<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
On a street in Georgetown that is what most people picture when they think of the word 'quaint', there's a toy store. The buildings are white brick or red brick and don't scale above three floors. The windows are painted white and march neatly, squarely across the facades of those buildings in sets of six or eight, depending on the width of the building. There's no such thing as a dark alley here because there are no alleys. The storefronts occupying the first floors are modern shops in the style of the area, so there's the salon and the stationer's across the street, but there's no pawn shop or anything like that.
It's a nice street, and a narrow street, and conveniently, it holds the equally nice and also quite quaint Georgetown Inn. Which is where Jake is staying tonight. It's neutral territory, or close enough. Don't think that old bitch didn't complain that her drive would be twenty whole minutes longer than his, but after what she pulled last month around Thanksgiving, she didn't have much traction even with her own lawyer on the issue.
So. She can drive twenty whole more minutes than he will, and after that she can hang as far as he cares.
These aren't very nice thoughts to have going through his head while he's standing outside of a toystore with a bright green exterior and bronze-colored awnings, he thinks. But thoughts like that are never far from his mind. He can tell from the window that it's overpriced, but he doesn't care. It looks charming. There are costumes, giant plush globes of the earth, pop-up play tents that look like they're made of more than polyester, toy kitchens made of wood rather than plastic. Blocks, trains, dolls, a wall and a table both full of art supplies.
He doesn't even mind that it's closed. It would be. It's late at night, after all. And the only person out here other than Jake himself, standing in front of the toy shop's windows in a wool coat with his hands in his pockets, is
a lone vagrant who doesn't realize he doesn't belong in this area. But he sits on a stoop in jeans and a hoodie despite the cold, swaying a bit from the effects of the last few bucks someone gave him. Enough to buy a few of those little bottles of Wild Turkey. Keeps him warm.
But that guy at the toy store is bugging him. Something off about that man staring in the windows of the toy store, right? Yeah. Tall and dark, something darker in his eyes. Heavy brow, hard jaw. Doesn't even look like he's American. Too many damn foreigners in this town. Looks well off, too. Nice coat. Nice shoes.
Watch on his wrist. Saw it glint a minute ago when he took his hand out of his pocket to check it. Nice watch. Really nice, could get something for that. Bastard standing there outside a rich kid's toy shop with a watch like that, ignoring the cold and the hunger and the gnawing thirst of his fellow man. Bastard.
Jake is, in fact, ignoring the cold and hunger and thirst of his fellow man, but he is not ignoring that man. The vagrant doesn't make him uneasy. Not even when he gets up, shuffling over, and says
<i>Hey</i>.
Even that word, short and simple, slurs in his mouth.
Jake turns his head slowly to face the man, look down at him. It's hard to tell how tall the guy actually is, or how old. He could be twenty or he could be forty-seven. He's stooped over, he's missing teeth. He smells.
<i>Hey,</i> he says again, like he's choking on it. Jake sighs, stepping one foot back, thinking the man is about to vomit.
<i>You got any spare change, man?</i> he manages, finally, while Jake stares at him. The man doesn't like that stare. Not a lot of people do. It's too direct, too unabashed, too patient. He's too tall, his shoulders too broad, his center of gravity too low. There's an uncanny look to his stance. Not like he's ready to take a hit, not like he's ready to roll with a punch or absorb a blow. No... something about Jake just gives off the sense that he's ready to attack.
Calm. But on the precipice of great violence.
"I'm afraid I don't," he says mildly, his voice quiet and his tone polite. Warnings are, after all, a form of courtesy.
<i>You got sumfin' else then mebbe?</i> the guy asks him, and shuffles a bit closer.
Jake doesn't move. "Not for you," he answers, and there's very little about his tone that's polite now. Still mild. Still quiet. Still calm.
Still on the precipice.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Buddy, why don't you fuck off before your night really starts to suck."
The voice comes from behind Jake. It's youngish, blandly accented, not terribly invested in the situation. Still; the words are rather rude, but the tone isn't. It's a touch exasperated. It's mostly sympathetic. Footsteps, and then the voice has a body attached: a fellow who doesn't really look <i>American</i> either, per se, unless maybe you were talking about the upper Midwest. Wisconsin, Minnesota.
Blond. That's what this guy is. Very fucking blond, the sort of purity of tone that calls to mind north Europe. And blue-eyed. And fair-skinned, and tall, and generally quite different from Jake in nearly every conceivable way. Even in this: he's holding a bill out, handing it over to the transient. "Go get yourself a burger. Don't come back here."
It's not a dollar. It's five. An almost unheard-of level of generosity, when your average joe turns his head and keeps walking. For all that, he doesn't even get a thank you. He doesn't get asked if he could spare another dollar or two. The bum takes one look at him, snatches the money, can't seem to leave fast enough. Erich watches him for half a block, then turns to look at Jake. It's quite apparent why the bum took off so fast, then. There's a fire in Erich's eyes; it has nothing to do with his mood, or his mindset, or his gender, or even really the time of month.
It exists. It's the axis on which all his more primordial thoughts turn. It burns straight up some unspeakable, destructive core, and it is always there.
He's affable enough, though. If a little insulting: "Man, Ingrid would eat you up," is the first thing he says to Jake. "Like a fuckin' lollipop."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
You can tell a lot about what sort of man Jake is by how easily he takes his eyes off what would, to many a suburbanite, be a threat. He turns his head to look over his shoulder at the approach of a third party, catching sight of his face just before hearing the sound of his voice. He looks more curious than anything else, and even that is a subtlety in his eyes, which are dark as dirt. But Erich doesn't get much of a once-over right then, as Jake turns his head back to the vagrant.
Who looks even more like he's going to throw up. He grabs the bill, spits something unintelligible as he's turning away, and about five steps off he does, in fact, double over and throw up liquid, splattering on the brick walkway.
Jake sighs.
And then he turns to the blond young monster beside him. They do have more in common than gender. The height. The heaviness of their brows, something European in the way their faces are carved. Just... not the same areas. There's a roughness to Erich's features, a mismatch between mouth and eyes or cheeks and brow. Jake is not rough. Jake is hard as stone, that's true, but he looks sculpted from it rather than broken off in chunks.
His blood, his breeding, is dim but it's there. It's in the jet black of his hair, even though there are small lines at the corners of his eyes and edges of his mouth that show that at very least, he's not a kid anymore. It's in the angle of his jaw, reminiscent of a blade or the peak of a mountain. He's missing the pale, glacial eyes of others of his kind, the more pure ones, but there's something of the storm in his eyes all the same. Lightning doesn't flash in them, but what light glints off his irises is like moonlight off the edge of a shovel, overturning soil from a grave.
He is tall. And it's hard to tell from the cut of his coat hanging to his upper thighs, but anyone could sense the strength in him. Especially a wolf. A wolf had <i>better</i> sense it. Smell it on him as clearly as the touch of thunder. He looks older, and he looks intelligent, and he doesn't look grateful and relieved any more than he looks disgruntled and defensive -- <i>I could have handled that!</i>.
What's odd is that he looks directly into Erich's eyes, and he doesn't even seem <i>wary</i>. And he probably should at least feel that. After all: he doesn't look like an idiot.
Erich tells him that someone named Ingrid would eat him up. Like a lollipop. It sounds like a weird, roundabout come-on. Jake quirks a brow at the other, younger man. It isn't a sneer.
"Ingrid your girlfriend?" he asks, his tone not much different from the one he first used with the bum.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Bum barfs. Jake sighs. Erich makes a face: <i>eugh.</i>
Conversation moves on. "Would I sound happy about it if she was? Nah, she's sort of a friend." A pause. "Family actually. So are you. Though you look the part way more than Ingrid and me."
A moment; a pinning, piercing look, just to make sure Jake gets the point. Then Erich looks past Jake; he studies the window display. Toys. <i>Weird?</i> he thinks to himself; not a judgment, not yet, but a sidebar. Maybe the guy has a kid; he'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe he's one of those oddballs who collected dolls professionally. Sure doesn't look like the type to build a Lego castle on his off days.
"Whose Christmas present are you buying?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
"I don't know you," is Jake's answer, quite reasonable, when Erich asks if he'd sound happy about it. It's a simple explanation, even though Jake is fully aware the question was rhetorical. He isn't running away, though, and he isn't backing off slowly or asking Erich not to hurt him or anything like that. Maybe he knows, on sight, what Erich is.
He doesn't. Not until Erich starts rambling on from there. Family with a capital F, so are you, you <i>look the part</i>. It's really that last bit that makes the recognition flicker in Jake's eyes. He doesn't sigh this time, but he doesn't give a suddenly aware, alert <i>Ah, I see</i>. Erich gives him a
<b>LOOK</b>
and Jake's mouth tightens into a little smile. It's not that he's trying not to grin or laugh that makes it tight. It almost looks strained. Pained. Aching, like his face is trying to remember how this works. That's far from the truth, but his smiles make him look even more serious than he is. Which is saying something; he's pretty goddamn serious.
Thankfully, Erich leaves that there. No spiels about being on the same page, no demands for aid, and no back and forth about whose father begat who to explain how they all got here and who they are <i>really</i>. Because after all: you're nothing without family. Isn't that what they were always telling him, once upon a time?
Jake doesn't ask, not even for Erich's name. Erich doesn't ask either. He looks at the shop Jake is standing in front of, and asks about Christmas presents.
For some reason, tonight makes Jake want to be a bit of a jackass. Maybe it's the presence of a young, hot-blooded wolf. That sometimes seems to do it. Turns him into a troll, turns him back into The Kid, turns him into something. He rarely gives into it, though, and even if he wants to toss back something ridiculous like:
<i>How do you know I'm not Jewish?</i>
he doesn't. Jake has learned by now that he's not really that good at making jokes.
"No one's," he says, glancing at the dark window, himself. Seeing himself, standing beside 'Family' who looks nothing like him except in the way that Fenrir and Lords sometimes do: violent, capable, a little ruthless. There's a beat of a pause, little more. Enough to take a breath and finish a thought: "I thought I'd bring my kid here tomorrow, let her pick some things out."
There. That wasn't so hard. It's not like it's a secret, is it?
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Erich doesn't know Jake. He doesn't know that Jake has apparently racked up a reputation for being tall, dark and mysterious. He wouldn't be surprised by that reputation -- the guy is tall, dark, and at least rather reticent, and besides sometimes in kin circles reputations and rumors fly like pigeons -- but he doesn't immediately assign it in his own mind. It doesn't surprise him that Jake has a child, a daughter, or that he tells him about it.
"Bet she'd be thrilled," he says. "How old's your kid?" It sounds like small talk, and it probably is. Strangers ask each other this sort of thing all the time.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Handsome. The word Erich is missing is <i>handsome</i>. Yes, tall, yes dark, but he can never figure, himself, why people think he's mysterious or secretive. He has heard it, and he has wondered, but then he remembers he has other things to think about -- better things. Whatever energy he might put to being a little more forthcoming, a little more trustworthy, gets subsumed by work, by relationships, by all the major and minor elements of life.
They don't know each other, and haven't met, but they are connected. Jake has met the woman Erich sort-of lives with, and though he doesn't realize it, he's met 'Ingrid' as well. Erich has driven by or walked by or smelled the bakery in Browntown, maybe even gone in one of the rare occasions when the owner wasn't present. Right now Jake doesn't smell like cinnamon or sugar, though sometimes he does.
"I hope so," Jake says to the first, and that's genuine. Nothing out of place about that. It's heartfelt, and maybe even a bit sweet: the daddy wanting to see his daughter 'thrilled'. She must be young; the toy store he's looking at would bore any child above the age of nine...or at least they'd pretend to be bored.
There's a hesitation at the second question, though, and that's less sweet. No less obvious though, and not even out of place in this day and age. How many fathers don't really know, aren't entirely sure, because they just aren't <i>there</i> enough to remember?
"Fff...five," Jake answers, then adjusts: "Just turned five."
He inhales, nostrils flaring, then turns his head to look back at Erich again. "Just so it's clear, I don't live in this city. I live almost two hours west of here." <i>Not in your territory</i>, is what he really means. <i>Not your responsibility,</i> it also means, like he's letting Erich off whatever hook most Garou always seem to think they're on when it comes to kin.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Certain thoughts accompany the two little confessions Jake makes. He doesn't live here; his daughter is ... five, he thinks. Yes, five. Just turned. They're not judgments; they're not decisive. But they are thoughts, they are associations, and Erich thinks them:
Aha, he thinks, maybe a divorced dad. Mom lives with the kid around here. Mom's probably not Garou, then; no one's insane enough to make the Garou parent the sole guardian. Not while the kin parent still lived. And besides -- a Garou, a Shadow Lord, would never let go of her mate.
Erich's not born into the tribe of Thunder. He chose it. That means in some ways he has fewer misconceptions about it than most. He went into this open-eyed; he knows the strengths and the flaws of the tribe. And the flaws are many. The strengths are just more. He believes that, anyway.
At any rate: he has thoughts, he keeps them to himself. In the end he just glances in the window and says, "Don't get her Barbies. Unless she really, really wants one, of course. But Barbies are pretty boring. My sister used to ask for them <i>every Christmas</i> and then by January she'd be stealing my toys."
He turns away from the storefront; faces Jake again. And he smirks.
"Yeah? Well, I don't live here either. I live in my car. And the hundred-foot radius around my car, wherever it's parked -- that's my territory." A quick jerk of his head, some joint in his neck popping softly. "You don't have to worry," he adds. "There are like... half a dozen other Shadow Lords wandering around the Chesapeake area, and almost all of them outrank me. I'm not going to make your personal affairs my business. One of them might though." He darkens. "They're sort of an asshole bunch."
Some Shadow Lord. Emotions on the surface. Dangerous thoughts broadcast to strangers.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Almost every though that goes through Erich's mind is true. Correct. Jake does seem a bit removed from the usual kinfolk mindset. Mentioning that he lives outside of what he assumes is Erich's 'territory' seems an afterthought, a realization that there is a Shadow Lord just <i>hanging out</i> with him right now, talking about how his 'friend' might like Jake, asking about Jake's family. He's the type that would have a kid with a human being, that last attempt to run away from the nation... or something.
And he's right: no one's insane enough to make the Garou parent the sole guardian. And no Shadow Lord Garou would ever let go of her mate. Especially not a lollipop-esque, completely edible catch like Jake.
There are some missteps in the thoughts and associations, but it's close enough.
Barbies. Jake blinks. Blond guy has opinions on Barbies. He gives a slow, deep nod. "I'll keep that in mind." Erich turns to face him finally, smirking, explains his territory. That quick jerk of his head makes Jake's eyes narrow a moment, focus tightly, but it's a small reaction to a sudden motion from a werewolf. A half-dozen others, you say?
Erich tries to warn him. They might. They're assholes.
Jake gives a single-shouldered shrug. "That's not unusual," he says. "The same does apply to most tribes, though." And even though he just roundly called all the nation, from Shadow Lords and Get of Fenris to Children of Gaia and Silent Striders, 'sort of an asshole bunch', he turns to Erich and extends his right hand.
"Jake Novak." It's not an American name, no, but it's such a common one in so many countries it doesn't bring to mind any lost heroes, any grand lineages. 'Novak'.
All it means is 'new'.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"No lie," Erich agrees, taking Jake's hand. "But different tribes tend to draw different sorts of assholes."
His skin feels scalding hot. It's not. It's just the nerve endings getting confused: the non-physical slap of rage transduced in the only way the nervous system understands. He shakes Jake's hand and lets go.
"New man," he says, laughing a little. Common enough last name, that, especially in Thunder's tribe. Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians, Serbians -- pandemic to eastern and southeastern Europe, really. Even this cornfed, Fenrir-raised Ahroun seems to have heard it enough to know what it means. "Erich Reinhardt. Cliath Ahroun."
It's not entirely clear why he adds this. Maybe he's just an oversharer: "Most of my family are Fenrir. All of them, actually. 'Cept me."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
As reticent as Jake is, it doesn't make him uncomfortable to end up in a conversation with a complete stranger. Introversion, a sense of fiercely protected privacy, an upbringing that discourages talking about oneself -- they aren't the same things as being shy. He isn't shy, and he isn't fearful. But neither is he given to completely idle conversation, talk for the sake of politeness or simply to hear one's own voice. Still: sometimes he doesn't mind it so much. Some of the more interesting times of his life have come from talking to someone he had no reason to talk to, listening to someone who at first didn't seem to have much to say.
Case in point: he shakes hand with a Shadow Lord who gave a bum a fiver instead of breaking his arm. Erich mentioned looking the part, but Jake might not have noticed otherwise. He has that touch of his tribe's blood in his features and in his scent, even in his bearing, but he's not able to recognize it. Can't even seem to recognize the rage that pumps like blood, that sucks violently at the air around Erich like a wounded lung.
They shake hands. Erich's stings, but Jake seems either oblivious to it...or maybe just used to it. Jake's is warm, and calloused on the heel of his hand, the inner curl of his index finger, the ball of his thumb. You can be military or law enforcement and not get callouses like that, and in fact many soldiers and officers would prefer not to pick up their sidearm often enough to wear such markers into their palms. It comes from practice, which implies not the achievement of perfection but at least its pursuit.
Then again, given what he is, it's possible Erich's never picked up a gun in his life. Or needed to.
Jake's hand goes back into his pocket, because even if he burns a couple of degrees hotter than a true human, it's still winter and his hands are still bare. Erich laughs at the meaning of his name, and the corner of Jake's mouth twitches. Never a smirk, never a curl of his lip. Just tight little smiles, amusement that doesn't entirely know how to make itself known on his face. And he gets an introduction in return, but there's no flaring of surprise or confusion to hear the name, just as their wasn't any to hear that this blond guy is a Shadow Lord.
He does have this to say: "I had a feeling," Jake says, when Erich says he's an Ahroun. It's almost wry, but more just a verbal nod, a confirmation. It's the sort of thing most people say when Erich tells them no, he doesn't just look weird for a Shadow Lord, he actually wasn't born one. Fenrir. Instead, when Erich shares that, Jake just gives a blink, his eyebrows tugging together a moment.
"How does that work?"
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Erich doesn't, in fact, recognize the source of those callouses. He figures maybe the guy works with his hands. Kind of has that look about him, that sort of look you get when the strength in your body serves a purpose beyond vanity. Though, at the same time, his nice coat and his shoes don't quite look blue-collar.
Erich leaves that little mystery alone. There are likely people -- well, let's just say it, there are likely women Jake has met already who are drawn to his dark looks, his guardedness, that sense of secrets that hangs around him as much as the smell of his tribe is in his blood. Those are the people who have been scratching at his surface, sniffing for the answers. Erich, however, truly cannot be called the curious type on most days. And as for ulterior motives; well.
So the handshake comes and it goes. Jake's the one that gets curious next. Erich shrugs; they seem to exchange personalities for a moment, and something about the Ahroun is abruptly indrawn. It's physical: his shoulders tightening together a bit, his heavy arms coming to fold around his chest. He doesn't have a nice coat, or nice shoes. He has big glomping workboots and a quarter-zip sweatshirt in some nondescript mediumgrey, which has replaced the zip-hoodie he used to have, which got torn and stitched badly and finally lost. Ancient history.
"It just does," he says. "Most people think you're just born into a tribe 'cause your spirit is magically assigned to the right body or something. But it's not decided until you've passed your Rite and become a full Garou. That's when you become part of a Tribe -- you choose your totem and he chooses you. My turn came up and Fenris didn't come for me, and I didn't want him to. Thunder did. I was glad. There's too much ... pride in the Fenrir. There are lines they'd never, ever cross, even if it meant the difference between winning and losing. So maybe my spirit was born into the wrong family. Or maybe it had just changed over the eons. I don't know."
He raises a hand, scratches between his eyebrows. He brought the topic up himself; didn't have to, but did. He changes the subject now just as crudely.
"So -- you always hate beggars so much?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Reading people -- their moods, their feelings, their motives -- has never been Jake's strong suit. It's always been a weak spot for him, and one that has gotten him into more than one kind of trouble. But Erich wears what he's feeling like a note pinned to his shoulder, and though Jake can occasionally be slow on the empathetic uptake, he's not oblivious to body language. The tensing shoulders, not squared off but tugging together. The wafting motion of his arms lifting, crossing, resettling like extra layers of armor between the world and his heart, and even the tenor of that <i>it just does.</i> These signs, Jake can read just fine. It's the way he handled questions that didn't sit well when he was ...well, younger than Erich.
He explains, though, and in more detail than Jake was expecting after the way he reacted physically to the question. Jake just listens. Lines they'd never cross, even if they lost. Maybe he was born into the wrong family. Maybe he evolved. He doesn't know.
Maybe Jake has another question to ask, or something else to say, but Erich doesn't know because Erich changes gears abruptly. That's a sign, too, and another one that doesn't go over Jake's head. The question, however, makes both his eyebrows hop up a bit on his face. "That wasn't hate," he says after a moment, eyebrows returning to their usual home. "That was caution." Jake frowns, thoughtful. "He stank of liquor and desperation. Wouldn't take his hands out of his pockets. Didn't pay much mind to me until after I checked the time, then watched me like a hawk."
One shoulder rises and falls in a shrug, as uncanny as a mountain suddenly sighing. He gives a shake of his head, looking directly at Erich again where for a few moments his eyes had wandered. "And I actually don't have any spare change," he adds, like an afterthought or a realization.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Like you couldn't have taken him if he'd made a move."
It's not spoken beratingly, or disgustedly, or even chidingly. If anything, there's a hint of implicit approval there, one brawler to another. The Ahroun -- the young Ahroun, he must seem to Jake, and not merely young in years but also in mind, in attitude -- eyes the kinsman a bit.
"Pretty good defensive eye, though. You law enforcement or something? Retired boxer? Hired gun?" He thinks a minute; what else could he come up with? "Soviet James Bond?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake's smile, this time, isn't tight. It's thin, and it's dry, and he makes no comment. Not even that being able to take the bum was exactly why he was cautious, or that being cautious is why he could have taken him, or anything like that. Just a smile, wry at one corner.
It fades, dying a natural death, and Erich the Cliath Ahroun of Thunder starts guessing at the source of Jake's eye. Retired boxer doesn't fit -- his nose looks like it's never been broken, for one thing, and men that pretty seldom decide a brief, brutal life in the ring is worth getting their face bashed in. Even if they <i>aren't</i> vain. Law enforcement is a good guess -- not hard to see Jake strolling into a scene, assessing with those dark, sharp eyes of his. Maybe a detective.
Hired gun. Soviet James Bond.
Jake smiles, just short of the sort of dry little laugh that would only come out as a huff and a small cloud of steam. "Baker," he answers. And then, for no reason at all, adds to it: "I was homeless for a while as a kid, though. You learn what you need to."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Baker. Now there's one Erich would have never guessed. He gives a disbelieving huff of a laugh. "Really?" A pause. "Why? I mean, some sort of chef I can see, maybe, but ... " he makes a face, "there isn't even <i>meat</i> involved."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
"Occasionally there is," Jake says, that amused smile quirking over his mouth again. "Though not often. As for why..." A shrug. "I like it. I'm good at it. Something about the smell of bread just... feels right to me."
He breathes in cold air, exhales steam. Doesn't shiver, but that doesn't mean that standing in the cold doing nothing but talking is going to keep its appeal for long.
"You hungry?"
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"You're not going to bake me a cake, are you? Because that's a little forward for a first date."
It's a joke. Erich looks around, gets his bearings. That's an upshot to being a loner, a drifter, a wanderer, rootless: you explore. You explore everything, get acquainted -- if not quite ever familiar -- with everything. He knows where he is, and he knows,
"There's an ice cream place a couple blocks that way." He nods rightward. "If you like sweets," because obviously a baker would like sweets, right?, "I can handle ice cream."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
It's a joke. Jake knows that, he must, because he doesn't recoil or backpedal or begin stammering that that isn't what he meant... he's not... <i>I mean what gave you that idea...?</i> or anything like that. But the thing is, as capable as he is of handling himself in uncertain situations, Jake isn't the man you go to for the snappy rejoinder. When he does attempt witticisms, which is rare, it's usually because for one reason or another -- and he's discovered that his reasons make no rational sense most of the time in this regard -- he feels relatively at ease with someone. Always odd someones. They come at him out of nowhere and it surprises him more than anyone.
That girl in the woods, covered in tattoos and digging mushrooms out of the mud, silver in her eyes and in her hair and in her blood, pure enough to drive her mad from the inside. The new manager of the shop, the one who made that weird noise of protest when he was about to leave her alone in the creepy church basement but then sucked it up and did what she needed to do. And, for some reason, this guy.
So:
"Please," Jake says, after a faint smirk. "If I want to impress someone, I make croissants." He shakes his head at Erich. "Cake," he mutters, like the very word is worth scoffing at.
There's an ice cream place. Jake shrugs with his shoulders and his eyebrows, then lets them down again. "I was going to suggest steak. Or at least a burger."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Steak," Erich says immediately, sounding relieved. Not that he doesn't like ice cream, because he does, but that's always a bit of a gamble, and --
well, anyway: steak. He looks around again. Every time he does it he looks a little like some sort of hunting hound, a smart one that knows its way home, knows its way around the woods behind its home. He wouldn't be pleased with the comparison, though.
He would be pleased, inexplicably but genuinely, if he knew Jake felt at ease with him. Relatively. Erich is that most tragic of oxymorons: an Ahroun almost literally burning up with rage, who absolutely-literally is a berserker, whose mood and temper turns into a landmine on a bad day or a full moon night, who doesn't actually hate the world. Or the people in it. He's friendly, or tries to be. He's sometimes even a little bit witty.
"There's a pretty decent mom-and-pop restaurant around here," he says. "It's cheap, so don't expect grass-fed or beautiful marbling or perfect aging or any of that. But for what it is," he shrugs too, a sort of unconscious social mimicry, "it does a pretty good ribeye."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Here's the thing: Erich is now one of three people in the tri-state area who knows that for a while in his youth, Jake was homeless. That number -- those three people -- includes Jake himself. It isn't that he's ashamed. It isn't that it's some great secret. It's that this is one of those things that no one can seem to resist asking him about. Personal questions, too, asked with impunity and without shame. They want to know when, they want to know how, they want to know how old he was and how long it lasted and though they dance delicately around this one, they want to know what the worst thing to ever happen to him was.
Jake tells Erich that's how he learned how to spot warning signs that might lead to a knife in his gut, wounds he can't snap-shift and heal from. Jake's no Bone Gnawer -- he obviously had no Garou watching over him, smashing gourds on him, making sure he got enough to eat back then. There is a hornet's nest of history and assumptions and truths in simply explaining this one small thing, and Jake hates the questions. Hates the prying, particularly from people he's barely met. Voyeurs. Sickos.
And then he just throws it out there, a perfectly honest answer to Erich's completely matter-of-fact question. He wasn't expecting a follow up, and was satisfied to find there was none. Garou are different sometimes. More than a few of them have been homeless, packless, alone at some point in their lives, and several of them when they were too young to be without hearth or home. Erich didn't even bat an eyelash.
Erich, of course, walked away from the family and tribe of his birth towards another of the spirit. Jake is assuming, is guessing, but he figures Erich doesn't think being out on your own is all that weird, or worth talking about.
Maybe he just understands <i>not needing to talk about it</i>.
Jake never owned a dog. He doesn't compare one to Erich in his head. If he had owned a dog growing up, he still wouldn't. Isolated he may be, but Jake doesn't seem to be a stranger to wolves. What they're really like. What they really <i>are</i>.
Still: makes him smile, one of those tight little dry smiles, that Erich is so relieved. Jake just shakes his head. "You're pretty snobby about steak for someone who was going to have ice cream for dinner," he mentions, and starts walking. They have to pass the bum's puddle of vomit, but Jake merely walks around it with a well-done impression of someone who doesn't know it's there.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Me? Nah." Erich isn't nearly so gracious as to pretend he doesn't see the puke. He skirts it with a wide berth, wrinkling his nose up as he goes past. "You just look like you could afford really good meat. Didn't want you to expect too much and get disappointed.
"Though I guess if you've been on the streets, you wouldn't put on airs." It's the first, perhaps only, acknowledgment of what Jake said earlier. Erich leaves it at that. At the next block he makes a left.
"Where do you live, anyway? If not 'around here'."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
"It's kind of you to consider my feelings like that," Jake says wryly, walking in step with the Fenrir. He makes no comment about the streets, or his airs, or the fact that he so rarely eats red meat that he prefers to eat the best he can find, or the fact that even so, he doesn't really mind. They turn left, and that awareness of other people's body language remains consistent: they turn left as one.
At the question of where he lives, Jake huffs a dry little laugh. "A street masquerading as a village, to the west of here," is his answer. "It's called Browntown."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Yeah, I know the place," Erich says, which might be one of the very, very few times Browntown's name will engender this sort of immediate recognition. "A friend of mine lives there. And about half the Garou population of Virginia. I spend about half my time out there.
"So that makes you the town baker. RiSE?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Most people think Browntown is a joke name. It can't possibly be a real place. Who would name a town that? Then again, who would name a place in Texas 'Happy'? And yet.
Erich knows it, and by now, this doesn't surprise Jake. "Thought you might," he mentions. "I didn't realize there was a caern and sept there until eighty percent of the people I met turned out to be either Garou or kin." He shrugs at that, glancing at Erich, and nods. "That's the place. And yes, I've already met the butcher and the jokes have already been made."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Erich has no idea what jokes there may be: the confusion shows on his face, though he tries not to draw attention to it. Wouldn't want to seem a stereotype, after all. <i>Muscleheaded Ahroun. Dumb brute.</i>
"Why'd you name it Rise? I mean I get that dough rises. Always sounded very Che Guevara to me though."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
<i>Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub</i>, and so on. Erich doesn't recognize it. No nursery rhymes for him, then. Jake isn't looking at his face, though, he just notices that Erich doesn't have some snappy remark that Jake has already heard a dozen times in town. Every damn time. A hick's guffaw, someone asking if he'd met the Cutlers yet, something about a candlestick maker. So he doesn't mind Erich's silence in that regard, and doesn't question it.
Jake just shrugs to the other question, though. "Makes me think of mornings," he says. "Rise and shine, all that. But mostly the dough bit." By now, though, it feels that Erich is just going to keep coming up with new questions to follow each one Jake answers, so Jake turns it around on him. It's awkward, because Jake isn't usually inclined to ask people to talk about themselves. Most of the people he's met, he hasn't had to make much inquiry in order to get them to talk about themselves.
"Why'd you give him a five?" he asks, because it's the first thing to come to his mind, and because it's been niggling at the back of his mind. "He would have left without it. He isn't going to eat anything <i>with</i> it."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Because I didn't want you to beat him up. And you looked like you could and you would, if you had to. But a guy who's looking at toys probably doesn't want that on his conscience."
So maybe Erich is curious after all. He has a lot of questions; that's a sign of curiosity, isn't it? He doesn't seem to mind answering one, though. The response comes easily, without thought, and without hesitation or uncertainty.
"So I figured if I handed him a five he'd quit while he was still ahead."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake looks at him. Walking ahead, following Erich's lead without hesitating at turns or street corners, and walking with a steady purpose, he turns and fixes Erich with a look that doesn't seem like it knows how to ever be sidelong.
"It's not usually Garou who are trying to keep kin from doing more damage to someone than they can come back from."
That's just a statement. It isn't a judgement. It strikes Jake's curiosity. He's reticent, he's respectful of privacy, but he's not braindead. It's a curiosity, that the Fenrir-born Shadow Lord Ahroun would be the charitable one, trying to save the limbs and possibly life of a beggar because the kinsman -- the kinsman ten years his senior looking at toys for his five-year old daughter -- looked like he might break him in half. It's unusual.
"I wouldn't have beat him up, for whatever that's worth," Jake says, his voice a touch lower. "I wouldn't have even touched him unless he made me. And then all I'd need to have done is stop him."
Not hurt him. Not badly, at least. Not irreparably. And to say nothing of his conscience, and what it can bear.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Nope. It's not."
Erich swings around to face Jake fully. The first time since -- well, probably since they shook hands. There's something open and frank about the Ahroun's regard; there's no guardedness there. No lack of strength, either.
"I guess we're both a little bit unusual," he adds, and smiles a lopsided little smile. They start walking again. Jake goes on; Erich breathes a laugh.
"Well, you're good at controlling yourself, then. But I didn't know that then. Some people that have violence in their blood... once it gets going, they don't stop."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
When he turns like that, their steps hitch. Jake pulls a step up short. He wonders briefly if Erich is going to attack him. There's no real reason why he would, but it says something that Jake doesn't consider 'having a reason' necessary for a werewolf to attack. Maybe to test him, maybe to dominate him, maybe to vent his rage, fuck knows why. But even though his shoulders are squared and his feet are as solid as ever, this is evident as well:
Jake is always like this. At least, he has been since Erich first saw him with the beggar. It's not the same as defensiveness, tension. It's just readiness, unconscious from years of preparation. Caution, he said earlier. That almost fits. But not quite.
They're both unusual. That's all Erich has to say, and the corner of Jake's mouth tugs out and up in a smile that, like most of the others, is wry. This version of wryness has a touch of self-deprecation, but not much. They start walking again. Erich mentions control.
Violence in the blood.
Jake exhales slowly, a cloud of steam issuing forth from his lips. It's soundless. "That's the only time control is really needed," he says, his voice a touch lower than before.
There's only the barest of pauses after that. He glances at Erich, half-smiling again. "I appreciate your caution, though." Of course he would. "I'm sure the beggar does, too."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
It doesn't escape Erich's notice that every time he moves too quick, Jake tenses. It's not the sort of flinching you get from an abused kin; not really. It's the same way he reacted to the transient coming too close. Wary, but not afraid. Ready.
He doesn't mention it, any more than he asks about that long-ago homeless phase. He doesn't try to reassure the man that he's not going to hurt him, etcetera etcetera, either.
Violence in the blood. They both know a little about that.
"You're welcome," he says, quirking a smile, even though Jake didn't <i>quite</i> thank him. "Sure you'd do the same, if tables were flipped."
He's not sure of that, actually. It's a nice thought though. And anyway -- they're at the diner now. Erich swings the door open like he's familiar with it, holds it out behind him for Jake to catch.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Erich notices it when he moves suddenly, but that's not quite it: he isn't moving all that suddenly. Jake's readiness isn't a reaction so much as a constant: it's there even walking from one place to another. It's a steady, centered thing at is core. More obvious here and there, perhaps, such as when he's waiting to see if a beggar is going to pull a knife on him, but it was more pronounced in that moment than any of the times Erich has turned to him or spoken to him. Those are just the moments when Erich sees it -- sees Jake -- more clearly.
It's like violence. Being in the blood, burning up the insides of your veins. Once it starts it doesn't stop because in some way it's always there. It's the same with this: Jake's care in what he does, what he notices. Jake's preparation for that violence to erupt, and Jake's readiness to meet it. Always there. Always waiting.
It isn't just about control. It's about patience.
"They wouldn't be," Jake says mildly to that, which is the truth, and he doesn't seem the type to mince words. It also, in a small way, is a denial: no. He might not have done the same. But it's a nice thought, and he otherwise lets Erich keep it.
He catches the door after the Ahroun, breathing in deeply as they step in. He's smelling for the kitchen, for the food they have in here. The door swings closed again as he lets it go, and he brings his hands out of his pockets finally to quickly undo the four buttons of his coat. The sleeve pulls away from his wrist; there's that watch the beggar might have wanted. It does look like a nice watch, though very simple in design. Unlikely Erich is the sort to recognize it, name it, know its worth, any more than the beggar was. Enough to know: you could pawn that for a few bucks, right?
And aren't they the pair: Erich, younger, just a few steps up from that beggar. Jake, whose appearance is neat and orderly, whose face is wolflike as well but only in that way that's acceptable and even attractive to humans, whose coat is thick wool and whose watch cost seven grand, who is several years older than Erich and whose face shows it in a bit of wear, a bit of hardness. Meanwhile: Erich gives off the impression that he'd like to eat someone's head if they speak to him. So whoever comes to them first: server, host, what-have-you... they talk to Jake.
"Two," he says, folding his coat over his arm, as menus are plucked and they are led towards a table. He glances over at Erich, both of them walking slower now than they would have on the street. Jake is in jeans, dark washed and belted. His shirt is dark blue, tucked in, tailored along his midsection, the sleeves rolled up to just beneath his elbow. It's more evident, with the coat off, that Erich's estimation was correct: had he wanted to, had the opportunity or the necessity presented itself, he would have broken that beggar's neck as easily as breathing.
"I have a friend, similar to you in nature, who visits me in Browntown occasionally," he says, his tone idle as they're shown their seats, "and she kept asking, at first, if I'd run into any of my family there or here in the city. I had not, and did not for some time, and didn't want her to try and find someone to introduce me." He steps to his seat, lowering himself into it and leaning back. "You're only the second I've met. That I know for sure is... directly related."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Erich doesn't seem to mind that the waitress -- there's only one -- speaks only to Jake. He doesn't bristle; he doesn't assert dominance. He seems okay ambling along behind Jake, who follows the waitress to their table. They aren't asked if they have a preference. They get put in the back, far far away from the door and new customers.
And they get menus slapped down on their table. <i>Drinks?</i> she demands, to which Erich humbly replies with an order of Coke. The menus are laminated; were laminated so long ago that the lamination's scratched and dulled with time. The menu is exceedingly simple. Burgers. Cheeseburgers. Bacon cheeseburgers. Fries. Wedges. Sirloin steak. Ribeye steak. Salisbury steak. Chicken-fried-chicken. Soup of the day. The fanciest thing there is a turkey club sandwich, and no one ever orders that.
While Erich is settling in, quietly reflecting to himself that this is the first time he's sat down to eat with a guy-friend since he-doesn't-even-remember -- not that he has that many girl-friends either, mind you -- Jake mentions another friend of his. 'Friend.' Of Erich's nature. The Ahroun's eyes sharpen with interest, but he doesn't leap anywhere, conclusive or otherwise.
"Okay," he says. "Did you want me to go meet her or...?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Given the seriousness of the man now sitting across from Erich, the steady caution, the thoughtless but ever-present awareness of his surroundings and his company, his reaction to Erich's question is unexpected.
But let's go back: Erich orders a Coke, Jake gives an offhand order for a cup of tea with lemon. It will probably just be Lipton, but when you get right down to it, he's not the picky sort. Waitress steps away, footsteps snapping, and Jake takes his eyes off Erich for a moment, calls her back.
"Two ribeye," he says, because they both already know. He asks for his medium-rare, which means it will be medium, which is the rarest he actually trusts a place like this with. He doesn't have Erich's constitution. He can't survive everything and has no time this weekend for food poisoning. No potato. Steamed veggies. And then, turning back as she scurries away, he turns back to Erich.
Truth be told, it's the first time he's been around a Garou, much less a male Garou, much less a young male Ahroun, who didn't annoy the ever-loving shit out of him after the first two sentences. It feels familiar. It's not unlike sitting down to eat with Sam, though there are obvious differences between Sam and Erich and considerable differences in Jake's experiences with either of them and <i>profound</i> differences between his thoughts on each of them. But in tone, in candor, in comfort: yes. This is not entirely unfamiliar. Just unexpected.
Jake reflects, as Erich is doing his own reflecting, that he seems to like people who are both pleasant and unexpected. Just one or the other and he is either bored or annoyed. Interesting, that. He files it away.
So, returning to the beginning: Erich asks if he wants him to go meet her <i>or...</i>.
And Jake, who was serious even about ordering tea and water, laughs. It's a broad chuckle, low and subdued, but it's an actual laugh and not a dry huff or sardonic snort. His eyes do crinkle at the corners a bit, and he seems pleased as much as he is amused. "Christ, no. It's nothing like that. I think she was just worried for me, all by my lordly lonesome in hick central." Jake shakes his head, the laughter fading but his smile remaining in a bemused curve across his lips. "I just find it interesting. You're nothing at all like the other one, and you yourself said the ones you've met here are a bunch of assholes."
There are points where Jake's manner of speech is almost formal, his words chosen with care. It is very nearly awkward. It makes words like 'Christ' and 'assoles' seem unfitting on his lips, bolder somehow, though not quite shocking. Sharper, as emphatic as drumbeats not because he punches those words with his voice but precisely because he <i>doesn't</i>. They roll of his tongue naturally, fluidly, and yet are so at odds with the rest of his speech that it startles the ears.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
The waitress doesn't quite make a clean getaway. She gets called back, though in a way, this spares her. She doesn't have to come back a second time. Doesn't have to return to the table with its two oddly mismatched occupants: the elder of the two intimidating in the way people who are so certain of themselves and their own strength, physical and otherwise, are always intimidating; the younger of the two simply
<i>bloodcurdling</i> in a way that defies easy explanation.
Two ribeyes. Erich wants his rare, predictably. And he doesn't want potatoes. He doesn't want veggies. He just wants the meat. Oh and (his eye snagging on the bottom of the menu where the sides are) maybe a side order of chicken tenders. Meat and meat. The waitress eyes him; she has boys of her own, his age and a little younger. She resists the urge to scold.
Erich scoots all the way in on his side of the booth. It gives them both room to stretch their legs out. He cocks an elbow up on the back of his seat, getting comfortable, looking around. The word 'assholes' draws his attention back, and a surprised laugh escapes him.
"Who's the other?" he wants to know. "I've met a few of 'em now. Just once though. 'Cept for Ingrid; I see her now and then."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Meat plus meat. Jake just smiles at Erich's order. He looks amused. He looked curious out on the street. Maybe it's the warmth of coming inside, but now he just looks pleasantly amused with Erich, and not in the smarmy, condescending way that comes most easily to the faces of older kin who think they've seen it all and how could some whipper-snapper Garou kid understand their pain and their wisdom and what-have-you...
Jake, in a way that is as easy to see as his amusement, just sort of likes Erich. They say when you like someone, there's little they can do to upset that. Things that might otherwise seem weird are simply charming. Things that are awkward are merely endearing. Things that would normally be reason to roll your eyes are funny. And so on. He only just met the guy, and he's not wanting to pick out curtains or anything, but there you are. Uncomplicatedly, and plainly, Jake just likes Erich.
"She didn't give a name," Jake answers. "Showed up in my bakery one night, wasted a few minutes trying to be cryptic, then told me others of the tribe would be showing up in Browntown 'soon' and would need 'succor'." He doesn't lift his hands to create airquotes, but they're quite audible. "She gave me the usual drivel about loyalty, which I assume is because she had nothing else to offer in exchange for that 'succor'."
He speaks pretty boldly, for a Shadow Lord kinsman talking to a Shadow Lord. Dissing the tribe! Refusing to give aid to his kind! Shocking. Just shocking. But he's intact tonight, so either he didn't speak so boldly to this other Shadow Lord or...
...like so many, it seems, she simply didn't truly have the strength or cunning to get what she wanted.
Jake's shoulders round down a touch with relaxation. "You keep mentioning this 'Ingrid' person. Are you... pack, or something?"
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"God, I hate that cryptic shit," Erich bursts out. "It's beyond pointless. What the fuck, way to live up to the stereotype. And they don't even see how it embarrasses us all."
He cuts the rant short. Could go on, but already the fry cook behind the counter is turning his head and looking this way. One part wary, one part aggressive. Humans with a bit more in the spine department were usually like that around him. Just waiting for him to give them a reason to get mad. Never ends well though. Some men find it harder to stop, once the violence starts.
Shake of his head, then. "Nah. We're not the packing type, I think. Me especially. I like her though. I think I've got a tiny crush on her." There's another flare of the unusual: how many Garou would admit that so openly? "Nothing serious, not enough to make me do or even consider anything stupid. Just ... nice, you know? Fuzzy glowies that make her fun to be around. I like her," he's circled back to this. "She's cool. You should meet her. I'm serious, you'd probably be her type."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
[willpower]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
[manipulation + subterfuge]
Dice: 6d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 7, 10, 10) (success x 3)
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake has no comment on the mini-rant. Maybe he agrees; he certainly doesn't defend or argue. His tone regarding the Shadow Lords is, in the end, no different from his tone talking about any of the tribes or Garou in general: a bit dismissive, mostly just unconcerned. When he spoke of his friend, though, there was some measure of investment. He laughs at Erich, or smiles at him. Individuals are another matter. If Erich hadn't volunteered his tribe, it's entirely posssible -- even likely -- Jake never would have asked, and never would have given it second thought.
No matter. No comment, and no continuation of the rant. Jake doesn't join in, and if anything he looks a trifle uncomfortable for a moment, relieved that Erich lets it go. It's that polite streak he has: talking about people behind their back, even in general. It doesn't sit well with him. Not for long, at least. Not for the full length of a total rant. A few comments here and there, that might be all right. Then he feels bad.
<i>I like her,</i> Erich says, and they're switching topics, and Jake is listening with that relaxed attentiveness that he gives people when he's actually interested, and
<i>a tiny crush on her</i>
and Jake's nostrils flare. Erich sees that, and sees the muscle around Jake's jaw tighten, only partly obscured by his facial hair. That's all. Jake sits up a bit, his... discomfort, let's say... growing most pronounced when Erich says the words 'fuzzy glowies'. He doesn't even seem to hear the bit about Erich trying to set them up. Again. Jake just shakes his head, exhaling a huff of air. "Well, that's a shame. About not being a pack. Though it sounds like it's probably for the best." He glances up, and away, scanning the room, then back to Erich. "If you'll excuse me a moment," he says, and rises to his feet.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
That flicker of tension, which grows to a steady clench of tension, doesn't go unnoticed. What Erich can't discern is the why or the how; the underlying reasons and rationale.
Jake gets up. Erich seems a little surprised. His arm comes off the back of the booth, but he doesn't stand. "Oh," he says, "yeah, sure. See you in a bit."
By the time Jake comes back out, their food is on the table. The kinsman's portion is sitting in front of his vacated seat. Erich's portion has already diminished by a not-insignificant amount, but he's been polite enough to leave his steak untouched. He's working on the chicken tenders, though.
"Hey," he says, an offhand greeting. And he reaches over to the end of the table, pulls a wad of napkins out of the dispenser, passes them. They eat in silence for a while. Then:
"Did I say something?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
[manipulation + subterfuge part two: electric boogaloo]
Dice: 6d10 TN6 (4, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) (success x 5)
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake isn't gone long. He walks away from the table with the same relaxed, long stride he walked here with. Around a corner and down a short hall, and he's in the bathroom, unseen. It's just the one room, usable by one person at a time, and if he could see himself right now he would be grateful for that. If anyone were in here with him, they'd rather hold it then stand there.
His fists clench. He finds that he's shaking. A hand comes up, palms down his face slowly, and he feels his breath humid with fury against his fingers. Shoulderblades against the inside of the door, he lowers his hand and looks across the way to the dingy mirror over the sink and it's ten years ago, it's even longer, he remembers the way he looked then and the way people looked <i>at</i> him then.
Control, Erich talked about. It was a bit of a compliment. He talked about violence in the blood.
How it starts.
How after that it's hard to stop. Nearly impossible. Sometimes just doesn't.
Jake closes his eyes again and exhales. He just breathes for a while. Inhales deep and holds it until he can't stand it anymore, then forces himself to slowly, slowly let it go. It works better than the Three Deep Breaths thing. It calms him faster. By the time he steps away from the door, he isn't shaking anymore. By the time he finishes washing his hands, he looks relatively normal.
And when he walks back to the table, he's even smiling as he sits down. "Hey," he says back, huffing a laugh as he notices that Erich couldn't help but dig in. He ate all that in five minutes. Maybe less. Ah, growing young Ahrouns. Jake actually unfolds his paper napkin when he takes it from Erich and lays it across one leg, picking up his fork to spear a bit of cauliflower. Erich finally gets to his steak. Jake doesn't seem the type to need to make idle chit-chat when he's eating just to be polite, and doesn't seem to have anything else to say, because he appears quite comfortable with the silence.
His eyes flick up and over when Erich asks if he said something wrong.
For a moment, Jake just looks at him. He slowly finishes chewing his bite of broccoli -- he is not touching the steamed carrots, they're mushy -- and lifts his napkin to wipe lightly at his mouth before putting it down on the table beside his plate. He could lie. He could lie quite effectively, in fact, just as he can also walk through the woods in autumn without making much noise. It doesn't mean he has to. It doesn't mean he needs to, or wants to, or has much reason to.
So he sets that napkin down, meets Erich's eyes, and speaks calmly. That calm is, at least, a lie he feels comfortable with.
"I'm enjoying your company, Erich," he says, his tone measured, "so I would be appreciative if you never brought up your possible 'crush' on another wolf in conversation with me ever again." There's faint emphasis on the penultimate word, leveling off more than pounded in. He picks up his fork again, about to resume eating, fully expecting this to be dropped both immediately and permanently. "It isn't a topic I find tolerable."
He saws a bite off of the edge of is ribeye.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
There's a distinction to be made here. It's small, but it's significant: Erich never said the word <i>wrong</i>. What he said was:
<i>Did I say something?</i>
The difference matters. It matters to wolves and men like them, who are -- no matter how different they are, and how affable at least one of them might seem -- sons of Thunder. Adherents of the strictest strength-cult in the Garou Nation; stricter even than the Fenrir. The Fenrir, after all, tolerate weakness of will, of mind, of beauty; anything but body. Physical strength is all that matters in that tribe. Not so the Shadow Lords, and a Shadow Lord would never
<i>ever</i>
admit fault that he did not believe to be his. Most of them won't even admit fault that is.
So: did he say something. Something to make Jake's jaw twitch like that; something to make him disappear into the bathroom for a while. And it turns out, he did. And Jake tells him, which surprises Erich, but in a good way. He can appreciate transparency like that, even as some intrinsic, animal part of his riles on instinct to be told <i>no</i> like that.
Erich doesn't take <i>no</i> very well. Few Ahrouns do. This one watches Jake a moment, eyes a little narrower than they were a moment before. His fingers -- the pads of them still resting lightly on the handle of his steak knife -- tap a few idle times on the table. Then he shrugs.
"All right." A beat. "Why?"
There's no <i>can I ask--</i> this time.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Telling him <i>I don't want to talk about that</i> was transparency beyond what Jake offers most people. He very nearly lost his temper; an explanation as to why in order to avoid it happening again is fair, and also wise. So Jake tells him no. Erich narrows his eyes, but Jake is already eating again, watching his knife press through and shred apart a neat line in the overcooked meat.
<i>Why?</i>
Jake glances up at him blandly for a moment, wordless. Then he huffs a breath, the amusement feigned because his eyes still hold traces of that rage from only a handful of minutes before, and shakes his head. "I'm afraid your curiosity will have to be deprived this time."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
A beat or two. Some Garou - many perhaps, and more still Ahrouns, Shadow Lords - would detonate. Make an example. Hurt something, someone, everyone.
The potential is there in Erich; make no mistake. He resists. Controls it. He shrugs; a deliberately easy gesture.
"All right," he says. A moment passes in thought. He adds, a touch more hesitant, "I'm not without honor. Maybe I was too blunt there. Or too honest. But I know where the line is."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
It's hard to tell, even in this short time, what Jake's experience with Garou is. He talks of different tribes, he obviously knows the taboo around Garou mating, if not the law of the Litany. He is ready, watchful of Erich's behavior, like he knows -- like he's met, like he's seen -- what rage can do, even without intent. Especially without intent. And he had a question about whether or not Erich was in a pack. Yet he was confused when Erich said he was born to the Fenrir but chosen by Thunder. He came to Browntown, of all places, not knowing there were Garou and kin there, much less a powerful caern. He has a child, and by all appearances he's a divorced dad, so it doesn't sound like he married a werewolf. And as watchful as he is, that applies just as readily to a human vagrant as to a Cliath Ahroun. And awareness, for Jake, does not seem to be the same as fear. He isn't oblivious to the potential of what Erich could do to him. He simply doesn't fear it.
There is a pause between them again. Jake eats quietly, chewing his steak well before swallowing, and he looks up when Erich talks again, as though expecting they'll just move on in conversation to other branches, other discussions. He certainly didn't throw down his napkin and walk out, leaving Erich with the bill or storming off into the winter night again. He just looks up, meets the other man's eyes, and listens.
And sighs. Not at Erich. Almost at himself, at the detour from an otherwise pleasant evening.
"I did not intend to imply a lack of honor on your part," he says, still looking at Erich directly. He sounds sincere, at least. "Your affairs are none of my concern." Half true, but well meant. Saying what should be true, what you know should be true, instead of what is. "It's simply something I would rather not talk about." Jake picks up another bite of steak with his fork. "It's been a while," he says offhandedly a moment later, "since I've sat down to eat with another guy." He has no idea this is a reflection Erich had himself a few minutes ago, but he apparently shares it. "Or hung out with another guy, period. The only one I see regularly is my employee, and he's seventeen." Jake says that wryly, cocking a brow. Not exactly riveting conversation, your average 17-year old barista.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Whether deliberately or not -- Erich would have a bet on which, if he stopped to think about it -- Jake guides the conversation onward. What he says is such a reflection of a thought that had cruised through Erich's own mind just moments prior that the Ahroun brightens visibly.
Dog metaphors again: a ball has been thrown. Erich forgets the bone he's been gnawing; he chases.
"Yeah," he says. "Same here. It's different." He thinks about why. "The potential of sex isn't always amorphously in the background."
...which perhaps makes him <i>not so very different</i> from Jake's seventeen-year-old barista, after all.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
For a moment there, Jake isn't convinced -- even a little -- that Erich really forgets anything. Maybe it's because Jake himself is not so easily distracted, and maybe it's because Erich seems to be a generally curious and not entirely thickheaded kind of Ahroun, but when Erich lets the topic drop and joins the new one, Jake's kneejerk reaction is to take it as a deliberate and conscious response. It may not be. Jake can, at times, be charitable like that.
Regardless: it seems to make Erich happy. He perks up, and Jake goes on sawing bits of meat off his steak to eat, some more of the tension leaving him. Enough that he remembers how irrational his fury can be, enough that he asks himself -- as people often do -- why they can't seem to rein it in sometimes. The guy is nice company. Jake isn't exactly berating himself for 'fucking it up', because he hasn't and he isn't the sort, but the more steps he takes away from his own anger, the smaller it looks, the smaller it feels.
Jake blinks at Erich's explanation, and then he laughs lightly. "Whether you want it there or not," he adds, rather than arguing that no, Erich, it is possible to hang out with a woman and not think about sex.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Exactly." Erich is delighted. "You totally get it."
That brief but potent spike of tension has passed. It seems to matter less now. His anger seems smaller to Jake; on Erich's part, he's vaguely and inexplicably a little ashamed of his own reaction. That reaction, in truth, was mostly in his own mind; a subtle realigning of the senses so that Jake became -- however briefly -- an adversary, something to keep on the other side of the line from himself.
"I wouldn't mind doing it again sometime," he says. "Hanging out. Maybe next time I'm in Browntown I'll drop by your shop."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake gets it. Look at him: regardless of his own intentions or thoughts on the subject, at some point or another most of his conversations with women feel electrified by the prospect of sexuality. Not all, but definitely 'most'. He is too aware to be oblivious to it, and too well acquainted with subtlety. He knows it's there. It's nearly impossible to completely escape from.
He smiles wryly at Erich though, at Erich's delighted sort of... relief, almost. Jake gets it. "You should," he says, "though I can't promise it's very interesting. It's just a bakery."
He gives an offhand shrug, smiling as he digs into dinner again. "I also can't promise that one or more of my employees won't make eyes at you."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Erich's laugh this time is a touch dry. "Employ a lot of kin, do you?"
A hint of stark realism there, underlying all the rest - the easygoing nature, the gregarious affect, the quips. Erich isn't unaware of the real score; isn't unaware that no matter how approachable he can try to make himself, it's likely that only kin can withstand him for long. And only a very, very few kin can withstand him with the apparent ease Jake lays claim to.
"I'll come by sometime," he adds, a sort of casual promise. "Maybe bring a pound or two of roast beef. If you provide the bread we can have a picnic and see how many eyes get made."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
"Two out of four," Jake says with a small shrug. "If you ever do show up, give whoever is running the counter some space. Meghan and Trevor are great kids, but human. Sam just started, and she's managing. She has a 'guardian'," and it's clear from his tone how much weight Jake gives that sort of relationship or claim, "but I don't know what family she's from. Anneliese is only there for a few hours every morning and she works in the kitchen with me. I believe she's Fenrir."
Erich's joke makes Jake glance at him, mouth twisted in a wry smile and eyebrow up. "People make eyes at me all the time. I showed up in town around the same time that Sterling-Fisk did. Sam worked for them til just recently. I'm not convinced that most people don't still believe we're in league with their 'enemy'."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Will do," Erich promises -- counter-runner, space. Then a small pause while he saws off a piece of his rapidly diminishing steak, plants it in his mouth.
"Tell you the truth," he says then, "I have no idea what's up with Sterling-Fisk and all that. Saw the flyers a couple months back -- about rebuilding? Seemed like a good thing to me, but Browntown's not really my business. Didn't go to the meeting. Next thing I know everyone's up in arms 'cause apparently Sterling-Fisk's the antichrist.
"You know what it's all about? I mean... they any proof that they're in bed with the big-bad, or whatever?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
As far as Sterling-Fisk goes, Jake just... sighs. He shakes his head a bit, finishing the bite he's chewing and reaching for his water, since he's done with his tea. No beer tonight, no wine. Not even the house stuff they have on hand in a place like this. "My first experience with them wasn't exactly sinister -- just the usual corporate approach. I took everything I heard with a grain of salt, ignored the plans for sabotage and talk of getting everyone ready for some kind of battle, and offered to kickstart a small business group in town."
He shrugs, setting his glass down. "Which, as I see it, is good for the town, my business, and myself regardless of Sterling Fisk's intentions. So that's been the majority of my involvement." Jake picks up his knife. "Those who are doing more research or taking more under-the-table action are very, very bad at communicating whatever is going on, so I don't know much, either. However,"
and Jake pauses here, chewing a bite of steak slowly, thoughtfully, before he swallows: "a little while ago, some Sterling Fisk trucks rolled into town and drove up to one of the little churches. It was a large crew, probably larger than the congregation that used to meet there, and all of them were wearing high-quality anti-ballistic body armor. They claimed they were concerned about 'sabotage' to their rebuilding efforts, and after a little while they rolled out again."
His fork is set down, napkin lifted to wipe his mouth. This is more, all at once, than Jake has said most of the night and more than most people hear him say at a time. "I went in and looked around, and found a transmitter in the basement sending out a signal I couldn't fathom through an antenna up in the steeple. I asked around for someone who knew computers, and Sam -- the woman who works for me now -- showed up at my door. The signal being sent out is apparently four signals, to different areas of town. 'Grow, camouflage, survey, slumber'. And that, plus the body armor," Jake says, shaking his head again, "does make me more inclined to think something untoward is going on. But I don't know what, I don't like to act based on assumptions, and I haven't heard anything else since."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
Grow. Camouflage. Survey. Slumber. Of the four words, it's oddly the last and least ominous that piques Erich's interest.
"Slumber's a word we use for spirits a lot," he says. "Refers to a sort of ... low-energy inactive mode they can go into. Sorta like sleeping computers. Theurges have a rite that can re-Awaken them. Or sometimes they spontaneously pop back out of Slumber when there's enough ambient spirit energy. I hear there are also ways you can program a spirit to re-Awaken when certain conditions are met.
"What locations were getting the message? And was it the same four words to every location, or were some of them getting told to grow while others were surveying, etcetera?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
That Erich is interested in this at all keeps Jake's interest. It's that pleasantness paired with the unexpected: the Get of Fenris who is actually a Shadow Lord, the Ahroun who is curious and a little on the thoughtful side if you know when to look at him, the Cliath who isn't itching at any chance to make a mark for himself -- such as trying to stake a claim on any random unaffiliated kinfolk he finds. The Garou who doesn't bare his teeth and turn over the table in his rush to go keep that whatever from growing or surveying or <i>anything</i>, god damn it!
Beyond that: he tells Jake something he doesn't know. Jake looks at him when he hears the word 'spirits' and there's a faint frown to his brow, but he finds himself actually wanting to know. There is no condescension in Erich's tone or words, just a sort of rambling interest of his own that comes out in the form of talking about it. Jake just listens, though to tell the truth there's almost no point in his life he can see himself needing to know any of this.
He shakes his head, though. "I don't know," he answers, in a tone that could also mean 'I don't remember'. "You might ask Sam if she's around when you drop by the bakery; she's the one who pulled the information. I think Deputy Mitchell may know more, too."
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
There's a bit of hesitation in Erich. He turns his fork over in his hand, pokes at the last bit of his steak. The chicken tenders are almost gone too. A moment's thought when he doesn't look at his dinner buddy. When he stabs up that last steak morsel, there's an air of resolution about him.
"Tell you the truth," he says, "I don't really feel enough ... obligation toward Browntown to really bother digging into it. I got no ties there, pack or tribe or Sept. If they need me in war I'll go, of course, but ... "
-- he trails off; a shrug. He eats, he drinks. He sets his glass down and looks across the table to see what Jake makes of all that: a Fenrir who chose Thunder, an Ahroun who isn't raring to go to war, a Garou with no pack, no Sept.
"Just don't see a reason to <i>look</i> for involvement," he finishes his sentence after all.
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
"You're just curious," Jake says, in answer to Erich's tenative explanation of his lack of investment in Browntown. He isn't judging. He is, to an extent, assuming, though not by much. He's reflecting: trying to understand. Erich asks questions about it, wonders about it, talks about it, but... doesn't entirely care. Not in the way people might expect him to, might even demand of him.
Jake knows a little about not caring, though. What is and is not worth digging into, looking at, investigating, fighting. Look at him even now, living in a town and being perhaps the last kinsman in it to say <i>okay, maybe Sterling Fisk actually is 'bad'</i>. But he does invest. He has a child, one he obviously doesn't have sole physical custody of. He has reason to try and make sure his life out there isn't destroyed by minions of the Wyrm. And that reason isn't:
There's no pack or tribe or sept for Erich there. He'll go if he's needed; he's an Ahroun, after all, and Jake doesn't seem to see a need to reflect that back to him or mention it. He knows what Ahrouns are for. Why they exist. And what Jake appears to make of all that is, as Erich discovers when he looks over at him, very little. It is what it is. Erich is as he is. Jake seems to merely take it in stride, but Jake so far has not seemed a man terribly focused on what someone 'should' do, 'should' be like. If anything, he's seemed mildly pleased -- or at least intrigued -- when Erich has been the precise opposite.
"There is a caern there, they say," he mentions, and shrugs. "Personally, I've never understood why a caern is worth all the mouth-frothing and calls to war and dying, but that is what happens, and apparently the caerns are why. So," and rather than being a continuation, that last word seems to an unspoken summation. <i>So.</i> There you have it. There it is.
Jake slices one last juicy bite off the bone of his steak, his eyes dropping again to focus on the motion rather than the companion. "I hope you weren't expecting me to scold you, or worse, try to motivate you." The steak pops into his mouth, and he looks at Erich again.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"I don't know what to expect," Erich replies, half-smiling. "I met you an hour ago and now we're sharing meat, sort of. So that's a good start. There've definitely been people who would've felt that much interaction gives them the right to scold or motivate, though. Glad you're not one of 'em."
Down the hatch goes the last of his steak. No potatoes on his plate; chicken tenders were his only side. He takes care of that in short order too, and then there's just a coke. And Jake across the table.
"So..."
It's a tone anyone who's ever eaten out with anyone else has heard: the prelude to a goodbye, or at least an adjournment to a different locale. Yet that's not where this sentence leads. Erich stops short; he goes in a different direction altogether.
"You know if they let kin into their Caern? Out in Browntown."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Sharing meat. Sort of.
It would have been different if Erich had said 'having dinner' or 'sharing a meal'. That he is a wolf, and that Jake seems to grasp this so intuitively and effortlessly, and that they both know they're on opposite sides of a table not touching each other's food all contributes to both the phrasing Erich chose and the 'sort of' that followed.
It makes Jake smile a little, too. He huffs a short laugh through his nostrils, finishing chewing his last bite of steak and leaning back in his chair. That itself is a signal, the same sort of signal that Erich's <i>So...</i> seems to send. The meal is done. They have shared meat and conversation and knowledge. They have remained on their own sides, kept to their own territories, did not go for each other's throats. It's good. It can be done, too, without rancor or awkwardness, but:
Jake's eyebrows flick up at the question Erich asks then. He shakes his head once, twice, both slowly but smoothly. "No idea. Why?"
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
"Because if they let you go in," Erich replies, "you oughta. Even realmside, a Caern's <i>different.</i> It's ... special." A smile accompanies the shrug this time. "Can't promise a rapture, but you might get something out of it. Understand why Garou get so bent outta shape over Caerns and all."
On that note, Erich grabs a few napkins out of the dispenser and wipes his mouth, his hands. Then he lifts his eyebrows at Jake.
"You need a ride anywhere?"
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
Jake glances at him then says: "Ah." He gives a small one-shouldered shrug, head tipping to one side with it. "I've been to one." There's a pause after that, but it's brief. "Not this one, but I imagine the effect you're thinking of would be similar. I didn't notice anything. But I was preoccupied."
He absently wipes his fingertips on a napkin beside his plate, then shakes his head. "No. I'm staying at the hotel right across from the toy store for the night. What about you?"
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
<i>Preoccupied.</i> It could mean any number of things, and several of them pop into Erich's mind. Maybe Jake had been dragged in for punishment; he's kin to the Shadow Lords, after all, and somehow Erich couldn't see him submitting meekly to some of the tribe's less reasonable members. Or maybe he was there to witness something. The death of a father, a mother, a brother, a sister -- something along those lines. Or maybe it was a matter of claim and territory; maybe he was being passed, like so much luggage, from one Garou to another.
Erich doesn't know. He doesn't ask. There's been enough truth, enough unexpected revelation, for one night. The word makes him glance at Jake, but he says nothing.
On that subject, anyway. The next makes him shrug. "I'll find someplace," he replies, and then tilts to the side to pull his phone out. "Gimme your number? I'll give you a call sometime when I'm in Browntown. Or just drop by the bakery."
<strong>Jake Novak</strong>
That word is, coming from a man like Jake, rife with potential connotations. He might have been fighting for his life. He might have been surrounded by monsters, and even someone as stoic or seemingly unafraid as this man would be a fool not to feel a clench of cold terror in his gut at that point. And, yes: he might have been enduring some punishment or witnessing something even more grisly. He might have been grieving. Or marrying... though one could hardly call it that, if it were the case. It isn't the same.
But whatever it was, Erich doesn't ask. And already, the younger man's curiosity has made itself a clear part of his personality. Jake notices that he doesn't ask, even with that glance, and he is as grateful for that as he is for the distraction of a simple, companionable dinner with another male. At Erich's shrug, Jake doesn't leap to offer a place. Stay with me, let me put you up -- nothing of the sort. That he is a Shadow Lord to the core shows itself again: their rules of hospitality are different. It isn't that Shadow Lords don't have those laws. But they are not the same as those of a Fiann or a Fenrir. All he does is nod.
The number he gives begins with 540: the same area code as anywhere else in Browntown. No hints there as to where he's really from, or at least where he used to be. Seven more digits after that and he doesn't ask for Erich's number. He suspects the Ahroun doesn't have one, perhaps, or simply doesn't think he'll need to know. Erich isn't going to be his 'guardian', after all.
The check has landed, and Jake just puts down cash. Normally, people pay up at the front in a diner like this. He doesn't expect them to stop he or Erich as they walk out, though. Jake is reaching for his coat, shrugging into it again, smiling one of those thin smiles. "I'd say it's harder to find a decent steak out there, but I'm in league with the butcher. Good meat shouldn't be difficult to find."
Rising from his seat, he heads for the door with Erich, hands sliding into his pockets. He doesn't follow that up to explain that what he means is <i>yes. you should stop by. we should do this again.</i> He doesn't need to.
<strong>Erich Reinhardt</strong>
It turns out Erich does have a phone -- one of those cheap little Android pay-as-you-go's from Best Buy or Fry's or the sort. He punches Jake's number in and hits call so Jake has his number, too, and then counts out enough money to cover his portion of the meal, plus a bit of tip.
"It's never hard to find good meat around wolves," Erich says, smiling, as he stands.
They walk to the door together: two large men contrasted in nearly every other way. The diner breathes a little easier with their departure. On the sidewalk outside they part, Erich pausing to get his outerwear on, raising a hand in a loose sort of wave. "I'll see you around," he says. Jake heads, presumably, for his hotel; Erich goes to find his car.
