Cheap Flowers [Booker]

[Elijah Booker] This morning, before Drew left for work, she received a phone call from Eli. Could they do lunch in the park, he asked. To which she replied, yes. The weather is on a warming trend, though given the whimsical ways of Mother Nature, it might be cut short within the week. He asked her to meet by the reflective jelly bean just inside the park. So, when she arrives, she'd see him sitting on a bench with a copy of today's Chicago Tribune in hand.

Next to him is a bag of food and next to that is something wrapped in green cellophane.

[Drew Roscoe] Hey, you wanna meet me for lunch? Grant Park's good, right?
Right! Sure! Sounds good to me. I'll take my break around eleven, how's that sound?
Sounds good. I'll meet you at the Bean.

So eleven o' clock rolls around, and ten more minutes after that (travel time, no doubt), and Drew's cutting across the broad open plain of the park, where sculptures and testaments of art that were now as much a part of the landscape as the river were displayed for tourists to take pictures of each other in front of. Booker's at a bench, packed lunch at his side and newspaper in his hand, and the faint clack-clack of Drew's work heels give her away before she's close enough to speak up.

If/when he glances up to her, he's greeted with a smile and a wave. Drew's wrapped in her dark blue winter coat, cut just past the hip, with brown slacks and cream colored heels covering legs and feet. Her hair's tied back to prevent the wind from snarling it too badly. She's neglected a hat and gloves, figuring she'd be fine without.

When close enough that speech is acceptable, she greets him verbally while shifting things taking up space on the bench to the side some so she can sit. "Heya Eli. How's the house hunt?"

[Elijah Booker] He did not have the benefit of a nose so keen that he could pick out Drew from a half mile away. He relied on more natural things - the sound of her heels or the touch of her voice brushing against his senses. Eli is as Eli always is. Dark jeans and black leather work boots with a steel toe. Whatever he's wearing beneath the hooded sweatshirt is hidden and his glasses are left to rest on top of his nearly bad head.

How's the hunt, she asks. Eli grins and shifts his weight to make room for her. The bag is still warm and he points to it with one glove covered finger. "I bought you lunch." His smile widens, as if he'd just done the most wonderful thing in the world for someone he thought was equally as neat. "It's just a grilled chicken sandwich and some chips. There's a bottle of water ..." He says, resting the paper on his thigh while twisting at the waist to grab the water from the opposite side of where Drew sits.

"Here." When he comes back round there is a bottle of water, but there's also a bundle of flowers. They're far from expensive, more like the cheap bundle of spring flowers half wrapped in green cellophane you pick up from a gas station or convenience store for seven bucks.

"There are ...yours too. I mean, they're cheap as fuck ..but.." He shrugs and takes the paper back into his hand.

"The hunt is going good...slow but good."

[Drew Roscoe] Eli is about precisely as she'd expected to find him-- jeans, hoodie, heavy work boots and sunglasses-- though at the moment they were pushed to the top of his head instead of covering his eyes. He answers her smile with a grin and makes room for her on the bench, and Drew sits in a way that suggests it's been a busy morning already, leaning back into the seat rather than sitting up straight, spacing her knees apart comfortably (slacks were always a better choice than a skirt for that) and exhaling completely when still.

He's pointing out all that he provided, the grilled chicken sandwich and the bottle of water-- and when he leans to the side to retrieve the water he comes back with a modest bouquet of flowers. Drew looks surprised, then laughs as she accepts both the water bottle and the green-wrapped daisies and other brightly colored filler flowers.

"Why Elijah Booker, I had no idea." The water bottle's tucked between her legs for the moment, held upright with athletic thighs, and the flowers are held to her face for smelling. Nose still close to a flower, she glances sideways at him, bubbly grin appearing to be a permanent fixture on her face. "You're downright sweet and I didn't even have a clue."

The transition of topics is made with a chuckle for a conjunction. "It's never so easy as 'here's the deposit, I'll move my stuff in tomorrow'. Took me about... a month, I'd say, to get into my place? And I was doing nothing else but looking, really. Something'll come up though."

[Elijah Booker] Eli gifts and dashes. He doesn't stay on the topic of the cheap flowers he bought her for any longer than a breath. It wasn't in him to be that way, but here he is offering a cheap road side bouquet of spring flowers to Drew when it wasn't even quite spring yet. Dark eyes pass over her face when she says she didn't know he had it in him and then they fall back to the paper, embarrassed maybe.

"Yeah...I had it pretty easy at the other place." Leaning back, Eli stretches his legs out with little concern for passing foot traffic.

"What's up with you?" He asks, sparing a glance for her quickly before looking back to the newspaper print.

[Drew Roscoe] He's keen to roll with the change of topic, and Drew does nothing to stop him. The way his eyes darted back to the newspaper and how he'd flexed his mouth and cheeks for half a second suggested embarrassment. That kept the grin glued to her face, but that is all. The bouquet is set to her side, against her right hip (the left was nearer to Eli), and she digs around in the still-warm bag for the sandwich he'd said that he'd gotten her.

"Pretty easy except for the reason you left." It's not so much a correction as it is a reminder, a nudge toward resolve. It was easier at the other house, rent was already established and his things were already moved in and in order, but there was a reason for taking the more difficult path. It would be better in the end, and anyway if a Fenrir coasted on ease for too long they'd become soft, right?

Chilled but still functional fingers unwrap the sandwich, and check the contents under the bun to be sure. "Not an awful lot. With the drama gone away things have been pretty...." There's a significant pause as she searches for the word, then she shakes her head when she decides on it. "boring. It's freakish to complain that I haven't been chewed up and spit out by a monster recently... But at least when I survived that and the bad guys were down and not getting back up, I felt like I'd done something to help. As it stands I feel like I'm just coasting."

[Elijah Booker] Eli's right hip is near Drew's left. They sit on the bench comfortably with the idea of personal space forgotten between them. Hitched behind his left ear is a ink pen in case he found anything worth circling in the FOR RENT ads in the Tribune. She brings up the reason he left and Eli's brow furrows deeply and his jaw muscles flex. He held a bitter taste of dislike for Defiance and it cut him to the bone that he had to eat their disrespect in his own home.

"I got lazy or complacent somewhere." He says quietly, more to the paper than Drew. "I forgot what it was like to sleep on concrete beds and cold floors." Because Eli has done that. The steel bed of a city jail cell is only nominally better than the cold concrete of a prison one. These things he knows to be fact.

Drew digs for her sandwich and she'd find things just as he said. That he got everything bland speaks volumes as to how much he really knows about her. Did she like mayo? mustard? lettuce or tomato? Instead of finding these things on the sandwich she finds them in a small bag...lettuce and tomato along with small packets of mayo. The chips are plain Lay's.

"I got us workin' on that shit with the church...you ever wanna get in trouble you let me know. I'll make sure it happen." He says, sliding his eyes toward her to peer out of his peripheral as a grin begins to worm its way across his mouth.

[Drew Roscoe] Toppings are taken from the bag and added to the sandwich here and there-- mayo and lettuce and tomato seemed all she really required. While he speaks, she listens and takes the first three bites out of the sandwich. Her posture switches, she straightens up some and crosses her legs, so her left ankle rested on top of her right knee. This brought her left leg entirely flush with his own, but there's no startling embarrassment or uncertainty with contact. He was warm and sturdy in the cool late-winter air, and she didn't have to worry about him drawing away or trying to make to brash an advance. Even if he did, though? It wasn't too unwanted. The only thing that would legitimately deter it would be the chicken sandwich.

"Now if I say I want to get in trouble then I'm a dope. But at the same time I don't want to do this daily grind bullshit and nothing more. The only reason I took this dumb computer sciences degree was so I could make enough money to support a pack and, eventually, a family. Sure wasn't because I actually care about microprocessors and software restores."

"Anyway," this is as she sets the half-wrapped sandwich to balance on her left leg and unscrews the top to the water bottle, "you sleeping on something besides rock and steel doesn't make you lazy. Means that you got better at taking care of yourself. Lazy would be if you weren't rolling your sleeves up and diving into that Church project like you are. You hunt for things you can do for this Tribe like a coonhound hunts pretty much everything it can find. Ergo, not lazy." An eyebrow flicks up, emphasizing her point, and she takes a swig from the bottle.

[Elijah Booker] The paper closes and Eli's eyes drift, his mind becoming tangled and lost in what Drew says. He wasn't complacent or lazy, really. Just better at surviving. And, he wonders about that too. The last month has left him second guessing his entire being more than he ever, ever has.

When Drew crosses her legs the way that she does, their legs become settled against one another. His thicker than her own but no more stronger. Eli doesn't jerk away or pretend that it was nothing. It was something. There was a comfortable familiarity the came with Drew and that was something...important.

"Nah." He says when she says looking for trouble makes her a dope. "I do it all the time." A wide grin is flashed her way as one hand drifts over her knee and rests their lazily. His touch is warm, felt even beneath the slacks she's wearing.

"There's a difference between wanting to get into trouble and wanting a little excitement." He explains, the paper closed and one finger holding his place. "If you want excitement...I'm your man. I can't promise you won't get a little scuffed up though." He says, leaning over toward her to nudge her gently.

[Drew Roscoe] There isn't anything said when he explains that he looks for trouble all the time. She just looked at him pointedly, then smirked some. Dope, said the smirk and the glint in her eyes, but her lips stayed at the water bottle until she was finished drinking her fill and that was set down, lid screwed on, then set to rest on the bench beside her along with the quaint little bundle of springtime flowers. The sandwich is surveyed for a moment, but forgotten when Eli's hand settled on her knee, fingers and palm warm through the winter-chilled fabric of her slacks.

The nudging is answered by leaning to the side some, as all girls will when fingers and elbows alike threaten to dig into their sides, and her smile spreads wide on her face as she straightens back up and settles her hand over his. It wasn't as warm, a bit chilled from the weather really, but soon enough March will have rolled on and April would be warming the earth and air alike.

"Scuffed up is nothing new. If nothing else it reminds that you can survive it. Almost necessary from time to time, don't ya think?"

A pause, a thought, and then a ball out of left field: "Didn't you get anything to eat?"

[Elijah Booker] Her body leans away from the nudge and his grin blossoms fully into a smile. It isn't until she rests her hand on his that Eli decides he's done with the paper for now. The house hunting could wait for a while. At least today.

"That's true." He says with a nod when Drew shares her feelings on why getting scuffed up now and then was kind of important. It helped you feel alive. If anyone could relate to that statement it would be Elijah.

"Yeah ...I had a hot dog and a soda earlier." Eli turns, his hand leaving her knee so he can sling his arm across the back of the bench behind her. His knee draws up slightly and presses to her leg - somewhere between her thigh and knee.

"If I asked you to go to a fuckin....piece of shit honky tonk where you weren't sure if the glasses were clean and Skynard had a permanent home on the juke box...and getting drunk and your head knocked off were a promise and not a maybe....what would you say?" Dark eyes bear into her own, which are equally as dark. This question seems important to Eli. Less out of the blue, let's play twenty questions and more I need to know this.

[Drew Roscoe] Booker's arm slings about the back of the bench, and subsequently behind her shoulders as well. This opens him up to her, and she accepts the bodily invitation and leans more closely into his side, against his ribs, while ditching his hand for a second so she could take another bite of her sandwich. The meeting was more important than the lunch, really, she could have settled for a powerbar and kept on working through her lunchbreak as she typically would, but she still had to eat. He explains that he's already eaten, and this is accepted with a nod before the remaining half of the sandwich is folded over with the paper it'd come in and tucked back into the bag. On second thought, she could always finish it later.

He's looking at her pretty seriously all of a sudden, and inviting her to the kind of event that would have most people making a face and suggesting a movie instead. That sounded more like a boys night out than a date, after all. Their eyes were matched in color and tone, and held together without having to flutter away after a moment for the pressure of Rage or spasm of discomfort.

Her answer doesn't take long to form, she's already grinning before he's completely finished explaining what kind of an establishment he was inviting her to.

"Booker, that sounds like the kind of thing I'd have skipped prom for in high school. If you asked, I'd say 'When, and can we take the Harley?'."

[Elijah Booker] Drew eases into his body, made bulkier because of the layers (and the kevlar) he wears. The arm that he slung across the back of the bench on which they sit finds a place around her shoulders and his chin a home on the top of her head. She wasn't eating, the sandwich could wait until later. He wasn't going to complain.

Eli listens to Drew's answer and she'd feel him exhale a sigh. His fingers scratching lazily against her covered back.

"Good." Is his reply. It leaves him quiet for a beat, his eyes falling closed as if he could drift off to sleep sitting up, there, with her.

"I'm glad."

[Drew Roscoe] Quiet settles about them, save for the insistent cooing of pigeons that would wander near the bench, expectant that they would get scraps from the sight of food they'd caught earlier. Just because it vanished into a bag didn't mean they'd lose interest right away, they were smart enough to know better. Tourists and bored couples and little old ladies in the park made sure that these birds knew precisely where their primary supply of food came from.

Drew ignored the scavengers. Linus had said something about leaving tribute for the birds and rats around her home, and she'd certainly do that, but it didn't mean she'd give birds at the park her sandwich. At the same time, bearing in mind the note of respect that was implied with tribute, she'd surmised that she wouldn't chase the little scavengers off either. Their spirits could badmouth her and the word could travel home and she could cause Linus to lose the little house sitters he'd left in the Umbra for her.

They're still for a few minutes, Eli with his chin at the top of her head, Drew content with her head tucked to his shoulder. They were a curious sight, this thuggish biker with the cute lady in her business attire. One would be quick to jump to the conclusion that she was straying from her husband, because girls like her had fun with guys like Eli but certainly didn't settle down with them. Right, general public? Whatever, they looked happy enough.

A few minutes pass before Drew's voice rises, quiet and bubbling from under Eli's jaw. "Much as I'd like to just stay for a while... I ought to get back to work. If I wanna keep my house anyways."

[Elijah Booker] The pigeons coo and peck at the ground. He doesn't stomp a booted foot or scare them away, instead his eyes watch the flashes of gray and white as they come in for a landing near the bench where they sit. She says she has to go and Eli frowns.

"Really?" He asks, and for a few minutes he doesn't move. Eventually, though, the space that he occupied near her is left vacant and cold against her. That one word was all the protest she'll get from the tattooed biker. Regardless of the fact that he wanted her to stay. Regardless of the fact that he'd go wherever she asked him to. Whenever.

Eli, returned to his own space on the bench, drops his sunglasses over his eyes and starts to fold up the paper he'd been scanning a handful of minutes earlier. Now, with the movement of his body, a few skittish pigeons scatter while the more brash remain.

"When can I see you again?" He asks, leaning forward with his head turned toward her.

[Drew Roscoe] Drew's stating that she had to get going was timed strategically. She knew that in herself she would still linger even after declaring she needed to go, and allowed time for this. She felt Eli would be the same way, and was proven right when he didn't move away from her at first, just as she didn't straighten up. Instead she'd turned her face to his hoodie, breathed in his scent from off the front of his shoulder, and closed her eyes to exhale a silent content sigh. "Yep, really."

When they do slide apart, Booker drops his sunglasses over his eyes and goes to fold the newspaper back up. Drew's tucking the water bottle into the bag her sandwich had come in and smiling faint and fond at the bundle of seven-dollar-flowers.

He asks when he can see her again, and she answers this with a slightly surprised lift of her eyebrows, pausing for a moment. Her rear was right at the edge of the bench, she was about to stand, but stopped to look back at the other Kin. There's a second where she's looking over his face, at the expression he wore on it, then her own softened and she leaned in to close the space between them, pressing her lips to his in a kiss that would linger and warm. When her mouth parts from his, it doesn't go far, just enough to say:

"Whenever you like, you're always welcome. I've just got a job to keep right now is all." She kisses him again, and this time he can feel her lips spread into a smile against his. "Thanks for the lunch date."

[Elijah Booker] Maybe they were lovers, away on a secret rendezvous by the giant reflective jelly bean in Grant Park. Romantic, as it were. They part, their bodies leaving the warmth of one other for the cold of a chilly late winter afternoon. She's gathering her things and he's doing the same. They both were lingering on the edge of the bench - Drew about to stand and Eli threatening that he might.

She kisses him, it's warm and nice and returned. His lips linger because a hand has drifted to the back of her head. There's no weight behind it. No instance that their lips stay pressed tight to one another. It's more of a plea - and unspoken one that asks her to just let it linger ...a minute more.

From behind his glasses he watches her speak, his hand falls away and he stands. The paper is held loosely at one folded corner by one hand.

"I hate your fuckin' job." He says, grinning. "I'll see ya later Drew..."