Worries Could Come [Erich, NSFW]

Erich Reinhardt
Erich's been scarce for a while.  Hasn't been around Drew's place much, or Browntown at all.  Work on the almost-completed Mustang has proceeded at a snail's pace or not at all.  Who knows what he did for Thanksgiving -- flying or otherwise going home seemed like an unlikely prospect.  Maybe he scrounged a meal somewhere.  Maybe he went to a strip club.  Maybe he was wolf-formed and hunting or tracking or doing something that made him forget all about the holiday.

He comes to Drew's late that night, though.  Around eleven, nearly midnight; long after food coma's put most people in Browntown down for the night.  No explanation, though at least he brings some food.  Not holiday fare; a tube of sausage, a carton of eggs.  If there's a light on, he knocks.  If he doesn't, he pops right into the guest room he usually occupies.  None of his belongings live there, but he's been there often enough now that something of his presence or his essence has begun to suffuse the walls.

Early morning, Drew takes her dad to the airport.  Maybe he asks about the now-closed door of That One Bedroom In The Back.  Maybe he doesn't.  In either case, when Drew gets back, that door's open, and there's noise in the house.

Erich's in the kitchen, barefoot and in pajama bottoms.  His hair is short, but it still manages to stick up at weird angles after a good sleep.  He's multitasking: he has a toothbrush in his mouth, and he's beating eggs in a mixing bowl.  With a fork.  There's sausage frying in a pan.  This is the sort of way lovers see each other after a good night.  They've somehow simultaneously never reached and skipped past that stage.
"Mornin'," he says, toothbrush-muffled.  "Want eggs 'n sausage?"

Drew RoscoeErich was off doing his own thing this past week, for the most part.  Drew wasn't worried about his absence-- he was a self-proclaimed Lone Wolf after all, he had family in Nebraska (though he did say he didn't get invited back for Thanksgiving...), and he could do a fine job of taking care of himself.  Besides, Drew's been a little bit preoccupied.

Wednesday in the middle of the day Drew drove off, and when she came back later that afternoon she had a mountain of a man with her-- one she called Dad.  He was in his fifties, with brown hair that was going gray in no gentle way and blue eyes that Drew didn't inherit.  He was massive, probably a few inches above six feet tall, but his weight could only be guessed.  He was big in a way that suggested that in his prime he was nothing but rocky muscle and strength, but hasn't had to exercise that strength in a long time and thus has gone soft in figure with a big belly to take its place.  He was boisterous, loud, cheerful, and thoroughly Garou.

Thanksgiving Day was spent in the house, where the smell of food filled the place and hung on the ceiling and walls.  They ate heartily, drank happily, and spent the evening catching up and talking about things both fun, exciting and new, and old, sad and serious.

The next morning they got up early and Drew drove her father to the airport.  She was pulling back into the driveway around 9:00am.  When she came through the door, she was a little surprised to find Erich in the kitchen, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, muffled while he asked if she wanted eggs and sausage.  Drew blinked and unwrapped the winter clothes she was wearing (scarf, gloves, hat, coat) from her body and hung them up appropriately on the hooks hanging from the wall beside the door.

"Uhh, yeah, thank you.  Good morning.  Happy late Thanksgiving."  Boots thumped the entry space before she stepped out of them, tucked them aside by a mat specifically set up to house shoes, and she walked through the dining room to meet him in the kitchen, rubbing chilled fingers together to warm them.  "Did'ja keep yourself well yesterday?"

Erich Reinhardt"Well enough," he says, setting the bowl of beaten egg down to spit into the kitchen sink.  He finishes brushing his teeth the way someone might brush a stubborn stain on a bathtub: with tight, energetic jabs of his whole forearm.  Foam flecks the sink.  He spits again, leans down to sip from the faucet, gargles.  Spits one more time.

Straightening, Erich rinses out his toothbrush and drops it in his pocket, butt-first.  Wipes his mouth across the back of his wrist.  "Ahh, minty fresh," he declares himself.  Picks up the skillet of sausage, dumps the patties out on a plate, preserves most of the oil.

Pours the eggs right into the oil.  Healthy food, that.  Just the thing to follow up a huge Thanksgiving meal, in case one or two coronary arteries remained unclogged.  "Was that your dad I heard leaving this morning?" he wants to know.  The eggs are sizzling in the pan; he grabs a spatula and pushes the edges in, tilting the pan to get uncooked egg on the heat.

Drew RoscoeDrew wasn't dressed in morning clothes-- she'd put on jeans and a pink sweater before heading out before the sun came up this morning.  So it was in this, jeans and a sweater, that she came to peer curiously at the kitchen stove and what Erich was doing on it.  She didn't intrude upon his space just yet, let him multi-task between brushing his teeth and not burning the sausage patties instead.

She breathed deep the smell of breakfast, hummed her approval, and found a space of counter to lean against-- in front of the dishwasher at the end of the 'U' shape her kitchen counter made, just on the other side of the sink.  Her rump found the front of the dishwasher, her back the edge of the counter, and she jammed her hands into her pants pockets so they had someplace to be while she indulged his curiosities about who he heard leaving this morning.

"Yeah, that was my dad.  He lives out in Peoria, Illinois by himself.  I'm his only kid and my mom's been gone for a while, so I figured I'd bring him out here so we could spend Thanksgiving together and I could show him the new place I'd found."

Erich ReinhardtStrange: for such an adamant loner and drifter, Erich's first instinct is to feel bad for Drew's dad, living alone half a country away from his only child.  His back is to Drew, so she can't see the quick stitch between his eyebrows.  He shakes the eggs a little in the pan, letting them set slowly into scrambled eggs.

"Should move him out here.  At least someplace closer.  Midwestern winters suck."  He half-turns; she gets a look at his profile as he nods toward her cupboards, "Grab a couple plates, will you?"

And when she does, he puts a couple sausage patties on each, then gives the eggs another stir.  "Woulda come out to say hello," he says, "but I was half asleep when you guys left.  Plus, thought it might be a little awkward explaining who I was."

He grabs the hot pan up from the stove, then, clicks the burner off.  Erich cooks the way he does anything: quickly, in broad strokes, attacking the task with more physicality than necessary.  He dumps the eggs on the plates, clatters the pan into the sink, hands Drew her share and nods the both of them toward the table.
"Is he Garou?  Kinda felt like it."

Drew RoscoeShe chuckled at his suggestion to move her father out into the area and shook her head.  He'd requested that she grab some plates, so that's what she did while she answered him.  "He's used to the winters, he's just fine where he is.  Been in that house since I was tiny, he's not leaving it anytime soon."

She didn't have to stretch very far to reach the plates from where they were stacked in a cupboard, but she did have to reach a least a little.  That was the nature of being petite.  Two plates were grabbed, though, and the cupboard was closed.  Plates were set on the counter next to the stove, and she collected forks next.  When he'd put patties and eggs on both plates, Drew accepted the one he handed to her, flashed a quick smile of gratitude, and moved to set her plate on the table.

She didn't sit immediately, though, and instead returned to the kitchen from the shared-space dining area and grabbed a pair of cups down.  "He is," she advised.  "Used to be a Rotagar.  Uhh...  Adren, yeah."  She had to pause to remember the name of the rank that she'd been taught a while ago.  She didn't pay too much mind to ranks, as far as she was concerned that didn't affect her nearly as much as it did Garou.  But it was still good to know, for situations like this where one Garou was asking about another.  "Not anymore, though.  Which is another reason why I shouldn't move him out here.  Milk or juice?"

Erich ReinhardtErich quirks a brow - "He lost his Wolf?"

Maybe it's a rude question to ask.  In some circles -- in macho, warminded circles like the Fenrir -- it's a little akin to publically discussing another man's erectile dysfunction.  Erich doesn't seem to be angling for some sort of humiliation tactic on Drew's old man, though.  She knows him well enough to know he wouldn't.

Just curiosity, then.  Rare that anyone lives old enough to lose their Wolf these days, after all -- and Drew's dad hadn't sounded all that old.

And, as she brought drinks over, he quirks a smile.  "Is 'both' an acceptable answer?"

Drew Roscoe"It is.  And no."

Another glass was pulled down, then.  Two glasses of milk and one glass of orange juice were collectively poured, and this was done, again, while she spoke.  "He can still change.  I've seen it once before, and only that once.  He... left.  Voluntarily.  Basically quit his job being a Garou, left the Nation, his Sept, all of it.  Became a carpenter and took me away with him.  Wanted to keep me away from all of the dangers of the Real World, you know?  Didn't want me to die horribly like so many of us do."

She carried all three glasses over at once, two of them balanced with fingertips and cup edges at the heel of her hand, the other just held normally with her free hand.  An orange juice and milk were set before Erich, and Drew sat herself in the chair she'd set her plate in front of while taking a sip of her milk.

"My mom went in a pretty violent way.  It tore him up pretty good."

Erich Reinhardt"Oh."
That's it for a while.  Any other Garou might be offended.  All up in arms.  These are the End Days, they might huff, and he's just taken himself out of the war?  Coward!  Deserter!

Erich doesn't get into that.  He'd be some sort of hypocrite if he did, but he doesn't.  Doesn't even seem to cross his mind.  He just mulls the information over a while, taking a gulp of milk first, then picking up his fork to dig in.  Somewhere between his fourth or fifth bite of sausage and eggs he adds, wry:

"Well, now I know why you've got a soft spot for loners like me."

Drew RoscoeThe 'oh' made way for breakfast quiet-- where people just put food to mouth for a while and get their fill before they're satiated enough to start talking again.  Drew happily chopped her sausage patty up with the edge of her fork and mixed it in with her scrambled eggs before eating it like some mish-mash casserole (all it was missing was ketchup or hot sauce to be a real mess).  Erich's comment, wry as it was, was met with a grin that curled one side of her mouth more dominantly than her other.

"You think I have a daddy complex, do you?"

An eyebrow lifted, but the smirk said clearly that she wasn't offended, was only playing with him.  She took a drink of her milk, licked her upper lip to make sure she didn't have a milk mustache left behind, and continued:  "That was a pretty mild reaction.  Most people get all kinds of pissed off about what my dad did.  Joe and him had a bit of a stand off once that I got to break up.  Joe was pretty sure it was his duty to kill him-- my dad, that is.  ....As you can see, he didn't."

Another bite of her egg-and-sausage pile on the plate, and she leaned back in her chair some to peer across the table at the Shadow Lord.  "...I wasn't trying to hide you, y'know.  But at the same time, it was a little easier and made things feel less... juvenille that you just let us have our dinner together and catch up.  I appreciate that."

Erich Reinhardt"Ew, gross."

Which might just be the most juvenile thing she's ever heard come out of an Ahroun's mouth.  It's humor, though, not genuine disgust.  She goes on.  He chews, eats, chews some more, watching her.  Gets up, then, tugging his pajama bottoms up an inch as he went back to the kitchen for a roll of paper towels.  Tears one off for Drew, then sits down with another for himself.

"Eh," he says, "I'm not exactly Mr. Participation here.  Not like I can fault him for not wanting to be Garou anymore when he A) outranked me, B) probably accomplished more than I have, and C) went through more shit than I did.  Besides, he's still got the Wolf.  That says to me that when push comes to shove, he'll do his part.  He might even think he won't, but he will.

"I know you weren't trying to hide me," he goes on.  "I wasn't even around on Thanksgiving, 'cept at the very end.  Not that I trying to hide away either.  Just figured you probably had some sort of family thing.
"Came by at the end just in case you didn't, though.  Didn't want you to end up spending Thanksgiving all alone."

Drew RoscoeBrown eyes followed when Erich rose from the table to fetch paper towels for each, and followed him back when he returned to the table and offered her one of the two that he'd grabbed.  She flashed a smile of thanks, folded the towel into fourths, and tucked one edge under her plate.  While he spoke, she ate.  Their conversation worked in a rhythm like this.  When she was busy talking, he would eat while listening.  Now: vice versa.

When she'd eaten about two thirds of what was on her plate she slowed her pace down and ate more for taste than hunger anymore.  She was more concerned with finishing her milk than her eggs now.

Didn't want you to end up spending Thanksgiving all alone.

That sentiment was met with a brief lift of eyebrows, and a soft smile to follow.  Her hair, which had been down and tucked back behind her ears, was gathered up in one fist at the nape of her neck.  Her other hand snapped a hairband from where it was hiding about her wrist, under the cuff of her sweater, and she looped her hair through it a few times to tie a ponytail.  As she did this, straightened up, arms up and elbows out, she spoke.

"That's sweet.  Thank you.  ...I'm sorry you wound up spending it alone, but I'm glad you felt welcome enough to come here and find a bed to sleep in.  ...Didn't figure you'd put too many eggs in the Thanksgiving basket, though.  Most of you guys not only don't celebrate regular holidays like that, but outright despise them.  More than a few that I knew back in Chicago thought that holidays were underneath all of us-- a silly human tradition to be ignored because we're 'better than that' or something.

"Myself?  I just like having an excuse to wear sweaters and eat a lot of food with people I care about."

Erich Reinhardt"Yeah, it was," he agrees, when she calls his gesture sweet.  "Don't tell anyone."

She's more or less done eating.  He's still going strong, systemically marching his way across the plate.  And while Drew's not talking with her mouth full, the same doesn't really go for Erich.  Like now:

"Your Chicago crowd," he opines with a smirk, "sounded like they didn't know how to have fun at all.  Garou holidays are based on human traditions too.  Just pagan shit instead of Christian shit or pilgrim shit.  Unless of course they just didn't celebrate any holidays.  Which just makes my point even more valid.

"I like the holidays.  It's like the one time of year people stop acting like completely selfish jerks.  And don't worry your pretty little head none.  I grabbed some diner turkey with one of my tribemates."

He grins, then.  "Heh," he says, "you're just lucky I didn't decide a couple hot kisses entitled me to finding your bed to sleep in.  Or maybe I am, since your old man was in the house.

Drew Roscoe
With her plate of what remained of the eggs and mixed sausage that she didn't feel able to finish cooling rapidly, Drew nudged the dish toward Erich with a raise of an eyebrow to ask if he wanted to finish what was left.  She sure wasn't, anyways.  Her milk was finished as well.  One way or the other, whether he accepted the rest of her food or not, Drew rose from the table and took her dishes back to the sink to be rinsed and tucked away into a largely empty dishwasher.

As she bustled about, like she was ought to do, she laughed at his mention about finding her bed instead and nodded her head.  "Oh come on, now.  I'm a big kid these days.  And this is my house.  Even if you had tried to climb in with me, I don't think it would've affected Dad any at all."

As she straightened up from stacking her dishes in the washer, she cast a grin in the Shadow Lord's direction, the expression playful and a touch sly.  "Can't say I could've had a lot of room to protest if you did."  She hovered in the kitchen for a second, gauging his reaction, before glancing about like she wasn't sure if there were chores that needed done urgently or not.  Upon deciding that there weren't, she leaned one hip against the edge of her counter and wrapped her arms loosely around a midsection that was still lean with athleticism.

"To be frank, I can't really remember the last time I've... y'know, not gone right to bed with someone I wanted to.  But to be fair, I haven't had to worry about tribal affairs before either."

Erich ReinhardtErich's smirking the next time Drew looks at him.  He's smirking, he's tipping his chair back on two legs, he's eyeing her in this slow leisurely way that she would've probably smacked him for if he'd started out doing that the day they met.

"First it's one night stands," he says, "and now it's going straight to bed with someone you want.  Drew, you're talking yourself straight from good little kin to Jezebel of the West.

"And trust me.  Your dad would've tossed me out on my ass.  It doesn't matter how grown and how woman you are.  He's your dad."

Drew Roscoe"Maybe."

The tone of her answer is contemplative, and more than willing to let him be right about what he figures Larry Roscoe would do in response to finding some utterly strange cool-eyed Shadow Lord curled around his daughter in her bed.  It really all depended on that slow-burning Rage the old man had, if he'd had his coffee yet or not that morning (ironically, having not had coffee would've benefited the young pair more-- a groggy Larry Roscoe is virtually sleepwalking until caffeinated), and if he'd had breakfast yet or not.

Erich is smirking half-smug, and scanning her appearance as he pleases-- and it likely does please, at that.  She's petite, yes, but capable.  Bust isn't much beyond average, but her figure is fit and years of gymnastics intermingled with dance played a hand in shaping a good rear and thighs.  Beyond just sexual shape, though, she kept a warm glow about her even in mundane situations like kitchen conversations on Black Friday.  She was healthy, largely happy, and very easy to be around.  It only helped that she was easy on the eyes to boot.

"I'm no jezebel.  And I'm not gonna backtrack to explain what I meant either."  Her mouth was curved to mirror his smirk, but without so much proud self-confidence that comes from surveying something you've won for yourself and more a reflection of standing to meet his teasing without flinching or offense-taking.  Her tongue swept over her lips and she shifted her arms from being loose about her midsection to being more snug just below her chest.

He could tell that she was mulling her words over by the half-cautious, half-thoughtful pause that she held on to.  But, as always, she spoke:  "Is it too early to make a move?"  Whether she was referring to it being early in the morning, or early in whatever relationship they were forging wasn't specified, but rather left to be assumed.

Erich ReinhardtThe smirk widens.  Erich lowers the front legs of his chair back to the floor, but only so he can push back from the table altogether.

"Stop thinking about making a move," he says, "and make one.  How else are you gonna thank me for making that delicious, nutritious breakfast, hm?"

Drew RoscoeIt was more the way that Erich's smirk grew like a cheshire cat's than anything else that had Drew grinning just as broadly.  He told her to act rather than think, and quipped (as he tended to do) at her about thanking him for breakfast.  He moved the chair back from the table, opening his front to her by doing so.  Drew answered by moving away from the counter with a small rock of her own weight.

She approached him in a straight-forward way, true to her own nature.  She didn't rush to meet him, nor did she slow her pace intentionally.  This wasn't intended to be a show, she didn't step deliberately or force a step-sway to her hips.  The closest approximation in comparison would be a prowl, but without any predatory blaze to go along with it.  She'd pause at his knees and reach forward to touch the side of his face, light and gentle, with her left hand.  The right hand splayed across his chest and rubbed.

A quip would fit in here somewhere, something snarky and cute to parry Erich's last remark.  Drew opted not to, though, and instead leaned in to bring her face to his.  Lips didn't go to his, though, but rather passed right by and grazed the edge of his jaw.  Her breath huffed hot and soft at his ear, her nose and cheekbone nuzzled at his neck, and she inhaled deeply the scent of him (Kinfolk are but cousins of Wolves in the scheme of things, after all).

"Here," she murmured into his neck, and ran the hand that was on his chest up to his shoulder and down his arm until she found his hand.  She wrapped her fingers about his and guided his hand to the curve of her waist, right above her hip, and pressed his palm snug to the soft material of her sweater.  "I wanna know you want me too.  Wanna feel you press."  This was confessed evocatively at the side of his throat before teeth scraped lightly and lips pressed a kiss where her words had warmed his skin.

Erich ReinhardtThat smirk fades a little as Drew comes at him.  It's seared right away.  What's left behind is intense and perhaps a little darker: a direct stare, flaring nostrils.

She leans close.  He doesn't sit idle.  There's something terribly feral about this: she breathes him in and he rubs his cheek to hers, his morning stubble rough against her infinitely softer skin.  She puts her hand on his chest and finds a rumble there, a growl that he doesn't let loose.

And then she draws his hand to her waist.  His fingers spread wide; it's immediate and unafraid.  He grasps at her body, the strength of his hand clear and firm through the thickness of her sweater.  She doesn't quite bite him.  He draws back, just enough to see her eye to eye.

"You wanna feel me press, do you?"  There's a thread of amusement there. It coils in his eyes, like a filament at the center of an old-fashioned light bulb. She didn't kiss him -- not on the mouth, anyway -- but he kisses her: a sudden thing, and rather hard.  She invited his hand to her waist; he pushes it under her sweater, under her shirt, the callouses on his palm rough against the skin of her side.

His lips move against hers: "And just how far are we going today, Miss Drew Roscoe?"

Drew RoscoeThere's a rumbling, a force within Erich that Drew had been hunting for.  She's pleased to feel it within his breast, to feel the swell of Rage under his skin making his touch warm-- damn near hot.  He wouldn't let her do everything, wouldn't sit still while she was this near, this breathy and so willing to touch and be touched.
She brought his hand to her waist.  He pushed her sweater and the snug camisole underneath aside so he could feel her skin under his palm, so his fingers could grasp and become familiar with her shape.  He'd leaned his head back just enough to find her face and crush his mouth to hers.  Drew answered with a muffled exclamation of affirmation, and returned the kiss with as much commitment to the act as Erich offered himself.

Their mouths parted just enough for him to speak, though his lips grazed hers as he did.  Her answer was to smile, just a little, and touch her forehead to his.  Her eyes closed, her breathing was heavier (though certainly not because she was winded), and her hand moved to the back of his head, fingers running through his close-cut hair to the lengthier show of blonde at the top of his head.

"Well," she breathed back to him, and her weight shifted again.  She'd been standing at his knees before, but now she brought herself closer still.  She threw one leg across his lap and settled down to sit on the tops of his thighs, hips close to his but not flush, not giving that quite yet.

"Can't we just find out?"

Erich ReinhardtThe truth is this is perhaps a little dangerous.  Playing with fire, as they say.  They have the house to themselves: no fathers, jolly and goodnatured or otherwise; no passing pedestrians.  He's not wearing a whole lot, and while she's dressed to go out, his hand has already found its way beneath several layers of that armor.

He can feel the sleek muscles of her torso shift as she comes down over him.  She keeps a bit of respectable distance between them.  It doesn't count for a whole lot, but it's there, and so is that smile they keep sharing,
which more than anything else divides this from anything he's had before.  Erich's not exactly a player, not exactly a ladies' man, but nor is he a monk. Not his first rodeo, he said once.  But then: this isn't quite a rodeo.  It's not quite a game at all.

His hands rest on her hips; he has to resist the urge to drag her closer, seal that space to nothing.  He hears an echo of what he'd said to her in what she says to him; it makes him laugh into the space between, low.
"Using my own argument against me," he says.  "Very sneaky," and then just like that, before that word quite completes itself, he finds himself kissing her again.  Drawn, like a magnet to a lodestone.

Drew RoscoePlaying with fire is almost precisely what this was.  The attraction that Kinfolk had to a Garou's Rage was not at all unlike a moth's need to be drawn to a warm lightbulb hanging over a back porch.  But this was not Drew's first time with a man who had the Wolf in his heart.  Erich's Rage was ever present, a dangerous thing indeed.  He could easily be pressed to a point where the Wolf and Monster come together to defeat the man, and the word 'no' doesn't mean anything anymore.

That's why you had to be sure what you wanted going into the situation.  That's why you had to know how to gentle your way into a Garou's mind, to catch their attention without provoking them.  It's worked very well for Drew so far in life.  She was mated to a beast with much Rage about him, and she had no scars to show as evidence of being burnt by that fire.

So Erich held onto her waist, fighting the urge to drag her up against him and let his fingertips bite into her firm flesh.  He didn't pull her flush to him, but he did press another kiss to her mouth.  He all but fell toward her, drawn in by something curious and new-- the fact that they smiled together, spoke.  That this was physical (certainly, how could it not be?), but that wasn't all.  It was something to be investigated and explored.

Drew cupped her hand to the back of his neck and leaned into his kiss, his touch.  She pressed her chest to his, breathed in deep when she inhaled.  Her weight tipped toward him, balanced and hanging.  The balls of her stocking feet were on the tile floor still, maintaining this balance, supporting a share of her own weight to do so.

She would pull away after a moment with a small gasp of breath and move her hand from the back of his neck to the side, fingers spread over his collarbone and the top of his shoulder as well.  "Moon's not quite full.  You're present, not the Beast right now.  I trust ya, Erich."

Erich ReinhardtHer touch to the back of his neck sends electricity down his spine.  The hairs on his arms are standing on end, and then --

then she presses herself to him.

This time the growl escapes him; rolls out of his chest like a storm front.  He grasps her under the thighs and he's standing, he's pulling her against him, that distance is gone now.  Her feet are losing touch with the floor.  The dishes are rattling on the table as he sets her down on it.  Her sweater is soft.  His skin is bare.  What layers she wears are the only ones between them, and then even that starts to slip: his hands sliding under the back of her camisole, rumpling sweater up ahead of his wrists.  He opens his palms over her back, covers entire stretches of her skin with his big hands.

That ravenous mouth of his, which is a deadly weapon in any form but this, is at her neck.  She never had time to profess trust in him; not while she was still seated on his lap, anyway.  If she still says it, she'd be saying it now,

now, when it might be a little harder to believe her, with his kisses falling like bites against the tendon of her neck, the juncture of her shoulder.  A hand leaves her back, braces against the tabletop.  There's a shift in his balance. He might be a second away from sweeping the dishes aside, perhaps off the table altogether; a second away from pressing her down on that surface where a minute ago they were having a nice little breakfast.

Drew Roscoe
Her chest pressed to his, the swell of breasts beneath her sweater causing the fuzzy fabric of her shirt to rub against his bare skin.  This evoked a growl, this one flooding up from behind his sternum and vibrating out from his throat.  He grabbed her legs, one hand under each thigh, and lifted her up from the chair along with her.

Her thighs, he will note, were made of firm muscle with only the smallest layer of fat overtop (to keep things feminine).  She squeezed them about his hips for support, and no doubt other reasons, when her feet left the floor and her weight fell soley into his hands for that instant.  She wasn't a heavy girl by any stretch, but years of choreographed dancing with partners had her reflexively distributing her weight to sturdier, more central parts of his body.

This was rendered unnecessary soon enough, though, as her rump was set on the kitchen table a foot or two away from the dishes that Erich had just eaten from.  With his mouth at her neck, a shock of thrill spasmed through her arms and into her heart and belly both.  She knew very well what those teeth were more accustomed to doing, what task they usually performed when this close to someone's throat.  She inhaled a quick, shuddered breath, but tipped her chin and jaw aside to give him room and permission that he didn't necessarily need at this point.

She wrapped strong legs about him, crossing her ankles at the bottom-most edge of his back to secure him in place.  She wasn't certain where her hands should go immediately, so one rested temporarily on his upper arm and the other was set on the table beside her for support and balance.  Erich's weight shifted, his hand braced on the table behind her back.  He was leaning into her, kissing and grazing at her throat and shoulder fervently.  She sighed, and his name was carried on the exhale more breath than voice, faint but there.
Perhaps a second before he was ready to sweep dishes aside and lay her back on the table, Drew moved her hand from his arm to the center of his chest and pressed him back, firm but not sudden.  She leaned back simultaneously, breaking away from the ministrations of his mouth.  Any doubt or worry that might cross his mind is extinguished promptly, though, when she grabs the edges of her sweater with both hands and pulls it up over her head then tosses it into one of the kitchen chairs.

Under her sweater she wore a thin, simple white camisole with lace at the straps and lining the edges.  The bra beneath was easily visible, simple, a bit utilitarian, and some shade of pink that probably went by 'salmon' or 'coral' on the tag.  More interesting than that, though, was the lick of black ink that showed under her right arm, crawling up to make visible the etched foliage of a tree top along her ribcage.

Not a lot of time was giving to admire the view, though, because Drew was leaning in to claim another kiss, not wanting momentum to be lost.

ErichThere's a jolt that goes through her when his mouth is at her throat, his teeth so close to the complex networks of arteries and nerves and airways that lie just beneath the surface there.  It makes Erich freeze: just for a second, and barely noticeably, but it's there.

He waits, blood pounding through his veins.  He nuzzles Drew under the jaw, gently as he can, and then -- she wraps her legs around him.  It's all the approbation he needs.  He's on her again, his teeth scraping her neck.  Between her thighs he feels as solid as oak, carved out of muscle and bone, the heat of his flesh searing right through her jeans.  He starts to push her down.

She pushes him back.

His eyes flare, he rears back, he starts to say oh you are shitting me but; no, it's not what he thinks, she's not drawing the boundary right there, right now.  The words die in his throat as she grabs the hem of her sweater.  She tugs, she can get it off herself just fine but he's rather driven to help: has a stake in this, you see.  His hands are rough, a little clumsy, as he yanks and tugs, damn near stretches her nice cashmere sweater out of shape before it gives.

It lands in a kitchen chair.  He has a second to look at her, his pale eyes flashing down her body.  "I don't know why you don't dress like this more often," he says: then she's kissing him again, he's opening his mouth to her and closing his eyes, he's pushing his hands under her camisole.  She feels sturdy, but small: he feels like he can hold her between his two hands.  He tries: he opens his hands over her ribs, slides them up; now the arch of his thumbs and forefinger follow the lowermost edge of her bra, and her camisole is riding up her body, and he's pulling away from her kiss just so he can lower his head to her,

(he's pushing her down on that breakfast table after all; one or both of them shove plates aside impatiently before their leftovers end up on her back)

press his mouth to her bared midriff.  He's a mouthy one there, too.  His teeth scrape her skin.  He bites the middle of her bra, tugs at it, growls at her, grins at her with his eyes flashing up at her -- lets it go, lets it snap back a little against her body.  He finally seems to remember he has hands: he reaches around under her to undo her bra.  Or try.

Drew RoscoeThere's a hot flash of frustration and protest when Drew pushes Erich back, but she ignores it well, even with the Rage that snaps and licks along with it.  He was about to snarl at her, but the words went quiet before they had a chance to form completely behind his teeth.  Upon realizing what was happening, he was quick to help, snagging her sweater between caloused fingers and pulling to help it off that much faster.  Pale blue eyes swept her figure, and the comment her provided was met with laughter that was as flushed as her face and chest.

"Could be that it's about winter time," she explained against his mouth, far from actually concerned if he disliked her choice of clothing or not.  Clothing wasn't important, it was what existed underneath, after all.
He parted lips for her, and Drew met the invitation happily, sweeping her tongue over and past his lips, encouraging his to join the old dance that it knew by nature.  He grabbed her sides again, under the hem of her camisole this time, and pushed it up high while laying her back.  She pushed dishes aside with whatever touched them first (her elbow and forearm, but was careful not to send them flying off the table) and let herself be laid back by the Garou, legs still about his waist rather than dangling off the table's edge.

Where his mouth met her stomach, hot and wet and with the ever-looming threat of sharp demise, her body rose and rolled in subtle ways to encourage and affirm.  Her head was back, hair falling out of the ponytail she'd tied it into earlier.  When he made his way up higher and took the center of her bra in his teeth, she opened her eyes and glanced down at him, then mirrored the grin he wore on his face.

When his hands moved from where they'd been holding the trim sides of her waist to search for the hooks that kept her bra on, she propped herself up on one elbow and ran her fingers through his hair with her free hand.  She brought her face down to the top of his head and pressed her lips to his crown, where he'd feel them move when she asked:  "Should we take this to a room?"

ErichThe fingers searching for the hooks on the back of her bra pause.  The hand turns over; palm to the table.  Erich slows down for just a second, panting, his breath a hot wash between her breasts.

Not much hair for Drew's fingers to run through, really.  Half an inch, an inch at best; a blond so fair it ripples in the light like wheat bowing to wind.  Short enough that the motion of her lips is clearly tangible to him.  Makes him close his eyes a moment, murmuring a low, pleased, animal sound.

"I don't know."  Muffled, that.  "Pretty hard to remember why we're taking this slow as it is.  Not sure I'll remember at all in your bed."

Drew Roscoe"This don't seem slow to me."

He's breathing heavy, not due to physical exertion, but rather for excitement, for building heat and the promise of what was to come.  Drew breathed the same way, but slower and less of a pant.  Her breath washed warm against the top of his head.  They were both fit people, both could probably run long and hard without needing to take a break.  Erich was a Garou, after all, and an Ahroun at that.  It was his very purpose to be fit and strong and good at dominating the opposition.  Drew, while not blessed by Gaia, still managed to march across the arctic and maintain pace with a pair of Fenrir boys.  That was no small task (and she wasn't the one that passed out when they reached their last leg either).

She pressed a kiss to his forehead, then nudged her face down nearer to his and kissed him on the mouth once more.  This kiss wasn't quite as deep as the last, her tongue didn't venture to gain new territory.  But it was still full of energy and promise.  When she broke it, she found and held his eyes.

"No real need to wait.  I just didn't want it to be against an alley wall the first time around."  Her hand moved from the back of his head forward and down, fingers trailing past his chest to brush the hard oak wall of his stomach.  "C'mon."

ErichAgainst her mouth, the corners of his quirk - a grin, quick and loose.  It gentles into something a little softer as she says she didn't want the first time to be in some alley.  Which, truth be told, did cross his mind.

Then she's running a hand down his chest.  His heartbeat is a hammer there in the center of his sternum; his pulse an echo all down the axis of his body.  He watches her hand go: down, down, pressing to his stomach.  He catches her there, his hand firm on hers, his kiss an urgent, eager thing.

"Okay."  It's breathed more than spoken.  He straightens up, scoops her off the table with his hands under her ass, and then -- quite frankly -- rubbing her ass as he stands there, kissing her, forgetting what he was doing until he remembers again.

He's not quite familiar with the path to her bedroom.  Never been there, after all.  Knows the path to the guest rooms -- all of them, because curious creature that he is, he's crashed in all three -- and to the guest bathroom.  Knows the path to the kitchen, the basement.  The shed.  Not this way though, the master bedroom, the one place in this whole house she keeps to herself, and he, by some errant spark of courtesy or manners or chivalry, has yet to intrude.

Drew RoscoeA hand caught hers less than an inch shy of where she intended to stop it anyways, pressed it close to his stomach.  He kissed her again, and breathed agreement before straightening up and lifting her off the table.
This time around he didn't hold her by her legs, but rather by cupping her hands about either ass cheek through the sturdy denim of her jeans (real jeans, mind you, not some polyester blend intended more to stretch than protect properly).  He savored that moment, this apparent by how his fingers felt and his palms pressed.  He lost track of the task at hand for a moment and they stood there, Drew with her legs about his hips, attempting to help evenly disperse her weigh to make holding and carrying her less of a task.  She hummed her approval against his mouth while they kissed, nipping his lower lip lightly and letting her eyes fall closed as well.

Then they're walking, and Drew's tucked her head to let him see where he's going, is kissing and grazing his shoulder and neck again.  Into the one part of the house that Erich hasn't explored before-- he's poked around all the guest rooms, discovered her cement basement lit only by a bald bulb over the stairs and a flickering halogen light in the center of the big dark room.  This is his first time going into Drew's bedroom, though.

The door on the right side of the house opens up to a large master bedroom, established with hardwood floors that matched the rest of the house and walls painted a deep taupe with white trim.  There was a king sized bed with the headboard against the windows.  There was enough room in there for Drew to successfully arrange a lounge chair in one corner with a bookshelf and table nearby, and a desk somehow maneuvered against an empty space of wall as well (computer set up with two monitors, evidence that she either played computer games seriously or worked from home).

Drew lifted her face enough to nip at an ear lobe, encouraging without words that he find the light green comforter of the bed (too big for one person, really) sooner than later.

ErichShe's put a bit of thought into the decor in here.  Made it comfortable, at least.  A touch stylish too.  But all Erich really picks up from his quick distracted glance around is that a) there's a bookshelf, and b) there's a bed.  A big one.

It's a bright day outside.  Blinds are shut though.  Sunlight slants across the floor in thin, even slices.  Sunlight traces across his arm and her thigh, his leg, then the floor as he passes through it.  He barely sees that either.  If his eyes are open they're on her.  If they're closed, he's kissing her, his mouth straying blindly from her lips to her neck to her clavicle, and back again.

His knees hit the bed.  He's found it.  Gravity upends itself: she finds herself dropped, tumbled down, hitting the mattress on her back.  Kingsized bed.  There's a spark of amusement in Erich's eyes as he moves over her, kneels on the bed, catches her legs against his chest, reaches to undo the button of her jeans.  "My, what a big bed you have," he comments, sly, turning his head to nip at her legs through her jeans.

Which come open a moment later.  He sits back on his heels and pulls on the denims.  "Lift up, baby," he whispers, and if she does: he tugs her pants up and up and off, wholesale, dropping them with a whump on the floor.

Drew RoscoeThe bed was an upgrade that she treated herself with when she moved into this house.  Something she gave herself as a reward for opting for the smaller one-story house from an uninteresting decade in the mid-1900s rather than selecting the nigh-historic Victorian that was for sale at the back edge of the Browntown township.

Erich dropped her with a 'whump!' onto the mattress and knelt below her, catching her legs to hold them to his chest.  While he quipped about the size of her bed, Drew was busy pulling the camisole up over her head and tossing it haphazardly onto the floor.  This revealed a startlingly large tattoo that ran down her right side, a black-ink representation of a tree that ran from her top rib to just above her hip.  That large of a tattoo was surprising to find on anyone, but especially so on the small woman with the sweet face and infectious personality.

He nipped at her legs through her jeans and unsnapped them at the waist, encouraged her to 'lift up', as he put it.  She complied without question or pause, smiling in a way that was pleased more with something on an emotional level than a physical one in this moment.  She liked that he called her 'baby', it showed.  Her hips lifted, abdominal muscles tightening to do so without heels on the mattress, and she wiggled them enough to help disengage her pants from her hips.

With jeans yanked off and dropped to the floor, that left Drew in a pair of simple bikini underpants to match the bra, with her arms above her head pulling the elastic band out of her hair and putting it about her wrist out of habit.  She tossled her long brown hair about some to lose the ponytail shape the band had given it, then moved her hand to drag fingertips slowly over her own flat belly, obviously with the intent of creating a centerfold-esque image for the Shadow Lord to eat up.

She bore no scars, no marks or blemishes to indicate the vast array of injuries she's suffered, of monsters she's killed, and adventures she's been on.  That much couldn't be said for many, and was looked down upon by some of her Tribe.  She just happened to be lucky enough to have loved ones that ensured she was healed whenever she was wounded.

Words of encouragement, of luring might fit best in this moment, with her poised on the bed before him, stretched out with hair pooled about her head and fingers tracing the lines of her stomach.  Drew, for now, left the imagery to do its job and Erich to set the pace.

Erich Reinhardt
That smile courses between them - passes straight from her face to his.  He grins back at her; it's a bright, warm, tender thing, there for just a second before she's whipping her camisole off

and he's kissing her ankle, muttering oh my fuckin' hell at the sight of her all-but naked now.  She lets her hair down.  He's sure he's seen her hair down before, but it still makes him stare, it still makes his heart thud in his chest, it still makes the pupils in his glacier-blue eyes widen.

He'll ask her about the tattoo later.  Just like he'll look around her bedroom later.  Just like he'll worry about the consequences later, if he bothers to worry about them at all before they bit him in the ass.  He'll think about all that later.  Right now --

right now, he's running his hands up her body, coursing his palms from her hips to her stomach to her breasts, lingering there to draw the straps down her shoulders with the tips of his fingers; pull the cups down.  So much for taking her bra off.  This seems just as good, a stopgap measure before his hunger got out of hand.  His shoulders part her legs as he leans down to her.  It seems such a natural thing now for her thighs to graze their way down his ribs, fold around his waist.  He goes straight for her breasts; doesn't stop, doesn't pass go, covers one with his rough hand while he takes the other into his mouth.

The mattress creaks.  He shifts -- now her legs are wrapped over the lean span of his hips instead.  She's no blushing virgin, and she has to know he's aroused.  Still.  This is the first unflinching evidence of it; the hard heavy curve of his cock pressed against her, two flimsy layers of cotton between.  So little material that she can feel his heat, his pulse.  So little space that he can feel her wetness.

There's this to be said about Erich: he isn't shy about this.  Any of this.  He bucks his hips against hers, grinds against her hard, pins her against the mattress, groans against her breast.  His voice is muffled and rough.  He's reaching down with his free hand, his weight settling onto her as he shifts.  She can feel him pulling her panties aside; can hear the snap of elastic as he pushes his pajama bottoms down.  If ever there was a point of no return, this would be it.

Drew RoscoeThere was something thrilling about having a man look you over in the same way a person having just crawled through a desert would look at a water fountain.  His icy blue eyes upon her had Drew feeling self-assured and sexy, had gooseflesh crawl at her belly and chest, and had the small of her back arching just enough to exaggerate curves.

She relished in his lips at her ankles and legs, gasped softly when he leaned his weight forward and pressed her thighs open with his flanks to claim space nearer to her body.  He pulled the cups of her bra down and paid mind to her breasts with his hand and mouth both.  She shuddered some and curled one hand to the back of his head.  The other was bent behind her back, worked to unclasp the hooks of her bra, and when they were undone she'd interrupt him just long enough to take the bra off and abandon it on the floor with the rest of her clothes.

The pace here is good for a moment, but not much longer.  More flesh needed to be touched, much baser yearnings had to be addressed, and soon.  Erich moved his knees and shifted his hips to hers, causing the hard shape of his cock to press against her crotch.  He moved against her, far from shy about what he wanted from her.  As observed, she was no blushing virgin and didn't shy away from the persistence or intensity.  Rather, she snugged her hips to his and found rhythm to his bucks and grinds, and gasped quietly near the top of his head (as his face was still at her breast).

It was when she felt his knuckle graze blazing bare skin between her legs as he tugged her panties to the side that she squirmed and hesitated.  "Wait," she muttered to him.  "Wait."

This might be the time where she would reach for her bedstand were she still a college student to grope around for a spare condom.  If she were a high school student it's where she'd blushingly beg that they stop, apologize and express that she wasn't comfortable with going any further.  Here and now, though, she makes him pause only long enough for her to hook a finger at the hip of her underpants and pull them off one foot at a time.

Then, now utterly nude under the Shadow Lord's frame, Drew pushed the waistband of his pajama pants down past his hips, past his rump, and wrapped her small hand around his dick.  She gave it a few small rubs and tipped her hips back towards his, found his face to kiss him deep and hum a muffled "Go on," to encourage him forward.

Erich ReinhardtIt's a good thing one of them still has some manual dexterity left.  She reaches for her bra.  He ignores it utterly.  She's undoing those clasps with remarkably alacrity, but all he notices is the arch of her body up against his mouth, which he's duly appreciative of: muttering in his throat, something like a growl.  His hands wrap under her back.  He lifts her against his mouth, he licks and sucks at her like she's one of those frozen treats he likes so much that it's the one thing other than meat that he'll eat.  She gets the bra off.  She has to physically push him back, and then he just settles for kissing her mouth while she flings the bra down.

It hits the floor.  A moment later one of her pillows joins it.  There's a sultry sort of war going on here.  He pushes her up the bed, moves over her, she stops him again, squirming, hesitating, he drops his brow to her breastbone and tries not to bellow in lust and impatience.  She's doing something with her legs that makes him open his eyes, and then

she tosses that last scrap of underclothing to the floor, too.  He laughs breathlessly, and then he remembers:
"Do I need, y'know -- "

She puts her hand on him.  He gives a quiet exclamation that he muffles against her shoulder, some primitive reflex arc taking over: he thrusts against her hand like he can't help it, grasps at the sheets under her.

" -- a condom," he manages.  "Do I need a condom?"

Drew RoscoeErich's frustration and impatience is well contained, but thrums through his muscles none the less.  It's particularly noticable when she stops his hand at her panties, where he touches his head to her collarbone and his back and chest tense up with the primal roar that he contained.  She'd whipped the last scrap of clothing from her body and tossed it to the floor. He found one of four pillows to push aside and topple to the hardwood floor as well.

Somewhere between grunts and muffled cries and gasped breaths Erich was asking about a condom.  Drew was shaking her head, lips parted, and brushed her free hand down his muscled side and to his hip, where she grabbed and pulled anxiously.  Her thighs rubbed at his hips while hers squirmed beneath him, back arching, begging what small space between them that still existed to close.

"No, no, I'm on birth control.  Come on, please, Erich."

With assurances made and wanton cries called, damn near begged from kiss-swollen lips, there is nothing to hold them back at that point.  She'd relax her legs so he could push them as far open as he needed, brace her weight against the mattress, and support what weight he'd put onto her belly and chest while he let no more nuisances interrupt progress and slid himself inside her.

There's no holding back from there.  Drew would let him lead, let him set the pace and figure out which position worked best.  She was compliant, but far from a dead fish herself.  Hips would roll against his, if his hands stayed still too long she'd grab them and move them-- from her breasts to her hips to her belly depending on how often she was given the chance to direct causeless hands.  Her own would spread over his chest, grasp his shoulders or upper arms for support.  She pressed her mouth to his for a hard kiss here or there, but more typically she had her forehead to his shoulder, or her mouth at his neck and shoulder.
This would keep up until pressure and want built too strongly deep in her abdomen and she would increase her pace, buck her hips harder and hold him more firmly with short fingernails biting dull into his skin.  Faster and harder, more demanding, and she would drag him on top of her and whisper for him to come, words of encouragement at his ear, then--

it all spills over.  Drew tenses, arches, muffles her own cries in his shoulder and closes her eyes and holds him close.  If their timing doesn't match up, if he doesn't come quite when she does, she's determined to catch him up and works hips and hands to get him there.

When they've both crashed over the edge and are left sweating and panting and holding each other close, Drew lays kisses at his brow and face and sighs happily.  It's these moments, even with the mid-morning sunlight cutting arcs across the bedroom through the blinds, where time chugs to an unrecognizable pace and the world seems at peace-- at least, what world existed within that house anyways.

Erich ReinhardtIt's not even what she says in response.  It's how she says it.  Something about the hurried rush of her voice, the way it rides that sweet edge between impatience and imploring, that quite undoes Erich.  "Okay," he breathes, and -

they're neither of them first-timers.  They're not highschoolers, they're not college kids, they're not really kids at all.  But despite the way they smirk and banter, despite the quick parries of their verbal flirtation, every physical encounter between them -- all two of them -- has been underlain with a certain innocence.  Inexperience, even, if only with each other.  They fumbled with her clothes.  His pants didn't even make it all the way off his legs.  He didn't have a condom ready; she wasn't wearing risque lingerie.  Everything up to this point has felt eager, uncertain, hungry.

But then she lets her thighs fall open.  He moves over her, wraps his hand behind her head, kisses her mouth, holds her eyes.  She can see the moment he penetrates her reflected in his eyes: the furrow of his brow and the pull in the muscles of his face, the way his gaze unfocuses.  "Oh," he groans, low and rough, and:

just like that something falls into place.  There's nothing to hold them back, and the fumbling gives way; the rhythm is elemental.  He somehow didn't quite foresee her directness, that boldness even in what looks so very much like surrender.  She guides his hands; he's eager to follow.  He guides the pace, and she has him wrapped up in her limbs, tattooing sounds and breaths against his shoulder; his lean cheek; his mouth.

It's never quite sweet and soft.  Not even at the start.  There's a raw energy in him; even when he goes slow, it's a heavy, deep, solid fuck.  His back grows slippery with sweat.  Her fingernails bite at him.  He bites at her: bites her shoulder and her neck, kisses her hard enough that it may as well be a bite.  Toward the end he tries to rise up on his hands to give himself the leverage, but she pulls him down, and he tumbles over her, wraps her up in his arms, gives her what she cries out for:

fucks her, quite plainly put, in her soft bed with the four pillows and the nice sheets.  Her climax is an electric thing.  It crackles right through him; pulls him after her.  He doesn't even try to muffle it when he comes: he bellows past her ear, half-deafens her, pounds it into her, collapses.


Then there's a brief peace.  She's kissing him, soft and loose.  He's reminded absurdly, sweetly of some long-ago memory he didn't even know he still had: a summer litter of kittens, the tiniest of them batting at his fingers with paws so soft he could barely feel it.  He must have been young then, he thinks.  He must not have Changed yet.  He must not have relinquished his heritage then,

and all claim he could have possibly had to a kin like Drew.

His eyes open.  His heartbeat seems a rational thing again; not a wild thunder in his chest, a wild beast beating its way out from behind his sternum.  The angle of the light has changed a little.  Sunlight slats through the blinds and warms his lower leg.  His pajama bottoms are still rumpled around one ankle.

He shifts off her, heavy and lazy, rolling to the side.  Their legs are tangled, and he leaves them that way.  He looks at her for a moment, his face close to hers; he says nothing.

Drew RoscoeEnergy hums within the room, seeping into the walls and back into the bodies it had come from in the first place.  They rested together, tangled up in one another for a minute or so before Erich rolled off from on top of her and rested at her side instead, dissuading all but his legs from her.  She moved a little uncomfortably when he slid out of her, but once that was done she was content to rest her thighs and knees together and turn to face him as well.

This was different from other first times she's had with the couple of lovers in her history.  Typically it was at the end of the day, on one occasion it was after a battle where she'd lent her bullets to a Modi's claws.  Here, though, laying with Erich, they had the rest of the day ahead of them.  She didn't feel rushed to do one thing or another, like sleep or rush to a class or work or anything like that.

With their legs mixed together still, Drew with one foot hooked behind his ankle and her other knee snugged up to his, the Kinfolk's brown eyes (uncharacteristic of her heritage) met with the Wolf's blue (VERY characteristic of THEIR heritage).  They shared silence like that, close together, and Drew tipped her forehead to touch his, careless of the fact that they were both sweat-slicked and would benefit from a shower.

Silences inevitably break, though.  Drew broke theirs by making a soft humming sound of contentment in her throat and reaching around to find a pillow that she could drag under his head first, then one for herself as well while she spoke.  "Holy hell, Erich...  You should bring me to bed more often."

Erich ReinhardtThat makes him laugh - a quick grin widening his mouth, a huff of breath out.  He lifts his head and she slides a pillow under it.  He settles back down again, the musculature of his shoulder shifting as he lifts his hand, strokes her cheek, rubs his palm lazily and familiarly down the side of her neck, over her shoulder.

"I'm sure we can work out some sorta arrangement," he says, a little husky, "Miss Roscoe."

They should shower.  He should think about finishing up that paint job.  She probably has something to do today.  Even on a holiday, she hardly seemed the sort to lie idle.  A moment later he lets those thoughts - so practical, so pragmatic, stop being such a shadow lord - slide out of his head again.  The bed shifts as he moves closer.

"You don't have to go anywhere just yet, do you?"

Drew RoscoeThe laugh and grin were answered with a pleased looking smile from the Kinfolk.  She seemed to glow in the way that women tend to right after sex-- with sweat glistening just so, with lips red and full without the help of cosmetics, hair tossled and, perhaps more importantly to a Garou, the smell of their lover all over them, scent mingling in with her own.

He touched her face and neck and said they could work something out in the future, where they could lay together more frequently in the days, weeks, months? to come.  She turned her head into his hand, nuzzling her cheek to his palm and inhaling deeply.

You don't have to go anywhere just yet, do you?

The question was met with a shake of her head.  "No.  The bank's closed today, they don't need anything from me.  I could get some extra work on a project out of the way, but I'm not feeling particularly motivated to worry about anything that's not immediately right here just yet."

She ran her fingers along his forearm, tracing veins and lines in his muscles absently.  Eyes implored when she asked:  "What about you?"

Erich ReinhardtHer fingers make a map of his arm.  The smile he gives is that one she's seen so often: lopsided, crooked; underlain with something more than humor.  Warmth, perhaps.  Wryness.  A bit of wistfulness.

"I'm staying," he says.

The space between them closes.  He kisses her forehead, and then he kisses her mouth: a gentler thing than any of the ten thousand or so that have preceded it.  When it fades, he stays near enough that her face is a blur to him.  And so he looks at her body instead, the healthy iridescence of sunlight on skin, the intricate tattoo on her side.

His fingertips trace that absently.  When he speaks, though, it's not to ask her about the marking after all.
It's a whisper: "We'll have to tell someone about this sooner or later.  You know that, don't you?"

Drew RoscoeShe traced at the natural contours and lines of his arm.  He instead chose, after a kiss and pulling her flush with him ontop of that pretty light green comforter of hers, to trace fingertips along the inked-in lines of the sprawling tree tattoo on her right ribcage.  She wrapped her arm under his and snuggled up close to him, tucked her head to his chest and murmured "Good," when he stated that he was going to stick around.

When he spoke next his voice was soft and low, little more than a whisper.  The words were heavier, though, like stones dropped into a bucket.  They pulled her down from that happy heights of post-coitus haze and had her pause, think for a moment, then nuzzle her head closer to his chest.

"I know.  I wouldn't plan to keep anything secret.  I'm comfortable sharing whenever you are-- I just want to give us enough time to both be certain we want it-- this, US-- longer than just a couple of weeks, you know?
"But I'll tell.  I'll find the Jarl and help him remember my name long enough to tell him what we're doing.  To be honest, so no half-moons come after you full of righteousness and raised hackles."

They could figure out when they wanted to tell the world about their joining together later.  For now, though, there were other things to address-- like a shower in the master bathroom attached to Drew's bedroom, like Erich exploring her bedroom and poking around at her collection of books on her shelf, or like Drew explaining that the tattoo came from a time in her life when she was very concerned about symbolism and family trees and decided to drop way too much money on a tattoo that she didn't really regret but didn't hold a lot of significance to any longer either.

They had the whole rest of the day.
Worries could come tomorrow.

Heavy [Erich]

Drew Roscoe
Drinks were on Drew tonight.  No very good reason was given for the occasion, Drew had just gone out to the shed where Erich was working, tossed him a sham rag, and advised that he wrap up whatever he was doing and get cleaned up because they were going to go find someplace to have drinks and unwind for an evening.  She didn't rush him, and whenever Erich was ready they'd climb into the truck and take off into the city.

The drive was long, as always, and it was certain that they'd flash between conversation and music along the way.  Upon getting into the city Drew took them into the more cultured of Washington D.C.'s districts-- Du Pont.  Here the buildings were older, the shops and restaurants all flavorful and unique and crammed close side-by-side.  They'd pass by a large museum and not far from Drew pulled her big Dodge Ram truck into a public parking lot, killed the engine, and climbed on out.

She'd lead him up the sidewalk for a few blocks, headed toward a bar she told him:  "Don't worry about it, it's not a dance club or anything.  I know you guys don't do well in places like that."  The Kinfolk had dressed for the settling cold of mid-November (encroaching winter) in a red winter coat whose hem was cut at the hips, with the hood up to keep her ears warm and brown leather driving gloves on her hands.
They'd come to a bar that was set into a three-story brownstone of a building.  It occupied the main floor, the two on top were likely apartments or office spaces.  There was a large window beside the door, and a red awning overtop of both.  White text in the window declared the name of the bar to be Jefferson's.
"See?  Quiet enough," Drew'd offer with a grin before pulling the door open to head inside.

Erich ReinhardtWhen Drew came into the shed, Erich was busy painting the quarterpanel.  The shed windows were open.  The air inside still smelled downright toxic, so thick with paint fumes that the space heater he's set up behind him has got to be some sort of fire hazard.  Not that fire would kill him.  Paint fumes either, one supposes.
He doesn't hear her at first.  The windows are rolled down on his Mustang, too, music blaring out of the speakers.  His head is down, just the top of it visible behind the coupe.  She has to call twice, three times, possibly enough reach in and kill the music before his head snaps up.

"Huh?" he said.  And then: "Oh.  What?  Okay."

They go into the city.  It's the first time he's taken a ride in her truck, and the first time she's driven, period.  He doesn't change; he did get cleaned up, though, washing errant flecks of paint off.  Tossed his hoodie on, too.  Half an hour or an hour later they're pulling up to the hipper parts of town, the sort of place where restaurants boast cuisines from all over the world; where record stores have taglines like FIERCELY INDEPENDENT SINCE 1983.  Erich looks out the window, interested.  He doesn't come around here often.

When they get out, Drew buttons up that pretty red coat of hers.  Erich is privately amused: he wonders if it makes him the Big Bad Wolf.  She reassures him, and he glances sidelong at her.

"You don't know that about me," he counters.  "For all you know I'm a regular at," he glances across the street, "the Manhandler Saloon."

He takes the door from her.  Nods her in.  Follows.

Drew RoscoeFun Fact:  One Halloween a few years ago Drew had gone in costume to a party along with her Kinfolk friend, Lonna.  Lonna had been Little Red Riding Hood, and Drew had been the Big Bad Wolf.  It was fun irony, and a fun night.  Well, the first half.  The night had been fun up until a couple of Fomori decided to spring forward after Kinfolk in a night club.  Drew had put them down with a gun out of a woman's handbag.  Somewhere in Chicago, spirits held and whispered stories quietly about the Kinswoman who dug her knee into a monster's chest, risked her fingers by prying his jaws open, and jammed the barrel of the handgun into his mouth before pulling the trigger.

Most nights Drew liked to consider herself the Big Bad Wolf, but when Wolves were actually around that title was relinquished and the red hood would go up.

Like tonight.

The quip Erich had about the Manhandler Saloon across the street was met with quiet laughter from the Kinfolk, and she went on to explain herself while Erich took the door and held it so they could walk inside-- her first, him bringing up the rear.  "I meant in general.  It's usually crowded, loud, hot, smells like a bunch of bodies, and dark.  All of that put together tends to either put you all--" and of course he knows she means Garou when she makes the generalization-- "on edge.  Or, once or twice from what I've seen, just brings the predator too far out to play.  It's kinda never been a good choice in my experience."

Inside the lighting is dim, as lighting in bars always is.  It's built narrow, deeper than it is wide.  The bar's up against the left side of the wall, there's a television showing sports news on mute with the captions on, and a couple of people lining the bar with one or two of the booths lining the other side of the wall occupied.  Largely, though, as is expected on a Tuesday night, the place was pretty much vacant.  At the far back are a couple of tables, more booths, two pool tables, a dart board, a jukebox, and the bathrooms.  Drew nodded politely to the bartender and led them toward the back-- it was always the best place for Garou and/or Kinfolk to be, as the conversations they tended to have simply weren't suited for eavesdropping ears.

Drew chose a booth for them and removed her gloves and coat, folding them over and tossing them into the corner of the booth bench.  Without the coat, she was dressed in a pair of dark-wash jeans that fit comfortably, but attractively enough.  The cuffs of these jeans were tucked into mid-calf height brown boots with low heels (he's seen her wear these before-- Drew was not a girl with an endless supply of shoes in her closet).  Her top was a clingy long-sleeved navy blue number with thin white horizontal stripes slashing through it.  Her hair was left down, brushed out and relatively straight save for errant waves and kinks here and there.  She tucked her hair back behind her ears when the hood was down to get it out of her face, and settled into the booth.

"Car looks like it's coming along pretty nicely.  Gotta say, I didn't really comprehend how much work goes into repainting a car when ya started."  The tone was offhand, the sort that came with making conversation rather than making a point.  She took a drink menu from where it sat propped up on a tripod against the wall's edge of the tabletop and flipped it open to view the selection.

Erich ReinhardtErich doesn't know Drew's history.  He's no Galliard.  He's not even a Fenrir.  If he had been either, he might've heard.  There are stories out there about her.  The shit she's done.  The shit she's killed.  The wolves she's loved, and the one that was her mate.  All that.

He's not privy to those secrets.  He knows a little about her past, but only because she's told him.  He knows she's a widow at the ripe old age of twenty...what?  Two?  Three?  He knows she has no kids, has no family.  And he knows -- not because she told him, but because he realized it in a raw and aching moment -- that she misses the family she had.  And the one she could have had.

Still.  Bottom line is: he doesn't know her very well.  And vice versa.  Maybe that's why she invited him out tonight.  They're friends, aren't they?  Friends should know each other.

She finds a booth.  He wonders if she's been here before.  He takes his hoodie off.  It's thin compared to her clothing, but then Garou burned so much hotter.  He wads it up and tosses it into the corner the way he did at that Mexican diner; then he slides into the booth, plucks the menu out of the tripod while Drew peruses the drinks list, and looks over the edibles.

"Well, I'm sure dumping a bucket of paint over it wouldn't have taken any time at all," Erich says.  "But that car's the nicest thing in the world that I can call mine.  So I'd rather it not look like shit."

Chicken tenders, he decides.  And closes the menu, sliding it over to her, taking the drinks list from her when she's done with it.

"Almost done though," he adds, and tilts her a crooked smile.  "You'll get your shed back soon.  Not to worry."

Drew Roscoe"Eh, I wasn't using it.  The truck doesn't even fit in the damn thing, it's too tall."  She grinned across the table to Erich, and traded menus with him when he'd finished picking his food.  Drew flipped through the pages of the eats menu herself and decided that nachos would be best.  She'd eaten an early dinner and wasn't particularly hungry, but how could you sit at a booth in a bar without some sort of bar food to go along with your drink?

They were given another minute or two before a woman somewhere in her mid-twenties with curly black hair twisted back into a bun, a full sleeve of colorful tattoos on one arm and a septum piercing came over to take their order.  Her face was dull and bored, but her eyes were bright and very alert of Erich in particular.  Natural caution made it impossible not to be.  Drew politely requested the plate of nachos she'd decided on along with a pint of some dark ale or another that they had on tap.  The instant Erich was done ordering the waitress whisked away to another table, happy to get away from the table in the back with the dark current of violence swirling about it.

"So," Drew started onto the conversation again, apparently damn determined to find a topic that they could talk on for more than two or three sentences.  "Did you ever find your tribemates?  I think you're the only one of your group that I've met out here."  To be fair, she didn't get out too much, but that didn't make her statement inaccurate.

Erich ReinhardtIt's natural to want to find a reasonable conversation topic.  No one wants to sit in an awkward silence -- and the truth is, since the last conversation they had on that street halfway between Browntown and Drew's place, every silence between them has the potential to be awkward now.  The topic Drew picks, though, seems to put Erich in a dark mood.  Immediately his smile folds up; his brow furrows.  Across the booth from her, the young Ahroun shifts in his seat, suddenly disgruntled.

"Yeah," he says shortly.

That's all for a while.  Chatter goes on around them.  A bunch of dudebros one table over, roaringly obnoxious, drawing an irritated over-the-shoulder glance from Erich.  A couple a few tables down, dancing the age-old tango of romance.  Meanwhile Erich plays with a coaster, sliding it back and forth between his big hands.

Stops it, eventually.  Catches it under his fingertips, his nostrils flaring as he inhales.

"There was a Shadow Moot.  Basically a tribal moot, 'cept we have a rite involved that makes it all official and secretive and crap.  It's bullshit.  The rite, and the moot itself.  Whole thing was bullshit.  Met a bunch of others, but everyone seemed mostly concerned about looking like a badass.  Don't think anything got accomplished at all."

A beat of pause.  "Met a Ragabash too.  Not just at the moot.  Ran into her a few times now."  A wry flick of his eyebrow.  "Think she wants to be friends."

Drew RoscoeThe mood darkened around the stormy (by stereotype more than anything else Drew has seen so far) Ahroun when the topic of his tribemates came up, and he answered with a short 'Yeah' and let the conversation die for a second.  Drew's eyebrows flicked upward in curiosity, but she didn't press the topic.  She was pretty good at reading social cues like this, after all.

So, for a minute, they listen to the chatter of the bar.  Erich glanced at a group of loud young men in irritation, past them for a moment to a couple reaching for hands across the table.  Drew seemed content to look at the TV for that time and frown ever-so-slightly at the conversation happening on the sports news channel about how her home team, the Chicago Bears, had performed so poorly over the weekend in their game against the Houston Texans.

Before too long, though, Drew's attention is drawn back to the Shadow Lord with the face of a Fenrir as he goes on to explain what had happened at the moot, and how he met a Ragabash who wants to be friends.
"So be friends?  It's good to have connections within your tribe.  What are we without our Kinsmen, after all?"  She shrugged one shoulder, the gesture rolling, and swept her fingers through her hair, securing it behind her ears again with a motion that was more habit than practical thought anymore.  From there she tugged at the shoulders of her shirt, tugged up the white undershirt that peeked out through the low v-cut of the shirt she was wearing, then tucked her hands into her lap so they wouldn't fidget.

"Sucks that the meeting didn't really... assure you of the way things are going with your people out here.  I've experienced that, it's pretty damn disheartening to find that you don't even like the folks you're supposed to call your own."  There's a pause, a beat, a thump of blood in veins, and Drew met Erich's eye and raised an eyebrow.  "Do you think the New Moon wants you to make a pack with her?"

Erich Reinhardt"Who knows what the fuck she wants.  She's a slippery one and I don't trust her."

Well.  So much for that.  Erich sits back in his side of the booth.  The seat next to Drew indents: he's put his foot up there, stretching his leg out under the table.

"Anyway," he adds, "I'm not really the social type.  I know that shocks the fuck out of you, being quite the family girl yourself."

Drew Roscoe"That's fair," was Drew's quiet answer when Erich stated quite firmly and frankly that he didn't care what this Ragabash wanted because he didn't trust her.  Brown eyes hopped away from blue ones to instead investigate the shoe on the bench beside her.  They then hopped to the other side, as though she was pretty sure a shoe would show up there as well.  When it didn't, she grinned a little (mostly to herself) and looked back up to the Shadow Lord's face.

"Well yeah, I know you're not.  You don't want a pack or anything like that... but you still should be able to go to your own tribe and tribal leaders for... I don't know... guidance?  I guess?  Structure at the very goddamn least.  I would hope to be able to find that even if I weren't worried about making friends and housemates.  A tribe's only as strong as its members, yes, but without shared direction there's no point to all that strength.  There's supposed to be a leader there that you all can turn to-- or a panel of them, or something.  Sounds like whatever you found left much to be desired there."

Eyes dropped down to his shoe again, and this time hands followed.  She explained her actions briefly, off-handedly, by stating: "Rocks," and held the top of his shoe with one hand while the other dislodged pebbles and rocks from the driveway he'd been marching about on from the cracks of his shoe soles.

Erich Reinhardt"There's supposed to be," Erich replies, "but we're also supposed to be winning this war.  Truth is, I haven't found too many admirable authority figures in my life."

They're interrupted.  The waitress shows up.  Their orders get plunked down: a dark ale and nachos for Drew.  A hefeweizen and chicken tenders for Erich.  The Shadow Lord glances up at the waitress, nods a thank-you, then picks his brew up for a swallow.  Chases that with a big mouthful of chicken tenders, nudging the plate over toward Drew to share.  Generous guy, and all.

Meanwhile she's picking at his shoes.  And he's smiling across the table at her, a touch lazily, leaning back in his side of the booth.  "Drew Roscoe," he says; there's a fond note there.  "She who can't bear not doing something for someone else.  Stop that," he adds, "you gotta eat with those hands.  And you don't know where these boots have been."

Drew RoscoeFood and drinks arrive.  Both had ordered beer and plates of pretty standard bar-food, chicken tenders and nachos.  The waitress was prompt, the food was presentable, and the beer glasses were full.  She did her job well and got the hell out of there to let the beast and his petite lady-friend be alone to their booth in the back of the bar, because as long as she didn't see anything suspicious she wouldn't be responsible for anything suspicious-- like this viscerally violent feeling (because he wasn't doing or saying anything, and he didn't really look like much of a thug) man probably murdering the girl later that evening and hiding her where no one would find after snapping over a disagreement on what dressing is best on a salad.

"I think I've got an idea.  Gravel, shed, road, and jammed up the asses of enemies, then squashed down on their heads to make sure they don't get back up.  Anyway, I'm done."  This is announced as one last pebble is flicked out of the shoe and tumbles somewhere under the booth.  Drew scrubbed her hands and fingertips thoroughly enough (for her liking anyways) on the thighs of her jeans before snagging an offered chicken tender and, in turn, sliding her plate to the center of the table as well to share.

"You don't suppose the 'supposed to bes' are connected here, do you?  Maybe we ain't winning because we can't establish the right kind of leadership?"  She dunked the chicken strip in whatever sauce was provided (ranch, honey mustard, barbeque, she wasn't picky) and munched on it while waiting for his answer.

Erich Reinhardt"It's related and you know it is," Erich retorts.  "But even the humans have only had a handful of truly great leaders in all their history.  And there's about seven billion more of them than us."

A last pebble goes pinging off under the table.  He leaves his foot where it is, though: as though his half of the booth just wasn't big enough to contain him.  Him and all his rage.  Him and all his strength.  The waitress is far, far away now.  She can't stand to be in Erich's vicinity.  Some kinfolk can't even quite stand it.  Drew Roscoe, though, has iron under that diminutive exterior of hers.

"Anyway.  Didn't mean to start bitching and moaning.  Doesn't even really affect me.  I do my thing, the same I always have.  And I do my part where I can.  I'll say this for that Ragabash.  She knows where to turn up shit to kill."

Drew Roscoe"Yeah, but you guys are made of such greater stuff than regular humans are.  I remember you all better.  Your faces stand out more, your presence is stronger and... more correct, I guess.  Somewhere in this city, dwindling though our numbers are, there's gotta be at least a fistful of good leaders out there that we should be able to turn to."

With the chicken tender down, Drew chose to crunch on a nacho chip before picking up her glass of dark ale and taking a deep drink.  Drew not only was able to withstand Rage, but she seemed to have a good understanding of it.  It was no coincidence that Erich was invited out when the moon was absent from the sky.  She knew him for what he was when they met because she knew how Rage affected a body, a face, and the air around that person as a whole.  She took that understanding and rather than using it to avoid the dangers of Rage and protect herself, she instead used it to better tolerate and withstand such a force.
If you asked her why, she'd say because good Kinfolk don't flinch away from the people they were designed to be there for.  That was weak, and it was just plain rude on top of that.

"I asked, anyway.  You're allowed your frustrations, and who better to vent them to than someone who has no investment in your tribe meetings anyways?"

Erich Reinhardt"Not to mention," Erich puts in, sardonic, "the one who almost had me convinced that family ties were a good and necessary thing."

He picks up his hefeweizen.  He takes another slug of it, and then grabs a chicken tender himself.  Turns out Erich's a honey mustard sort of guy.  He breaks the deep-fried bit of poultry in half between his hands, dips one half at a time.  Drew's never seen him eat anything but meat, but he certainly is a voracious carnivore: the tenders go down his throat quick as a blink, and then he leans sideways to snag a napkin from the holder.

"You're always so forgiving of others' faults," he says, sinking back into his place.  "Do you ever get angry, Miz Roscoe?"

Drew Roscoe
Drew's nibbling at nachos again when Erich asks if she ever gets angry.  This intices a smirk to curl on naturally pink lips, and eyes flipped up from the nacho plate, where she was making sure there were black olives on the chip she was bringing to her mouth, to Erich's face.

"You have to ask?  Remember what family I'm from."  Drew grinned, popped the cheese-and-black-olive loaded chip into her mouth, and washed it down with a drink of her beer.  She wagged her finger some at the Shadow Lord, indicating that she had more to say when she was done chewing.  Once the nacho had been properly chewed and swallowed, she launched into story.

"Back in Chicago there was this Child'a'Gaia Kinfolk that couldn't take care of herself to save her ass, and my Jarl had asked me to take this gal into my home and take care of her and her babies.  Now this lady had a baby already, like not even six months old, and was pregnant again.  Couldn't find work, didn't want to in the first place, and wasn't even seeking help from her own Tribe.  Instead, when I went to find this gal, I found her being a fuckin' housekeeper for a Shadow Lord, right?

"Well, I didn't want her in my house for any number of reasons, but I was willing to throw some funds her way to get her into an apartment or something, and give that place to her to live until she could find a job.  But she shot me down, and then took offense to my even offering.  So, I run into her in some cafe a few days later and she's giving me the evil eye the whole time we're there with some mutual friends.  So I ask her outside, and ask her what the hell her problem is.

"She goes on to tell me that I don't know how to be a proper Kin, that I don't understand the value of having and raising children.  She gets hurt and pissy and starts bleating about how hard her past was and how I don't know what it's like to be in her shoes when I tell her flat-out that if she can't afford to take care of her own kids then she shouldn't be having them rapid-fire like that."  Drew took another drink from her beer glass, finishing it with this last swig, and set it on the edge of the booth table.  "It ended in fists.  She tried to hit me, I swung at her and clipped her cheek, and then someone got in-between us.  So, yeah, I get angry, and I fight about it.  Just in odd situations-- like when faced with dumb bimbos who can't maintain their baby-pumpin' lifestyles."

Erich Reinhardt"I do remember," Erich retorts while Drew is doing her best to Not Talk With Her Mouth Full.  "That's why I'm surprised in the first place.  Fenrir girl like you, I'm surprised every time I don't wake up in your guest room with a gun in my face."  He pops a chicken tender in; he doesn't bother to Not Talk With His Mouth Full.  "For snoring too loud, or something."

By then she's able to talk again.  He's washing down his chicken'n'dip with a mouthful of beer.  She gets around to fuckin' housekeeper for a Shadow Lord and he gives her a look for mock warning.  She gets to the end and he laughs aloud, and loudly at that.

"You got in a fistfight with a pregnant chick?  Didja win?  I bet the Children of Gaia were all up your ass about that.  Y'know, in their passive-aggressive let's-all-be-friends way."

Drew Roscoe"Surprisingly, no."

Drew was grinning, clearly pleased with her story and the fact that Erich laughed (and not just a little, quiet chuckle of courtesy either, but a full laugh that came from the belly) from her telling it.  Another nacho was munched on before she leaned back, away from the plate, and took a napkin up in her hands to crease and rub the edges.  Drew had busy fingers, you see, she was used to working and doing things with her hands so keeping them still was awkward and uncomfortable for her.

"I had a talk with my Jarl that night, and I suppose I was honest enough about the fact that I fucked up -- and I totally know I did, but didn't feel bad about it -- that she pretty much just told me to keep away from that Gaian Kin and mind my own."  One shoulder lifted and dropped in a shrug and she left the story there.  Another recollection of anger came forward after a couple of seconds slipped away to thought.

"Oh.  And when I found out about Joe, the guy that told me was just... really dick-ish about it.  Shrugged his death off and asked me why I was mated to him in the first place.  This was in a bar where I had to track him down to ask him where my mate had gone that he told me.  So I broke a beer bottle and got in at least one gash before I got knocked out."  This story is told simply, without sadness seeping into her eyes and voice, or a solemn air flooding the booth they shared.  More than anything she was expressing how the Wolves in the West are assholes.

Erich ReinhardtThat changes the mood.  Erich's humor fades; his eyes go to his food, his drink.  Silence unfurls for a while, enough for him to grow aware of conversational chatter around them, music in the background that no one's paying attention to.  He nurses a long sip of his beer, and then looks at Drew again.

"What happened with your man, anyway?"  He's quieter now.  "Don't think I ever asked.  Just assumed he died in battle like every other Son of Fenris out there."

Drew RoscoeDrew was trying not to let the mood change, tried to put a casual spin on mentioning her deceased mate in the telling of a story, but Erich (child of Storm and Thunder) went solemn and dropped his eyes from Drew's, sureveying the good laid out on the table before him instead.  After a minute of shared quiet he took a drink of his beer and, looking back up to the Kinfolk across the way from him, asked how Joe had died.

"He was murdered," she told him without hesitation.  The resolve in her voice made it difficult to disbelieve her.  And why would he, anyways?  Her brown eyes held Erich's for a second, like she could convince him of the truth in that statement with her gaze as much as her words.  When she started talking again, her eyes dropped to the napkin that she was creasing and smoothing repetitively.

"Joe was a member of the Swords of Heimdall camp.  From what I understand, that's a pretty bad thing to be.  He was ostracised for it.  And, yeah, he was racist and a bit of a purist, but that didn't make him a bad Fenrir.  If someone was Strong, it didn't matter to him in the end of it.  He was a damn fine Jarl to Chicago, a good Alpha to his pack, and a good Mate.

"The folks in Seattle didn't agree.  From what I understand they put him on trial for his Camp, told him that he had to renounce all of his rank and glory and start from scratch, otherwise they'd kill him.  Joe was proud.  He spat on their feet, sneered and laughed and I hope to hell killed two or three on his way down into the earth."

There's fire in Drew's eyes and voice as she tells Joe's tale.  This isn't the kind of thing that's forgiven, ever.  She's also not going to be told that those who put Joe on trial were right to do so.  That's plain as day to see.
Story told, Drew looked away, found the waitress, and reached over to lift her empty glass to indicate she'd like a refill.

Erich ReinhardtSword of Heimdall, she says.  Racist, purist, a bad thing to be.  Strong, too, she says.  A good Jarl, a good Alpha, a good mate to her.

There are people who would look at Drew with pity now.  Men and women who would look at her with sad eyes and say things like oh, honey, can't you see him for the monster he was?  can't you see you're lucky to be rid of him?  And there are people who -- perhaps more disturbingly -- would look at Drew with a new sort of recognition, as though her mate's associations tainted her as well.  Who might start muttering things about the master race and needing to get on top again, needing to get this country under control, can you believe there's a monkey in the white house.

To be sure, Erich's looks would put him more easily in the latter category.  Just look at him.  The Swords would have been glad to have him.  Would have made him their posterboy, put a goddamn banner in one of his big hands, a hammer in the other.  So fucking Aryan: the pale skin, pale eyes, pale hair.  He's not a Sword, though.  He's not a Fenrir, even, and if nothing else -- he understands that things are never black and white.

It's a while before he answers.  And when he does, it's quiet; slow.  "The Swords," he says, "were still out in force when I was a kid.  I saw some of the shit they did once.  Heard about lots more.  They weren't good people, Drew.  They were a growing Wyrm-cancer in your tribe, and the Fenrir were right to stamp 'em out before they turned into another Silver Spiral deal.

"I don't know the story with your man.  Could be he was a good Garou, and we're weaker for his loss.  Could be they just got to him early and he never stopped to think about it.  Could be he didn't even really believe by the end, and he was just defending his pride.  But the Fenrir don't see shades of grey and they don't take well to being told no.  He and his tribesmen made a call that day.  He decided not to renounce.  They decided to kill him."

A pause.

"The good and the bad," he adds then, "aren't always mutually exclusive.  Whatever your man's strengths and glories, he was part of a camp that was headed straight for Malfeas.  And whatever his alliances, he was still, as you say, a good son of Fenris.  And your mate.  It is what it is.  You can't sugarcoat either side.  If there's some cosmic balance that decides whether a man's good in nature or bad, it's not for us to tip."

Drew RoscoeErich explained to Drew why the Swords of Heimdall were such a bad thing, and told her that they were going to the Wyrm and it's a good thing that the camp has largely been stamped out.  He went on to express that this didn't necessarily mean that Joe was bad because he didn't know him, but the camp certainly was.  Drew nodded thankfully to the waitress when she quickly dropped a refill of Drew's dark ale off at the table, then took the beer in her hand and had another deep drink from the fresh pint.

Drew was good at listening, she let Erich finish.  But it seems she'd already made up her mind before he was even done talking, because when he finished she was shaking her head to help him close up his last sentence.
"Doesn't matter who raised him up.  I thought it was terrible, all the hate and the marks on him.  I got to know him better.  I'm not defending his camp, and I won't ever.  But Joe was so much more than any title given to him, or that he gave himself.  Doesn't matter who's good or bad, what matters is that he's gone, that he was gone too early, and that he didn't go right.

"Thomas is puttin' his soul to rest right now.  I'm hoping that at least sets it as right as it can be."
Drew's defense petered out there.  She abandoned her napkin, folded and smoothed and fraying at its paper edges now, and instead wrapped both hands about her pint glass and held it near her face like she could mask her mouth behind it.  Eyes drifted about Erich's face as she spoke to him, and when she finished they relaxed down to look someplace more level to her height, and settled on his collarbone as a result.
"....Don't suppose we can talk about something else and keep the night cheery, huh?"

Erich ReinhardtThere's this at least: he doesn't argue with her.  She doesn't argue with him, either.  Could be there's nothing to argue about, really; they're more or less on the same page.  There's good; there's bad.  And for Drew, no matter the bad, the good was there, and worth it, and worth holding on to longer than she had it.  Had him.
And she's his mate, after all.  His widow.  Erich supposes if anyone had the right to make that call, it'd be her.  And maybe this mysterious Thomas who came around speaking of carrying grief and burying memories.

The conversation dies with Drew's defense.  Erich looks down to find most of his chicken gone, which is no surprise; he's a ridiculous carnivore, capable of putting away nearly obscene amounts of meat.  Drew's only seen him in wolf-form the once, but that looked like a flesheating beast too, shaggy of fur and sharp of tooth.  As the silence unspools, Erich picks up another piece of chicken, breaks it in half, and offers Drew half.  It's an unconsciously animal gesture of reconciliation.

The smile he offers is wry.  "We seem to kinda bounce between the two, don't we?" he remarks.  "One minute we're laughing about something, and the next we're mourning something.  Guess we both carry a lot of memories around."

Drew RoscoeQuiet settles between them once more after Drew asks if they could find another subject.  That didn't quite happen, not immediately, but at least he didn't press the matter of her dead mate's camp-alliances and character any further.  Instead they sit in silence that existed only within their booth, the sounds of the bar (filling up a little more since they entered, but still not necessarily crowded) only muffled background noise that wasn't worth making sense of.

Drew's eyes hopped up when a hand reached to the center of the table to offer her half of the last chicken tender, and her lips quirked into a small, soft smile at the gesture.  They continued upward from his hand to his face, and she reached out to accept the offering.  Her answer to his comment is a quiet half-humored huff of air and to dunk the piece of chicken she was given in the honey mustard sauce.

"Well, we only ever seem to talk about mine.  You haven't let go of too much about your own history."  A bite of chicken was taken, and after chewing and swallowing she continued.  "We do bounce back and forth.  I'm okay with that.  We don't talk about your history so much as where you're going.  I'm okay with that too, if you're not comfortable disclosing, or if you think your history's too boring for sharing.  I'm pretty sure it isn't, though."

With that said, she worried more about eating the rest of the chicken he'd handed over to her and let him decide how he wanted to proceed from there.

Erich Reinhardt"Well, there's not too much to tell on my end," Erich says.  "Think you already know the highlights.  I come from Nebraska.  I grew up on a farm.  Everyone in my whole family's Fenrir, 'cept me.  I'm like the gay nephew, 'cept I actually have a gay cousin and he still gets invited home for Thanksgiving."

Humor blunts that edge, but it still digs into him.  Seems Erich Reinhardt knows a thing or two about being ostracized.

"I have a sister," he adds.  "Guess you don't know that yet."  He thinks another moment.  "I got named a few months after my Rite of Passage, by some Shadow Lord who ran on a few hunts with me.  Another lone wolf.  Think he was a Judge, or maybe a Lightbringer.  One of those flying-solo types.  That was years ago.  I've been Cliath a long time.  Guess when you drift around and don't really put roots down, word of your deeds doesn't really get around.

"That's about it, really.  You want to know anything else, you can ask anytime.  I'll probably answer."

Drew RoscoeWhile Erich told his abbreviated story, Drew settled more forward than backward, leaning in toward the blond-haired Shadow Lord, toward the tabletop.  One elbow found the table's edge and her chin settled into her palm, fingers curling about her jawline as she heard his bulletpointed story.

He concluded by inviting her to ask any questions she could think of at any time.  Said he would probably answer.  The Kinfolk smiled loosely, the expression perhaps the tiniest influenced by the pint and a quarter that the petite woman had consumed.

She was quiet for beat when he'd stopped talking, and when she spoke up it was with a brief glance past Erich's ear, to the bar that was filling slowly but steadily behind him.  "Think we could pay and go?  I'm ready for air again, I think."

Erich ReinhardtErich smiles, a touch lazy, more than a touch fond.  "Drink going to your head, Miss Roscoe?"

The unfortunate waitress is flagged down again, but this time they have good news for her: they want their check.  Erich finishes his drink as it's getting delivered.  She'd said something about drinks being on her tonight, but when the tab comes he won't hear of it; he puts down money for his share all the same.  He's already occupying her shed and sometimes her guestroom, he says.

Then they're wandering out on the street, leaving the heat and the noise of the bar behind.  It's getting late enough that the nightlife crowd is out: twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, yuppies, college kids, ex-frat-brothers stuck in the mentality.  Out on the street Erich shrugs into his hoodie, then glances at Drew.

"So.  Are we heading back to the sticks again?"  Scurrying, he wanted to say; doesn't, though.  Might sound like peer pressure or something.

Drew RoscoeThe jest about drink going to her head was shaken off with a small grin and by straightening up, removing her chin from the palm it rested in.  "In a warm way, not a dizzy way.  More fingertips and toes, which is probably a good thing for going outside."

The check came, and there was a moment of polite (enough) bickering about who would pay for what.  It ended with Erich paying for his share, because he wouldn't hear anything of it and Drew didn't believe in fighting over money.  So the check was closed, tip was left (Drew left more than the average person might, because she always believed that any server who could handle Garou at their table deserved a big tip), and the two headed out into the cold.

Drew was finishing snapping the buttons over the zipper of her coat as they stepped out, and glanced left then right before deciding that they could meander toward the truck.  She didn't pull up her hood or put on her gloves just yet, she was still warm enough from the bar that she didn't feel a need for such cold-weather accessories just yet.

"We can.  I was content to walk and talk.  The neighborhood's pretty, I like stretching my legs, and the company is nice to boot."

Erich Reinhardt"Really now."  Erich's eyebrows are raised so high his surprise has to be feigned.  "No longer worried about this straying into feels-like-a-real-date territory, I see."

He doesn't complain, though.  He looks up the street, then down.  Then he picks a direction -- heads down a sidestreet, glancing curiously into the windowfronts as they passed.

"Don't hear that often," he adds.  " 'Company is nice'.  The other day one of my tribesmen tried to recruit me for a pack by saying I can help them look scary by standing in their midst and foaming at the mouth.  I think he meant it as a good thing."

Drew Roscoe"I wasn't worried in the first place," Drew stated simply, and fell into step beside Erich to walk up the sidewalk with him.  There's a pause, a glance in both directions, then the Garou selected a side street to lead them along.  Drew was more than content to go along with him, to let him figure out what direction they would go in and maybe even how long they would wander (up to a point).

The comment about how someone approached him about joining a pack was answered with a small shrug from the Kinfolk.  "It's probably because you're a Full Moon, and that's all that they're seeing of you."

Again, as was becoming Drew's habit with Erich, she went quiet in a way that suggested she was chewing on her words and deciding whether they should be said or not.  As was also usual, she decided it was better to speak her mind than hold back.  By this point she figured Erich'd just call her out for having something to say and not saying it anyways.  "Is it bad?  I mean, that I'd be happy to call this a date?"

One eyebrow was lifted a touch higher than the other when she glanced up at him, the look sidelong instead of fully forward-facing.  She wasn't smiling when she asked that, probably because the question is so serious.  It could very well be a bad thing, after all.

Erich ReinhardtShe's not smiling.  Neither is he.  There's an immediate, irrepressible response - a quick glance her way.  It's not quite surprise.  They're not kids; neither of them is blind or stupid.  They wouldn't be alone together nearly so much if they didn't at least enjoy one another's company.

But her question's an honest one.  And it's a valid one.  It makes his brow knit; it makes his steps slow.  He stops, less than half a block down that quieter side-street he's led her down.  There's this to be said about hanging out with someone who can turn into nine feet of terror and death: one worries less about wandering down dark streets at night.  One worries less about stopping there on the street to talk; muggers become a non-issue.

"I don't know," he says.  "Depends how far ahead you're looking."

Drew RoscoeDrew didn't worry too much about dark streets at night.  She didn't go out without a gun in the back-holster she kept under her shirt in the first place.  She was very assured of her ability to draw and shoot her gun in a moment's noticed.  The typical things that people worried about in dark places-- muggers, rapists, people insane from a cocktail of drugs and chemicals-- the Kinfolk was hardly afraid of.  She's survived much worse, and she knew that the Much Worse could be found anywhere, so there was no point of being afraid of dark streets specifically.

It didn't hurt that she was there with a Garou either.  She had faith in the Ahroun, she had faith in herself to guard his back if he needed it.  They were as safe here as they would be anyplace else.

"Not terribly far.  The world changes in a month anymore.  Looking too far forward just gets...."  She struggled for the words for a second.  When he'd stopped walking, Drew traveled for another step or two, passing his side before stopping.  When she came to a stand still herself, she turned about to face the Ahroun, hands dipping into her coat pockets.  Her expression was uncertain, a touch worried, with a glimmer of some kind of hope.  Hoping she wouldn't have to tiptoe around rejection, gentle though it may be.  Hoping for affirmation, perhaps.  It was rough to pin that one down very precisely.

"It gets scary.  I'm taking it day-by-day anymore, just because I have no goddamn idea what's far ahead."

Erich ReinhardtA long time ago --

well; a long time by their standards, anyway.  She's right.  The world changes day to day.  A month is an eternity.  So; an eternity or more ago, he said something.  Something about how under the good-little-kin and the tough-little-Fenrir veneer lay something a little more profound.  The courage to admit vulnerability.  A disarming honesty, even when the truth was painful.

And there it is again.  No bluster, no fronting.  Just truth: in her words, in her voice, in her face.  The hope there kills him; slices right through him.  He smiles, but it's lopsided and a little pained, and then he reaches out and wraps one of those big farmboy's hands behind her head.  Brings her forward until the space between them turns into a memory.

He's almost absurdly taller.  He bends to her; inches away, and then less.  A fool could see where this is headed.  They're not fools.  He smells like paint, to be frank: paint and machine grease, beer, the bar.  Sweat.  Maleness.  And beneath it all, a subtle, feral scent: wildgrass, treebark, earth, hot flesh, hot blood.
"You gotta stop doing that," he says, the slightest rough edge of laughter in his tone.  "You gotta stop taking your truth cannon to all my defenses."

Drew RoscoeA while ago, with a conversation over Mexican food in some joint that Erich had discovered, the Kinfolk's words found a way to strike within the Ahroun.  She displayed a kind of honesty that was strange to behold-- it wasn't something you came across anymore.  People were guarded and distrusting, they didn't talk like her.  That kind of honesty was somehow simultaneously revealing and frail, but tall and courageous both.

So when she does it again, admits so openly that she's afraid of the future because she can't begin to guess what it could hold, and that she does so facing him directly and not shying away from her own statement, it provokes response.  Erich reached across the two-step space between them and held the back of her head and neck, pulled forward and stooped down at the same time to bring her face nearer to his.

He smelled masculine, like a workshop and beer and some natural must lying underneath.  The air was warmer there, that near to him.  Her hands had moved from her pockets immediately when he drew her in, but now they hovered uncertainly between them.

You gotta stop doing that, he said with a touch of a chuckle to his voice.  He advised she needed to stop pulling his defenses away like that.  She breathed deep, nose near to his, and one hand touched fingertips-only to his stomach.  The touch wasn't certain whether it wanted to encourage him closer or keep him at bay.  Whatever doubt that may lay in fingertips was cast aside by leaning forward past the tiny space he'd left for her to close and pressing her mouth to his.

There was no sense in not knowing now.

Erich ReinhardtSo Drew surprises him after all.

Not with the touch.  That just makes him look down.  He can count the number of times she's touched him on one hand.  He doesn't think they even shook hands when they met.  This is no handshake; this is at once chaste and searingly intimate.  He can barely feel the contact.  Her fingers are so light.  He, on the other hand, is as unrelentingly hard of body and solid of bone as anyone might expect.  The flesh beneath his hoodie and his t-shirt has almost no give at all,

and he's looking down to see her hand on him, he's raising his chin again, and the truth is he was going to kiss her anyway, but he would have prefaced it.  A joke, a quip, something to blunt the edge and soothe the rawness of the moment.  Make it something that, if they decided they'd made a mistake ten minutes later or twelve hours later, they could simply laugh off.

She cuts him off at the pass, though.  The kiss is the same as the touch. Chaste; searingly intimate.  And that's when she surprises him -- can feel it, a tiny but unmistakable jolt all through his body like electricity passing.  It's instantaneous and then passing; his eyes close.  That contact solidifies.  He kisses her back, there on that street.  It's firm but undemanding; unafraid.

Drew RoscoeIt might have been safer to preface a test-kiss with some jibe of humor.  If nothing felt right about it, if the drive back to Browntown was terribly awkward it would be that much easier to write the whole thing off as an awkward mistake and go back to whatever was there previously-- the odd friendship and bouts of very honest sharing, a platonic companionship that just seemed to work in a way that couldn't be explained in any cementing, successful way.

Not that going back was impossible without the quip.  It just might have made the moment less heavy.
Perhaps she didn't want that levity, though.

So Erich, after half a second, leaned into her to return the kiss.  She inhaled the scent of him-- this near it wasn't the paint fumes in his clothes and hair or the beer on both their breaths that she was worried about so much as a smell that was very individual and natural and impossible for someone with a human nose to break down and define past a person's name.  She didn't press deeper or further, tongue didn't sneak into the picture.

But she did linger, several seconds or so, before tipping her head so her forehead touched his and their lips parted.  The hand not at his stomach came up to hold the side of his neck, and she kept her eyes closed as she asked quietly, and a touch breathily:  "We don't have to have a heavy conversation about this right this second, do we?"

Erich ReinhardtErich doesn't press.  He doesn't try to kiss her mouth open; he doesn't throw her against the nearest wall and maul her.  It's not that he's incapable of such things, or that he's just so much a gentleman that he wouldn't.  He's not a gentleman.  Not always, anyway.  Drew's seen him with some random blonde in the Browntown bar.  She's seen, even, the thoughtless swagger in his brief interaction with Anneliese.

He's all but accused Drew of putting on a front -- the good little kinswoman and all that -- but the truth is she's not the only one that wears a couple masks.  There's a reason his potential-maybe-possibly packmates think he's the frothing berserker, the muscle in their midst.  There's a reason sometimes, even with Drew, he's cocky and quicktongued, always fending off every sign of vulnerability with a smart remark.

That's the persona he wears very easily.  It's a defense and an offense both; an impenetrable armor of confidence and cool.  What's a little harder to understand is why, and how, she's slipped under it.  It's hard to imagine Erich stepping out of some bar with some blonde and kissing her so gently in a backstreet.  It's hard to imagine him stopping the way he does:

leaning into her just a second after she's drawn back, reluctant to part, and then letting her go after all.  Her brow still touches his.  He licks his lips, an unconscious reflex.

What she says makes his mouth move, a quiet huff of a laugh.  "Let's not," he whispers.  His free hand comes to her waist; he moves a half-step closer, nearly flush against her now; kisses her again.  It's a little deeper this time; his hand is a solid pressure at her side, the warmth of his palm lost to the layers of her clothing.

Drew Roscoe
Drew didn't really know what to expect from Erich in an intimate situation such as this.  She knew that people, Wolves especially, were different than what their exterior appearance and demeanor would suggest.  The Ahroun Shadow Lord, all muscled shoulders and Lone Wolf arrogance, would typically be rough and demanding according to stereotype.  Drew knew better, though, than to think she could anticipate his reactions.  He swaggered in some instances, was stoney in others.  This didn't mean a gentle hand was impossible, though.

She wasn't surprised when he let her pull away.  She would be lying if she wasn't a little surprised when he pulled her nearer still for a second kiss, though.

His hand grasped at her waist, finding the curve between waist and hip through the padded material of her winter coat.  His hands were big and her frame small enough that his fingertips would come to find the edge of something hard strapped to the small of her back.  He should know that it's a handgun, kept under her coat and shirt.  A Kinfolk with her Tribe and her history probably didn't go anywhere without one, and it was easy to understand why.

His kiss delved deeper, lips firmer to hers this time.  Drew had just enough time to smile, the expression wispy, before mouths met again and she was pulled so her hand was caught between his stomach and hers.  She pulled it free, letting their stomachs and chest touch, and instead moved her arms about him, hands both laying across his back now instead.  Her mouth relaxed to his, lips parted enough for tongue to touch lip questioningly (seeking permission, or perhaps granting it?), and she huffed a quiet little sigh that would mingle immediately with his breath.

Romance wasn't really the impression given to anyone that might pass by the side street.  It would look much more like a man mauling some poor stupid girl there in the shadows barely touched by dim lights from windows above.  The Rage that swept and curled in the air like puffs of breath from mouths would drive away anyone who felt it might be their responsibility to intervene, though.  While the setting wasn't storybook, it was secluded enough to serve for this.

Erich ReinhardtThat smile of hers is more felt than seen.  The same with his -- the corners of his mouth abruptly quirking as his fingertips bump the unmistakable weapon at her back.  Fenrir girls, he thinks to himself, fond, a little nostalgic.  Then her mouth opens, and his thoughts dissipate.

That first kiss might have passed as tentative.  This is different.  A relentless gravity seizes him, pulls him down.  His hand shifts as she does; they move closer still.  She wraps her arms around him, his upper back so broad against her reach; his hand seems to span her back in contrast.  Tongues touch, jolting a panted breath out of him, a harsher counterpoint to her sigh.  There's a beat of pause - a searing moment in the shadows between them, his eyes flickering open, pale blue even in this light.

Then they close again.  He goes back for more.  His hands are both at her back; he presses her closer.  The way he kisses her tells her this can't possibly be the first time he's thought about it.  There's hunger in the way he bends to her, something feral and focused about the curve of head and neck and back.  He catches himself, manages to catch himself, before he reaches down and simply lifts her off the sidewalk.

Turns his head to the side, a little.  Like coming up for air.  His temple touches her forehead still, a steady and heavy contact.  He doesn't open his eyes as he turns back, kisses the corner of her mouth.
"We need to stop," he whispers, "before I drag you into an alley."

Drew RoscoeHis arms tighten, but he doesn't squeeze her too tightly.  She can feel the tension rolling for release in his back and shoulders.  The way he kissed her deep, touched his tongue to hers and panted once roughly, suggested a hunger stirred and awoken within him.  Sure, there'd been a growing closeness, but Drew didn't quite think that he'd been thinking this moment over at all, or anticipating it in any real way.  Perhaps this was the ignorance of femininity that has her a little surprised by his intensity.

This isn't to say that she doesn't meet his passion in return, though.  He leaned into her, curled himself around her smaller shape, hands seizing her back without being worried by the gun strapped above her waistband, fingers gripping and holding her near.  When she exhaled (she had been holding her breath without realizing it), her breath shuddered some as it made its way from her lungs and she tipped her hips to his, letting her stomach press flush to his through their outerwear.  Reluctance be damned, she figured, and if no one was around to scold them then why should they be ashamed?

A dozen long moments of this pass before Erich turns his head to the side, breaking the kiss and pressing the crown of his head to hers.  She breathed deep, lips still parted, cheeks flushed from him moreso than the cold at this point.  He whispered that they needed to stop or he'd have to find them a dark place to be alone, and this elicited a breathy chuckle from the Kinfolk.  One hand dropped to his waist, holding just above his hip, and the other touched the side of his face, fingers stroking from his cheekbone to jawline before she dropped them to hold onto his hoodie sleeve instead.

"Then we oughta stop," she confirmed, but did not disengage entirely from him, not just yet at least.  It was nice to have him near, to feel his warmth, to feel the lick of Rage lick past and around her-- encompassing rather than buffering within this proximity, it seemed.

"....Maybe we should get to walking again?"

Erich ReinhardtNo complaints from Erich when Drew doesn't draw back immediately.  They stay as they are for a moment.  Then his hold on her shifts.  He straightens, pulls her against his chest, holds her like that for a while.  His heartbeat is a deep, thunderous thing.

And his rage is potent.  Far more than the typical human can stand.  It burns under his skin.  It roars out from him like solar wind.  As close as she is, it surrounds and infuses her.  Calls, perhaps, to some bone-deep genetic memory in her that remembers all her past lives, all those lifetimes spent as a mate, a kin -- as a Garou, herself, with rage like his living in her own heart.

"Yeah."  It's almost more felt than heard, that word: the bass in his voice vibrating in his chest.  "Just gimme another minute."

Time goes by.  Then, reluctantly, he lets her go.  They draw apart.  His hand finds hers this time: his fingers thread through hers.  He looks at her a moment.  Doesn't quite know what to do with her, or himself.  He starts walking again.  No big drawn-out discussions right now, they'd agreed, but as his blood cools inevitable thoughts gather: her tribe, his.  All those who would, in fact, scold their faces off if they found out.

Drew RoscoeDrew had suggested that they go back to walking.  She figured it would be good to have their feet moving again.  Walking would make it easier to peel apart, would give their feet something to do.  Erich requested another minute, and the way her cheek moved against his when the muscles in her face formed a smile said that she would be just fine with that.

So he had straightened up some, moved his face away from hers, and instead wrapped one hand to the back of her head to tuck it against her chest.  She complied happily with this guidance and snuggled her head to his collarbone, arms wrapping about his waist with a small squeeze at first, then loose and comfortable.

They'd stand like that for a minute before his hand found hers and they turned to start walking again.  His fingers laced through hers, and she wriggled her hand free from his, but only so that her arm was behind his rather than in front of it.  With that detail corrected she intertwined her fingers to his once more, thumb settling on top of his own, and fell into pace beside him.

Quiet had gathered between the two again.  The only sound they made was that of the heavy soles of his boots and the low heels on hers thumping and clicking faintly on the pavement.  This gave them time to gather thoughts and wonder about consequences, directions, and distances.  They'd think like that long enough to reach the next intersection before Drew gave Erich's hand a small squeeze, gentling him out of his own thoughts so she could have his attention to speak to him.

"I love my Tribe.  I love our ways and traditions, and I've aspired for a while to be everything that they expect from a Kinfolk and more.  But I'd be lying if I said that I was worried enough about what they thought to shoo you away."

Erich ReinhardtIt makes Erich look down, quizzical, as Drew rearranges the clasp of their hands.  When he figures it out, he laughs.  "Perfectionist," he teases.

Then a quiet; each in their own thoughts.  The squeeze on his hand brings his eyes to her again, his eyebrows up in question.  They lower as she speaks; furrow a little, aching.  His mouth moves a little.  It's not quite a smile.

"Didn't think for a minute you would," he says.  "That's way too cowardly for your style.  If you shooed me off, it'd be your own damn choice."

A car swishes by at the intersection.  The light turns.  He steps off the curb with her, his hand firming a little on hers.  It's an odd little gesture, a touch of protectiveness as he leads her across the street.  On the other side he continues, "Doesn't mean the rest of your tribe will see it the same way, though.  They don't much like me as it is.  Doubt I'll earn any points dating one of their purebred kin."

Drew RoscoeThey'd wait for the light to change and give them permission to make safe way across the street.  When they stepped off the curb, Erich's large hand wrapped more securely about her own, grasp firming protectively.  She wondered for a moment how it would play out if that protectiveness against traffic needed to come into play, then decided, practically, they'd both scoot out of the way of whatever asshole nearly ran them over, and then she'd need to wait patiently while Erich dribbled the driver's head against their steering column for a minute or two before they could move on.

To what Drew had to say, Erich answered to let her know he wasn't worried about her shooing him off for her Tribe so much as what her Tribe would say and/or do when (not if, because Drew had long since grown used to the idea of spirits watching her for her Kinsmen when they couldn't be there to do so themselves) they figured out that a Shadow Lord had taken interest in her-- and a traitor no less.

To that, Drew shrugged her shoulders.  She didn't seem very worried.  "The only one that's had interest in me enough to come knocking has been Oma.  And I'm pretty sure that was just when she thought she could convince one of her boys to court me instead of his Black Fury woman.  Haven't really heard anything from any of them since."

She didn't pay mind to where they were walking, only kept note of the street signs so that she wouldn't be disoriented when they needed to find their way back to her truck.  For now, though, she was content to wander and talk.

"It would be nothing but hypocritical if they decided to take interest only when someone else does."

Erich ReinhardtErich laughs - one of his quick, unrestrained laughs.  "There are a hell lotta hypocrites in the world, then.  Damned if I haven't gotten interested in something just 'cause someone else wanted it too.

"Though," he adds a moment later, "I guess if one of theirs is chasing some Black Fury, they can't bitch too much if a Shadow Lord wants to chase one of theirs.  Whatever," there's a sort of decisiveness to that, "we can cross that bridge if we get to it.  We've been dating for about five minutes.  For all I know you'll be tired of me before the week's out."

The neighborhood's getting quieter as they go, commerce transitioning to residential.  Erich takes a right at the next block.  They pass a Trader Joe's, closed at this hour.  Next door's some little indie record shop, where Erich glances in through the windows.  A pair of hipsters are in there, listening to the Beatles.  Ironically.  Or something.

"Hear you talking like you're not worth much to the tribe a lot, though," he says.  "You shouldn't think that."

Drew Roscoe"Dating."  Drew repeated the word, and chuckled a little.  "Thomas and Joe used to tell me that our people don't date.  And I couldn't ever, ever wrap my head around how anyone's expected to go from zero to mated without any sort of middle ground to figure things out on."

They pass by a few shops, most closed, a few still open.  They pause at a record shop whose lights are still on to peer through the front window.  There's a small cluster of young adults there, passing a set of headphones around and nodding and talking about whatever it was they saw.  They dressed like a bunch of hipsters, in checkered shirts, scarves, and hats that wanted so very much to fall off the backs of their heads.  Drew watched them like someone at a zoo looking in the gorilla pen-- those kids seemed more like distant evolutionary relatives than anything else.  Their worlds were vastly different, after all.

Erich brings up what he perceives about Drew's sense of self-worth within her tribe, and Drew answered by offering a lopsided smile and nudged her arm against his to move them onward, away from the record store and along the sidewalk.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure of my own value, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm pretty awesome."  The smile turned to a crooked grin.  She was joking, but only to a point.  Drew was a Kinfolk well aware of her own worth, and she had been assured frequently enough to believe it fully that she was valuable.  "I just think that they're too busy to really be worried about the self-sufficient Kinfolk that doesn't cause trouble.  There's already some Kinfolk Matriarchs established here, I'm too new to challenge that in a community like this in anyone's minds.  So I'm just kinda.... shelved, I think.  Not given away, not looked at as less either.  Just not needed right now."

Erich Reinhardt"Dating," he repeats back at her, smirking now.  "You used the word first.  I'll call it 'sniffing around your skirts' if you prefer."

Nudged, he starts walking again.  There's a comfortable silence between them for a bit as he digests what she's said.  Then he crooks a grin at her.  "You are pretty awesome," he agrees.  "You cook, you shoot.  Though, you do get spooked by stray cats that go bump in the night."

He nods up at a ice cream shop up ahead.  No Baskins Robbins in this neighborhood; this is something independent and gourmet.  "Let's get some ice cream," he says.  "Make this feel like a proper skirtsniffing."

Drew Roscoe"Call it what you will.  It's just words."

Boot heels clunked quietly on the sidewalk, the sound too low and deep to qualify as a 'click', like a high-heeled shoe would.  Another bout of quiet had settled between them, and Drew was considering whether they should head back toward the truck or not and start driving back out into the country.  After all, it was getting a little late.  Not that Drew had to be up particularly early, but she was kind of an old maid in her sleeping habits these days.

Erich had slowed, though, right as Drew was thinking about putting her gloves on because the hand not wrapped up in his was getting chilled, and brought them to a shop in front of a small ice cream shop.  It was independently owned as most things in this neighborhood were, and probably churned on location too, given the nature of the Du Pont Circle culture.

"It wasn't a cat," she stated firmly enough.  "I heard metal scrape the gravel then.  You must've scared off whoever was skulking, but it sure wasn't a cat.  ...But yeah, ice cream sounds good."  Sure, it was around thirty-some degrees outside, but who could say no to ice cream?  She eased her fingers loose from his and brought her hands up to her face, cupping them over her mouth and nose.  She huffed a few breaths against her palms and rubbed them to the tip of her nose, which had gone pink and chilly from exposure, then reached to the door to pull it open for him to catch, as seemed to be their rhythm whenever entering an establishment.

Erich ReinhardtDrew sticks to her guns.  That's something he's learned pretty early on.  She insists that it wasn't a cat; she gets a curious glance, and a shrug.  "Well," he catches the door, "if it comes back we'll fuck it up."

That's the comment they enter on.  That's the comment he enters on: we'll fuck it up -- six-feet-something of rage and muscle looming through the door.  Small wonder the girl behind the register eyes them askance.  Farther in, the boy scooping the ice cream calls a faltering hello.

They're the only customers here at this hour.  Too damn cold, and they're far enough off the main streets that the buzzed crowds don't wander this far.  Erich stands in front of the freezer case, debating mint chip and butter pecan.  He ends up getting both: a double scoop on a waffle cone.

"I'm getting this," he says to Drew as she steps up to order.

Drew RoscoeThe pair enter the ice cream shop in the middle of a conversation, so the poor young people working the counter are given more reason to falter, because that conversation is the note of the pair of them fucking something up.  Coming from Drew, the cute little brunette with the contagious smile, it would be funny to imagine and easy to dismiss.  Coming from Erich, though, there was little doubt in anyone's mind that he damn well meant it.

Drew laughed in response and lifted her chin to unzip her coat, letting it hang open rather than shrugging the whole thing off and having to carry it through the shop with her.  Erich decided a double-scoop and mixing flavors would be best.  Drew was happy with a single-scoop in a cup of strawberry.  She'd stepped up to the counter, reaching for the debit card she'd tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, but Erich announced both to her and the girl working the register that he would be paying.  Again, Drew didn't pick fights over money, so she just smiled politely to the girl at the counter and made up for the cloud of Rage that enveloped her companion by being borderline saccharine with how sweet she was to the girl.

So Erich would pay, they'd get their ice cream, and Drew'd nod for them to pick a corner away from the counter to sit in.

"Ice cream seems downright 1950's as far as a date night concept goes.  Most kids our age go for coffee and talk about obscure bullshit.  You and me?  Ice cream and some weird amalgamation of battle stories and supernatural politics as of tonight."

Erich Reinhardt"Most kids our age slap a condom on and get busy," Erich retorts, "but you, Miss Roscoe, sleep at 9:30pm on weeknights.  I bet you have bunny slippers somewhere too.  So I figure ice cream's the way to go with you.  Now watch out, or I'll find us a hoedown or square dance or something next week."

He grins, biting in to his ice cream.  "Besides," he adds, "this is literally the only non-meat thing I'll eat.  And now you know my deep dark secret."

Drew RoscoeThe very blunt, and rather crude mention of what kids their age would normally do is met with a huff, and Drew set her ice cream cup on the table, then draped her coat on the back of her chair before settling down into her seat.  Without thought, she folded her right leg underneath of her when she sat, giving herself an extra inch and a half boost to sit more comfortably at a table that would otherwise be a smidge too high for her forearms to rest easily upon.

"First of all, don't knock a hoedown.  They're always loud, busy, warm, and smell like straw and good beer.  If you don't know how to enjoy a good hoedown, then you're missing out on a special part of life.  Second of all, I don't like the idea of belittling our first-founded frienship on gut-wrenches and whims and wants."
She paused to take a small bite of her strawberry ice cream, then continued on:  "I'm not saying I know about a long run.  I'm saying if there is one, I don't wanna fuck it up."

As for his (almost) strictly meat diet:  "You can't be serious that you won't eat cookies."
Because, as far as Drew was concerned, everyone loved cookies.

Erich ReinhardtThere's a serious conversation there between the quips and parries that are second nature to him; growingly familiar for her, too.  It's that conversation that he pays mind to first, his cone half-forgotten in his hand.

"I get that," he says.  He's relaxed in his seat, the same way she's seen him at dinner, at the bar, at her kitchen table.  Leaning back, slouching a bit; stretched out, lazing.  An animal in the prime of his life, with nothing to fear.  "I do.  I'm not subtly trying to hint anything here.  Tell you the truth, some part of me's almost ... wary of taking this beyond friendship.  I don't have a lot of friends.  I don't wanna lose a friend if there's nothing but stupid, momentary lust.

"I think there might be something more though.  So."  He's been around a wide circle; he gets back to the point.  "Yeah.  I don't wanna fuck it up either.  And I'm willing to take it a step at a time so we don't skid into fuckups."

Drew RoscoeDrew's eyes hop up from her cup with a single scoop in it and find Erich's while he takes the wide path around making his point.  As he spoke of uncertainties when it came to progressing friendship into anything else, mentioned that he didn't have many friends, and stated finally that he figured there was something there beyond friendship in the first place, Drew watched his face.  She'd glance to his mouth, jaw, and hair, but land back on his eyes in the end.

He really did look exactly like the poster boy of her Tribe.  She figured that had to have something to do with her pull toward him.

When he concluded that he was willing to go one step at a time down this brand new path, Drew smiled and spooned up another bite of ice cream before sticking the spoon back in the cup and sliding it to the middle of the table to offer a bite to him.  "I'm glad we're on the same page there.  'Cause I'm pretty sure that going to bed on the first night is some kind of death kiss to potential.  Happened before just to prove my point."

Erich ReinhardtHell knows what his pull to her is.  She's certainly not a posterboy of her own tribe, or of his.  Hair too dark for one.  Complexion not pale enough, nor olive enough, for the other.  Could attribute it to some ancestral pull: his blood and bones remembering her breeding, her scent.  Could just be what it is, though -- an attraction developing out of an unlikely friendship.

Erich looks at her cup with a touch of suspicion as it's offered: strawberry?  what is this devilry?  Then he takes a tiny spoonful, swallowing it like medicine.  "Mint and butter pecan," he says.  "That's where it's at.  This strawberry shit is awful."

Then his eyebrows go flying up.  "Wait," he's genuinely shocked, "did you just tell me you've had a one night stand?  You?"

Drew RoscoeShe chuckled at his reaction to tasting strawberry ice cream and dragged her cup back in front of her.  "Pecan and mint sounds weird enough to work, I will give you that.  But there's nothing awful about strawberry anything.  Especially preserves."  She took another bite of her ice cream, then grinned a little and shook her head when he inquired about her implied one-night-stand.

"No, no, it wasn't a one-night-stand.  It was myself and a Kin, and we were friends.  Got close, and the first night we owned up to any sort of attraction we went to bed."  She sniffed a little and pushed the sleeves of her long-sleeved shirt up to her elbows.  It was warm in the ice cream shop, an effort to welcome customers in and drive away the cold of the encroaching winter nights.

"It's just superstition, our going to bed didn't really ruin anything.  We kinda grew apart, and then I moved for work.  I realized that Kin aren't made for one another.  We're made for you all."

Erich ReinhardtThe chair creaks as Erich shifts in his seat.  "Gotta admit," he says, "I know I'm the one that asked, and I'm glad you can be honest with me and all, but -- it's fuckin' weird hearing you talk about your sorta-ex that you slept with."

She goes on -- explains that it didn't go anywhere because they grew apart.  Because something wasn't there; some supernatural draw, some gaia-mandated attraction.  Erich's eyes flick up when she says: we're made for you all.  Unbidden, the memory comes back to him -- that kiss on the dark street, tender, then heated.  He can remember how she felt against him, small, almost dainty.  A gun at her back.

His lips quirk.  He looks down at his cone and finds it melting.  Lifts it, sucks a dollop of ice cream off the side of his thumb, resumes eating it.  He's crunching into the cone now.

"I've never really been with a kin long enough to ... feel that sort of connection.  Y'know.  Dated or mated or been the significant-other of."  His shoulders lift and fall under his hoodie, which he unzips a bit in deference to the warmth in here.  "Anyway.  'Nough about old flings.

"I don't eat chocolate chip cookies."  The change in subject is about as smooth as sandpaper.  He knows it; his grin says he knows it.  "Think I liked 'em as a kid.  But ever since I changed, anything other than meat doesn't really agree with me anymore.  For ice cream, though, I'll take the risk."

Drew RoscoeErich shifted about, a little uncomfortable, and admitted it was weird for him to hear her talk about people she's slept with before.  That was met with a small grin and acknowledging lift of eyebrows, but she had continued to explain the situation further than that.  To express that she discovered Kinfolk to be incompatible on a basic, instinctual level.  She believed quite certainly that Kinfolk were there not because they were the babies that should have been Garou but didn't have the spiritual link with the Other World and the Moon to finish the job.  Rather, she believed they were born to be the counterparts of the Wolves-- lovers and partners and support all at once.  They did what Garou couldn't, while Garou worried about saving the world.

They were built for this.  It's why she found that no chemistry existed anywhere else.  It was biological and spiritual both.

A confession of having not had a significant relationship with a Kinfolk before had Drew looking curious and plainly surprised.  She clearly was interested in that revelation, but he didn't want to stay on the subject.  Respecting his wish, she finished her ice cream while he crunched on his cone, and licked her spoon before letting it rest in the empty paper bowl.  "Sincerely?  You get, like, digestive distress if you eat anything not meat?  Must have found your way closer to wolf than man somewhere down the line."

Her eyes hop to the kids behind the counter.  They look anxious, they're chattering at one another, trying to convince each other who should do something that neither of them want to do.  They're watching Drew and Erich, but mostly Erich, nervously.  Drew glanced to the window, squinted at backwards letters depicting hours of operation to potential customers on the sidewalk, then stood up and grabbed her coat.  "We should let these guys close their store.  We oughta get back out home too, anyway.  I was planning to be up by eight o' clock tomorrow morning anyways-- got a project that I should get finished for work."

Erich Reinhardt"Or maybe," Erich says, mock slyness, "I just figured out exactly how to get away with eating nothing but rare steak all the time."

The angle of his gaze shifts as she stands.  He stays where he is a moment longer, sprawled large and warm in his chair.  A glance at the two behind the counter, the boy high-school-aged, the girl half a decade or so older.  "All right," he says, and stands himself.  The zipper that had come down goes back up.  He raises a hand at the storekeeps: "Thanks."

They mutter something about having a good night.  At the door, Erich's hand is briefly at Drew's back, escorting her out.  His foot catches the door from her this time, jamming against the bottom to keep it open until he can bump it with his shoulder.  His hands, between her and his ice cream cone, are filled.
Out on the street, he takes her hand again.  His palm is warm, on the verge of hot.  Garou burn hotter than humans; they burn brighter, live shorter lives.  Gaia's shooting stars.

"I'll walk you to your bedroom door like a gentleman," he bargains as they start heading back, "if you kiss me goodnight and let me crash in your guestroom again."

Drew RoscoeThey bid their goodbyes and thanks to the kids that were there to work the closing shift at the ice cream shop, Erich with a one-handed salute and single word, Drew with that bright smile of hers and and apologetic mention of keeping them open too long.  With that said they were out the door, Erich bumping it open and keeping it that way with his shoulder so Drew could pass through after him.

Out on the sidewalk Drew took a second to gauge which direction she had to go in to get back to her truck.  She was figuring out to just cut around the block to return to the parking lot when the warmth of his hand closed around hers.  She responded by looking up at him, smiling, and lacing her fingers back through his.  The gesture of holding hands was small, simple, but comforting none the less.  When he touched fingers to hers, she was more than happy to comply and mate her palm to his.

"That sounds like a plan."  She took a moment to rest her head against his arm, just below the shoulder, then straightened up and started walking.

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

The truck drive was warm and comfortable.  The vehicle was new enough still that the heater kicked on without fuss or delay.  Back at the house, Drew'd pause only to drop a few flakes of food in the fish bowl, would putter around for conversation's sake in the front room, and be guided to her bedroom door not long after that.

The goodbye kiss that ended the evening was sweet and warm and lingering, and when her bedroom door closed between them the evening left would be filled with buzzing thoughts and warm chests and 'Oh jesus, what've we started?'

That could be left to be figured out in the next coming days.