A Favor [Erich]

Drew Roscoe
The evening has long-since fallen on the outskirts of Browntown.  The porch light of Drew's house is alight, as are a few of the windows within the house (blinds closed, as was typical), and the flood light set on a post above her garage/shed also throws dim but effective light across Drew's property.

This many hours after sundown the chill of a mid-autumn night has settled, encouraging people to get home, or to their pub, or friends' house, or what have you.  Certainly not to loiter outside, not unless you were having a cigarette or escaping relatives.  Drew, with no relatives in her house and no addictions to speak of, didn't have these excuses.  Yet she was still hanging out outside, standing at the side of her driveway and looking up at the moon through the clouds that would occasionally blot it from the sky.

She's properly defended against the chill, wearing an orange knit beanie over long brown hair that was left down to shield her neck from the breeze.  She was wearing her brown jacket, a pair of jeans, and scuffed black sneakers that she probably used for yardwork.  Her breath catches in the air only on particularly deep exhales, but other than that she is still and so is the night around her, left to her own thoughts and just begging to be interrupted on some jarring fashion or another.

ErichBeing outside gives Drew the distinct pleasure of being witness to Erich's bat out of hell tear down the country roads leading to her place.  And then a tight turn onto her drive, tires churning dirt.  And then a hard stop, the handbrake pulled up with an audible ratchet.

"I need a favor," he says.  He hasn't even gotten out yet.  He's just flung the door open, pulled the keys out of the ignition.  A sole stomps down on the driveway; then he rises out of the driver's seat.  "Pretty please."

Drew RoscoeDrew was snapped out of whatever trance she'd been in when the sound of a car engine roaring and car tires screaching interrupted her quiet.  Brown eyes sharpened, shot from the moon to the headlights coming up the road, and watched carefully.  The car was, thankfully, recognized before it had a chance to whip into her gravel driveway.  It was a good thing, because otherwise she would have raced for her truck and the shotgun within.

However, Erich's car was something she knew by sight, so she did no such thing as running for a weapon when gravel flew into her grass and the muscle car slammed to an abrupt halt precariously close behind her well-maintained (but kind of dusty) truck.  Rather, she took a few steps back into the yard and looked concerned, surprised, and a little bit annoyed.

But then the car door throws open and Erich is asking for a favor.  There's obvious urgency here, and it gets Drew's spiking, just a little bit.  She straightens up and the annoyance completely leaves her expression.  She sounds oddly business-like when she asks:

"What do you need?  And how much time do we have?"

Erich"Time?  Enough.  I'm not in a rush."  He smirks.  "I'm just pissed.

"But if they were coming after me they would've blocked off the roads and arrested me before I even got out here."  He slams the door behind him.  Brings back old times, doesn't it: Erich storming out of a car, yelling at Drew.

"I got pulled over tonight," he says by way of explanation.  "Expired plates.  He was spooked already by the sight of me, I could tell.  Wasn't no talking him down.  So I laid him out before he could take down my VIN.  Ripped up the ticket he was writing.  Think I managed to delete my plates off his computer too, but I can't be sure.  Plus he's bound to remember my face.

"So I need you to hide my car for a few days.  Maybe a couple weeks.  And if you're willing, I gotta use your address.  Get properly licensed and registered in state.  It's a risk though.  If they track me down, they'll track me straight to you.  So," a lift of his shoulders, a shrug, "'s up to you.  No hard feelings if you say no."

Drew RoscoeDrew is still, calm and quiet while Erich explains his case, even as he's flinging heavy metal doors closed and letting the sound of the slam echo through the trees and into the hills.  Her hands remain in her jacket pockets, and she simply keeps her eyes on the Shadow Lord while he explains.

Of course, there are expected human reactions.  He mentions that he got pulled over for expired lates, and she sighs a little, but silently.  He says then that he punched the cop, and her expression switches into a cringe, not of empathy, but rather something more akin to 'oh my god, you idiot.'  Then he says that he deleted any record that the cop had besides the memory of the incident and had come flying out here.
He wants to hide the car and use her address to register it when the heat settles down.  Drew seems to process this for a moment, then takes a hand from her pocket to swipe it at her nose, takes a breath, and answers:

"Your car'll fit in the shed.  I'll get a cover for it and make sure it looks all old and dusty just in case.  You need to wait a good two or three weeks before you use my address to register, I don't want attention."  There's a pause while she thinks, then she's remembered something and is asking:  "Did you make sure he didn't have a dash-cam?  Where did you get pulled over, here or closer to the city?"

Even as she's asking these questions she's gone into motion, and is walking onto the driveway and up, toward the shed, no doubt to open the doors to let him park his car inside.

Erich"If he had one I couldn't see it.  Just deleted whatever I could.  I was in a hurry.  There were witnesses."  A pause.  "Think they might've been kin though.  Didn't go running away screaming like you'd expect.

"It was downtown," he finishes, and climbs back in the car.  The engine rumbles back to life.  "I'll have to destroy the plates too.  Maybe even repaint the car.  Fuck, probably have to clear my slate with the DMV back home before I can re-register too.  I gotta think it through."

And the door shuts again.  He rolls the car slowly, carefully into the shed.  The fit's tight.  He has to squeeze out when he's in, going around back to pop the hatch open and grab essentials out of the trunk.

Drew RoscoeDrew is good to work with Erich in helping direct the car when he needs to crank the wheel just so, getting the she door open as wide as it will go, and getting the hell out of the way when he squeezes the car in.  The shed was intended for two vehicles, but Drew's truck is too tall to fit in, so it's been relatively empty this whole time.  The floor is packed dirt, and to the side of the garage that Drew's truck was parked in front of was a neat set-up of a work bench and miscellaneous garden and lawn tools.

Once Erich is out of the car and moving to the trunk to grab what he needs, Drew is there with her hands out of her pockets and standing near his flank, obviously waiting for him to set things in her arms for her to help carry wherever they may need to go.

"Where's 'back home' again?"  The question is not for the sake of getting to know one another further so much as it is for knowledge within the situation itself.  She may be able to do some footwork for him, get things set up that only require him to make a phone call or sign a piece of paper.  She'd do what she could.  In the meantime, though, there's a low huff of a chuckle, more irony-dosed than anything else.
"So, I'm left to guess that without your car you're gonna need a bed for the night."

The mention of him seeing a Kinfolk there is left alone for now.  She considered it irrelevant.  If anything he was lucky that one was a Kin, that would probably be one less person tattling on him to the cops.

Erich"There's no 'again'," Erich says.  Polite lad.  Never one to point out awkward little euphemisms, nope.  "I never told you where I grew up."

He straightens up.  His duffel bag clanks a little.  If she looked, this is what he packed: two jeans.  Two tshirts.  A buttondown that could double as light outerwear in a pinch.  A thicker jacket.  Some socks and boxers.  Wallet.  A very beat up laptop.  A small cookpot, a bit of salt and pepper.  A big hunting knife in a sheath.  A handaxe in a sheath.  A small set of tools, the sort you toss in the back of your car In Case Of Emergency.

And his tire iron.  He takes that too as he's reaching up to close the trunklid.  Uses it to tap the license plate -- the one with the expired tags, the one he's about to rip off and destroy.

NEBRASKA, it says.  Who'd have thought.  He's a child of the corn.

There's a pause, then.  He turns to face her.  There isn't a lot of room in the shed; it's dark and his eyes glimmer as he looks at her.  A furrow to his brow.  Then he shakes his head.

"I'd like that," he says, "but I think I better get a motel somewhere and pay in cash.  If the cops're after me and pin me down someplace, I can fuck off to the Umbra for a couple months.  You can't."

Drew RoscoeHe points out that he's from Nebraska, and Drew doesn't react much beyond nodding.  He looked about the type, big farm boy with an old but cared for muscle car.  It was, again, just for the sake of knowing, for things she'd be researching later.

"I didn't mean the whole damn time you're under cover from punching an officer of the law in the mouth."  While the words would imply that she's getting snippish, her tone certainly doesn't.  She isn't nosing into his belongings when he grabs them, but is only offering to help carry.  If he doesn't set anything in her arms, she steps back from the car instead, places her hands on the shed door, and waits for him to get the rest of what he needs, then out of the way.  Once all of that is done, she's sliding the the door closed and setting the wanted car into darkness and dust.

"But tonight.  It's late enough, you're on foot from here, and you've got shit to carry that'll make it rough to go quick on all-fours.  Stay, wash up, take it easy for a night."

Of course she's firm with her tone of voice.  But, though she's only known Erich briefly, she hasn't once known him to cave on a topic just because someone was being stern.  In fact, figuring what she did about him, he might get a chuckle out of defiance just because he could.  But still, she's insisting.

ErichThere it is again: that faint flickering curl of his lip.  "I think a Full-Moon son of Thunder can manage to tote a duffel bag a couple miles without dropping dead of sheer exhaustion."

The humor fades.  He shoulders the bag.  "Appreciate it," he says, "but not tonight.  Especially not tonight.  If they're coming after me at all, it'll be sooner rather than later."

Erich nods her to her door - an easy lift of his chin.  "Go on in," he adds.  "I'll be back soon 'nough.  Gotta repaint the car.  You want a houseguest so bad, I'll stay the night then.  Probably have to after inhaling fumes in here all day."

Drew Roscoe"You knew damn well how I meant that."  There's a vauge tone of sulking to her words, and she stood dusting her palms briefly on the thighs of her jeans.  Then, hands went back into her coat pockets, and she looked back at the Shadow Lord as he went on further to explain that he'd need to come back later to paint the car.

"You want me to pick anything up for that, then?"  The offer follows his stating that he'd stick around after painting his car.  She has, apparently, accepted that as good enough.  Poor hysterically house-empty Kinfolk that she is, he's probably doing her a favor just saying that he'll be an entity within the walls to make the space seem less stark, just for a time.

Maybe this was why childless widows went strange and started collecting cats?

Either way, she's slid back a few steps up the driveway, toward the front of her house, following his suggestion/instructions to go on inside.  But she's slow and lingering with the travel, waiting to hear if he needed her to bring anything back into the shed that he could use before turning completely away.

ErichThere's an odd dichotomy in Erich.  On one hand he's not one to turn down an offer out of politeness, or to avoid asking for something he needs just to be nice.  If she'd decided to cook pork chops for him that night, he would've stayed and chowed down with a spare thought.  And tonight, he drove straight here; didn't even think twice.  Nowhere else he could go really.  Not exactly Mr. Popular, Erich.

But then there's a part of him that's loathe to accept something he doesn't absolutely need.  Like this: a kinfolk not of his tribe, running around buying paint for him.  Which isn't something he can't do for himself.  Which is, however, something that would make his life a hundred times easier if she did it.

So he's ambivalent for a moment.  He shifts his weight; pushes his fist against his jaw to pop his neck.  Then drops his hand and nods.

"Yeah."  Simple like that.  "If you could.  Need sandpaper - coarse, medium, fine, and then as fine as you can find.  Primer and paint.  Whatever color you want, I don't care.  Long as it's not pink.  And an air compressor and a spray gun.  Just get cheap ones, not like I'm gonna be painting cars for a living.  If you can find car wash soap I can use a little bottle too.

"I'll pay you back," he adds.  "Don't even think about not accepting my money.  I got more than enough to live by when I don't pay rent, and you'll damage my masculinity if you go around being my sugar mama."

Drew Roscoe

Drew's answer is a quirked grin and a nod.
"Of course."
To all of the above.

"I'll see you when you make it around next, then, but I'll have everything ready.  Goodnight, Erich."
And with that, the Kinfolk bustles her way back into the house and leaves the Shadow Lord to his night and potentially sprained masculine pride.