how much time do you spend color-coordinating every outfit?

Ingrid

Two weeks, he said. One week with her car and she with his for each shoe he shoved (and brutally destroyed) on his big ugly feet. Ingrid doesn't have those shoes anymore, they were discarded casually in a club somewhere on U-Street, but a promise is a promise.

When the two week time limit is up, Erich gets a text with an address and a time from however he has the Ragabash entered in his phone. The location is a parking lot near the water, the time dusk. The place is sparsely populated, but not completely empty. Mortals, stinking worthless meatsacks loiter here and there, but not too close to the white and black Mustang. Not because they don't want to get too close to that sweet yet oddly painted car, but because the woman leaned against it has an aura that wards off the weak willed.

Wrapped in a long black coat, charcoal dress slacks and another pair of completely impractical heels, a scarf the color of blood wrapped around her throat, at the appointed time she's already out and leaned against the side of the car, much as she had the night they first met.

Erich

Erich's feet, excuse Ingrid, are not ugly. They are big, though. And yes, compared to hers: they are undelicate, all brute and bone.

They are also, at the moment, stomping the gas pedal of an Audi R8 into the floor. Ingrid can hear her car coming from blocks off. Who knows if she even recognizes the sound: cars sound different when you're driving them. Especially if you've never driven them

quite like this.

Blue-white HID headlights claw across the parking lot. The engine's pushed to screaming. Ingrid's baby whips around Erich's Mustang in a wide circle, close enough to lift her hair with its tailwind. The back tires lose traction; the front tires turn into the slide. Rubber peels down over a hundred feet of asphalt, and then the coupe comes to a rocking stop, the engine shuddering ever so slightly from the performance extremes it comes down from.

Then it dies. Erich pops the door open and gets out; looks somehow too large, climbing out of the sleek little racer. He's grinning; he tosses the keys at Ingrid, glittering in the dim light.

"Bet you never pushed her like that," he brags.

Ingrid

Compared to most males, physically at least, Ingrid is small, delicate, graceful. Compared to Erich she appears outright fragile, ethereal, wispy and breakable as a nymph out of a folk tale. She hasn't heard her car from outside the cabin, but that doesn't mean she can't recognize that sound for what it is. Hers. Her baby, being returned to her after an extended stay with its wild, irresponsible distant uncle. He can't see her when she hears that sound, can't see the animal way her head shifts in the direction of the sound.

When the sleek black vehicle whips around the lot, tires skidding across the lot, she pushes off from the side of the Mustang. Heels clacking on the pavement, she moves smoothly, almost lazily to the other side of the car to where she guesses the Audi will come to a halt. The Ahroun gets out, the man looking far too big to fit into something so small as the Audi, and she's still walking. She stops only to catch her key with both gloved hands.

He brags.

Dark eyes flick to his face and her head tilts. Full lips curve upward in a smile that is infuriatingly full of secrets, but she doesn't answer him.

Instead, she pulls his key from a pocket of her coat and holds it out to him, dangling it from the tip of her gloved index finger.

Erich

There's no silence to Erich; no refinement. He's as jarringly contrasted to Ingrid as their cars are to one another. There's something quite sleek and cosmopolitan about her; he, on the other hand, is big and rawboned. Raw in general.

He snaps the keys up. It calls to mind a wolf snapping up a shred of offered meat. He shows his teeth in a grin, and then he shoulders right past her to spread his arms over the roof of his car, dropping a big theatrical kiss on the so-fresh paintjob.

"Mwah! Hello baby, Daddy's home. Did you miss me? No, no. She was just a bit of fun on the side. I promise I didn't love her more than you."

Turning, he doesn't lean against the side of the car the way Ingrid prefers. He vaults up on the hood, heels on the bumper. "Sticking around a while, or heading home?" he asks the Ragabash.

Ingrid

He shoulders past her to hug and kiss his car. He might be able to hear her footsteps - just two - as Ingrid steps nearer, inspecting the display curiously. He might even be able to see a bit of her reflection in some part of the car, which would mean he'd notice 'baby' is a little cleaner than when he entrusted her to the Ragabash. Not much, it wasn't recent and she didn't keep the car locked up in a garage all this time.

"What makes you think my car is female?" she asks behind him, and he can hear the smirk before he turns around and sees it. Her brow is quirked, and she stands with feet apart, braced, ready for anything.

When he asks if she's sticking around or heading home, she shrugs a shoulder. "As I have no home currently, I can...stick around," she says, pausing as if she's tasting the idiom on her tongue as she speaks it.

Erich

"Because," Erich replies without missing a beat, "it's way more fun thinking about you riding a girl."

He smirks too. And she says the words like they're just too inelegant for her: she's sticking around, yes. He laughs, "What, don't tell me you've been sleeping in my car too."

Ingrid

There's that smile again, the one that reminds him that this woman is a Child of Crow, collector of secrets. It happens when he says it's more fun thinking about her riding a girl. Whatever images pop into mind as a result of that look, what she replies is, "It's my experience that the inside of a girl is not so dry."

Ordinarily, it would be impossible to misinterpret the meaning of that statement. But considering the woman in question is, well, more animal in nature than human, it's hard to tell if she means something sexual, or if the experience of which she speaks is bloodier.

Erich is of course free to take it as he will, which would be the point.

"I may have. Which reminds me, I have something for you." Slipping a hand into her coat pocket, she steps closer so that when she holds out her closed fist, it's right in front of his chest. "A souvenir."

Erich
Erich makes a production of looking at this 'souvenir' -- examining her fist from all angles, up and down and side to side.

"Is this something I actually want in my hand?" he wants to know, and then holds out his open palm anyway. "It better not be gross."

Ingrid

She holds her fist perfectly still for his appraisal. All he can see is a red leather glove with three gold buttons. It's the exact same shade as her scarf, which matches her shoes, which, if her hair would get out of the way, he would see match her earrings.

She shrugs at him, shifts her arm impatiently when he questions her generosity. Her fingers uncurl, and a keychain drops into his palm. It's small and black and round, with a vintage painting of a woman in a red bathing suit before a rather iconic shoreline. Atlantic City it reads across the top, and at the bottom America's All-Year Resort PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD.

"For your collection, if you want." It probably cost a buck fifty, maybe two dollars tops. The fancy Ragabash really pulled out the stops with this gift.

Erich

It's dark out here. Erich has to hold the keychain up to his eyes to figure out what it is, much less what it says. Those eyes widen when he reads it.

"You drove all the way to Atlantic City? You shameless bitch. I hope you at least changed the oil and checked the tires."

Ingrid

The sun sets quickly this time of year. They met at dusk, and already the sky has darkened to a deep, dark indigo, lengthening the shadows they cast. The sparse number of humans has thinned out almost completely, leaving the pair of wolves all but alone in the semi-gloom.

"This from the man who besmirched my car's honor for a mere fling?" She almost sounds offended. Almost.

"I had the oil changed and took it in for a tune-up first." In anyone else she would sound only the slightest bit peeved. Coming from Ingrid, that tone clearly states something along the lines of I'm not a heathen.

Erich

"Don't pretend like your car didn't enjoy it. A little rough play goes a long way, you know. -- But thanks." He holds up the keychain in indication. "For the souv.

"By the way," he adds, head bent to the task of stringing the newest chain onto his ever-growing litany of locales, "I met a kinsman the other day. Good looking fellow with a job and everything." He grins at Ingrid, crookedly. "You should ask him out."

Ingrid

He bends to the task of adding the newest chain to his collection. Ingrid, hands sliding into the pockets of her coat, takes a step and turns, leaning back against the car. She's in front of him still, but he sees her other side in profile as the breeze tugs at her long hair.

Tilting her head toward him over her shoulder, crossing one ankle over the other, she says, "Oh?" Curious, but not overly.

Erich

" 'Oh'." He looks at her, smirking. "His name's Jake. He lives in Browntown. Actually, he's the town baker."

Ingrid

If Erich had something on him with the baker's scent, maybe she would react differently. She knows that scent. Not so well as she knows Erich's, not even so well as she knows a sparse few others, but it's there, stored away in her memory. If she wanted she could hunt him down anywhere.

If she wanted.

The name gets nothing. The town doesn't, either. The profession, though.

"Ooo," she says, "a baker. I am a quiver with desire."

Erich

Erich barks a laugh. "Don't knock the bakers, man. They know all about kneading and rubbing and tossing and pounding. I'll give him your number if you want."

Ingrid

Her mouth quirks and she unhooks her ankles so that she can turn, press her hip into the car and face the Ahroun more directly. Dark eyes glitter in the night a moment before she lifts her chin to regard him beneath lowered, shadowed lids.

"If you find him so appealing, why don't you ask him out?" she asks, saying those three words in that odd way again. Not like she's too good to use them, but as though she's never used them before. She must have, her English is better than Erich's. But there are words that don't get used very often, that aren't a part of her every day vocabulary.

"Besides, I don't need you to find someone for me."

Erich

A little less humor this time to the twist of Erich's mouth; a hidden nerve has been touched. "Because I think I've had enough trouble with kin lately," he says. Then the smirk returns. "Plus, he's not really my type.

"And you so need me to find someone for you. If I don't, you'll end up a bitter old maid, just you watch."

Ingrid

His humor fades, and as that tide recedes it briefly reveals a beach of emotion littered with jagged, broken glass. Erich tries to drop the shutters, but it's too late. Crow's perceptive daughter has already seen.

Ingrid drops her chin, angles her head to the side. She drops her teasing, stops dancing away from his banter. "What trouble with kin?"

Erich

A twist of his mouth; a quick shrug that looks like he's trying to shake something off his back.

"Not important. Just some stupidity on my part that didn't end happy. Good reminder of why I didn't join my forefathers in the Get, though."

Ingrid

Stupidity on his part involving kin that didn't end happy. Given who she's talking to, there is absolutely nothing in that summarized assessment that is a surprise to Ingrid. There are details missing, of course, most of which she couldn't care less about uncovering. Who the kin in question is, what they did, what have you. She could press him for this information if she really wanted to know it, could wrap her fingers around his mind and squeeze until every last tidbit was hers to be devoured.

If she wanted.

Once upon a time she might have, too. But something other than idle curiosity and a lust for secrets motivates her next question.

"Because you would have acted differently?"

Erich

"Because the Get are stuck in the past," Erich replies, "and they'll die out before they change."

It's flat, short; not at all the smirking, quipping Erich she knows and loves-to-hate. He gives a shake of his head, quick, like he's shaking off rain. "Let's talk about something else," he offers, and then manages a smile. "Hell were you doing up in AC?"

Ingrid

Her brow quirks, and more questions come to mind. Questions she does not ask, her reasons for that her own. Maybe because she loves-to-hate him, and delving deeper into that quiet, intense response would ruin that. Maybe for some other reason, something she keeps to herself.

"I was playing," she says, mouth curving with the memory.

Erich

Erich studies that secretive little smile, then huffs a laugh. "And what," he wants to know, "constitutes 'play' for Ingrid Kim, anyway? I never did ask you what you got up to that night in the club."

Ingrid

Tilting her head, the smile shifts from secretive to wouldn't you like to know. Propping her hands on the car, she hops up, perching on the edge of the hood. If they're going to chat, she may as well get comfortable. "Nor I you. Which would you like to know?" she asks, angling her body so she mostly faces him, but partly doesn't. "You may have one answer, but not both."

Erich

"Oh, I may, may I?" Erich eyes Ingrid as she invites herself up on the Mustang's hood. "Well golly gee whiz, I gotta think before I pick my poison. Which answer is more likely to be suitably titillating?

"I'm gonna go with my original question. How does our very own Ingrid Kim play?"

Ingrid

She sits there on the edge of the hood, leaning into her left arm, her right resting gracefully over her midsection, studying Erich while he talks. He talks a lot, which is fine. When he's talking he's normal, or at least pretending like he's not trying to bury the kin business beneath the weight of a thousand thousand words. Ingrid, equally pretending to think over what her answer will be, is content to let him.

"That depends on the toys available, but I suppose you could say I enjoy gambles."

Erich

The truth is, there's not much to bury. Not much in the way of pain or angst. Resentment, to be sure -- but that resentment is an old thing, an old festering wound much deeper than whatever affection lay between Erich and his unnamed 'kin problem'. Not much in the way of true love, either; at least not the sort that starcrossed lovers in his position so often and so loudly proclaim.

He's annoyed. He liked Drew, he really did. He has even more ammunition now in his personal hate-war with his former tribe. But Erich's hardly moping about with a broken heart. If anything, he seems about as content as Ingrid to let that whole business simply fade.

And he snorts: "Well that was an uninformative answer."

Ingrid

"How so?" she asks, watching for his answer, the lazy, sated huntress lounging on the hood of his car. For what it's worth, she doesn't appear to be toying with him now, isn't laying out tiny half-answers as bait to lure him in toward some deep truth. Nor is she leading him, patiently guiding him to a conclusion he could only get to with her assistance. He asked a question, she answered. If he was expecting something long winded, he asked the wrong woman.

Erich

" 'Toys' can mean any number things," Erich points out. "Same deal with 'gambling'. Specifics, duchess. Spit 'em out. What's the worst that could happen? Not like I'm gonna betray your secrets to the enemy -- as if the Wyrm would care how you spent your weekend."

Ingrid

For a moment she considers dragging this out further. Spinning him in circles until he gives up his questioning, that's the sort of thing she'd normally do, and not even from a desire to remain a mystery.

Instead she smiles at him, and there's a touch of genuine amusement that shares a border with warmth without quite entering that territory.

"Because my only enemy is the Wyrm?" A graceful, red leather gloved hand moves to sweep stray locks of hair from her cheek. "Toys. Playthings. I played a lot of cards and with a lot of dice, but the real risk is in the other players in the game."

Erich

"I find it hard to believe," Erich says, "that any cardsharp could possibly pose a genuine risk to you. And if you really are racking up enemies as significant as the Wyrm itself, then maybe you ought to consider a safer game."

Her hand descending from her hair is caught: first by Erich's icy eyes, and then by his significantly less icy hand. His thumb and fingers form a neat manacle around her wrist. He raises her hand back up for her to see; he looks bemused.

"So I just have to ask. Exactly how much time and energy do you spend every day color-coordinating every outfit you wear? I mean look at this shit. The gloves match the scarf." He drops her hand, peers down. "I can't tell; are those heels red too?"

Ingrid

"Safer," she says, the corner of her mouth lifting a little higher, musing. Ingrid is as likely to tread safer waters as she is to answer a question head on. There is more she would say, and she will, but first. He catches her hand, and she doesn't pull away, nor does she twist from his grip as she did that night in the alley. He holds her by the wrist, and she allows it. The hand, once released, drops gracefully to her lap.

The heels are indeed also red. There are other details, other places where the colors are carefully coordinated that can't be seen easily in the darkness. "I doubt I spend any more time on my attire than you do," she says, her dark eyes dropping to take in the appearance of the Ahroun before snapping up to his face. Her head tilts to a curious angle.

"Is your range for adversaries really so limited? The Wyrm," she says, lifting one hand to eye height, "and everything else?" Her other hand drops below her waist.

Erich

"I seriously doubt that," he says, "seeing as how I spend zero seconds deciding what to wear and just grab whatever I can reach out of the back of my car."

One hand's at her eyebrow. The other's below her waist. He laughs, the sort of loud open noise that rings across the empty lot, that one doubts Ingrid is even capable of. "Are you trying to get me to check you out?" There's a gleam in his eye; he puts his own hand at the level of her -- how shall we put it Ingrid-ishly? -- her bosom.

"Weaver," an addition to her proposed ranking. "Well, maybe a little lower. But that would defeat the purpose, right?"

Ingrid

"What makes you think this wasn't the first outfit at the top of my suitcase this morning?"

Her brow quirks, but her hands remain stationary when he adds the Weaver in the general vicinity of her considerably less-than-ample...bosom. In fact, in that coat her chest is practically completely flat.

The hand held at eye-height lowers to wrap around upper torso, anyway, the gesture protective. Dipping her chin, she schools her pretty features into an expression of worry. The cold, aloof Shadow Lord becomes demure, almost innocent.

"How dare you. The only man I want to check out my figure is Jake the Baker of Browntown."

Erich

Very drolly: "Are you going to slap me for my presumption, too?"

Ingrid

Just like that the act is dropped, the sly smile returned. "Do you want me to hit you?"

Erich

Erich smirks. "Why don't you give it a try?"

Ingrid

The smile widens. "Now that," she says as she hops down, heels - yes red like her gloves, like her scarf, like other tiny details that can't bee seen for the dark and for the coat that covers her - to the pavement once more, "is a fetish of yours that does not surprise me."

Without missing a beat, she lifts her right hand and strikes his cheek. It's more sound than force, the red leather whacking into his skin. It's a feather tap, hardly anything. His head does not move, her hand does not sting.

Nonplussed, Ingrid brushes nonexistent debris from her coat.

niko @ 11:53AM
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[KER-SLAP!: dex+brawl]
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niko @ 11:54AM
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[dam?]
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Erich

"Wow," Erich deadpans, "that was monumental. Truly devastating. I'm amazed I'm still standing. I shall never insult your honor by motioning toward your bosom again."

Ingrid

She tilts her head at him, brows lifted. "Oh, you wanted it to hurt? Shall I try again?"

Erich

"I think you're the one with the fetish. You know, when they talk about hitting on someone, they don't mean literally." He winks at her, clicking his tongue. "Just a tip for when you meet Jake the Baker of Browntown."

Ingrid

"Oh is that what that means? I had always wondered but never thought to ask. Thank you so much for enlightening me." Folding one arm before her and the other behind, she bends at the waist and then straightens. And she adds with a smile, "I'll keep that in mind."

Sucking a breath of crisp, cold night air in through her nose, she lets it out on a sigh. "All this talk of enemies and fetishes has made me thirsty. Care to join me on a hunt?"

Ingrid

Erich

"Thirsty? Are you a vampire now?"

Ingrid

"I'll take that as a no."

Without another word she crosses to her car and opens the driver's side door.

Erich

"Hold on a minute, princess," Erich doesn't so much slide off the hood of his car as he springs off, landing solidly on the pavement. Her car door opens, but he grabs it and keeps her from shutting it in his face. "Just wasn't sure if you were hunting for drinks or the Wyrm. You need backup?"

Ingrid

She slips fluidly, gracefully into the driver's seat. Her hand is still on the door when he grabs it, keeping it open. Looking up at him, she does not shrink away from his suddenly looming presence crowding close.

"Need," she states, nose wrinkling slightly. She gives a small shake of her head. "But, I wouldn't have asked if I were opposed to your assistance, Erich."

Erich

"Yeah, you need backup." He's insufferably smug. "Figures, when you could barely kill a fly with that slap earlier."

He lets her car door go, circling around the back to the passenger's side. Raps his knuckles on the window there, waiting to be let in.

Ingrid

He raps his knuckles against the window while Ingrid puts the key to the ignition. The car purrs to life, earning a twitch of a smile from the Ragabash. If the Ahroun thinks she's going to lean across and open the door for him, he has another think coming. The door is already unlocked, and he obviously still has the use of his hands.

Ingrid doesn't correct him in his assessment of her supposed need for backup. With no scent and no breeding to give away her existence, a knack for melting into the darkness, and her skill with a sword, the Ragabash does well enough on her own these last few months. But wolves are not solitary creatures by nature. Even the loners seek companionship occasionally, if not permanently. Though Ingrid is in no hurry to bind herself to anyone under a totem, she doesn't mind Erich, crude and unrefined as he is.

These are not things that Ingrid says when Erich finally drops into the passenger seat. What she does say is, "Brace yourself." And she proceeds to show him just how she handles her 'baby,' which is not gentle, timid, or demure. Speeding off into the night, she heads for a patch of Wyld with which she has become familiar, a place where the Gauntlet is thin enough that even someone of her relatively low gnosis can cross easily.

Erich

Brace yourself, she warns.

"You keep this up and I'll think you're -- fuck me." The wisecracking retorts turns into a whiteknuckled grab at the door grip as Ingrid whips the R8 around, tires skirting perilously close to the edge of the lot, where concrete gives way to a ten-foot drop to the river. She's off, and he's -- let's admit it -- rather impressed.