobedient strands and he looks over at Lola as he does so. Blows out a breath and lets his eyes tick to follow her cousin into the room and then he takes several steps away from the wall to sit down on the couch while he waits for the other man to return. Knees wide apart and fingers knit between them.

Some thought he has while it's just the two of them in the room makes Hector drop his gaze to the floor and scoff out a voiceless laugh. He starts to twist his jewelry again but he hasn't got much time to explain to Lola what made him make that noise. Could have been something over Celduin's mystic connection but for the fact that his gaze didn't turn inward.

"I suck at this," is all the explanation she gets.


He's still sitting when Anthony comes back out into the living room. Not as if he intends to stay for very long but so he isn't looming in the background like a maladjusted delinquent. He never even took off his coat.


Lola Hawkes

When Anthony had vanished into one of the rooms, Hector came to sit on the couch and twist anxiously at his rings and laugh, voiceless and humorless, at how the visit was going.

It could have been a comfortable social chat.  They could have talked about Anthony's businesses, or shared childhood stories about growing up with Lola and Maria as his 'curious cousins out in the sticks'.  He could have told him what he knew about his aunt and uncle, and asked after Hector's history as well.  If that was the way things had gone, Lola may have been content to let the more talkative of the three there in the room carry the conversation and simply relax.  But that's not how it went-- Anthony had cut to the chase about what he and Lola were arguing about, and Hector stepped up to the plate to defend.  He didn't swing the bat too heavily, but the niceties were cut from the air regardless.

He expressed that he sucked at this 'meet the family' thing, and Lola reached out to him (she was still standing near the couch, and he'd sat down close enough for her to reach him) and put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.  The motion is bracing and reassuring both.  "It could be worse," is all she has to comfort him with.

When Anthony came back out of the office, he was carrying a brown paper shopping bag with him by the handles.  It appeared about half-full, given how the sides of the paper bag bulked out at the bottom but were flat and hollow at the top, and seemed to be light because its weight didn't strain the flimsy handles in Anthony's hand.  He'd stick out his arm, elbow straight and locked, and hold the bag out for Hector instead of giving it to Lola.  He looked like he was presenting it like a peace offering-- like a man who didn't know how to be around wolves would hold out a raw cut of steak on a plate and hope that it satisfies.

"I blew my chance to give a warm welcome already, I suppose," he explained.  When Hector accepts the bag (because Anthony will hold it and wait until he does, and let's face it Hector's a good guy-- he's not going to leave the poor stressed Kinsman hanging) and looks inside, he'll find that there's a long, large rectangle of burnt orange cloth that's soft and strong to the touch.  Under that there's some lotion marketed specifically for pregnancy and helping with stretch marks, and a foursome of books, two of which specifically teach on the topics of home birth.  He knew his fight was lost before that phone call had even ended.


"But like I said, I'll give what help I can anyways."


Hector Ghosh

Her hand on his shoulder is enough to ground Hector in the present instead of allowing his brain to shoot off into alternate universes and spots on the timeline that have either already happened or might not ever occur. His imagination is part of what makes him an effective Galliard but it feeds his Rage. By the time Lola reaches out to him he's already talked himself down and replayed the last fifteen minutes or so.

This is a difficult situation for all of them. This meeting wouldn't be occurring if it weren't for the fight the two cousins had had the other day.

"Doesn't have to be bad at all," he says as he reaches up his hand to squeeze Lola's. Removes it from his well-padded shoulder to bring the palm to his lips. He kisses her there before he lets her go. "Remind me--"

And then Anthony returns before Hector can plant a marker for a future story. Though he's released Lola's hand he doesn't himself stand. The kinsman can like as not feel the weight of the taller younger male's attention resting on him. While the Rage gives him the sense that he's being stalked by an irritable jungle cat that uncertain tension has gone out of Hector's body now that he's let himself sit down and be a guest for a few more minutes before he and Lola leave. The Galliard's eyebrows lift at the stiff presentation of the bulging bag but they don't shoot up the way they had when Anthony had stumbled his way through his congratulations earlier. They creep up and then Hector's teeth show in a chagrinned smile that would have come with laughter were he feeling more relaxed.

At least he's letting himself show teeth. Humans don't interpret bared fangs as a sign of aggression. Normal people smile when they're content. Hector takes the bag and his brows lower to form a curious frown.

"You didn't blow anything," Hector says and then scoots over on the couch to make room for Lola. They're staying a little longer, it looks like. He lifts the blanket up not to inspect it but to admire it and then laughs an actual laugh at the bottle of lotion and takes it out and passes it to Lola. "I think that's for you."

He wasn't prepared for Anthony to have gathered up a small stack of books for them. He sorts through them just to see what's there and then huffs out another laugh when he gets to one of the home birth volumes.

"Oh, man, that one was hella overdue when I went to the library the other day. Librarian almost fainted asking me if I wanted to put a hold on it."

He puts the books down on the cushion and stands up and if Anthony is surprised to find himself entrapped in a 170-pound embrace by someone who looked like he would have snapped his neck a few minutes earlier no one will blame him.


"Dude, thank you so much..."


Lola Hawkes

The kiss to the palm was met with a softening of the corners of the Kinswoman's eyes that didn't follow down to soften her mouth as well.  That was fine, though, Hector knew how to read her.  She curled her fingers briefly to his chin and jaw, but then Anthony was coming back out into the room and Hector had released her hand.

When the paper bag of gifts was presented, Hector accepted it and scooted over to give Lola more room on the couch to join him.  As he pulled gifts free from the bag to look at them, Lola did not sit beside him, but rather she rested her rear end against the arm of the couch and propped her weight up there instead.  The bottle of lotion is glanced at, the snippet of its purpose read, and Lola smirked some and shifted her attention to the long rectangular piece of fabric that had been pulled loose as well.  When unraveled, it's revealed that it's too long to be a blanket, and there's a ring attachment stitched onto one end.  It's a sling for carrying newborns while keeping your arms free.  This realization impresses Lola and pleases her both.  She puts the sling-fabric in her lap and leans to the side to peer into the bag at the other books.

Two volumes about home birth.
One about pregnancy in general (but not What To Expect because fuck that franchise).
One about what to expect through pregnancy and infancy, but specifically geared to new fathers.

Anthony's got a blush to his ears that his hair does a fine job of covering up, but the flush on his cheeks doesn't hide quite so well.  The mood had shifted, and he was pleased but didn't quite expect the moment when long lanky arms wrap around him and pull him into a hug.  Anthony's chin breaches Hector's shoulder, unlike Lola's, so she's able to see the surprise on his face when he hesitates, then awkwardly pats Hector on the back.  "It's not, like, a crib or car seat or anything like that.  But I figured it was things you guys could actually use now."

He catches Lola's eye and her raised eyebrow, and saw her plucking at the sling in her lap, and Anthony parts himself from Hector and mirrors the smirking expression back at her.  "That one I just thought would be good, period.  I know strollers don't really work on grass."

Lola straightens up and starts returning things to the bag-- the books, the lotion, the cloth.  "Can't say I was expecting any gifts.  Thank you."


Again, Anthony is dismissive and shakes his head and shoves his hands in his pockets because they itch to be around some beer bottles-- having a werewolf in his house along with his weird rural cousin made him want to double-fist his drinks.  "Eh, what kind of asshole would I be if I didn't at least get you a book?"


Hector Ghosh

No one ever expects the moment Hector goes from aggressive to affectionate. He feels like the apocalypse some days. Lola is the only one who has ever seen him so shot full of Rage that he could have given himself over to Grandfather Serpent and retained no memory of the fault in his being but Lola also knew that she was the only person in the universe who could grab him by the wrists and yell at him to shift and he would hear her. She did not know that he would heed her but he heard her and did not give himself up to blood-soaked oblivion.

Despite the anxiety that rode his shoulders tonight Hector did not come close to frenzying. Despite the fact he shook Anthony's hand he also did not sit with him and talk with him as a man. As space inserts itself between the first few minutes of the exchange and the present Lola can see that he had held himself as he would have before a disapproving father figure. He hadn't meant to but when one conducts oneself as if the eyes of the world are upon one's back every time one is not sequestered away within one's mate's home--

Makes terrible sense that Lola only has to glance at her mate's eyes to tell what he's thinking. He cannot lie and she knows him better than even Tamsin, who can hear his thoughts as he projects them through Fog. She knows him and she knows that his thoughts sometimes contradict themselves. He can go from hating chopping wood at the outset to reveling in it once he gets started. He's terrified of the thought of becoming a father but when he lies in bed with Lola in the morning with his ear against her belly and his lips close by he sounds dream-dizzy with the thought of the baby inside. Of course he's scared he'll lose both of them. He loves both of them.

So he clutches Anthony to his chest without warning and Anthony does not know how to respond but the Galliard lets him go when he is ready to free himself. Lets the cousin share a moment over the purpose of the sling and Lola can see by looking at him that he's touched and happy and relieved all at once. No hint of negative emotion to see physical proof of a possibility beyond their current uncertainty. Like he can already envision her strapping their child to her chest and slinging her rifle across her back and going out on the four-wheeler while he stands on the porch and watches them go.

That vision fills him with warmth. It's the half-dozen other visions that run his blood cold and make him snap at her cousin. As he's weathered everything else he'll weather the fear that comes with expectant fatherhood. If Lola can believe nothing else about him she can believe Hector is resilient enough to overcome the mess inside his own head.

"You're not an asshole," Hector says. He too shoves his hands into the pockets of his army jacket like they're holstering their weapons. His eyes are aimed at the floor and he still looks contrite. When he lifts his eyes the rest of his head is slow in following and he glances over at Lola. "Can I... ugh..."

He runs his hands through the loose strands of his hair and stalks off towards the kitchen but it isn't out of anger or impending frenzy. When he reaches the stout island Hector turns around again and laughs at his own nervous energy. Hands plant themselves on his hips instead of burying themselves in his pockets.

"Anthony, man, can I--" Yes, Hector, you can ask him something. He drops his hands. Glances to Lola before he goes on: "I get that you've got a business to run. And it's a pain in the ass to drive out to the sticks. This city is a war zone though. Just... Lola and I spent a good month up here patrolling when things were hairy with the Broadway Sept and things have just gotten worse since then. I don't want to be up here at all, but until things settle... your cousin's a badass. I--" He looks to her again. "I'm sorry, I know this is embarrassing, or whatever--" Back to Anthony. "--but she is. The rest of the Nation, the spirits, everyone thinks she's awesome. And she is. Anthony. She's... amazing. And I know it's scary, but she can handle herself. She's never gotten hurt when she's fought with me. Crap, Lola, I'm nervous-talking. Help."

Hard to be endeared to him when one is also afraid he could tear apart the living room and one's bones at the same time but the moon is so thin and he's not much larger and Hector actually looks as if he is so nervous right now that he can't bring himself to focus for longer than half a second.

"I just... if we're up here on patrols, or we decided we wanted sushi, or whatever. Is it okay if we, or I... whatever. If someone stops in. I just... I don't think anything is going to go wrong. That's what I was saying earlier, is I trust her, you know? She's... she is, man, she's so strong, and capable, and... she's a badass. I really am honored that she wants to be with me and not some scar-covered Athro Ahroun." Another flick of his eyes to callback to his apology for this being embarrassing for her. "But I also don't want the agreement we have to be 'if something goes wrong' and then like... nothing goes wrong. And we don't hear from you until the summer. Or... you know what I mean? That's shitty. Maria was like a sister to me. I'm Lost. Like, my mother was Kinfolk and didn't know because she was adopted, and I haven't seen my family since I was a teenager, and... Lola and I aren't exactly swimming in family, over here."


Crap, Lola. He's nervous talking.


Lola Hawkes

Hector can already tell that Lola's most impressed with the selection of the sling out of all of the gifts provided.  This will change later, after she's thumbed through one of the birthing books, when she determines the knowledge found there (once you get past the wishy-washy love-and-support-and-orgasmic-birth crap) is most practical, but for now she's pleased with how Anthony had not only nailed pretty much the whole package, but had provided something for 'Baby' as well.

Just as she is able to read him, he's learning to better read her.  Lola's always been an honest (enough) woman.  She was straightforward to a fault right from the first time he'd met her and she was still a teenager and full of untempered fire.  Despite that, though, she wasn't ever an easy read.  If she wasn't raging over something then it was hard to gauge if that neutral expression she wore all of the time was a mellow one or a smoldering one.  He's learning now, though, that he has to read the edges of her eyes to gauge where she's at.  The fact that she glances distractedly to the bag and reaches over to adjust the way the sling fabric is folded over the top of everything else is a tell-- she's excited by the gift, it serves as a reminder of what lays at the end of the arduous journey ahead.

She falls to quiet once more, as is normal and expected for her, and the Galliard takes the floor instead.  He'd insisted to Anthony that he's not an asshole, and the Kinsman just shuffled the toe of his stocking across the carpet of his living room and shrugged.  "Well, I guess you're right.  I did get books, after all."  His own joke falls flat in the water like a belly flop from the high dive, and Lola smirks a little smirk over at him-- pleased with her cousin's flubbed attempt at humor and continuing to break the ice away.  It was the same kind of expression that a sibling might give when you clearly stick your foot in your mouth when on the phone with someone you have a crush on.

Then Hector wants to say something, or ask something-- it's hard to tell at first.  He moves with nervous energy bound up tight around his bones and wanders toward the kitchen, then plants himself in front of the squat kitchen island with his hands on his hips and starts going off.

Things have been bad in the city.  Your cousin is a badass-- hey, don't be embarrassed--
Oh, she wasn't.  Hector called her amazing and awesome and strong and she just sat there looking proud and capable and continuing to yield the floor to him.

She doesn't get hurt, she can handle herself-- Crap, I'm nervous talking, help.
Even though Anthony glances awkwardly from Hector to Lola, the Kinswoman just shakes her head and interjects briefly with:  "You're good, just get where you're going."  These are her words to encourage him to continue.  She could tell that he hadn't said what he was trying to yet, and so she'd let him keep going even if he thought he needed help getting there.

If we're in the city... If it's okay...  If someone stops in.  I don't want this to be only on a 'if something happens' condition because something might not happen.
I want to see more of you.  To be family.  I'm Lost, I haven't seen my family since I was a teenager and we don't have a lot of family over here and.. and...

Here is where Lola interjects.  Hector has the passion, the momentum, the imagination and fervor and fire.  What Lola offers to that is some control-- a throttle to the rolling energy that Hector brought to the table.  She had folded her arms over her chest and swung her head so that she wasn't facing Hector anymore and was looking directly to Anthony instead.  "What he's saying is...--"  There you go, Hector, take a breath.

"--...that we want you included more.  You've been distant from this part of your family for a long while.  We're not gonna ask you to drop what life you've built and come join us where we are, but we want this," and she gestures between herself and Hector by pointing to the both of them with two fingers, then back to Anthony with one finger-- back and forth a couple of times, "to be more open, and more frequent."

Anthony doesn't quite know what to say, but he senses that Lola isn't really finished yet either, so he just stands back on the opposite side of the coffee table from Lola and the couch and lets her finish.  While she continues to speak she straightens up, rises more completely to her height which wasn't impressive on measuring tape but somehow managed to be with the force of her very nature anyways.

"It's dangerous here, things are shaky, and now that the Spire Sept has dissolved there isn't as much... coverage keeping the Bad Things at bay here for you.  You didn't ever stop to think or recognize, but They were what kept you able to walk comfortably home from your parlor at night.  Without that, things that noticed you before will come for you now, y'know?  So I want to stay in touch, make sure that nothing like that happens, because I know your left hook is weak as shit and you ain't shot a fucking gun in four years.


"So we'll watch for you.  I owe ya that much.  In return, you just be family....  And come to a fucking Moot once every so often when you're asked to be there, you dick."


Hector Ghosh

With nothing more to go on than Lola's shutdown face with only the muscles around her eyes as a clue to her inner workings and Hector's flayed-bare expression telling every knee-jerk emotion to flit past his consciousness of course Anthony is not going to know what to say.

If he knows nothing else about Hector he would know from Lola telling him that the man is a Galliard. That's great. That's half the battle. Hector is a Galliard but he's also one hell of one. He's passionate and he's eloquent and he's confident so long as he's sure he has the attention of his audience. When he busks in the city with Tamsin he's confident and he's funny and he's sexy but he's also playing on the audience's attraction to his Rage. If anyone in the audience has the balls to approach Tamsin despite the heat banked beneath her breastbone the Rage turns on them and Hector scares them off.

Not so much anymore because Tamsin finally told him to knock that shit off but that was the norm for a long time. Not much more than a year separated then but Hector treated Tamsin like he was the younger of the two. He'd behaved like a little brother with Willow and Glen and Maria. Behaved like he and Corey were twins, almost, some days.

Never treated Lola like they were siblings. It may all come rushing back in hindsight now that he'd approached her like a woman and not like a blood-relation but there's no point looking back now. He's always been honest with her. Even in moments like this when it would be in his best interests to at least front he does not front.

Lola takes over for him and Hector draws a breath like he'd had his knocked out of him. Wears an expression of stage fright that he never wears even when he's stood up in front of a hundred Garou, more, telling stories about the war they're all fighting because he doesn't get nervous when he's around his own kind anymore.

What he asks of Anthony is the same thing he would have asked of any other wayward family member. It's the same thing he would have asked of his own sisters if his own sisters knew what he was. One day the thought will burrow its way into his head that he should try and reach out to his family. Today is not that day. He has to ask Lola for help talking to her cousin and she does take over for him. The territory into which he'd wandered was nebulous and fraught with uneven patches and he did not know the way.

No human equivalent exists to define their relationship but Anthony can come up with his own when he sees the way the young man looks at her.


"That's all I wanted to say," he says when he looks back at Anthony. "Minus the shade-throwing."


Lola Hawkes

Anthony, all the while, has been quiet.  That's one thing to be said about the man-- he's good at paying mind and listening.  It's perhaps the only thing that being a Kinfolk has brought to him, his patience.  He isn't always understanding, but he is often willing to wait, to give time, and to lend his ear when it's asked after.  The last time he spoke with a Garou directly had been when one of the city wolves had come sniffing around one of his tattoo parlors by chance.  He'd inked a story in glyphs onto the Garou's thigh, as was their request, and through the two and a half hour session he was pleasant but quiet, meek, subdued.  This was two and a half years ago, and he was happy to just quietly coast under the radar of the City Wolves since then.

But here are Hector and Lola, in his living space, asking him to pay more mind to the Wolves, asking him to participate more.  They're family, and they want to be a support system.  Anthony's eyebrows knit together, and he leans his weight subtly away from Hector when the Galliard breaks his own rambling to ask Lola for help.  His eyes had hopped over to his cousin, watched her reject her man's plea, but were pulled back to the magnetic younger man when his words had continued.

Then there's Lola, cutting in, taking over, laying out out like blueprints on a table.  He presses his lips into a thin, tight line when his cousin tells him flatly that the city is dangerous and its protections have fallen.  He wants to ask 'how does that impact me?', but he knows already that Lola will lift her hackles and tear into him for it, and all of this will have been for naught.  So he just stands with his arms folded snug across his chest and looks between the two in the quiet that follows, squeezing his arms to his own chest to crush the build of anxiety within it.

"Well," he says finally, and shakes his left arm out in front of him before turning it and checking the timepiece he wears on his wrist.  "We've got some time before Natalie shows up."  Natalie, apparently, is his girlfriend.  "Let's make it happen, then."

And so Hector and Lola will hang around for another thirty or forty minutes.  Most of it will be spent with Anthony and Hector driving the conversation-- inquiring tales and histories from one another.  Anthony will share a story about a thirteen year old Lola dragging herself home with branches and twigs all tangled up in her hair, cradling a bitten and broken arm because she'd gotten into a tussle with a Wolfborn, like a damn fool.  That was when she'd hacked her hair off, as the snarls were too great to simply overcome and Lola had lost patience trying to fix it herself.

Hector may share some story from his own teenage years, probably including skateboarding, possibly a broken limb, probably gained from fleeing police.  What a rebel.

The night ends on a pleasant enough note.  Lola claps her cousin on his cheek when they leave, the sign of affection a little rattling but not harmful.  Hector may try to hug him again, and Anthony's still tense but more receptive the second time around.


Five or so minutes later Hector's stress from meeting a new family member and navigating unfamiliar social waters will be vented and directed toward a careless driver that nearly strikes his mate in the knees rounding a corner.  But they don't know that, they're telling stories when they make their way back down the stairs to leave.

How Fucking Much It Helps - 11.1.2013 [Hector]

Hector Ghosh

All they could do last night was turn away from the punishments doled out and walk back to the Homestead. Not a far walk at all but the air was heavy and they did not speak the entire way. His arm stayed around Lola's shoulders for as long as she would have it there, crept up when holding hands would not suffice as support once the blood started flowing from their elders' pelts. Tamsin knew she was invited to stay with them. Thomas's house was not far. No one has seen Jack in some time but they still feel him out there.

He wasn't concerned with his pack after that display. The cries of a half-orphaned infant rang in his ears.

Hector made toast and poured orange juice down his throat straight out of the carton while he waited for the bread to become toast. He's not the one gestating a child but he knows better than to go to bed on an empty stomach after something like that. Eat, he'd said to her. Hadn't said please and if she'd gone straight to bed without humoring him he didn't push it. Just banked the furnace and brought a glass of juice to bed with him and stripped out of his clothes to climb in beside her.

And through the night Hector held her like he himself could keep the nightmare tendrils from slinking their way out of the Caern and into the quiet house. Flush against her backside with their legs tangled, an arm across her midsection and the other across her chest, four hands locked over her heart. She could feel his breath against her neck grow cooler as his heart slowed. Rage like a third entity in the bed with them.

A fourth, technically.

He fell asleep before she did and they stayed like that. He did not rouse completely with her nightmare but when Lola did she felt a ring-heavy hand at her forehead smoothing back the hair and the sweat and the worry, murmured reassurance in her ear. Not quite words for the words coming up out of a dreamless sleep to bury themselves in her skin.

In the morning Hector's body comes awake before he does. Before the sun has even thought about showing its face. She knows when he's conscious these days because his mouth starts running before his eyes are even open.


Lola Hawkes

Both Kin and Garou were summoned last night.  Lola knew that she was to go to the Caern because of a message delivered while she was out in a dense clump of trees along the Bawn's edge, completing her patrol.  Wind had kicked up, though the leaves on the treetops didn't shift and the wind kicked at the ends of her hair but didn't touch the top of her head.  Leaves swirled about and lay, yellow over brown and orange, in a message:

JUDGMENT CAERN NOW GO

She'd stopped and stared at the message, shifted the rifle she was carrying on her back, supported by a strap across her chest, and was about to start headed toward the Caern, presuming Hector would be there, but he'd intercepted her-- a tawny colored wolf with a streak of steel-gone-rust along the spine, come to escort her there.Lola refuses to stay back in the house with the cluster of other Kinfolk.  Even after three hours worth of dolling out insults and punishments to one Theurge, when many others decided that things couldn't get much better and by now it's the wee hours of the morning.  She stands tall and proud at Hector's side, among him and his pack.

Even when a wolf is banished, with his mate's back turned and his infant bleating unhappily from the doorway of the house whose meadow they were congregated in-- Lola watched, eyes hard and heavy and full of the judgment that these city wolves deserved.

Then a wolf is seized by his throat, lifted, and flayed along his side.  Lola's face goes ashen and she sways, just a little.  Not by the sight of the skin being stripped from meat, but the dark dreadful sensation that the opened box caused, and the knowledge of what had happened to the man-- stripped of his Wolf, for Gaia knows how long.  Hector's arm goes around her shoulders here, and she does nothing to shrug him away, willingly accepting the comfort and shelter and leaning into his flank.

When Crescent Sky's terrible, terrifying punishment is doled out, Lola's eyes darken with recognition and she glances up to Hector's face to see what she finds.  She finds it hard and grim, confirming what she suspected, and exhausting her resolve all the more.

When they get home, she eats but only because she knows Hector is right to recommend it.  She sleeps, glad to be wrapped up in his arms.  Nightmares shake her in the dreamscape, and she wakes when her dream-self has been impaled by a silver spike of earth intended for a Grand Elder who had fallen on her shoulders for mercy and aid.  The sweat is smoothed from her brow and back into her hair by a half-stirred Galliard, murmuring nonsense that soothed none the less into her skin.  Eventually, she sleeps again.

In the morning they're unfortunately awake before the sun has had the chance to crest the horizon to the east.  Hector's stirring, muttering, and Lola's still got her back flush with his chest and stomach, her right leg stuck between his and left leg stretched out below.  When his voice and her own tingling restless discomfort with what was witnessed the night before had pulled her fully from sleep, she twisted about in his arms so that she could lay on her back instead and turn her head and press her lips to his brow, one hand moved to hold the back of his head while she did this.

They were both sweaty and unwashed, they smelled like the blood-filled air of the punishment grounds, but she breathed him in anyways.

"Can't sleep either, huh?"


Hector Ghosh

When a Garou commits such an egregious act as warrants punishment by Gaia's Vengeful Teeth none other may speak his name or talk of him as though he was ever anything other than a traitor. All the detail Hector gave her of the Garou who consorted with a Black Spiral Dancer and nearly brought the end of the world to a Caern out there in the desert where he had his fostering was just that: he was a Charach and a traitor.

He couldn't make Lola see what the rite looked like. Couldn't tell her what he felt watching his alpha scream and bleed onto a creature he'd loved once while the ground rejected him. Left out that Broken Dawn had to hold Hector up by the neck just about because the blood threatened to rush out of his head. Didn't tell her that after the body fell to be consumed by the earth that took its spirit that Blood on the Leaves had gathered up the rest of his pack the Cub included and told them they were going on a quest.

Years later that was the only time he had seen the rite. Has to feel somewhat prophetic that he'd told Lola that story while they were sat out on the porch last month smoking pot and talking about what was going to happen to the Guardians. Hector is not a prophet. He's just seen enough in his short life that he can suss out patterns.

Lola turns not away from him but onto her back and Hector loosens his grip on her to give her space. He hisses in a breath when their bodies brush against each other and despite the horror of the night before he's still reaching for her. When he hand finds the back of her head, her lips his brow, Hector's eyes fall shut again.

His hand slides across the space where her ribs meet her belly and anchors his arm over her. As she breathes him in Hector turns his face towards her. His hair smells of judgment smoke and he hasn't shaved his face in so long the hair on his jaws has gone soft. A hand slides the hair back off her face, comes back to trace the bones in her face. He kisses the space between her ear and the curve of her jaw. Scents her there. No sun yet and Hector's eyes are still foggy from sleep but he's looking at her like he might not have another chance after this.

They just woke up and she can already sense a need in him, words jangling around seeking purchase.
"I don't know why," he says as he leans over her. "All we did was sit around yesterday."


Lola Hawkes

There had been horror last night at what she was seeing.  Lola hadn't quite come close to passing out, but she did loop an arm around Hector's lower back and hold the back of his coat gripped tightly in her fist while the other hand stayed firmly at her side.  She refused to look weak in front of the Garou present, even though cubs and Cliaths alike were turning their heads, two or three even retching at what they were seeing.  Lola wouldn't lower herself to that, but she did tremble to watch the woman whose name had been smeared with ash and tar and bitterness onto her tongue flee on ground that killed her, chased by a pack of powerful beasts that would ensure that it did.

Hector would have had to give her enough of a nudge that her weight would rock in order to start her feet moving toward home.  If Tamsin or Thomas looked like they needed the support, Lola would offer what she had-- a hug for Tamsin, or a clap of the hand to the neck and jaw and behind the ear for Thomas.  She wasn't a part of their pack-- she heard rumor that there was a pack running around with a Black Fury Kinfolk bound to them through their Totem, but she had no idea how that happened or if she would even ask for it.  She wasn't a part of Celduin, but she braced and supported them like family none the less.  That's what a pack was at the end of the day, after all.

Here in the cool of the morning, when the furnace hasn't been stoked in several hours and the cold of the transitioning night between October and November had begun to seep through the walls, the Uktena could sleep no more even though they'd only gotten a few hours out of the night so far.  Even though their eyes were still half-open with sleep still being shaken off, Hector stirred differently than Lola and moved to lean his body over hers after having touched her face and hair and breathed her in as well.

His comment earned a half-bitter chuckle and the Kinswoman shook her head, then moved her arms away from him and into the space between her pillow and the headboard so that she could flex them and curve her spine and stretch.  She yawns and turns her head so she doesn't breathe morning breath into her man's face before settling and reaching up to touch Hector's chest.  Her fingertips speak of affection in how gentle they are, but the firmness behind them that rests in the iron wire of her forearm and wrist is a silent statement-- don't get too affectionate, friend, that's a no-go right now.

"Hardly at all.  I'm pretty sure I sat down twice yesterday."


Hector Ghosh

All it takes is hardness in her touch for him to draw a breath to calm himself and Hector is lying back down beside her rather than climbing overtop of her. He rests not with his head on her shoulder but with his arm working itself underneath hers, where it had been before he roused to her. His fingers thread through her hair again and consciousness brings with it coalescence and everything that passed the day before starts to form as events and not a tide rushing them forward.

The hand that had been holding up the rest of him traipses back from the opposite side of her body but it doesn't stroke her leg or trace her bones like to seduce her. It lies in the space between her hips, well above the space where he would have gone if she felt the same stir he did. Where she's caught him aiming his speech on the mornings he's gotten up before she has.

They're going to have a child and the wonder with which he broaches the subject when he broaches it at all is almost childlike on its own. Like he can't believe they're actually going to have a baby. A picture of it hangs on the refrigerator because they don't know what else to do with it and it's already two weeks gone from the day he broke her out of the hospital.

"You only sat down twice yesterday? I was outside chopping wood all morning. Not that I'm complaining," he says and indicates his biceps with a tick of his eyes. "Look at that. I'm getting huge."
He can only use humor to diffuse the horror of last night for so long and he knows it. Lola knows he knows it. She can see thoughtfulness lacing the edges of his jesting. Already he's starting to conduct himself more like a Fostern than a Cliath. Time would have been the thought of advancing would have scared the shit out of him. He's got to be more terrified of becoming a father than of becoming a Fostern but they aren't talking about that right now.

"So, uh... pretty intense phone call yesterday."


Lola Hawkes

Since she'd come home and stayed home, torn between unwilling to go back to the city and bored, longing for the adventure and excitement and danger of walking those streets to keep them clear of the wicked, Hector has picked up the habit of murmering to her abdomen.  He approaches the matter of the creation of life with wonder and caution and curiosity and sparks of joy.  Like a cat testing out the fish bowl that its owners brought home -- I'm not positive about this thing but I like it already.

They don't know how far along she is.  They might have a better idea if Lola wasn't made of such firm musculature.  Even against that, though, Hector's been able to notice over the past week that the lowest part of her belly, where his hand currently rested, was starting to grow.  Not in any way that anybody outside of the two of them would notice-- Lola notices because it's her body, and Hector notices because he's been watching specifically.  Anyone else would assume that's just a part of how strong the muscles of her stomach are, and couldn't guess it to be the start of something that would become a hinderance to her over the next four or five months.

He laid there, one arm under her again with his hand in her hair, the other hand over her abdomen, and he asks after the phone call he'd overheard her having yesterday.  In the wake of being summoned to the Caern and witnessing what she did, Lola had pushed that memory to the side and hadn't recalled it just yet.  Her eyebrows went up at the question and she looked over at Hector, expression somewhere between surprised, guilty, reluctant, and hindered.  It passes quickly enough, and Lola's elbows catch the mattress under her so she can push herself into a sit.

"I'm gonna make us coffee before we start talking about that.

------------

And she did.  Twenty minutes or so later they're sitting out in the kitchen, Lola up on one of the stools tucked against the outside of the kitchen counter.  She's leaned forward with her elbows on the countertop and black coffee pouring steam into her face since she was holding her mug under and in front of her chin.  She'd pulled on a pair of worn-in jeans since she was planning to shower in the next hour or so anyways, a form-fitted black camisole, and a green zip-up hoodie that was left unzipped.  She'd wrapped her unwashed hair into a topknot and secured it with a pair of hairbands, and was sipping at her coffee.

He'd wanted to know about the phone call.  He was always so honest with her, she figured there was no sense in being anything but direct when answering his question.

"That was my cousin, Anthony.  I'd told him that I'm pregnant, and he got all condescending on me."


Hector Ghosh

Hector stumbled into the bathroom after letting her in first and when he came back out he looked no more or less put together than he has historically after getting little sleep. During the awkward aching months between coming back from Winnipeg and finding a place in her life he was sleeping in university library chairs and bathing in public restrooms. He smelled half the time but he was a boy. No one was surprised that he smelled.

Habits die hard though and he spent more time transient and without a sense of physical security than he has knowing he has access to hot running water whenever he wants it. He rinses sweat off of himself at the sink and he combs back his hair with his fingers and ties it at the nape of his neck. Wanders out of the bathroom again wearing the dedicated jeans he'd had on last night and a shirt he found on the floor.

For all she knows it isn't his shirt. It looks like something he stole from Glen for as large as it is. A faded t-shirt from a music festival that took place when Hector was still in middle school. He probably did steal it from Glen.

Before he came to join her in the kitchen Hector went off to reawaken the furnace. He comes back up with soot on his hands. Warm air blows out of the vents at least. His feet and arms are bare. It's too cold for his liking but his Rage helps him run hot. The chances of his frenzying are as low as they ever are with the moon dark but it's like having an Ahroun in her kitchen anyway.

Once he has his coffee Hector wraps his hands around it and leans against the island and rests his eyes on her face.

"Condescending how?"


Lola Hawkes

Her face is stitched into tired displeasure.  She held the coffee mug with both hands, two fingers slipped through the petite handle that the ceramic thing has to offer her, and looked into Hector's face for a couple of seconds before slipping her gaze out the window above the kitchen sink.  The curtains were pushed open, so she could watch the world grow light as dawn started to creep into the sky.

"He's sure that I'll screw something up just out of neglect and ignorance.  Thinks I don't know how to take care of myself, or how to be pregnant.  Cocky fucking ass, was insisting that he send some woman-- some midwife-- out here to look after me."

That doesn't sound like it was that offensive of a conversation.  Hector may think that Lola might be defensive over nothing, overreacting.  He's heard of Anthony here and there between Lola and Maria.  Even though he's never met him, he knows this about the man:  He's Lola and Maria's cousin through their father's side.  A Uktena Kinfolk, and he lives in Denver and owns a trio of very successful tattoo parlors there.  He makes money, even though he isn't even thirty years old yet, and it's that money that pays the bills at The Homestead and ensures that there are clothes to wear and food to eat.

He knows that Anthony doesn't come to visit much, he corresponds by phone calls instead.  He's busy out there in the city, running a business requires a lot of his attention.  Maria thinks thought that he is a wonderful person, because he'd buy her dinner and let her sleep in his guest room and hang out and let her relax.  Lola loved him, of course, because he was family and he cared, but she thought that he was too involved with human life and was going to forsake his Wolf heritage completely.

It's hard to imagine him outright attacking Lola, she's the aggressor more often than not.  He probably just wanted to send a midwife out to be helpful and Lola probably took it the wrong way.

But she elaborates to shed light on that:

"He didn't think I knew about buying vitamins and all that.  Had the audacity to jump the gun and give me a damn-near-rehearsed speech about not flying into danger because 'you're not a fucking Garou, Lola, and if that baby's gonna make it you need to figure that out and act like it'."


Hector Ghosh

Imagining what other people are thinking and feeling is difficult for him because Hector has never had to sit down and empathize with another person. His sisters were forthright and his father was never one to withhold words if something was annoying him.

After the surreptitious group that taught him out what it was to be Uktena he was packed with three people, then five, who accepted him and loved him and ran with him and some of them were fine with speaking their minds and some of them still aren't. But Willow was so perceptive it scared him sometimes and Maria and Glen were wise and when they could not intuit what was wrong they could beat it out of other people if they had to. They knew when to prod and when to back off.

He never had to guess what Corey was thinking because Corey only really had two settings. Maybe three. He and Corey used to yell at each other all the time but then they'd wrestle and move on with their lives.

So standing here talking about something he can never understand because he will never be in Lola's position has him frowning like he's encountering the biggest puzzle of his life. Even through the concentration Lola can read love in his eyes. He and Anthony are both male but she doesn't see that flick-spark of agreement that she sees whenever Hector thinks someone is right.

Doesn't mean her back isn't up. Hormones make the most emotionally stable women feel as if they're losing their minds. His older sister had her first child when he was sixteen years old, the year his Rage started stirring and the sand in the glass counting down to his First Change started slipping away. On one of her last visits home before the baby came their mother lamented to their grandmother, the woman who adopted her when no one else wanted her, "Mama, I don't know which one is worse, the pregnant one or the teenager."

But Lola elaborates and Hector doesn't judge. He chews his lip. He tries something new: he doesn't just blurt out the first thing that comes into his head.

"Can I say something?"


Lola Hawkes

The request for permission to speak has Lola looking a bit surprised.  Let's note here, by the way, that Lola is regularly a person of open emotions but muted ones.  When she looked pleased with something in front of her it showed as only a shade of an upward curl to her mouth and a flash in her eyes.  When she was angry it was a storm cloud over her air and rumbling in the air, and an electric hot flash of promise of violence.  Not Rage, not so dense or potent or tangible, but present none the less.

When she was surprised, as she is now, it's a moderate incline of her eyebrows and a small widening of her eyes.  Her mouth is set straight, blank, not showing judgment on what she thinks will come, simply because she doesn't know what it will be.

She looks at him like this, surprised and curious but subtly so because this is how Lola functions.  Then she nods her head.  "Of course."  And sips her coffee.

Whatever it is that he has to say, she'll hear it.  Because she respects him enough not to interrupt, and because the coffee is only just starting to settle in the creases of her brain and make her feel less groggy.


Hector Ghosh

And he stares into the surface of his coffee like a mystic would read tea leaves before casting out his vision into the air. The only movement for a handful of second comes as he uses the tips of his fingers to twist the cup one way and then back again. Steam twirling into patterns as he does so.

When Hector looks back up he brushes hair back behind his ears and draws a breath like no one knows he draws a breath just before he steps out of the shadows to tell a tale at Moots.

"You're not a fucking human, either. A human would've bleed to death from that bite you took, which... you've been out there just the same as the rest of us have the entire time I've been here, and I've gotten just as messed up as you got messed up that night, only it was more than once. You know? You've protected me so many times. I'd be dead right now if you didn't see danger and know that's where you need to be. You killed a Fomor with a hunting knife, love. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to him, but it does to me."

Which means it means something to the rest of the Nation, coming from a Galliard who wouldn't shut up about her even after it made him look foolish.


Lola Hawkes

He takes a few moments to gather his words and put them in order, and Lola waits patiently.  If he takes more than five seconds she stops staring expectantly at his face and glimpses the clock on the wall instead, lets her gaze slide out the window.  When he does start speaking, though, her attention is firmly back on him.

He holds her in such high regard, and it fills the Kinswoman with pride and love and flint.  He can see it in how her spine straightens, back and shoulders holding themselves stronger and more confident instead of slumped and rested and tired.  Her eyes light up with that pride, and she inhales so her chest puffs out more-- which is ridiculous in a shirt that she was starting to outgrow as the changes of pregnancy had exaggerated her bust considerably over the past few weeks.

She switched the coffee cup into one hand and used the hand now freed to reach out and grasp Hector's, holding his fingers tightly with her wrist resting on the countertop.

"Baby," yes, she drops that pet name on him, "I can't tell you how fucking much it helps that you see it that way."

She doesn't say the rest, but what she really means is that his confidence in her helped keep the wind in her sails to keep her chin up and shoulders squared and to stand beside the Garou like she belonged there.  This is translated through with a lengthier hold of his gaze and a small squeeze of his fingers before she releases his hand and sits up straight in her stool.

The conversation turns a little because she turns it.  Back to the phone call that she had with Anthony, because there was a point he made that bothered her a little.

"Hector, we don't know how far along I am.  He pointed that out.  That's part of what got my hackles up at the stupid dickhole-- he made a point."


Hector Ghosh

He would have brought her fingers to his lips and coaxed her back to bed but for the fact that he sensed more to the conversation than what he'd interrupted just to beat back the doubt Anthony harbored. When Lola holds his gaze she finds his eyes on hers and when she lets go his hand he takes a deep-deep swallow of coffee.

That she uses his name to steer the conversation back to yesterday catches his attention. His eyebrows flick up and he puts down the mug.

They don't know anything because they did not stay in the hospital long enough for Hector to do anything other than retrieve her truck keys and commandeer a wheelchair. If he could have he would have just picked her up and carried her out of there. Let her run on her own if we're truly committed to the idea of an alternate reality where no one would have tried to stop them. As it was the young man had nearly frenzied at least once for how sterile and smelly and loud the place was, how alien and wrong it was for her to be there in the first place let alone stay there.

Neither of them can read the ultrasound printout. They see nothing unless they squint and even then they can't tell what they're looking at. Anthony made a point.

"How dare he," Hector says in as close to a deadpan as someone who only ever uses sarcasm as a last ditch defense mechanism can get. "Well... I dunno, it's somewhere between two weeks and two months, right?" He glances over at the refrigerator. "That's not a huge..."

He doesn't sound like he thinks he's being funny. He sounds like he has no clue what sort of advice to give her.

So he clears his throat: "So what's he think, you need another ultrasound?"


Lola Hawkes

The 'how dare he' gets Hector a flat stare.  She's not pissed at him, not going to turn all of that anger and spite and venom that she'd unleashed on her cousin (who, frankly, should just be able to take that by now-- Lola's been snapping at her family members and loved ones since she was a teenager) onto her Gibbous-Mooned lover.  But she is a prideful creature none the less, so he gets that look before she sniffs and takes another drink from her mug.

Hector turns to glance back at the printout on the fridge, held up by a magnet that's shaped like a chess piece, black and gray and fuzzy-- it looks like a blob with a little black blob inside of it, with a tiny white looking blob within that one.  That tiny white blob was a baby, but it was impossible for either of them to know how developed the thing was.

Hector was right-- it could be anywhere from two weeks (at that time) to two months old.

Lola rose from her stool and circled around into the kitchen proper, standing in front of the sink and  reaching for the coffee maker beside it.  She turned to lean back against the counter while she poured hot coffee on top of the dredges of lukewarm that were left in her mug.  As she does this, she looks toward the ultrasound as well.  Lola's got a mind for medicine, but only in the most practical ways.  She knew enough to make a tourniquet for her own leg when it was bitten, because she knew about the artery there and how quickly she could bleed out.  She could (and has) stitch closed open wounds, can (and has) dug out bullets, can (and has) managed a seizure brought on by the mad influence of a Wyrmling foe.

She knows absolutely nothing about pregnancy, though, besides the basic concepts of delivery, and only because any emergency medicine manual or book will go over that.

Hector asked if she needed another ultrasound, and Lola scrubbed the heel of her hand to her forehead and for a split second looked like a worn out, stressed out average human being.  But then she lifts her chin and has that uncanny resolve to her bones once more and that impression is cast to the wayside.

"I don't know.  Is it very relevant?"


Hector Ghosh

Bless his heart he actually sits and thinks about it.

And as he sits and thinks about it Lola can see his eyes are on that blob within a blog. He can't make out arms or a heart because at the time the picture was taken the arms and heart had not differentiated themselves and he wouldn't know what he was looking for anyway. His second-oldest sister was the one who went to college to become a doctor and the one who the Internet tells him has started a residency in pediatrics at Duke. If anyone could help him it would be Helen.

So far as the San Jose Police Department and the FBI and, at last, the Ghosh family themselves are concerned their youngest child and only son is either dead or so far gone he will never come back. They can only speculate what happened to him. His personality warped in the year or so before he disappeared. He was always a happy if hyperactive child. They can speculate but they can't imagine. It's better to imagine him dead.

No discernible humanoid features on the printout but that doesn't matter. He'd already asked her if he could say something. As he looks at the printout Hector cashes in that permission a second time.

"The night I started staying here, I loved you the most I'd ever loved you. I'd kind of loved you for a while... I mean I didn't know, but... I did. That's why I went looking for you. And the next morning I loved you more than I did the night before. It's been like that the entire time. It doesn't matter if the baby happened the first time or right before you got hurt. Whenever it was, I loved you."

That doesn't answer the question or have anything to do with anything. He clears his throat and turns back to her. The sleep-deprived daydreaming tone goes out of his voice then.

"If it's anything like either of us, the baby's gonna show up when it feels like showing up. Our people have been having babies without machines for thousands of years. Wolves, like actual wolf wolves, don't have midwives. As long as you're taking care of yourself, I think we're just supposed to wait and be ready for it."


Lola Hawkes

She'd been sipping at her second cup of coffee (Anthony's midwife on call would frown, but fuck that bitch anyways) when Hector started speaking with a touch of Spirit and Daydream to his voice.  She looked toward him while he talked, her lips on the edge of her mug which was being supported by both hands again.
It doesn't happen often, but Hector coaxes these moments out of Lola with relative frequency.  Her normally hard, bright, alive gaze softens and the tense wind goes out of her so that her shoulders and back and knees releax and she's leaned more heavily up against the counter.  When the daydream clears from his eyes and he goes back on track and looks at her again, he sees a clearly loving, admiring look on her face.

He declares that they've been doing this since before machines, and he and Lola could handle this process just like their ancestors did.

She doesn't reach out for him or walk over to press herself to his front and kiss him deeply to share the romance.  This isn't her way.  Hector knows, or he should know, without a doubt that Lola loves him.  These moments, these looks and clear hours out of the day without tension where they can just be with one another and let it be that simple-- they happen more and more, and it's clear that this is because Lola loves him more and more each day.  He loved her first, so he had a headstart, but she was catching up quickly.

She may remain at the kitchen sink, leaned back against it and nursing a cup of coffee that a doctor wouldn't recommend because she knows she isn't human, not entirely, and because she was operating on approximately three and a half hours of sleep.  This doesn't change the clear-cut honesty and openess to what she answers him with, though.

"I'm lucky that you shed the city off your back so easily.  I'm lucky for pretty much everything else about you, too."

So it's agreed.  It's settled.  She won't seek a midwife or a hospital again, not if it can be helped.  It didn't matter how many weeks along she was or was not-- they would know when it was time, just like many generations before them stretching on 'till the dawn has before.

This allows Lola to bring something up that was chewing on a corner of her mind since last night, because now she has a chance to recognize the budding concept by voicing it and testing it on Hector.

"...So.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they say that Forge of Nótt has to accept any pupil now?"


Hector Ghosh

This is what the rest of the Nation does not see when they're out in public and Hector is jumping around like he's been sucking down coffee since the night before and can only quell the itch beneath his skin by running off at the mouth. When Lola is all tight smiles if she smiles at all. Stone-faced and humorless and, as of late, inclined to snap at other people more than she was normally inclined to snap at people.

It is enough that that bundle of cells hung on their refrigerator will come into the world and the Nation will want to know what it is right away. Male or female doesn't matter so much as Kinfolk or Garou. Tamsin has already cursed Hector to have nothing but girls but it doesn't matter to him, really. Whatever their firstborn is, whatever the ones that follow are, he trusts Lola to keep them safe until they can fight on their own.

But it is none of anyone else's business what they discuss or what they do when they are safe in their home. It's taking him some time to think of this place as his home and not just Lola's home but here they sit now.

He doesn't pull her to him in the wake of that confession or her own answering feeling of luck. Lola rests against the counter and Hector turns away from the island to face her. He was standing to begin with. Now he drains his cup that he might free his hands.

"They did," he says. "Everything she knows, she has to pass onto others." A beat. "Why?"


Lola Hawkes

He asks why, and her lips curl into a smirk of wit and cunning and 'oh I beat you to the idea, that's delightful'.  It's the same way that she smirked when she was told that her cleansing bomb idea was a good one.  The same smile was cranked up four times more intesne when she was informed it was this same idea that ruined Beloved Horror and tore them from their Totem.

He asks why, and she sets her coffee mug down on the counter to her left, then settles the heels of her hands on the counter's edge behind her.

"She's a high-ranking Theurge, and a Get of Fenris on top of that."  Lola has a deep respect for that Tribe, though she doesn't get along with them more often than not.  It's a curious relationship she has with that lot.  Hector knows that one of her very good friends from childhood and still to this day is a Get of Fenris Galliard that she just calls 'Eddie'.  She meets up with him on her patrols from time to time, as she always has.

"She can help me find a spirit to teach me to be better."  Mightier.  More powerful.  So much more than what I am now.


Hector Ghosh

Hector's eyebrows lift at the answer but not in a bewildered or uncertain way. More in a show of surprise and then amusement at not having been able to guess what she was thinking. Last month would have exhausted a less capable Garou. That isn't to say he isn't tired. He is tired. But that has more to do with the fact that he slept for three hours before the shifting of the light and the nearness of his woman tugged him up out of what was already shallow sleep.

"Yeah..."

So much time running with tricksters has left others with no wonder as to the ease with which Hector finds problems in plans. It isn't pessimism. After all he's seen and lived through he does not think the War is pointless or that they have no reason to hope for anything. Lola was alone after news of the last of her immediate family falling rode in on the back of a young man tormented after half his pack died and his alpha abandoned them. They're recovering though. And Hector frowns as he thinks.

"I mean, she has to, if she wants to atone. I don't know if getting a spirit to bless you counts? The spirits get pretty irked if Garou teach each other things spirits teach them and the sentence was she has to teach everything she knows to others." He drums his fingers on the edge of the island and flicks his eyebrows again. "It can't hurt to ask."


Lola Hawkes

Hector thinks out loud.  The Godi is required to teach any who ask, anything that she knows.  That might piss off a spirit, because they didn't much care for others sharing the knowledge that they share, but hey-- it never hurts to ask, right?

Lola already looks victorious.  She's sure that this plan will work.  And she's already aware of which power-- which spirit's gift she wants to seek.  She learned about ones that are best suited to people born as she was-- in her skin, under her moon, to her Tribe.  There was one that the Ahrouns know that she wanted-- to be able to send a creature or man of any size flying back to the ground with just a tap of her fingers.  She could get high on power like that.

"I'm gonna fuckin' ask."

There's a pause, a thought, and a surprisingly thoughtful side of the Kinswoman shines through like there's a rare break in the north pacific clouds.  "I'll wait.  Give her time to level out, a couple days, a week maybe."  Long enough for the shamed Godi to accept her voice, her punishment, her duty.  Then Lola would demand that the duty be carried out to its fullest.  She would give the woman time to recover, then take full advantage of her when the time was right.

So like a predator.


Hector Ghosh

Fate must slap its knee and howl with laughter when it sees the two of them.

Anyone with enough distance and a grasp of the passage of time can watch them settle into roles that did not fit then at the beginning of the summer but the irony of their assignments will never fade. Of the two of them Hector is more comfortable serving as a support and a sounding board. It is not in his nature to lead. He has a natural magnetism that only grows stronger as he grows more confident but he doesn't have Lola's sense of inner strength or her instinctive prowess in battle. Everything he knows about being Garou he's had to scramble to learn.

They're better together than they are separate. This much even they can admit. Lola may never shed herself of her conditioning but Hector is all but rid of the trappings of his mortal life by now. The idea of cashing in on a punished Garou does not disgust him.

He still laughs, loud and surprised, when she says she'll give the Godi time to level out.

"Holy shit," he says as the laughter trails off. Pushes himself off of the island. Forward momentum being what it is she knows where his trajectory is taking him. "You're like a shark."

All she hears in his tone beneath the amusement is pride and love.


Lola Hawkes

It's absolutely true, were it not for the fact that their Tribe tied them together and matched them up by default, it would make little to no sense to the Garou and Kinfolk of their community why Hector and Lola were together.  Hector was pleasant, likable, full of energy and life, even if he was chock full of Rage and Loss.  Lola, on the other hand, had a reputation for chasing the unwanted from her property with a shotgun.  She was hard and unbending.  She'd shot a teenager in his face without flinching and then interrogated a sobbing, half-possessed girl by putting the gun, still hot from the discharged bullet, against her skull and demanding information.

Yet Hector evens Lola out, and Lola gives Hector something to strive to survive for.  He gives Lola someone to talk to, to share her thoughts with, to advise her and temper her.  Without him she had been alone and unsmiling, committed to her duty and her land and her own prowess and not much else.  She's been known in the past to act downright feral sometimes, and it raised concern in her cousin's heart once that she had gone mad with the news that she would never Change.  There was one particular occasion where she'd fought hard alongside the Guardians against something they had found, and when all was said and done and wounds were being nursed she stood tall with blood on her face and chest and arms, with a terrible gash down her left leg that she wouldn't let hinder her.  She'd stood, thrown her head back, and yelled to the sky like she could howl.  In that same battle she'd snapped her teeth into the face of an enemy before jamming the nose of her rifle into its mouth and pulling the trigger.

Without someone to remind her to talk, to interract, to be social, she may have continued down a path of hermit madness.

Instead, though, he loves her and stays.  He calls her a shark and walks toward her, and she just smirks pridefully at him and accepts him when he comes.

They won't end up back in bed.  But when they are finished with one another in the kitchen they will set about their day and treat it as something new and bright and clear.  The Spire Sept has fallen, those that errected the monstrosity had been punished, and there were new hunts on the horizon to be had.

Family Feuds - 10.31.2013 [Lola Solo]

The past two weeks have been quiet-- almost painfully so. Lola's been stir-crazy with how uneventful things have been. She doesn't say much on the matter, but Hector and anyone else from Celduin that visits The Homestead can feel Lola virtually vibrating with suppressed energy. She hasn't been out in combat since she nearly lost her life, since she and Hector found out in the most face-paling, stomach-turning way possible that she-- they were expecting.

It's on the afternoon of Halloween that Hector sees that energy whiplash its way through some poor, unsuspecting asshole's eardrums.

The phone conversation had begun out at the edge of The Homestead's property, and had been a lengthy stretch of distance to begin with. The conversation started slow, casual, typical. As her boots carried her over scruffy grass and fallen leaves, cutting across the back of the property toward the house, she spoke into the phone, alternating between English and Spanish as comfortably and intermittently as though they were the same language.

Hector's busy with something in the backyard. He's been full of energy too these days, but a slightly different, more upbeat sort. He was up on the back patio, perhaps whittling, perhaps tuning an instrument, maybe reading a book that Tamsin's been on him to finish for a while. Either way, as Lola nears she doesn't wave or smile or provide any such friendly gesture. Instead she pauses near the edge of what was going to be an expansive garden next year and stands still, one hand holding a cellphone to her ear and the other hand out in the air, gesturing something that looks like frustration to someone that can't see her.

He'll catch snippets from the distance, and what he catches is:

"No estás mostrando mucha fe en mí."
"Jesus Christ, Anthony, be menos de un imbécil."

A pause, and she's turned about, away from Hector after a brief glance in his direction before she hisses something else into the phone, under her breath. Whatever the answer was gets a reaction from Lola because the Uktena Galliard will watch his woman's spine straighten, her shoulders square, and when she turns to the side to face northeast, toward the city of Denver, toward the person she had been having a tense conversation with, he can see that her chest is puffed up with breath that would carry a stream of curses that sounded venomous in both languages.

"You know what, you smug son of a bitch? Todo sabes! Mantenga su medicina y las máquinas y los seres humanos Aléjate de mí, mi familia y mi tierra. If I see one unfamiliar truck out here I'll shoot the tires out and make whatever poor güera you sent drag that truck back by her teeth and its bumper at gunpoint.

"You don't have the time to come fucking visit anymore, but you think you can send some bitch with a medicine bag and a nametag out here to take care of me? After fucking insulting me and saying that I can't even take care of myself?" She's gotten herself worked up enough that she actually spits on the ground before continuing her tirade into the phone.

"Te haré un trato. You come out here, you take the time to drive your ass out and pay us a visit and sit down and have some fuckin' coffee. Meet Hector, acknowledge that you're more than the human you've been pretending to be. Then maybe I'll think about taking your advice. Until then? Keep your medicine men away from my house."

With that, the conversation is ended. Lola jabs the key on her phone that ends the call and shoves it into her coat pockets. She looks back to Hector, who has no doubt been watching with avid interest and perhaps even some concern. Whatever his expression, regardless of if he starts to approach or calls her over or does none of the above, Lola will wave one arm and call out to him: "I need to walk this off," and turn and head back the way he came.

If he came to follow, she wouldn't stop him, though.