Label Ourselves [Booker]

[Booker] It's night. The temperature is hovering perilously above freezing and the ground is covered with the finest smattering of snow. The streets are slick and it's highly probable that anyone operating a tow truck will be having an extremely busy night.

And, Eli is tired. He's mentally exhausted and his mortal muscles ache from moving room after room of furniture by his self. Still, he manages to stop by the tired home that Drew occupies inside Cabrini.

The truck stops and the kin hops out. He's wearing a hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled over his head. Taking the steps slowly, one at a time, he knocks on Drew's door soundly.

[Drew Roscoe] It's night and it's late both. Drew worked the hours of a typical daily-grinder, Monday through Friday, some time in the morning to some time in the late afternoon or early evening. Around this time she would probably be either in bed or nearly on the way there. So when the tow truck rolls up against the curb in front of the little blue-gray looking house, it's probable, Eli should guess, that an answer could take some time. He could, though, trust her to answer. She might have to roll out of bed to do so, but she'd be downstairs.

He's in a sweater, hood drawn up, when he knocks on the door. Drew answers within thirty seconds, give or take, in a pair of silver basketball shorts and a black tank-top. Her hair's down and brushed out, and one hand's on the doorknob, the other behind her back when she pulls the front door open. There's confusion and suspicion on her face at first, but when she recognizes who's standing on her step she blinks once, surprised, and steps back to give him room to come in, not bothering to question what brought him by first.

"Eli." Affirmation and relief both. Once he's inside and she's relaxed her arm from behind her back he can see that she's holding one of her big heavy pistols. A girl had to be safe, after all. "Not that I'm complaining, but it's pretty damn late. Not that I'm judging, but you look like hell." An eyebrow lifts and she gives him a once over, then glances out the door toward his truck, to see if there was anything pursuing him. "You okay?"

[Booker] There are no bad guys in pursuit. No hell hounds nipping at his heels. Eli looks tired. Were he Garou he'd carry the expression and posture of a man who's wasted all his Rage and is spent. But he's not Garou, Eli is just a man and his face bears the weathering of a rough couple of days.

"Jes tired." He mumbles and slips inside, edging past her and moving to her couch. Eli sits,elbows propped up on her knees and glove covered palms resting on the back of his hooded head, which is slightly bowed.

He could sleep for two days and still feel worn out.

"I had to move." He says quietly. His voice never lifts above an intimate tone spoken just loud enough for her to hear. "It's just temporary until I can find a place."

[Drew Roscoe] He says he's tired and moves to the couch, and Drew watches him for a moment, takes a better, longer look outside until her shoulders quake with the cold air against her bare arms and the top of her back and chest. Content that there were no bad things lurking along after him, she closed and locked the door back up, scrubbed at her arm with her free hand to warm it back up, and walked around the back of the couch into the kitchen, intent on returning the pistol to its proper place and pulling down a mug from one of the shelves high enough that she had to stretch up on tippy-toes to reach.

"I'd heard," she answers. She'd been by the church earlier in the day, heard mention of him leaving his house and moving in to one of the spare rooms until he could find someplace sturdier. She sniffed some, contemplated what to put in the mug for him for a moment, then went back about puttering around between fridge and microwave for a couple of minutes before coming back to sit on the couch next to him, holding a steaming mug with a spoon in it out toward him.

"No booze in it, but it always helped my dad relax." The smile she offers is small, bracing, and her hands settle on the couch, framing her legs, and she leans forward some to look past the lip of his hood to see his face.

"Didn't hear the whole story, though... Something about the neighborhood watch being 'varmints'?" Of course that last word had to be courtesy of Roman, no one else talked like that.

[Booker] She holds out a mug and he lifts his head, eyes hooded, and takes it. "Thanks." He isn't sure what Drew has heard, word traveled fast in Chicago apparently.

"Yeah well ..." He says, his voice a deep smooth sound when pitched low as it is. "About three days ago...I went on a repossession job and stumbled on some bad shit. I found a Garou caged up like an animal and almost dead." Eli sips the concoction Drew gave him again, "I managed to get her out...but that's about it. I got her back to my place and let her rest."

"I called Kora. I was worried it'd be a trap, that I'd take shit back to the Church, so I didn't take her there. Joey and Hunter showed up last night and started a buncha shit." He doesn't give any further details on what a buncha shit means exactly.

"I can't stay in Bronzeville anymore. They'll end up hurting or killing me..." Because Eli was just that fucked up and there was no way he could hurt either Joey or Hunter.

[Drew Roscoe] The concoction that Drew made was the kind of thing that paired well with childhood memories in wintertime-- the kind where you had a day that you went out and played in the snow, came back in and warmed up leaned back against the heater, wrapped in a blanket and sipping something hot to warm up while mom worked on dinner. Milk and honey heated up, simple as that, but simplicity was the best way to go at times.

She listens carefully while he explains his side of what happened, a better account than what she'd heard in polite half-explanations through a grapevine that refused to gossip, only to inform of the basics. She propped an elbow up on her bare knee, set her chin to rest against the heel of her hand, and peered up at him with a raised eyebrow-- curiosity rather than skepticism, maybe a little bit of surprise, but all of it underlined with muted concern.

"They can't hurt you, not really, let alone kill you. That's what Kora's around for." She pauses, frowning some, just a little. "I mean, she's not quite the Jarl that Decker or Joe had been... She doesn't seem to be everywhere at once like either of them seemed to be... But they can't do that. It's downright corrupt."

[Elijah] "No, you don't get it." He says, voice hovering in that low whisper of a pitch. "I wanted to punch them. If I would of, I'd be dead or hurt. I can't deal with them." He says with a sound sense of finality. One gloved hand cradles the cup while the other lifts and tugs the hood back off of his head.

"I gotta find a place - something bigger - in Cabrini...so I'm gonna be working a lot more." Eli stands and starts for her kitchen to put the now empty dirty mug where it belongs. His booted feet echo on her floors echo off the walls.

"How you been? Everything good?" He asks, the sound of his foot falls herald his return toward where she sits - unless of course she pulled herself up and followed after him.

[Drew Roscoe] The only sound she makes to what he tells her, his explaining how this pack was dangerous to him, was quiet and both sympathetic and understanding. He rises to go to the kitchen, deposit the used up mug in the sink, and she stays seated on the couch, tugging at her tank top straps so they laid comfortably on her shoulders rather than twisted and biting into her and leaning back into the sofa cushions.

As he’s rinsing the mug (or just leaving it), Drew relates: “Been there before, that’s part of why I had to come back from Portland. This guy—I think he was the Jarl—was infuriating, insulting… I fractured my hand on his face and did my damn best to cut him up with a broken bottle. Couldn’t stick around, I’m lucky he didn’t kill me on the spot.

“I could help you look, if you want? There were some nice places I checked out before landing here I could refer you to—not the one with the Spirals, of course…” She grinned at him as he settled back into the couch, and set to brushing her lengthy hair out with her fingers, the gesture more idle than anything else.

Nevermind how she was doing, that question was left in wake of her offer to help. She was more concerned about him.

[Elijah] Eli did wash her mug. So when he returns to the kitchen it is without the mechanic gloves covering his hands.

"I just don't know." He says, sighing and letting himself ease back into her couch. His legs are spread, his hands rest idle on his upper thigh. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore." He shrugs and looks at her with big dark eyes before leaning his head back and staring blindly at the ceiling above his head.

"I need something big..." He says again, "3-4 bedrooms at least and a full basement for my workshop." He hadn't thought about the cost of it, how he'd swing the exorbitant amount of rent he'd have to pay for such a place.

"Hey ...anything you can do, you know I appreciate it right?" His head twists slightly so that it's still leaning back but tilted allowing him to peer awkwardly at her seated frame. "How are you?" He asks again, this time more pointedly.

[Drew Roscoe] Eyes trail along with him on the trip back to the couch, and she’s lifting an eyebrow inquisitively when he expresses his need for a place much larger. His settling into the sofa, how the air seemed to leave him when he sighed and confessed to not knowing what to do, it struck emotion in her, and she answered it by moving her hands from her own scalp and instead settling one on his, fingers massaging at the short buzzed hair of his ink-drawn scalp, around the scruffy mohawk left behind.

“That’s a lot of space… What’re you gonna be using it all for?”

He’s insistent on knowing where she is, though, eyeballing her as though he could press an answer out of her with his eyes, and she chuckles some and shakes her head. “I’m doing fine, Eli. You won’t believe how much better punching a pregnant chick in the kisser would make you feel. Maybe you should try it?”

[Elijah] His hand lifts, hovers above her knee and then falls gently to rest upon her knee cap, the touch is warm. The feeling of her fingers against his scalp is enough to draw a low rumbling purr from his throat while pulling his eyes closed. Eli draws in a heavy breath and then sighs.

"There's a Garou, that chick I told you about? She's gonna crash with me I think until I can convince her to join a pack." He pauses and tilts his head into her touch. "And I think Kora wants a safe house, somewhere people can go and crash....I might do something like that. Fuck, I'm hardly home anyway..."

Then, she says that she punched a pregnant person in the head and maybe he should try it, Dark eyes open and peer at Drew with a look of confusion. "Tell me you didn't slug that broad Kora was wanting to move in here??" He asks, concern touching his tone.

[Drew Roscoe] Eli’s content grumble-rumble-purr sounds draw a content smile on the girl’s face, and the settling of his warm hand at her knee has her relaxing more completely into the couch. One leg kicks up so the heel of her foot catches on the edge of the coffee table, the other foot stays on the hardwood floor of the living room, and her fingers work slow, idle, and thoughtless at the top and back of his head.

“Not a half-bad idea... Joe and Thomas always said, though, that it wasn’t healthy for a Kin to be staying with their Garou all the time—too much intense, too much bad and business and blood and all that. But if Kora gave you the green light, I guess?” She shrugs a shoulder, and glances toward the living room window that gave view out onto the street.

Skepticism and worry color his tone when he confirms who she punched, and she grinned sheepishly, cheekily in answer, returning her eyes to his. “Can’t lie to you, Booker.” And, a bit hurried, she adds: “In my own defense she was being catty as hell and had the gall to grab me by my coat like I was some kid to be disciplined. She had it coming.” Her hand takes a break from the scalp massage to wave dismissively at the air, but returns to work right after. “Anyways, I didn’t touch her stomach, she and the kid are both fine, and I talked to Kora afterwards. It’s all settled and outta my system now.”

[Elijah] Eli is listening, even though it looks as if he's falling asleep. His ears are keen and pick up on every word Drew is saying. Whenever she offers the advice of Thomas and Joe, the edges of Eli's mouth tug downward.

"Speaking of ...." Dark eyes shift and look up at Drew, his gaze able to hold hers without fear of violence. "What's up with us?" The question is one normally reserved for females, but Eli approaches it head on and throws it at Drew. "Given the other day...do we stay friends and see if that was enough to keep us satisfied or...do we try and work somethin' out?" A brow perks upward and his eyes remain focused on her waiting for a reaction.

"I know...with Joe and everything...it's complicated. And I'm cool with whatever..." His hand remains on her knee, fingers drawing circles on the bumps of her knee cap.

For now, the relief he feels when she says Kora was fine with it, rides the back of his expression. He doesn't comment on it.

[Drew Roscoe] Her assuring him that Kora wasn’t going to come breathing down her neck with her little brother in tow seemed enough to placate the other Kin and set the topic of beating up pregnant girls from other tribes to rest. Instead something else caught the focus of his attention, it was enough to open up the eyes of the very tired man after causing him to frown, to have him turn his head to look at her instead of fall asleep right there on the sofa.

He wants to know what they should do, if they were going to become a We, an Us, or if they would just stay friends. He’s hunting for a green light, maybe, or just a straight answer, trusting her for the kind of blunt honesty that they owed one another. Awkward wasn’t a word that seemed to apply to them, even in this moment with things uncertain, unstamped with a title.

His frown and mention of Joe, how things were complicated for her after him, is met with a smile and by her sliding her hand from his head to rub at his neck instead.

“I don’t really think we need to label ourselves.” Her eyes drop to his hand, how his thumb runs familiar over her kneecap. “I don’t… really wanna stop being with you? But at the same time…” She’s hunting for the right words for a second, then simply grins when she brings her gaze back up to his. “You don’t strike me as much of a one-horse kinda guy. I’d like that, but I don’t want to be a ball and chain.”

As far as Joe was concerned: “Joe was… impossible to measure. And I loved him. But he wouldn’t want me to mourn forever, probably disappointed that I have been for as long as I was in the first place.”

[Elijah] Eli is pleased that Drew is back on solid ground with Kora. It's likely she doesn't quite understand the depths to which that troubled him. He held a fierce loyalty to his Tribe - to his family - and that she mended fences with them eases the worry from his brow.

But he's brought up the question of them - Them - and now his attention is so focused on her face that it his body actually turns so that he can watch her comfortably. An arm lifts, elbow pressed to the back of her couch. She doesn't think that they need labels and he nods.

"I don't know what I am anymore." He says, and if he were looking for a green light - or if he needed her approval - it doesn't show on his face. He is pleased with her reply and a small smile begins to dawn across his mouth. "I know that...I want you. That I think I might of wanted you before I left, but respected Joe. What I'm afraid of..." And the way that he says it, she can hear the faintest him of wariness in his tone. "...is someone stalking in and taking you away from me. We both are bred well from what I've been told....Garou usually snatch kin like us up.

"But ...I don't need anymore than that. To know that you don't want to be rid of me ...that you're not giving me the whole let's be friends and it's not you it's me speech..." Eli takes her hand and draws it to his mouth to kiss the underside of her wrist.

"And I'm fuckin' thrilled you're good with Kora."

[Drew Roscoe] Drew’s gaze was typically a warm, kind thing. It was a part of her nature, ironic to and separate from her bloodline of warriors and bloodlust. It’s already soft, doesn’t need to soften anymore when he speaks honestly of his feelings toward her, even before he’d left, when he’d known she was with Joe, and moves her hand so that it’s to his mouth, pressing a kiss at the back.

“I’ll admit I felt interest too, then. But like you said, Joe.” That’s all that needs to be stated, she doesn’t have to go into detail as to whether she was worried he’d hurt her for leaving him or whether she loved him too deep to betray (it was likely the latter, possibly a blend of the two). One shoulder hitches up and drops again in an easy, lazy shrug, and a very real, honest concern is addressed.

“That’s the peril, though. We can’t place any sort of claim, and if, say, someone comes to challenge for me? Well, it can’t even be a challenge ‘cause you’re not of the Changing sort, it’s just taking. Same story if some lady-Fenrir blows into town and decides they’d like to sweep you up, I can’t stop her.

“All we can really rely on is their respecting our choice, y’know?”

And, for Kora: “Yeah, it’s nice to be smiled at by that pack again.”

[Elijah] The look on his face says this bothers him. It says he's none too pleased with the idea of needing to let Drew go because someone else is higher on the food chain. After her initial words have faded Eli rests his jaw against the back of her couch and continues to watch her.

"Yeah. I know." He pauses, drags his eyes across her face and then sighs. "It is what it is, it don't mean I gotta like it." And with that his index finger brushes the tip of her nose.

"I told Kora and Roman I was going to ask for your help with some stuff....getting some kinda records for the church...who owned it last or tax records...you know how to do that?" He asks, his hands toying with the fingers of one of her own.

[Drew Roscoe] His hand had claimed her own, paused to brush her nose briefly before dropping into a more relaxed place between their laps. She twines her fingers with his, glancing from his face to their hands while the pad of one finger tapped at the edge of his thumbnail, an idle and thoughtless gesture that comes from hands accustomed to being kept busy.

“I don’t like it either,” she says with a faint frown, eyes kept down. Just as he could no doubt think of a couple of Fenrir men that could, and maybe would sweep her away from him, she had a few faces come to mind as well. It didn’t inspire jealousy so much as discomfort. She didn’t like the idea of becoming attached only to have someone else torn away from her. A deep breath through her nose, exhaled slowly, helps to clear the threats of tightening in her chest.

A new topic was easier to focus on, so she stepped into that instead.

“I’m sure I could figure that out… I don’t know about tax information, that’s kinda kept with the IRS and housing companies, I think, but I could do some searches, ask a friend. Why’s she want to know? Any reason in particular?”

[Elijah] "They need to know who owns the church - or at least who owned it last. That place has gotta get some electric in it and a roof among other shit..." He's avoiding the topic now. They were good and he didn't care to think of any local Fenrir stomping up to Drew's door and sweeping her off her feet. He wasn't exactly a Casanova himself.

"I volunteered to do some of the shit, but I know all of nothing about computers or getting any of that information. You gotta be better at googlin' shit than I am." He grins, fingers still toying with her own. He is worn out and stressed out yet he attempts a smile and a bit of his normally witty (sarcastic) personality to shine through.

[Drew Roscoe] “Yeah, that’s no problem at all.”

He offers what he knows about blueprints and constructing homes to the cause of making the church livable, it was the least Drew could do to find records of who had owned the place initially—she figured it would go back to a church, owned by the religion’s business offices rather than any one individual. This was all just thought, though, she would check for sure and deliver what information she could find.

There’s a pause in the conversation here, a minute of peace and calm and the comfort of a warm home and a similarly warm hand to hold. Drew breaks it, resting her head sideways onto his shoulder and offering quietly:

“You know, if you wanna come lay down with me I won’t say no.” A pause, and a glance to the window. “I think your truck’ll be safe.”

[Elijah] She agrees to help and he smiles. "I appreciate it." Then, "They'll appreciate it."

Eli hadn't realized the time. He had not stopped to consider that there were some people that kept normal hours. Rushing to Drew's house to let her know what was going on seemed important, he just did not consider the particulars before coming.

"Shit ...I'm sorry." He mumbles, casting a tired eye around her home for a clock. "You're tired and I'm keeping you up..." But she told him he could lay with her and that makes his mouth twist in a wiry grin. "...but if you need a warm body to keep you company I won't say no."

His hand slips inside his pocket and he fingers the keys to turn on the alarm the owner of the company only recently had installed. "It should be fine ...and if it isn't? Do I really fucking care?"

[Drew Roscoe] It’s only when she says something that he notices the time—darn close to midnight if you asked the clock hanging on the living room wall—that he apologizes for intruding on her so late. He must keep erratic hours, she could imagine it was easier to repossess a vehicle at night, that there were more car accidents in the dark, that’s probably when he worked the most. The apology was dismissed with the shake of a head, she was noticing his exhaustion, not the time.

The invitation to stay the rest of the evening is accepted with his trademark grin, he confesses he could give a damn less what happened to the ‘cage’ out against the curb, it was only good for its hook and the money it made him anyways.

It’s with a bit of a chuckle that the petite Kinswoman rises, pulling Eli’s arm along with her to urge him up to his feet as well.

“It’s alright. Let’s go to bed.”