wearing lingerie under an overcoat.

Celia de Luca

This is how it begins: a text reading I want to see you. It's not the middle of the day and it's not late at night when it comes, but it's a summons nonetheless. A few texts go back and forth. A location and method is settled upon. He informs his wife in another suburb that he won't be home in time for dinner, and he'll probably just stay here for the night, since so-and-so from such-and-such wants a late dinner, always tries to match him shot for shot. She tells him to stay safe and she'll see him tomorrow night, which is a not-so-veiled indication that he'd better come home the next night, though she knows he most likely won't. She pours herself a glass of red wine and contemplates divorce, though she knows she won't.

Meanwhile, Celia leaves the Hay-Adams hotel in a taxi cab with a little packed bag. She's wearing what he told her to wear and looking out the window. When she arrives she bypasses the front desk and goes up to his room, knocks on the door. He pulls her in.

And this is how it ends: hours later, he really does have that late dinner. He really will stay in this room tonight instead of going home. He really will drink himself half to death with that ambassador. But she can't stay, and they both know it. His fingertips stroke her arm as he tells her he wishes she could. She kisses those fingertips when they come to her shoulder and lifts her eyes to meet his, their gaze somewhere between passionate intensity and unknowable mystery. He wants her again, right then, because of that look. She is already slipping away, understanding, obedient. She can't stay. He dozes while she showers. She leans over him, smelling of orange and ginger now, kissing his temple and then his mouth before she leaves.

The people in the hotel have guesses about her, leaving a few hours after arriving. She's not a guest. But her coat and her walk scream class and she's not disturbing anyone or anything. She's someone's mistress, they think, not someone's prostitute. They only have a rules against the latter.

She stands outside in front of the hotel, dressed in black peek-toe pumps with white uppers and tiny string bowls over the toes. Her coat is knee-length and white, the same one he saw her in the first night they met. Her bag hangs off her elbow, shiny and black with silver buckles, the emblems of the designer. It was a gift.

Erich Reinhardt

I really shouldn't be seen with other men, Celia had said. That was in Browntown, which was so far in the middle of nowhere that, really, the risk was minimal. Erich thought she was being a little paranoid. Either that, or her keystone was.

This is not Browntown. This is Alexandria, which has a name even older than this settlement. This is also a classy, lovely town, a nice retreat for exactly the sort of man Celia is seeing. The risk is not minimal here. The risk is quite real, and even though her keystone surely keeps her hidden from his world as much as possible, there's still a chance that someone might see, might recognize, might tell

when Erich's Mustang pulls up instead of a yellow cab.

The passenger's side window rolls down. The car's in good shape; he takes care of it. He repainted it himself, recently and painstakingly, in the shed of the girl he's not longer seeing because He's Learned His Lesson About Kin Of Other Tribes. The car is also lived-in. Literally: the clutter of his life, the grand total of his belongings, are packed into the back. The back seat is folded down to make room.

"I don't know why I keep bumping into you," he says. "Need a ride?"

Celia de Luca

He's learned his lesson, this Mustang-driving Cliath who pulls up at the curb and invites a woman to get in and ride with him. He's learned his lesson, after dallying with the barely-bred but once-mated and rather honorable kinswoman of his birth tribe. He's learned his lesson, and still he's there talking to this one who even the Silver Fangs might take a second glance at because of how she smells to them.

It's hard to mistake his car. White Mustang, black racing stripes. She knows it when it comes around the corner, when the glare of the headlights passes by enough for her to get a look at the paint job -- and the driver.

She exhales, and without a word, walks around his car to the passenger side and opens the door. She puts herself in with grace but without much care, keeping her coat buttoned around her. The smell of her is, for the first time, in an enclosed space that smells so richly -- perhaps potently -- of himself. Orange-ginger soap layered above her own scent, which is itself just a shell for that ancestral memory that marks her with names like Maiden, Priestess, Oracle, Goddess. The smell, or sensation, that Erich thought of as something like his soul popping a boner.

The door latches shut behind her. She has brushed her teeth, but her eyes are glassy and her movements are looser than usual. Her breath doesn't smell of wine, but that doesn't mean she isn't drunk.

"I'm drunk," she says, staring ahead.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich's lips twitch. "Congratulations," he deadpans, and hits the gas. "Not your first time, is it?"

There's nothing subtle about the Mustang. Not the car, not the engine, not the paintjob, not the fact that it doesn't really fit in here amongst the Porsches and the Mercedes-Benzes and the Lexuses, and not the fact that it really doesn't look like the sort of ride someone's mistress ought to get into. In some sort of backward logic, it seems the damage is already done. It hardly seems to matter whether he roars away or not, and so he does. Acceleration pushes them both back in their seats. He skids around the corner, wrenches the muscle car back under control, and takes off in ... some random direction or other.

"Where are you going?"

Celia de Luca

"You're stupid," she says, and then grabs the handlebar and closes her eyes as he roars off. "I'm drunk!" she snaps at him, and after he clears a light she starts hitting him in the arm. "Do you want me to puke purple all over your windshield?"

Erich Reinhardt

"You're mean," he retorts, and then smirks, because he's ever so proud of himself for turning their opening volleys around like that.

He does slow down a little, though. Or well; he's going straight now, so it's harder to make her feel like her head might roll off her shoulders any moment and float away. "What the hell did you drink that's purple?"

Celia de Luca

"I'm not mean," she says, diffident and frowning, still holding on and keeping her eyes closed. "I told you I'm drunk so you'd drive slow. And then you asked if it was my first time and you keep acting like I'm twelve or something and that's pretty stupid considering you know what I do, and then started driving fast. If you act stupid I'm going to call you on it."

It takes her a while to register that he's driving slower, and slowly she opens her eyes, turning to look at him. Both of him. "Tempranillo. Where are you going?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Here I thought you told me you were drunk so I'd be a gentleman just in case you climbed into my lap. And I asked if it was your first time because you told me you haven't seen Moulin Rouge." He glances at her. "Have you seriously never seen Moulin Rouge?"

And: "I just asked you that. I'm giving you the ride; you tell me where you need to go."

Celia de Luca

She grimaces. "You're gross." Stupid and gross. "That's really gross." Just for emphasis. "And kind of creepy." She scowls at the windshield instead of him and she's not hitting him anymore. So there's that. "And no, I've never seen it. Woman who serves as muse for one man and is basically owned by another sold to a third man for the success of the first two. Love from a man is freedom, not personal autonomy or financial independence or achieving one's own dreams -- which, before she meets the leading male character, she is pursuing despite her circumstances, but dreams don't matter as long as you're getting dick, right? And then she dies, because she's not really a character, she's a lynchpin for the dude to learn and grow or just get depressed enough to write the opening and closing lines of the movie."

Celia stops talking for a moment and takes a breath. "I've read a lot about it though. It seems gross. I'm at the Hay-Adams and you really need to drive slower because there are two of you right now and I really don't want to throw up."

Erich Reinhardt

"Calm your tits," Erich says, quite possibly just to get a rise out of her. "It was a joke. If you actually climbed over here, I'd tell you to put your damn seatbelt back on. Is your seatbelt on? I don't want to get a ticket."

And then there's the Moulin Rouge rant, which makes him scowl -- "Thanks. You just ruined one of my favorite movies, and you haven't even seen it. It's a musical, for the love of god. It's not supposed to be a thoughtful dissertation on modern feminism.

"I'm going thirty-five. If I go any slower I'll get pulled over for obstructing traffic. Where's the Hay-Adams? You need to give me directions."

Celia de Luca

"My tits are very calm," she deadpans back at him. He scowls at the rant, and she misses the question about her seatbelt. "Wah," she says, imitating the crying whine of a baby as she looks out the window. "Your life is so hard."

Celia turns her head 180 degrees to look back at him. "It's about a block north of the White House." She perks. "Obama stayed there before his first inauguration because the guest house was being renovated. Probably not in my room though."

Erich Reinhardt

"You're the most cynical person I know in the entire District of Columbia," he says, which is the truth. He's met an alarming amount of idealists, romantics and idiots, but not very many cynics. "Stop insulting me. I'm being nice to you."

It's a straight shot to the White House via the George Washington Memorial Parkway. So that's the path Erich takes, merging onto the broad expressway. There's silence for a while. The Shadow Lord focuses on driving. The Black Fury ... possibly focuses on not vomiting.

"How'd you get into this, anyway?" They're a mile or more up the expressway when he speaks again. "I mean ... doing what you do." He's not sure what to call it. Entrapment? Black widowing? Whoring for a good cause?

Celia de Luca

She doesn't answer. He calls her cynical, insists he's being nice, and she looks out the window. She closes her eyes and rests her forehead on the glass to cool it, and when he doesn't follow himself up with further words, she finds her focus improving. Even if what she's focusing on right now is not throwing up in his car, or all over her pretty white coat.

His question makes her eyes slowly open, looking at the city. For the first time since she got into the Mustang she finds that the passing lights and buildings make her dizzy but not nauseous. All the same, her throat hurts. Like bile rising.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, and it isn't just that her voice is flat. It's numb.

Erich Reinhardt

[R U OKAY? i haz 2 dices.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Celia de Luca

[An overwhelming sense of OW + drunk. Not unlike the sensation of taking a step on a frozen lake and hearing the ice creak under your feet.]

Erich Reinhardt

Something about her tone makes him glance at her. It's evening, shading toward night. The city is aglow -- unique amongst major American cities in that its buildings do not reach for the sky but sprawl instead, stately and grand. By the light of the passing streetlamps Erich can barely see Celia's face; can't read very much from her at all.

Enough, still. Enough that his foot lets off the accelerator, and he takes the next exit. "Okay," he says. "We won't talk about it. But I'm going to stop and get you a bottle of water."

Celia de Luca

"Mmkay," Celia says, still not wearing her seatbelt, moving on from one painful moment to a less painful moment with the ease of someone who is inebriated. She smiles and closes her eyes again, curling up in the seat. Her legs tuck up, her heels holding close to her feet rather than dangling, and the hem of that coat rising up her leg until all he sees is bare skin from ankle to at least mid-thigh. The glass is cold on her forehead still. It's nice.

Erich Reinhardt

Of course, Erich pulls them into yet another gas station. Not the pumps, this time. The parking in front of the mini-mart. He keeps the interior of the car reasonably warm. Not quite steaming, not enough that one is inspired to peel down to a single layer, but warm enough that opening his door lets a blast of cold air in.

"Put your seatbelt on," he says as he gets out. Engine's still running, keys in the ignition. The door shuts. The Mustang rocks on its stiff springs. Then she's left alone for a while.

Her door opens. One hopes she's stopped leaning her head against the glass by then, or at least put her seatbelt on to keep from spilling out. Erich hands her a bottle of water. It's still cold. He shuts her door again unceremoniously and circles around. He has a mug of coffee, himself, which he settles into the cup holder as he gets in. The door slams again.

"You ready to go, or you wanna just sit here a while?"

Celia de Luca

It's been chance every time they've run into each other. This was no different, and he had no way of knowing she was drunk when he picked her up or even when she got into his car. She let him know only after she sat down. The girl isn't really so wild, so sloppy, so madcap; she is calculated. She has to be. But right now she's intoxicated, uninhibited, and will still go on a thirty-second tear about feminism and Moulin Rouge without taking a breath.

They stop at a gas station, the third so far, and she curls up tighter in the passenger seat while she waits. Sober, she might have gone in with him. She might look in his glove box or peer into the back seat and all of his worldly possessions. She might have been curious. As it is, it seems like barely a moment passes before he comes back, opening her door and spilling her out.

See, she hasn't put on her seatbelt. She nearly tumbles out and yelps, grabbing his arm, nearly making him spill hot coffee all over his hand. When she regains herself she's gasping slightly, startled, as she was nearly asleep in the time it took him to come back. Her hand clutches at his forearm, which for a moment feels like an iron rod rather than anything made of flesh. Heated, though. Hot.

Celia eases herself back into an upright position, taking the bottle of water from the cooler. When she's out of the way he closes her door. When he's back in the car she's sipping the water. Not gulping. No; not her first time.

"Let's just sit a while," she says quietly, lifting the back of one hand to her mouth to wipe a stray drop of water from her lip. She sips again. Breathes. "Thank you," and then takes another sip.

Erich Reinhardt

There was a bit of a scramble when he pulled the door open, unthinking, and nearly toppled his inebriated guest out onto the concrete. She grabs him. He almost dumps his coffee. Mutters a fuck! under his breath as he plants the coffee on the roof with one hand, catches her with the other even as she's catching herself. Through some concerted effort she's eased back into place, which he's rather surprisingly gentle about. She takes her bottle of water, and he closes his door, and a little later she thanks him.

He looks at her. He's sitting in the driver's seat by then, the engine still rumbling, the vents still exhaling warmth. Somehow this thank-you makes him uncomfortable when the first one the night they met hadn't. He shrugs. "I just didn't want you puking in my car," he lies.

The coffee is hot even through its little paper jacket. Erich sips as slowly as Celia does, wary of burning his tongue. He tries to think of some form of conversation, fails, and decides maybe he doesn't need to talk after all.

Celia de Luca

"Liar," she murmurs, and takes another sip.

They are quiet. Awkwardly quiet, the glare of the interior lights of the gas station before them and the more subtle and omnipresent glare of the city lights behind them. They are illuminated and shadowed at once, drinking two cures for drunkenness though only one of them actually is drunk and only one of the cures actually does much good.

And every time she tries to think of something to say, it feels too soon. Too much. What she could tell him about herself versus what she wants to tell him about herself versus what she thinks anyone really wants to know about her. So Celia is quiet, too, until she finishes her bottle of water and slides down in the chair again, still unbuckled. This time she curls toward the center rather than the window, and just as before, her coat reveals more of her thigh than is strictly ladylike. She rests her cheek against the seat she's in, sighing.

"Thank you for the water," she says quietly, even though she thanked him before. Apparently not for the same thing.

Erich Reinhardt

That draws another glance from Erich. He thinks she might've closed her eyes again, but no: when he looks at her he finds her looking back at him. Caught, a faint flush creeps up his neck for no reason he can readily discern. His eyes stray, touch on her thigh, and then he inhales and twists and there's a lot of motion and noise as he tugs something out of the back and drapes it over her.

It's a jacket. It's several sizes too large for her, and it's one of those thick hoodies with a fleece underlining. In a pinch, it serves as a blanket.

"Buckle up," he tells her for a third time. "We should get going."

Celia de Luca

She laughs, soundless but for the movement of air, like a sigh only happy. Or amused. It isn't at his blush, which she only dimly recognizes, but at the way he pulls jacket over her -- lower half.

"I'm wearing lingerie," she tells him, as though to explain her bare thigh. Or perhaps to reassure him that she's at least wearing something under her coat. Or maybe just to fuck with him, torture him, even as she's enjoying the touch of fleece against her leg. It is, after all, nice. And warm.

"Should we?" she asks. "Do you have someplace to be?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Most people wear clothes," Erich replies, wry. And he's putting the car in reverse, dropping the handbrake as he answers, "No. But you probably do, and even if you don't, you shouldn't be seen with other men."

Her seat thumps faintly as he puts his hand on the back. He has a familiarity with this car that tells her something about how long he's had it. The absurd number of keychains he has dangling from the ignition would tell her something about how far he's driven it, and to where, if she looks. He backs out of the parking space.

Celia de Luca

"Most people aren't whores," Celia says back to that, easily. It rolls off her tongue, that seemingly nasty word. She shakes her head. "I have nowhere to be. I only have one job. I get so bored," she exhales, sighing it, and gives a quiet

"Oof," as her seat thumps in response to his hand. The keychains dangle but she hasn't noticed them yet. She does sit up a bit, the hoodie still over her knees, blanketing her bare legs. "You know, I had four brothers."

Erich Reinhardt

He frowns at her. The angle of light has changed. The minimart and its glare is behind her; she's haloed by it, and his face is stark, all angles and glittering eyes.

"You're not a whore," he says quietly.

Celia de Luca

She looks at him, too. And as quiet: "It's not a bad thing."

Erich Reinhardt

"It's a way to make a living." Maybe that's a form of agreement. "But that's not how you make your living. Your job isn't having sex. Your job is taking out the keystone."

Celia de Luca

"I'm not making a living," Celia laughs, though emptily, as all the 'laughs' he's heard from her so far. "I make frightening compromises for the good of a cause, or for personal gain. That's all I mean."

She shakes her head, shrugs once. "Some have called us Whores for Gaia. It's not always meant as an insult. If you showed up covered in blood and carrying a dismembered head of some monster, it would be the same as me walking out of a hotel wearing lingerie under an overcoat."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich doesn't know what to say to that. They haven't moved yet; haven't gotten underway, haven't gotten back on the expressway. They're having what might be the most honest, open conversation they've ever had, and she's drunk, and he's --

at a loss. Puzzled, and oddly pained. Shaking his head, once and then again; exhaling.

"Well," he says finally, and quietly. "If it's all the same to you, I think I won't call you a whore."

Celia de Luca

"What will you call me, then?" she asks him.

Erich Reinhardt

"Celia."

There's a ghost of a smile there. It's not much, but it's not empty; it's not hollow. He puts his hand on the gearshift, then, and sets the Mustang in gear.

And again: "Seatbelt."

Celia de Luca

He says her name and it makes her eyebrows -- waxed here, shaped there, cast in perfect little angles above her eyes -- tug together. It's nothing of a frown without the tightness to her mouth, a shadow of something like pain in her eyes. She breathes in, and then out, and for no reason at all, says his name back to him.

"Erich."

It could be said that Celia has lost count of how many times Erich has told her to buckle her seatbelt, but that would indicate that she'd been counting to begin with. She hasn't. She's ignored it every time. Not arguing, not denying, simply not bothering. But it's quiet now and she's staring at him, curled up in the passenger seat and wrapped in her coat and covered by his jacket. There's the way they're talking, voices lowered. And there's the dark and the smell of coffee and it's hard to ignore him talking now.

"Sorry," she tells him, and she twists around a bit. Her hand does fumble a bit on the strap, but she pulls it across her body and snaps it into place. It latches, and she adjusts the 'blanket' on her legs, smoothing her hand over the back of the hoodie just to feel it.

"What made you say that thing before," she says, as he's driving, as she's touching the fabric and watching her hand move, "about me climbing into your lap?" Her head turns, her eyes a little more focused than when she first got in the car, and now focusing on him. "Did something make you think I was going to, or was it just... on your mind?"

Erich Reinhardt

Celia, he says, like it's perfect and self-evident: what else would he call her? Erich, she says, like she's attaching a name to his person for the first time. Until this moment, he didn't think she even remembered.

And there is this moment. A few handfuls of seconds in which they say one another's names, naming each other, and then watching each other. He grows acutely aware of his own breath, slipping through his nostrils. He catches himself looking at her mouth.

Then he looks away. Seatbelt; sorry. He laughs under his breath, not really humor at all. "Don't apologize to me," he says as she buckles in, as he starts driving. "Not my problem if you fly through the windshield when I hit the brakes."

A little later her question makes him wince, shames him. He shakes his head even before she's finished speaking. "No," he says, "nothing you've done made me think you might do that. I don't know why it came to mind; it just did. It was the first response in my head, so I spit it out. But I wish I hadn't. It was ... a mean thing to say, and I said it for mean reasons. You'd called me stupid, so I implied you were a drunken slut. I didn't mean it, and I didn't believe it. Then you called it gross and creepy," another wan huff of a laugh, "which it was. So I pretended like I would've blown you off if you'd done it.

"You were right. I am a liar. I didn't get you the water to keep you from vomiting in my car either. And if you didn't have your seatbelt on and I crashed the car, I wouldn't have let you fly through the windshield. It's all just hot air. A reflexive defense mechanism, I guess. It's a shitty, cowardly habit."

Celia de Luca

Men look at her mouth all the time. At her legs, her ass, her slender waist, her perky tits, her throat, the lobes of her ears, her ankles, her hair, sometimes even her eyes. That's the whole point. It's not just that she's young or that she's beautiful. There are a great many young and beautiful women in the world who men do not constantly, helplessly follow with their eyes, imagine in their hands. There is something about her, and it isn't just the terrible clarity of her blood that makes time stop, then wind backwards toward antiquity, toward creation itself. She could never be invisible.

Drunk she is, but not blind. Mean, he calls her, but there are a hundred kindnesses she's shown him simply by not pressing that button, flipping that switch. She keeps tracing her fingers over it, though, like she can't quite help but lean into the chemistry, perform the science, watch the reaction. But then she pulls herself back. He's not a mark. He's not supposed to be.

"Oh, yes it would be, you'd be in huge trouble," she retorts, when he insists that it isn't his fault. Even at that moment she's just stroking his jacket, watching her fingers, and that comes before the quiet. Maybe he laughs or has his own quip in response; no real matter. There is a quiet, and a pause, before she asks him what she does about that earlier comment. He might have thought she forgot that, too.

His answer tumbles out of him, and more besides. Celia is watching him, and her eyes open a little wider, her mouth opens a little. She looks so perfect like that, as startled as a fawn and just as inspiring of innocence, confusion, vulnerability. The expression comes so easily to her face. Natural. Real.

She thinks he's lying again when he says he doesn't know why it came to mind. His eyes on her mouth, the flush up his throat, covering her legs after realizing he could look at them. The effect she's been told her breeding can have on Garou. And it says enough, on its own, that it was the first thing that came into his head. He really is a liar.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with being drunk or being a slut," she says to him. All of that. All his confessions, and she tells him that -- just like she ranted about Moulin Rouge, just like she told him that being a whore isn't a bad thing. "But I get what you mean." There. Her own concession. She doesn't think it's a bad thing, but he meant it as an insult. And he feels bad for that. She understands. Still, it's a dodgy response to everything he just laid out, shallow in a way, and she knows it.

Just like she knows: he wouldn't have blown her off. Not easily. That's cynical; he did nail that one on the head when he called her on it.

"So..." she fiddles with the hoodie's string on his jacket a bit, looking at her fingernails again. "What are you afraid of, then, that makes you get all defensive and cowardly?"

Erich Reinhardt

On some level Erich is glad, deeply glad, that her answer is as superficial as it is. That instead of delving deeper into that, instead of asking him just why her climbing into his lap was the first thing on his mind, as if he didn't know, as if he really had no clue whatsoever, poor meatheaded lug that he is -- she asks him

a much tougher question, really. If he were any other Shadow Lord, or a Fenrir at all, he might take horrible offense to such a question. Such insolence! But he opened this can of worms himself. He can't fairly expect her not to play pandora, can he?

Erich is silent. He hasn't looked at her, truthfully, since he looked away from her mouth. He has an easy answer for her: he doesn't want to inadvertently turn himself into one of her marks. He doesn't want to accidentally-on-purpose lean across the center divide and find out whether or not she'd kiss him back or slap him silly. But that's the easy answer, and it doesn't address the fact that he said it's a habit. Older than their brief acquaintance, and older than her.

"I don't know," he says again, and this time it really is the truth. "I guess... I'm just afraid of looking weak in some way. I don't want to look stupid. I don't want to get played. I don't like to ... lose."

It surprises him, saying that. He frowns at the road. Strange; he'd always thought he didn't care much about these things. He always thought he was pretty laidback, maybe didn't care enough about the Important Things for his own good. He never thought he'd say so stereotypically Thunderous a thing as I don't like to lose.

Celia de Luca

Defensive and cowardly, she called him. It doesn't matter if he called himself those things just a moment ago. She's kin, and he's a Shadow Lord. Granted, she doesn't know that, and she might not even know to be more careful even if she knew his tribe. Then again, even another kinfolk might be affronted. A human would be, too. It's as though he rolled over, showed her his underbelly, and now she's scratching at it lightly with her fingernails. It may feel good. It could be dangerous. It could be both.

He tells her he doesn't know, which is a lie, but one that everyone tells every day. People begin longwinded explanations of their character and their perspective with those three words, as though to underline everything they say afterward with uncertainty: don't hold me to this. Sometimes, it's a way of simply disclaiming ahead of time that not everything about to be said is true... or at least not the whole truth. And in many cases, it's just a stalling technique. Celia doesn't know him, and doesn't know off the top of her head which it is for him.

This is all a bit shady, though she has no way of knowing it. It wasn't long ago, really, that he walked out of Drew Roscoe's little house not because he wanted to or because she wanted him to get the hell out but because they were essentially ordered to separate. It was a matter of weeks. He was willing to give it a go, because there was something there, maybe even something real, and it made him angry to be talked to the way Hellforged talked to them. Some part of his mind is, at the moment, thinking about her mouth and her thigh and if it'd be worth getting the shit slapped out of his face to kiss her. Not a big enough part of his brain to overcome the part that knows better, that Learned His Lesson, but there's no telling what part of his brain is thinking about Drew. If any.

But Celia doesn't know about any of that. Celia is somehow simultaneously the most cynical person he's met in D.C. and the most sheltered hooker he could imagine meeting anywhere. She looks at him with that little surprised face of hers and then fiddles with his jacket over her lap and asks him such personal questions, digging her fingers around in him like he's a treasure box full of pictures and baseball cards and knick-knacks and Army men and marbles and saltwater taffy turned hard from time and forgetfulness.

She's quiet for a while after that, thoughtful, and still technically very drunk. Processing words takes time. She thinks for at least several seconds, but in a conversation those several seconds spin out like eons. She doesn't point out that no one likes to lose, because the truth is that some people actively seek it. Some people set up their entire lives around losing again and again and again, playing an eternal game of Kick Me.

"Well," she says finally, gradually, "this may not be believable or meaningful, especially since we just tend to fight, but I'm not out to 'play' you. Or whatever." She looks over at him, a glance and little more. "I mean, I don't manipulate these men for my health or amusement. I do it for the war. And you and I are technically on the same side. So what would be the point?"

Of course she'd say 'technically'.

"But I mean in general," Celia goes on, not quite sure in her state if she's making enough sense or getting across what she really means, "I'm not trying to 'win' against you. Not in some big, overarching way. Even if I call you stupid. Which I know I shouldn't. It's just... rude. It's not very classy of me."

Says the whore.

Erich Reinhardt

Strangely, Erich laughs, and this time it's not a humorless huff. There's sound and substance behind it; genuine mirth, or maybe even joy.

"I know you're not trying to win against me." This is the first time he looks at her, and quite possibly one of the first times - ever - that he just smiles at her instead of smirking or snerking or whatever the hell else he usually does. "I didn't mean all that was just toward you, personally. It's a lot more general than that. Being defensive. Not wanting to look like a fool. Believe it or not, despite my charming personality, you're not the only person I've ever failed to get along with, or felt I had to protect myself against."

Celia de Luca

She wrinkles her nose at his laugh. It isn't annoyance or even displeasure, but gives her the brief appearance of a chipmunk. Or squirrel. Her face relaxes a moment after it wrinkles up, and when he finishes laughing and tells her that it's broader than her, she retorts -- because it is a retort: "I know that. I just figure most people don't come right out and say what their intentions are, because they're trying to play and win, too. So I wanted to tell you where I stood. So at least with me, you'd know."

Erich Reinhardt

Another glance her way, and this time his smile is quirkier: "Fair enough." And after a moment's thought, "Thank you. I appreciate it."

When he looks back at the road, he takes a deep breath, lets it out. Still a few more miles til downtown DC, til the Hay-Adams, til their briefly and strangely intersecting paths separate again. A small silence unwinds.

"Why did you ask?" That's what breaks it. "About what I said."

Celia de Luca

Now he knows more about her. She is honest and she is earnest and she plays men like fools, wears lingerie under an overcoat, goes camping by herself, isn't out to beat him in some bizarre power game, has never seen Moulin Rouge and may not have seen Pretty Woman, either.

They go quiet after his thanks. There's only a small smile to that from Celia. She glances at his coffee in the cup holder, the warmth and the movement of the car and the alcohol all combining to make her rather sleepy. She leans back, her eyes not closed but her eyelids heavy nonetheless.

"Hmm?" she asks, opening them a bit more when he speaks, turning her head to him. "Oh," she says, not after he clarifies or restates but after her brain processes what he asked. She looks to the windshield and shrugs, then turns to look out the window again. "Because it really came out of left field when you said it. And you know, what made it creepy wasn't like... the idea of it or anything. It was the bit about how..."

Words are getting away from her, sentences tangling. She scrunches her eyes shut, then pops them open. "What I mean is, I hope I wouldn't need to be drunk so I have an excuse to make a move on someone I'm interested in. And I hope that whether I was drunk or not, they'd --"

she doesn't say you'd.

"-- be a 'gentleman' and not a neanderthal or rapist or something. So that's the part that was gross and creepy, those... undertones. Not the basic concept. You know?" Swiftly, then, on those last two words, she turns to look at him. He swims a bit in her vision, then solidifies and settles. She exhales.

Erich Reinhardt

"Yeah. I get it."

He does. Maybe that surprises her. It surprises himself, a bit, the same way he was surprised when he managed to figure out -- all by himself! -- that some part of him is driven and competitive or at least just proud after all; proud enough to get back up after he's been knocked down, proud enough to resist any attempt to stuff him into a box with the rest of the losers, or the failures, or the wimps, or the cowards.

"I really would have put you back in your seat," he adds after a moment. Not strictly necessary. Not even really a part of the conversation. He says it anyway, and this time it doesn't sound like a one-up. And then he grins suddenly, "Possibly with greater or lesser effort of will, depending on exactly what sort of lingerie we're talking about. But you were really smashed."

It's on the tip of his tongue to ask why. Why did she drink so much, isn't that dangerous, what if she let something slip. Why did she drink so much, did he make her, want me to find him and pull his guts out through his ears?

Erich doesn't ask. The truce between them feels tenuous and rather precious. He's careful with it, and so he stays silent; he merges right. The next exit is theirs.

Celia de Luca

It matters to her that he gets that. Understands where the creep factor really was, understands that the mere mention of such a thing didn't astonish or disgust her, how dare he. So she smiles a little, partly because he just says he gets it and doesn't snap at her, doesn't argue with her. Progress! They must be growing as people, because it's been at least several minutes since they disagreed on anything or called each other foul names.

It has also been several minutes since he first mentioned putting her right back in her seat and telling her to put her belt on. But they're still talking about that. He insists, to the best of his knowledge, that he really would have sat her ass down again. She quirks a grin of her own at his smile, his admission that yeah: it would have been something of a challenge. Celia, mean and cynical as she is, does give him another kindness here: she doesn't take what may very well be unintentional bait. She could flash him in the car and they could find out just how much of an effort of will it would have taken. She could ask him what sort of lingerie would be harder for him to take his hands off of. She could

press that button, flip that switch, stroke that nerve,

but she doesn't.

"'Were'," she echoes, wry and not quite questioning, chuckling to herself. She still is. And, not even knowing that she just showed him mercy, Erich shows a little of his own: he backs off. He doesn't ask those questions that make him seem like he's foaming at the mouth, even though some part of him must be snarling and pacing. It isn't his fault; that's what kin like her do to Garou. It isn't her fault; she can't help who her ancestors were.

"I think we're almost there," Celia says mildly, looking out the window again. Parks. Statues. Old buildings and public fountains. It's a beautiful city. She turns to look at him again, quiet a moment, then: "I sort of want to invite you up. Not to have sex or anything, just... maybe to watch a movie or have something to eat. But I think he's already paying some of them off to keep an eye on me."

A beat. She realizes something.

"Come to think of that, could you maybe let me out around the corner instead? It's going to look really, really bad if I get out of your car right in front. Like, cover-blowingly bad."

Erich Reinhardt

"Around the corner? Princess, I was gonna drop you off at Charley Joe's."

They're both being merciful tonight. Or just careful. They don't keep talking about her lingerie. He doesn't ask those questions, pace around her, bare his teeth at the monsters in the night as if he wasn't one of them. He doesn't let himself think about what sort of man would pay hoteliers off to keep an eye on her too-young mistress. He doesn't think about what sort of man would have a too-young mistress, or see her in hotels miles outside the city, or drop her off at Charley Joe's to avoid being seen himself, or summon her to him wearing heels and lingerie under her coat. Erich's hands tighten on the steering wheel, and he forces them to relax.

Celia doesn't invite him up. He doesn't say a word about that either, he ignores the word sex; he even resists cracking wise about the movie even though it's right at the tip of his tongue: are we gonna watch Moulin Rouge? Not that. He quips about something else, Charley Joe's, and then he smiles sidelong. "That wasn't a defense mechanism. That was just a joke. I'll drop you at the corner of Lafayette Square and you can walk a block or so.

"Wanna borrow some pants?"

Celia de Luca

Her eyes skip sideways to him when he says that -- not the part about Charley Joe's but the 'Princess' bit. She doesn't comment on it. And yes: they resume being careful. She assures him she doesn't mean for sex 'or anything', he glosses over the mention entirely, doesn't follow up with question after question about what sort of man when he already knows.

She is still watching him, sidelong, when his hands grip and tighten and relax. So Celia holds off. She doesn't laugh with him, and he doesn't suggest -- perhaps too eagerly -- that he could just step sideways and meet her up there, go ahead and do it anyway, sneak under the radar of whoever or whatever is watching her and... watch a movie. Eat some room service. Careful, careful.

He's joking. Celia huffs a small laugh. "I think I can tell the difference now." Maybe. And: "I spent my formative years in a Black Fury commune," she says, scoffingly, as though he has any idea what that would be like -- though maybe she assumes all other tribes know some measure of what that means. "I can handle the cold. And it wouldn't look any better for me to show up wearing some guy's jeans." She's smiling as she says this, because she knows he was probably teasing. She thinks. Can she tell the difference?

There's a little pause there, and she mentions -- quieter, more serious: "I don't like being called 'princess'. It doesn't --" no. She doesn't want to tell him that. Instead: "It rubs me the wrong way."

Erich Reinhardt

She doesn't mind being called a whore. She thinks being a slut isn't necessarily a bad thing. But princess -- that she doesn't like. Erich mulls this one over for a moment, brow furrowed.

"Okay," he says. "I'll remember that. And maybe someday you'll finish telling me what you were about to."

Celia de Luca

"Maybe someday," she echoes, not quite in agreement and certainly not in committment. They're heading towards the corner of the park, and she knows it because even if she's still new here she knows this area better than others. She does, after all, live here... in one of the finest hotels in the city, if not the finest.

"Besides, she says, turning to him. "I asked, and you said you just wanted to call me Celia."

Erich Reinhardt

Nearing the corner, Erich pulls to the side of the boulevard. This is the epicenter of Washington, and even at this hour the streets are still busy. He hits the emergency blinkers as he parks.

"Yeah," he says. His hands grip the wheel as he leans forward, looking out and around. "I think we're here."

She lives a block and a corner away, insofar as anyone could possibly live in a hotel. He wonders who foots the bill -- her tribe or her mark. It occurs to Erich suddenly that a hotel was a temporary thing; that she talked about going abroad, going away. They've met a ridiculous amount of times in a very short period of time, but every time he's seen her thus far has been pure chance. He wonders if the next time he sees her, it'll be paparazzi pictures splashed up on a tabloid. If the girl herself will be long gone, like Persephone into the underworld.

"You going to be all right getting back yourself?"

Celia de Luca

This hour, and this week, the streets are going to be extra-busy and watched like hawks. Every hotel is full, and it makes Celia glad for the length of her stay. Dignitaries and officials from all over the country are here. There's going to be another swearing-in, another ceremony, more speeches, the whole ordeal. The streets are hardly deserted, even at this hour, well past dinnertime.

None of his thoughts play out over his face, or make it into words. She just smiles, thin and light, nodding. "I'll be fine," she says, amused. "This half a block or so I have to walk is super dangerous, being within earshot of the White House. Tons of crime and shady elements here." A smirk.

Erich Reinhardt

"Don't make me paranoid," Erich replies dryly. "It's Inauguration Week. God knows what psychos are milling around."

He turns to her. Seems time to say some sort of goodbye. He hesitates. Then: "You should call me. If you finish your job. Before you blow town."

Celia de Luca

"I'm Italian, female, and my ears are human-sized," Celia quips. "I'm not the target for those psychos."

They are sitting in a warm car, in the dark, and she hasn't removed his jacket from her lap. She's not reaching for the door handle and he's not kicking her out. Definitely time for a goodbye, if only so some cop doesn't stroll by or pull up and suggest he not sit his car motionless in front of any buildings around here. Then he tells her to call him, if and before.

She smiles, something sly to it that is carried over from her teasing about the psychos. "You want to be my getaway driver?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich laughs, a quick surprised huff. "Sure. Why not? I'm pretty good at it. Pro tip though: harder to make a quick getaway if you stagger out drunk again."

Celia de Luca

Her eyebrows quirk. "Oh, you're giving me pro tips for these situations?" Celia laughs, her amusement not just in her eyes or smirk but breath and voice now. "That's rich. Hey, pro tip: if you shapeshift you heal faster."

Erich Reinhardt

Automatically: "I'm not wound-- oh." He smirks. "Oh, very funny."

Celia de Luca

She smirks back at him, her nose wrinkling up tight like a small animal again. Just for a second. "You catch on quick, for someone sober," she says.

Erich Reinhardt

"All right, okay. That's enough." He nods at the door, a jerk of his chin. "Get out of my car before I start thinking you're enjoying my company."

Celia de Luca

Celia is grinning at him. "I am, now."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich's smirk fades into something else too. Not quite a grin; a smile, underscored with a certain poignancy. "Yeah," he says, "me too."

He should let her go. He's not sure why, exactly -- he doesn't have anywhere to be, and she said herself she only has the one job, she gets so bored -- but he should. There's some reason they shouldn't be here, and it's not just her congressman, her mark; it has something to do with the reason he can't see Drew anymore, but truth be told Drew is rather far from his mind, and it's only been a few weeks, god, he must be some sort of asshole. His smile has faded entirely.

"I almost got you that puppy," he tells her for no good reason at all. "The beagle at the store. I almost tried to kiss you earlier when you said my name."

Confessions. No purpose behind them, except perhaps that's what you do in the presence of the virgin priestess, the goddess-avatar. He shrugs his shoulders, a gesture like he's resettling some load.

"You should go home, Celia. Or at least back to your hotel room, if you can't or won't go home."

Celia de Luca

Oracles don't tell lies. They tell riddles that could be interpreted as the future. They sit high where they can't be touched, faces covered in hoods, eyes gazing into pools of water in shallow bowls.

Gods fuck anyone and everything. Animal, vegetable, mineral -- it's all fair game. All the bastard demigods are the sons and daughters of gods. But goddesses -- ah. Hera renewed her virginity in a magical pool every year. Goddesses are the punishers and the watchers, the wives and daughters too holy to be touched.

Then there are the priestesses, performing mysteries that seem pure and simple until they retreat to the mountains, rend clothing and flesh, pour wine into the throat of some captive man and scream to the moon for hours, for days, fucking and hunting and tearing things apart simply because they can, simply because destruction is in their blood as much as creation, and in equal measure, which makes it so terrifyingly great.

All of them are confessors in a way. Tell the madwoman on the mountain what's on your heart; all things are sacred then, all things forgotten, given to grape and earth and Luna. Tell the oracle who will never repeat it because she never speaks plainly. Tell the goddess so she'll punish you, so she'll forgive you, so she'll spare you both and doom you to a life as a hero. She represents some kind of magic, the stolen maiden and the queen of hell in one body, the apex of summer and the reason of winter.

It is a poetic way to hold her at arm's length, at least.

Something springs sudden and aching into Celia's eyes when he says he almost got her that puppy. It's complicated and it goes deep, but it's there and it reads simply as sharp, twisting pain, a knife between the ribs, right into the lung. Her eyes are glassy again, but not from wine, and she looks away. That's where she's looking -- not out the window but down at the speaker in the door of his car, the shadows by her legs -- when he says he almost tried to kiss her before.

The way she said his name mattered, and she knows it did, and she doesn't know how genuine it was. She wishes she did so she could tell him. She doesn't want to tell him. He's thinking of the reasons why he shouldn't and she's thinking of trying to pull herself together. So she does, breathing to do so, exhaling slowly.

She should go home. Or at least to her hotel. She looks at him sharply then, the hurt making her angry, and easily. "God," she mutters. "I'm just... trying to make some friends in this stupid city. I don't need you to act like you're my big brother or my boyfriend or... Romeo or something dumb like that." Scowling, she grabs at the door handle, yanking on it to open the door. Good time for a parting shot, but she can't think of one.

Erich Reinhardt

It's hurtful, how easily she flies into anger, the things she'll say then. But then, of course she does. She's the virgin sacrifice and the goddess, the confessor and the oracle. Erich thinks briefly and disjointedly of tales he heard as a boy: Odin sacrificing himself to himself, because he was the highest god and he deserved the highest sacrifice, which was his own self. He thinks of these things and they wash away again. He doesn't know any Shadow Lord myths; he was never fostered by them, and though Thunder chose him, he has had precious little contact with Thunder's children. Sometimes they seem as foreign to him as the Fenrir. The Furies. Anyone.

He does understand that too -- wanting friends in this stupid city. Wanting without actively seeking, because you can't or you won't or it's dangerous to yourself or it's dangerous to them. There's time for a parting shot, hers or his, but he lets the moment go by.

"Goodnight, Celia," he says as she opens the door. When she tosses his coat back in, he reaches automatically to stuff it into the back.

Celia de Luca

She throws it at him. Unbuckles herself, untangles her legs, swings them out of the car, rising up on her heels with her bag looped over her elbow still. She balls up the hoodie then and throws it at his face through the open door, still scowling, and slams the door harder than one would think a skinny thing like her could manage. He sees her walk away after that, down the street towards the hotel with its many lighted windows, the pale facade looking golden with the inner and outer illumination,

just like the girl.

Erich Reinhardt

Okay -- so she doesn't toss it. She doesn't lay it neatly down. She balls it up, she throws it, he blocks it with an awkward and reflexive swing of the forearm. She slams the door as he's stuffing it into the back, and she's turning to walk away when she hears or doesn't hear his door opening.

She'll hear this, though she may or may not respond: "Celia!"

Celia de Luca

The flashing lights on his car are still on, and people are still milling around. They do notice the girl with the earrings and the white coat and the beautiful eyes when she gets out of a car angrily, throws something at the (male) driver, and storms off. They definitely notice when the man in the car gets out, or at least opens his door and yells her name.

It takes a moment but it registers, and she whips around, and all but hisses at him through her teeth: "Keep your voice down!"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich closes his eyes a moment, jaw taut. She's concerned for her cover, of course, but it tastes like spite to him; he has to will the anger back. They've made progress tonight. He doesn't want it to go to hell again.

"I don't," he says, low now. "I don't think of you as a little girl or a damsel in distress or someone who needs my protection. I want to protect you. God knows I'd rather not want to, but I do, and that's why I tell you to keep my number, or be careful, or go home."

Some part of him hates her a little right now -- hates that he keeps telling her these things that are deep and baffling and disconcerting, hates that every time she replies with something so superficial, so trivial.

"I know I can't save you. And I know you don't need saving in the first place. All right?"

Celia de Luca

She storms back over to the passenger side of the car. Maybe they're safe with a Mustang between them. She's angry but he missed something when she turned away, started to all but stomp her way back to the hotel. Her eyes are bright and as soon as her back was turned to him there were tears on her lower lashes, clinging to the dark curving hairs, dangling above her cheeks, threatening to roll down her skin in gleaming tracks.

Seeing her face, he'll have to get it then: she's angry but it's not annoyance this time or fear, it's hurt, and ...it's rejection, too. "That is so not why I'm upset," she tells him, even pointing a harsh finger toward him, which looks very much like anger but sounds very much like her voice is cracking. And before he can ask, before he can throw up his hands in exasperation: "You can't go around talking about buying me a puppy or acting all stiff and stoic because I'm too sexy for you to be friends with and you --"

Celia sniffs, which isn't very sexy at all, but her voice is getting progressively thicker with emotion and, frankly, wine: "And you don't know the first thing about my home," she finally gets out, and by then her throat is too tight to talk and she's staring at him with those big, bright eyes and those thick, heavy tears welling in her eyes like she's a goddamn Disney princess and god,

her lower lip is trembling from the effort not to cry.

Erich Reinhardt

[WHAT IS GOING ON, HALP. +WP]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Celia de Luca

[I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS.

The most obvious thing is the rejection/hurt -- she's trying to make a friend and can't because he's attracted to her, which really sucks and isn't fair, etc. There's also some more complicated, more buried hurt having to do with the thing about the puppy and the mention of can't/won't go home.]

Erich Reinhardt

Even without a car between them he wouldn't know what to do. Tears are welling up in her eyes, which makes twice in all of four interactions in which he's managed to make her cry. He's not sure how they went from something rather like friendliness in the car to this. Traffic is whipping by behind him; someone honks because, really, who does that? Who pulls over to the curb where parking isn't allowed, who puts on their emergency blinkers, who gets out and stands on the traffic side of the car and holds a conversation with a girl that looks on the verge of waterworks?

"Celia..." He makes some sort of awkward, abortive motion. "Get back in the car, okay?"

Celia de Luca

She sniffs again. "You're dropping me off," she points out, which is true. "Where exactly are you planning on going? Someone's going to call the cops on you for sitting here so long."

Erich Reinhardt

"I don't know." He casts about. "A gas station," and he laughs, a surprised little blurt of humor.

Celia de Luca

Celia sort of laugh-sobs at that. "You're so weird," she says, and yanks open the Mustang door, putting herself in again and flopping into the seat. Again. This time she has to lift her ass off the seat and smooth her coat under her again, just so the bottoms of her thighs are pressed bare to the upholstery, whatever it's made of. The door is closed and she wraps her arms around herself, hands on her elbows.

Erich Reinhardt

Leather. His seats are leather. The car is the single most expensive thing he owns, especially if you count its contents. Then it becomes pretty much the only thing he owns, his transportation and home and territory all.

He gets back in a moment after her. He reaches into the back, and he knows this is inane even as he does it, but he pulls that sherpa hoodie out of the back and hands it to her again. Whether she takes it or not, whether he puts it back or not, he pulls away from the curb, rejoins the traffic.

Erich wasn't kidding: he starts looking for a gas station. He sees a Starbucks first, and that works too, so he pulls into the parking lot, which is crowded. He manages to find a spot far from the cafe, parks, pulls up the handbrake, leaves the engine running again.

A small, awkward silence. He asks, "Do you want to tell me about your home?"

Celia de Luca

At this point she is not crying out of sheer will, and not much of that. And the leather is fine and all, at least it isn't vinyl or wool, but you still don't want to sit on it wearing nothing but panties. Particularly the panties she has on right now. Erich pulls the hoodie out and she looks at it like it hurts, but takes it from him with a quiet,

"Thank you,"

and lays it over her legs. It isn't to cover her up now, it's just for warmth now, but once again she's swathed in fabric, shoulders to ankles. They end up at a Starbucks, but they aren't going in to join the line. No one is going to look at her and wonder which rich friend of his bought him a prostitute for his birthday. Which isn't fair: normally Celia doesn't look like a whore, unless you see her getting out of limousines in the middle of the night or getting into a strange car while drunk. Normally she looks quite charming, like someone's privileged daughter. It's just that right now, she's still tipsy and there's no hint of a skirt peeking out from the hem of the coat, so even if she has a skirt on it must be very short, and no one looking at them would think they're on a date, after all.

Out of his league. Whether to the mortal world or to the Nation, she is vastly out of his league.

She's pulled herself together more by the time they park. Again. This time no flashing lights. The inside of the car is dark and no one is paying much attention to them, if any. He asks her a weird question and she looks at him like he's grown a second head. "No," she says, more aghast and bewildered than angry.

Erich Reinhardt

"I didn't say you had to," there's a note of defensiveness now. "I asked because you told me I didn't know anything, so I thought maybe -- nevermind."

He remembers he still has coffee. Not the $5-a-cup stuff Starbucks serves, but the 99-cents-for-any-size stuff you get at a gas station. It isn't particularly good, but then Erich isn't a coffee aficionado. He can't really tell the difference. He sips; it's only warm now. When he lowers it, he lets the bottom edge of the cup rest on his thigh. He tries to relax in his seat, tries to get comfortable.

"I can't go home either," he says then, quite out of the blue. "I don't know if that's actually the case for you, but it sure as hell is the case for me. My people are all Fenrir, as far back as anyone can remember. A lot of big heroes in the old family tree. So when I finished my training and"

-- he doesn't say became or defected or renounced or any of those verbs. He doesn't even say chose, which is a word he does sometimes use, but isn't really accurate either. What he says is --

"was a Shadow Lord, they pretty much disowned me, threw me out, and told me to never show my face again if I valued my sorry-ass hide." His fingers drum lightly on the side of the cup. "So that sort of sucked."

Celia de Luca

That sort of sucked, he says, to sum up his entire family and his people shunning him. Celia doesn't even blink at the fact that he was born to Fenrir and was a Shadow Lord. She just curls up in the passenger seat, in her coat and underneath his, watching him as he talks. He doesn't offer her a sip of his coffee; that's probably for the best.

"I had four brothers," she says, and it's the second time she's said it tonight, but she doesn't leave it there this time. "And my mother and father, of course. My mother died when I was little; she was a Galliard." Celia looks down and slips her feet out of her heels. One stays upright, the other knocking quietly to its side on the floorboard. Her toes are pedicured, of course. French. She tucks them up under the hoodie. "By then brother number one and brother number four had already left the tribe because brother number four was Garou and couldn't be a Fury and brother number one... went with him."

That's a paltry way of saying it. She was young -- very young, 'little', she says -- and may not remember much, but it's still a wound. She pulls at a stray hair on top of the hoodie. It's long and dark. Not Erich's at all. Celia just drops it aside.

"There was an attack on the kin in the town I lived, and that's when my dad and brothers two and three were killed. The woman who had come to live with us after my mother died took me away and that's when I lived in the commune with the sisters." The commune. If she were a Child of Gaia it would sound more like a hippie co-op or something. He probably has no idea what a Black Fury 'commune' of sisters might be like. Apparently it made Celia unafraid of walking a block in cold weather, at least.

"So that's where I grew up the rest of the way, and... learned how to do what I do." There's more to that story, a lot more, but she could talk for a very long time without explaining everything of that story. She only just met him. Celia cuts it off there, looking at him as though to tell him it's his turn again now.

Erich Reinhardt

That's how Erich finds out Celia is an orphan. That even her siblings are lost. Two dead, two simply gone. He wonders briefly where the eldest and youngest went; which tribe. He wonders if it's the same for the youngest -- if he simply was something other than a Fury, or if it was far more painful than that. A severing from the totem one's soul recognized and worshiped. The very worst sort of parental rejection.

And that's how Erich finds out she was brought up and trained in a commune. He has no idea what a commune is; the Fenrir don't talk much about the Furies, and when they do it's usually replete with expletives and obscenities. Sometimes with outright misogynism, even from the females. Maneating bulldykes. Cunts. Bitches. The Fenrir, the traditional ones anyway, didn't like anyone that disagreed with them and their ways. He'd hate to hear what they say about him now, he thinks.

"I'm sorry about your family," he says. "There have been times when I wished mine was just dead, because it was better than knowing they were out there and just didn't want to talk to me ever again. That they'd made the conscious choice to snip me out of their lives like that, you know? But the truth is I'm glad they're still out there.

"I have a younger sister. She's the only one that still talks to me sometimes, but she still lives at home so it's a risk and there'd be all sorts of drama if anyone found out. So sometimes I get text messages from her. She's the one that got me my phone.

"I had a bunch of cousins too. Two boys, both older. Like... seven girls, four older, three younger. One of the younger ones had just First Changed when I left. I forgot what her auspice is. And then there's my parents, and my aunt and my uncle, who's a Forseti -- a Half Moon. He's the one that told me he'd tear me apart for a traitor and an oathbreaker if I went back. I don't even think it was spite. He thinks it's justice. He probably thinks letting me go was an act of gross mercy.

"We all lived out in Nebraska. The northwestern part. Middle of nowhere. After I left I've been all over the place. It's easy to move around when you've got no pack or family, and you live out of your car." He tilts his head at the back, self-deprecating. "You can have a look at my grand abode if you want."

Celia de Luca

He's sorry about her family. "Thank you," she says, as soft and rote as she might have at any number of funerals. But then, some Garou and kin don't get funerals. If they're lucky they get some kind of rite. There often isn't time to memorialize the dead, and sometimes no time to bury them. There always seems to be time to mourn, though. The rest of your life.

Celia is quiet now, because the tears have been reined back in and her face is cold and the rest of her body is very warm in the wool of her coat and the sherpa lining of his jacket. She isn't crying anymore, and she isn't yelling at him or all but sobbing at him because he's just so mean and he doesn't even know and so forth. She's just quiet.

Erich goes on to say he wishes his were just dead, because it might be better than knowing they were out there. A thick, violent anger rises up in her at that, setting her teeth on edge, and when he says that rhetorical you know? she just sets her jaw and gives a single small shake of her head. When he admits that he's glad they're still out there, she doesn't say a word. He can already tell by the look in her eyes, the look on her face, which she agrees with. But then: she doesn't know what it's like to be rejected so entirely like that any more than he knows what it's like for them to be just... gone.

At least there are those two brothers out there. Blood and tribe. Hard to tell which is stronger, and from whose perspective.

Celia looks at him when he says he has a sister, and seven female cousins, and his sister got him a phone just so she could keep in touch with him. This doesn't surprise her. Nor does the 'Forseti', whatever -- oh, it's a Half Moon -- surprise her by being the one to threaten Erich's life if he ever came back around. Celia just shakes her head, glancing out the window. Coming from a tribe that willingly gives up, and even forces out, close to half of their number, it must not strike her as that unthinkable for any Garou to end up in a tribe other than the one they were born to. It's not as simple as blood. She would know that, wouldn't she? Well. To an extent. Even she knows she can't really understand that.

His tone changes slightly, and she looks back to him. Looks back over her shoulder at the car. And maybe it's because she's still semi-inebriated and maybe it's because he made her cry again and maybe it's because she just told him things about herself she hasn't talked to anyone about in years, but she can't deal with it anymore. So she glances back, and looks at him, and gives him a dry smirk beneath tired eyes. "So are you inviting me back to your place?" she quips, teasing him, trying to pull back from that abyss of grief and all its darkness, all its merciless permanence.

Erich Reinhardt

He's the Garou and the one with rage like a wildfire, but even so he looks at her sometimes and thinks: so tempestuous. Her anger rises and falls like a tide, pulled by the strange moons of her temper, their conversation, the things he says, the things she does. He feels it sometimes, threatening or tempting his own. Sometimes he wants to show his teeth. Sometimes -- lately -- tonight, specifically -- he just wants.

Still, it makes him laugh, and suddenly, when she asks him if he's inviting her back to his place. "Truthfully, while I was in the gas station standing in line I was thinking you're the first houseguest I've had for a while."

There's no shame in his voice. This is his home; he's quite open about that. There is something a little shy about the way he reaches up and flicks on the ceiling light, though, because let's be honest: it's a goddamn car. It's tiny and it's cramped and she can't even sit up straight in the back, let alone stand. This is a girl who lives in one of the best hotels in the city. He's not sure what the situation's like at a commune, but he suspects even there she can stand up next to her bed without putting her head through the ceiling.

"You know," the idea hits him all at once, "I have an almost-full tank of gas, Starbucks has free wifi, and my laptop plugs into the cigarette lighter. We might not be able to watch movies at your place, but we can chill here for a couple hours."

Celia de Luca

"Well, don't worry, you're doing a fine job as a host," Celia assures him, her tone arch and therefore hardly serious. "You even offered me a beverage."

It's his home. He doesn't know what a commune is, but he knows the area her hotel is in and could probably even see it from where he almost-parked. He flicks on the ceiling light and illuminates the interior, and Celia winces at the brightness, then glances back and looks. Just for a moment. It's her hand that reaches up and, perhaps out of simple need for privacy, turns it off again. Her wrists, where her pulse moves like a beat, smell like citrus and ginger and that warm, indefinable scent that is her very own. It brushes over his senses when she lifts her hand to the light, then retreats again.

You know, he says, and then the idea pours out of him like he's a teenager. In a way she's glad he hasn't suggested sneaking into her room at the Hay-Adams via the umbra. Bad idea, he said, and that hurt for strange reasons, and even now she's a little uncomfortable -- no, not quite 'uncomfortable'; wary is a better word -- with the way he looks at her sometimes. Truth be told, she's averse to trying to get comfortable in the back of his car, which isn't even made for camping or carrying several people. It's a Mustang. But it's his home, and glancing sidelong at him, she has a feeling she knows how he'd react to going back to 'her place' with her.

King-sized bed.

Thick walls.

Her coat slipping off her shoulders.

Celia takes a breath and exhales, then nods. "That could be neat," she says, coming back to herself after a protracted moment of distraction. She glances back, then at him. "Do you actually have some pants I could change into? Maybe a sweater or something?" There's a beat. "I'm not cold or anything, it's just... this stuff isn't meant to be worn for hours on end."

This stuff. Whatever it is she has on under her coat.

Erich Reinhardt

That moment of distraction is enough to put doubt back into Erich. "Only if you want to," he hurries to say. "I know it's pretty weird."

And it's cramped back there. In that moment she had the light on, she could see the layout: the sleeping bag all down the driver's side, unrolled on top of what might be a foam mattress pad, or might just be a big piece of foam. Regardless, even with the seats folded down, there's still not enough room for Erich's six-two frame to stretch out entirely. Maybe he sleeps curled on his side every night. Maybe he stretches out atop the sleeping bag in lupine form. That definitely happens at least some of the time -- there are bits of stray fur back there. The rest of the space is occupied by a softshell suitcase, two duffle bags, a backpack, and a box.

Could be neat, she says. And asks for clothes. His mouth quirks -- "I was going to offer even if you didn't ask." Because: lingerie is not meant to be worn for hours. Because: of the way he looks at her sometimes, and how he really really really hopes she doesn't take off the overcoat. And also because he sort of hopes she does, and that's not okay.

"Hang on," he says. He turns the heat up higher, and he gets out. The back door lifts. He rummages around for a while, and then he tosses something up to her -- a pair of running sweatpants, soft from being washed over and over and over, clean but almost scentless from being stuffed in a bag for so long. "You can just zip yourself into that jacket," he adds.

The back door thumps closed. He comes around the front, and he's carrying the duffle bags and the backpack, which he shoves into the driver's seat and into the legroom under her side of the dash. It makes a little more room in the back.

Hand on the door, ready to close it: "I'm going to go get us some coffee and snacks. Anything you want?"

Celia de Luca

"I don't think it's weird," she tells him, perhaps a little too quickly. Eager to comfort him, maybe, or just eager to hang out with someone whose best friend isn't the Wyrm for a while. Both of them are, most likely, thinking about the logistics of Celia changing clothes in his car, in a parking lot, when all she's wearing is lingerie.

Just as they are both, in their own ways, thinking about the fact that she's in his car and wearing nothing but lingerie. Which is entirely different.

Erich gets out, and starts rummaging in the back. Celia twists in the seat, peering back at him, catching the pants as they're thrown her way. No t-shirt. He grabs some bags and carries them up, shoving them into leg space. Celia moves to keep her legs out of the way, then all but yelps when she realizes her discarded heels are still down there. There's a moment when Erich is stuck holding the backpack or the duffle bags while Celia leans over and gets her shoes, then gets herself out of the way. He pulls back, everything stowed, and she looks at him when he asks about food like he just got struck from behind with a halo.

"I'm actually starving. Could you get me a chicken panini? Or a turkey one? Just something hot with meat on it. Oh, and the cheese and fruit box if they still have some. And a grande vanilla spice latte with skim milk? And maybe some scones or donuts or -- ooh, brownies. Or cake pops." Her eyes have gone wide, round and eager, her tone almost breathless. "I'm so hungry, Erich, you don't even know. I could eat a porterhouse. And a baked potato that's bigger than your face."

Erich Reinhardt

"Potatoes don't come bigger than my face," he replies blandly, a smirk just itching to curl up in the corner of his mouth. "I'd know, I grew up on a farm."

And he doesn't take off just yet. He digs around in his bag some more, and then he finds a pair of socks, which he sniffs surreptitiously. "I'm pretty sure these are new," he says, "if your feet get cold. But I'm not positive."

Then he closes the door. And at least the back windows on the Mustang are tinted -- sort of a necessity when you're going to be sleeping there, after all -- but even so it's sort of up to Celia to figure out how to best change herself into pants and a jacket that are both way too big for her. In the parking lot of a Starbucks. Without being seen.

Erich, meanwhile, heads into the Starbucks. And it's a busy one, full of yuppies in suits with bluetooths welded to their ears, and everyone's order is a single very very fucking specific drink, and then Erich gets up to the front and orders:

a chicken panini
a turkey panini
a cheese and fruit box
a grande vanilla spice latte with skim milk
a cheesecake brownie
two chocolate chunk cookies
a slice of lemon pound cake
two cranberry bliss bars
a grande coffee, black
two bottles of Izzi juice
and, after a lot of deliberation, a chicken and hummus box.

He has all the bottled and bakery items in a bag when he comes out, and he's balancing two boxes and two drinks in his other hand. He knocks, awkwardly, on the passenger-side window with his elbow.

Celia de Luca

"Apparently not a very good farm," she sniffs, like the princess he called her and she refuses to be. It's a tease, like so many other things. He tries to hand her a pair of socks. She looks from them to his sweatpants. "I think I'll pass. But thanks."

Then he closes the door. She is left to her own devices in a well-lit and busy parking lot to change out of an overcoat and lingerie in order to get into a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. Celia thinks a moment, then slips into the back. For a few scuffling moments she's lying on top of his sleeping bag, wiggling out of panties and into pants, then unbuttoning and shedding her overcoat to switch it with the hoodie. It's zipped up her middle, far too large like most everything else, and then she performs the undershirt tango that gets her bra off and pulled down and out. Celia pushes her arms into the sleeves finally and opens her bag, tucking the lingerie inside.

It isn't that she takes care with disrobing out of shame or embarrassment or worry that someone might see! She isn't nervous. What she wants to avoid is the window being knocked on, her face being seen and -- in weeks or months to come, recognized and remembered and talked about. Erich knows she shouldn't be seen with another man, but he doesn't know why. His guess would, most likely, fall short of the mark. She plays a very long game. She is not out for the quick death, the end to a threat. There is more destruction to be left in her wake, and it is more lasting than death.

When Erich comes back, Celia is wearing his hoodie and his sweatpants and she is curled up in the back, slouched down against one side, her knees tucked up and her pedicured toes bared and her hair resting on the shoulders of his sweater. He knocks and she crawls forward, tugging the handle only after checking to make sure it's him. She's smiling, rather brightly, reaching out to take the drinks and boxes so he can climb into the car again.

"You got a lot," says the girl who claimed she could eat a porterhouse and an impossibly large potato.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich is smiling as he hands the food over. His crest falls when she says he got a lot. "I thought you were hungry," he protests, pulling the handle that snaps the seats forward so he can crawl in the back. "It's all right, if it's too much you can take it back to your hotel.

"Let me show you something," he says, and stuffs the box and the suitcase in the floorspace between the folded rear seats and the forward-leaning front seats. Pads the tops with his blanket, and -- "Couch. See?" He sits to demonstrate, legs stretched out, leaning against the back of the front seat.

Celia de Luca

"I am!" she says back, scooting out of his way. There isn't, as previously mentioned, much room back here. She has the drinks, and holds one in each hand while he stuffs things around, moves them, jostling the entire car. He makes a couch. Sort of. It's not even the size of a station wagon. She is near the rear of the car, hunched over and holding Starbucks cups, watching as he turns around, leans back, and shows her how he makes himself comfortable.

Celia looks at the seats. Then him. Then the seats. Then him.

"Okay," she says. "Couch." Holds his drink out to him. "Take it. I need my other hand for food."

Erich Reinhardt

"You totally don't buy it," he accuses, taking his black coffee, sipping and then reaching to put it in the cup holders up front. "Pass me the chicken and hummus, will you? Do you want the hummus and pita bread?"

Celia de Luca

"I didn't," she says, frowning at him like he's grown another head, which she's done before and will do again. "You -- oh. You meant the other kind of buy. And I will refrain from comment. I will concede that you have enacted a change in your environment that you are naming 'couch' and leave it at that."

This is how she talks while coming down from being horrendously drunk.

Celia takes the little swizzle out of the mouth of her cup and inhales the scent of the latte gratefully. She crawls, on both knees and one hand, up to the 'couch' and sits on the other 'seat', then reaches forward and drags the bag and picks up the boxes again, depositing all the food between them. He asks for the chicken, offers her the hummus and pita and peers at him. "You don't want it?" Like the idea that someone might not like hummus and pita is unthinkable. Horrifying. Sad.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich looks appalled at himself, "Oh. Shit. No, no, I didn't -- I wouldn't -- no, that is so not what I meant. God, that'd be so rude."

And then she describes what he's done in terms that make him think of scientists charting the activities of some strange new life form. He snorts a laugh, taking the box as she sets it down between them. "My 'environment' has gained a couch, and it is awesome.

"I pretty much only eat meat," he adds, which is something any other twenty-something male built like a young bull might say. He means it, though. "After my First Change, anything else usually disagrees with me. I still eat ice cream, though. I don't care if I get a gurgly stomach afterward; it's so worth it."

He pops the lid off his chicken and hummus and sets it between them.

Celia de Luca

"Huh?"

That frown again, only more bewildered. He looks appalled, stammers out no and I didn't and wouldn't and so rude and she looks completely confused. "I thought you were saying I didn't buy the snacks and you were talking about me not buying that this is a couch. Right?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Yeah," he confirms. "And I meant it'd be so rude of me to accuse you of not buying the food I just gave you."

Celia de Luca

She blinks at him. "Oh," she says. "But I don't think you would do that. I thought you were just being weird."

Weird = okay. Rude = wouldn't think of it. Apparently.

He goes on, perhaps getting back to the point , that he only eats meat. It's because of his First Change, he explains. He eats ice cream. Even if it fucks up his digestion. "I do not want to be around you after you've had ice cream and get a 'gurgly stomach'," she says, settling in and sipping her latte, though it's still very hot. She doesn't go for the hummus and pita right away, but digs around til she finds the turkey panini with its smoked swiss and rustic bread, pulling it toward her eagerly. "Warrrm," she says, and takes what is, for such a delicate-looking girl, a surprising bite. It is as vengeful as a warrior, that bite.

She chews, or at least gets the food to one side of her mouth, covering her mouth with her hand, asking: "What are we gonna watch?"

Erich Reinhardt

"I don't care," he says, sticking a piece of chicken between his teeth, reaching into the front to awkwardly dig his rather old laptop out of his backpack. "I've got Netflix. Pick something you like."

He has Netflix. He has no permanent home, the only furniture he owns are things he constructs out of suitcases and blankets -- and he has Netflix. He settles back on his side of the 'couch' after he gets the computer booted up and plugged into the cigarette lighter.

"Maybe not Moulin Rouge though. You might make me cry if you ruin that one any more for me."

Celia de Luca

There's a lot of jostling in this little muscle car tonight. People do notice them, think maybe they're homeless or something, or just young hipsters -- they do have a laptop in there, after all. The management doesn't mind much, since Erich just came in and bought more than anyone in line so far. So no one, yet, comes knocking to ask if she's okay, just to see if she needs an escape route from this very scary guy.

"Ugh," is all she says. "If you really want to watch a movie that will probably just piss me off and then blame me for 'ruining' it for you, go right ahead." There it is. A bit of that sharpness he came to know all too well in just a couple of early encounters. A harshness to her, a ragged and cutting edge to her personality. She takes another enormous bite of her panini, chewing like a starving urchin. Swallowing. "I like Alien and Aliens. And there's this really poignant-happy thing I saw a while ago called Waitress. And Billy Elliot. I like a lot of movies."

She's quiet a moment, and then finishes chewing and looks at him. "You know, I'm not just anti-anything that could possibly be construed as sexist. Most stuff is. If I rejected every piece of media that I could find objection with -- and some Black Furies do -- then I really would have next to nothing that I could watch, listen to, or enjoy. And what would suck about that isn't that I wouldn't be able to enjoy all these things, it's that I would have every valid reason to reject them. That's what's sad and scary and wrong and, frankly, of the Wyrm. If we see Gaia as female, then it's one of the most successful war campaigns ever waged for the Wyrm to make the world hate everything female."

She pauses. "I got off track. What I wanted to say was: part of the reason I don't want to watch Moulin Rouge, which you've mentioned like three times now, is because I actually am... well, basically a courtesan." She looks down and frowns at her sandwich. "It's like a doctor being forced to watch Grey's Anatomy." She takes another bite.

Erich Reinhardt

"You're not a -- " he starts, and then stops, because they've had that discussion already. "I still think there's a difference," he says, stubbornly, and meanwhile he's typing ALIEN into the search bar. "Between you and a prostitute. And certainly between you and a 'whore'. I don't care if you've reclaimed the word for yourself; it has a negative connotation for me, and it's got a negative connotation when 99% of the population uses it. So I refuse to think of you using that term."

He hits enter. There's a bit of snap in his wrist. A few more clicks, and then he leans back, reaching for his coffee again.

"I was kidding about Moulin Rouge. Wasn't really going to make you watch it; I know you don't like it on principle. Apparently it wasn't a very funny joke."

Celia de Luca

A bit of snap to his wrist. A harsh edge to her comment. She sighs heavily, pointedly, when he gets stubborn about it. She rolls her eyes, shaking her head as she goes at her sandwich. "Well good for you," she mutters, when he says he refuses to use that word, "for completely missing the point."

She keeps talking with her mouth half full. Maybe she just has bad manners, but she keeps eating like she's ravenous. "And --" not a continuation of what she just said, but a circling: "I'm not so stupid that I thought you were going to 'make me' watch anything," she says, and this is snapping now, frustrated. "You kept harping on how I 'ruined' the damn movie for you so I thought I'd try to explain why. Apparently,"

petty, sharp, passive-aggressive perhaps,

"it doesn't matter."

Erich Reinhardt

"It does matter to me, Celia. Of course it matters to me. And I heard you, I listened to what you said. I just wanted you to know I wasn't actually harping on you for anything. It was a joke. I don't care if you hate Moulin Rouge; it's just a fucking movie, and I don't even like it that much. It was a joke."

He's said that three times now. Four? Enough, in either case, that he decides to shut up about it. She's devouring food like she hasn't eaten all day. He snaps up another piece of chicken and is surprised, looking down, to see it was his last. Fucking Starbucks, he thinks. What a fucking rip-off.

Celia de Luca

She's angry. Or at least: annoyed. Frustrated. Drunk and so much more easily swayed to one emotion or another. He thinks she's tempestuous; he had to drive slow away from that hotel in Alexandria because she was so drunk she might have thrown red wine up all over his car. She's starving like she hasn't eaten most of the day, too; all that alcohol on an empty stomach.

And god knows what he made her do in that hotel room he summoned her to, wearing what she was.

Celia just scowls as she eats, refusing to say anything now. It's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke, he keeps saying, and she just starts ignoring him now. It's hard to remember smiling at him, telling him she was enjoying his company now. And it's harder still to remember that mental image of taking off her coat, walking across the room to him. He's a jerk and he's stupid and she scowls while she eats her panini and he scowls -- or at least curses -- the Starbucks for the three tiny pieces of chicken he paid six or seven dollars for.

Erich Reinhardt

It is hard to remember that now. Hard to remember what it was like to smile at her and tell her he'd call her Celia. Hard to remember what it was like, that rush of unexpected tenderness and gentle amusement, when he pulled the door open at the gas station and she spilled out. Hard, but not impossible.

Maybe that's why after a moment -- the silence between them thick and dark -- he grabs a napkin out of that bag of bakery goods and wipes his hands off. He says quietly, "I've never actually thought about Moulin Rouge like that. The way you put it, I mean. It was just fun to watch. But if I watched it again I might see the things you talked about. And that's not a bad thing. You didn't ruin anything for me.

"It doesn't mean I'll never enjoy watching it again. Or that you have to enjoy watching it. It's like you said. There isn't much in the world that isn't offensive in some way or other. We can't reject it all. Or embrace it all.

"And yeah. I hear you: it would be weird watching it now, with you. I still don't think you're a whore, not really, but ... you do have sex for ulterior purposes." It sounds so awful when he just says it like that, puts it out there. He winces, but he goes on. "I see the connection."

A small exhale. Then he looks at her. "I'm not... saying all this 'cause I want to sit here and talk about this tonight. I just wanted you to know: I did listen to you. I did hear you. So let's not fight again, okay?" Soft, that. "I like you. I was just getting used to thinking of you as a friend. And I don't have a whole lot of those."

Celia de Luca

Celia just frowns into her sandwich when he tells her she didn't ruin anything. There's hot, bright color the tops of her cheeks, a flush that with the tone of her skin only makes her eyes seem brighter, even in the dark. She keeps eating. She keeps chewing, keeps looking at something other than him because she thinks she might try to headbutt him. She knows how badly that would end, but it doesn't mean the urge isn't there.

And she exhales, levelly, when he insists he doesn't think she's a whore. On some level she knows he's trying, that there is good intent there, but his intentions aren't the source of her frustration. He winces. She catches it out of the corner of her eye and actually turns her head completely away for a moment.

It takes her a moment to turn her head again. He's looking at her, telling her he did listen and he heard and he doesn't want to fight. He likes her. He doesn't have a lot of friends. Celia is still all but scowling. She gives a small shake of her head, but it's not really to anything he said.

She breathes out through her nose, calming gradually but surely. "Erich, I don't care if I ruin a movie for you. You're the one who kept making the joke over and over. When someone does that, either they're really dull and not creative, or there's some truth behind it. I don't actually think you're stupid, so I wanted to try and explain how I feel. But you misunderstand a lot of the stuff I say." Her little brow wrinkles again. That bothers her. Her head turns to look at him again. "I know some of that is what I say and how, so that's not all on you. It's still really frustrating."

Celia glances down at her hands, holding the panini he brought to her. Her stomach rumbles slightly, still hungry. Her voice quiets a bit. "And... I don't care what you or most of the population thinks about what I do or what I call it. I do something very dark and very hard and sometimes very dangerous because it's necessary, and because it makes a difference. And every time you flinch or wince at the word 'whore' or 'slut' or insist that you don't think of me that way or want to call it something else, that makes me feel more insulted and demeaned than anything do for Gaia. If you want to be my friend, you have to get over that stuff."

She looks at him again. "I don't have any friends. And I do like you some of the time, so far." She doesn't mean to be cruel with those disclaimers; they haven't even known each other a week. "But I don't like arguing with you either, and we're going to keep arguing about this stuff if you don't try to adjust, because it really bugs me." Her expression is sad now, more than angry. Imploring.

Erich Reinhardt

"It doesn't bother me, what you do." This is almost immediate. "I know it seems like it does, but it doesn't. It bothers me to say it out loud, because every word I can think of to use for it has been said as an insult by someone, somewhere, at some point. And you might have 'reclaimed' all those words for yourself already, but I'm still working on it. I'm still -- adjusting."

He thinks a moment.

"Well, no. It does bother me, what you do. But not because I think it makes you dirty or less. And not because I think you're pure and beautiful and kin to wolves, and therefore you should be locked in a tower and protected and fucked by snarling beasts like myself. It bothers me because it's dangerous, and I don't want my friends in danger. I don't want to be in danger. I'd like to go back to Nebraska and grow potatoes bigger than my face, and I'd like it if everyone I liked could just put down the war and go home and do whatever it is they liked best.

"But we can't. We're down to the wire now, so someone has to do all the dark and dangerous things. Everyone has to. So," he shrugs, "that's just how it is. I can deal with that. I do deal with it."

Celia de Luca

Celia puts her sandwich down on her lap and uses the insides of her wrists to rub over her eyes. "Jesus, stop saying 'reclaimed' like that," she mutters, half under her breath, too aggravated to eat right now. Her hands drop and she doesn't pick up the food, irritation like a friction in the air between them. It isn't even the other kind of friction, just as troublesome but at least less upsetting. Only instead of looking like she's about to turn into an honest-to-god harpy, wings and talons and sharp teeth and all, Celia just looks... grumpy.

Underneath the irritation there's that genuine disappointment that they keep running into each other like this. He doesn't have many friends, he said. She doesn't have any, she answered. And not five minutes ago they were acting like they could be.

Friends, that is.

"Can we just..." she says, sounding defeated, "...can we just not talk about the war and what I do and what you think of it or don't think of it? I just think we keep saying the wrong things and getting into really dumb circular arguments and it's just completely exhausting and annoying. I was enjoying just chilling out with you and... honestly just trying to help you get to know me better when I started talking. So let's just drop it."

Erich Reinhardt

"Celia..."

He's not eating either. He can't eat most of the shit he bought; Starbucks isn't exactly known for its meat-heavy meals. There's coffee in his cup, but his cup is in his hands, forgotten.

"I'm trying here. I don't know what I've said to make you so angry; I don't know what to say to make it better. I don't even know if you heard half of what I just said, or if you got so hung up on 'reclaimed' that the rest was just fuel on the fire. I don't know what I'm supposed to drop and what I'm allowed to talk about. We got here because I made a joke about a movie.

"Listen. If you're exhausted and annoyed, I can take you back to your hotel. I'd like it if we could hang out, but you don't have to stay here with me. We don't have to make tonight work."

Celia de Luca

They've said each other's names again. Only she said Erich, I don't care and he said Celia, I'm trying. Maybe it's a meaningful difference, something notable about her personality and his. Maybe it says something about how far apart the places they come from are. Or who they are now. He thought she was sheltered. He's learning that she's cynical, which is almost stereotypical in and of itself to find in a girl who does her part in the war not by having babies or caring for warriors but by destroying powerful men with her smile, her charms, her cunt.

Celia doesn't answer. Not at first. She takes another bite of her sandwich, another big one, and chews slowly. She's staring at that sandwich, and maybe it takes a moment in the dark, but he'll realize she's thinking. Maybe just considering saying yeah. screw tonight. just take me back to the hotel.

Then she swallows. "I want to hang out," she mutters, not looking at him. Mutters, unhappily, but when she starts talking again she just sounds...well. Tired. "I'm worn out because I spent like six hours drinking and fucking and not even getting something to eat, not because we keep arguing. I'm annoyed because we keep arguing. And we got here, this time," she says, almost numbly, turning her head to look at him, "when I wanted to help you get to know me." It's a repetition. Almost verbatim. Her eyes are guarded, but her voice is quiet. "It wasn't about the movie, or the joke. I just wanted you to understand me better and how I see things and all that, and then you got all tied up about me being a courtesan or whore or... any of the other words you don't like. And that wasn't even the point of what I was saying. That's what pissed me off, Erich. I was like... reaching out and explaining who I am, or trying, and... you went on a mini-rant about the semantics. You keep missing the point."

Celia picks up her coffee in her other hand, but not to drink it. She just holds it, warming her hand. "So that feels kinda crappy. Like I'm thinking... if you don't actually want to understand me, then do you really want to be my friend or... what? And that sucks, even if it's not on purpose or whatever. It really feels shitty."

Erich Reinhardt

Some part of Erich wants to howl when Celia tells him just why she's worn out. Some part of him wants to shift into his biggest, warmest form and curl around her while she devours every last bit of the food he got her; until her system cleanses the very last of the alcohol from her bloodstream. He controls himself. That's what being a Garou is: you control yourself, over and over again. You don't tear the roofs off limousines, even if you know there are corrupt men inside. You don't lock beautiful purebred girls into towers, even if you know they'll be safe there, they'll be airless and sheltered and warm every day of the year, they'll petrify into something lifeless there.

You don't do these things because they would make you monstrous. And you're not monstrous; you're a monster, but an intelligent one, and under the best circumstances you're even fighting for the right reasons. But only if you keep a lid on it. Only if you control yourself.

So: he doesn't howl, and he tries very hard not to fixate on that. There's a shadow of ache in his eyes; it passes. He looks at her hand on her coffee, which so nearly mimics what he does with his. They are both warming themselves, even though the car is still on, and the heater. It's the warmth between them that's cooled, and she's right: that feels shitty.

"You're right," he says after a while. He takes a sip of coffee, looks down at the cup when he's done. There's a bit of coffee on the lid now, seeped out from that tiny hole designed to keep the hot liquid from splashing everywhere if one were to drive or walk with it. "I did miss the point. I still don't really get the point.

"So ... can you tell me again?" He looks at her; apprehensive, hopeful. "Can we try again?"

Celia de Luca

Drinking and fucking some guy who didn't even stop long enough to let her eat, didn't think to offer her something to eat, wanted to keep his own stomach empty for his long, late dinner afterward with some foreign dignitary. Of course it sets Erich's teeth on edge. It doesn't seem to affect Celia as much. Long day at the office. A slow and tiring battle. But she won. And her enemy doesn't even know it yet.

So she says it offhand, and she feels the tension -- and something else -- in Erich that for a moment she thinks is directed at her, at the rest of what she said. She glances at him sidelong, wary for a moment, but he doesn't start snapping about how she isn't a whore, she isn't she isn't she isn't, and he doesn't snarl and he doesn't grow fur and he doesn't do any of the things she might be wary of. Like him hugging her or something all of a sudden in pity.

She sips her coffee in the moment of quiet in between her words and his. Curled up in his car, on his 'couch', wearing his clothes, drinking and eating things he brought to her. It has to drive that part of him -- the part that wanted to curl around her a moment ago -- absolutely mad, or possibly make that part overwhelmingly joyous. It is everything his spirit tells him to do with a kin like her. Keep her warm. Keep her near and safe. Keep her fed, make her healthy and strong. Maddening.

You can't lock beautiful purebred women in towers.

She looks at him, as he looks at her with all that almost plaintive hope in his voice and his eyes, and her brows tug together in an expression of weariness, sympathy, and ache. Celia gives him a nod, but in reality, the answer is: "Maybe some other time. Just wanna... chill now. Okay?"

Erich Reinhardt

The answer doesn't come immediately. It's not rote; it's not a matter of social norms. Erich thinks about it. He gives it a moment's thought: is it okay? Can he stand to just let it be, let all of it be -- be something like normal with her, at least for the night?

"Okay." It's agreement, as solemn as a vow. He nods a couple times. "I'd like that."

And then he takes a breath, as though steeling himself. Or as though letting go of a weight. He turns to his laptop, humming in the space between their legs, awaiting command. He's pulled up the Alien series on Netflix. His mouse cursor hovers between the two.

"Alien? Aliens?"

Celia de Luca

Okay, he says, so seriously, and she almost smiles. "Thanks," she says quietly. He says he'd like it, and he breathes, and turns to his laptop. Celia contemplates her sandwich, then takes a large bite of it and curls up a bit more on his makeshift couch, tilting her body to see the laptop screen better. "You pick," she says, her mouth half-full but her hand in front of her lips to attempt politeness. "I like them all. I even like parts of Resurrection, and Resurrection was horrible."

Erich picks, and though Alien and Aliens are two very different movies, they are both very good movies, and less frightening when on a small screen in the back of a car. The streaming hiccups sometimes, buffering buffering buffering, and Celia asks him quietly to turn the heater down after a while, and for nearly the full length of the movie she's eating. Slower now, finishing one sandwich and leaving the other for him to pick the meat off of. She finishes her coffee and eats pastries, plucking small bites with her fingers and feeding herself. She never asks him if he wants some. He can't. Apparently he can do coffee and he risks ice cream, but she knows he can't eat a lemon-cranberry scone or anything. So she eats shamelessly, finds the brownies, gets a crumb on her lip, licks it off while someone is dying horribly on-screen.

It becomes clear that Celia has seen these often enough to even say a few iconic lines along with the characters, but she doesn't do that very often. At some point she shifts around, moving the bag and boxes and everything out from between them and scooting over so she can see better and so they're not both leaning toward the center trying to get a good angle.

By the time the movie is winding to a close, she has decimated the contents of the bag Erich brought out and just sipping on an Izze, her eyes brighter, more alert, than they were when she first got in the car. She's sober now, and only tired. She yawns, lifting a hand to cover her mouth, and then takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. She looks at him. Doesn't say anything.

Erich Reinhardt

"I kinda liked parts of Resurrection too!" Erich is pleased. "Aliens 3 was the one I couldn't stand. I mean, the entire second movie revolved around Ripley coming into her own as this mother-warrior-queen. Resurrection even acknowledges that side of her character. And it was so fucking satisfying at the end of Aliens when she's finally getting out of there with her cub safe and sound. Then what does 3 do? It kills her cub in the first five minutes and turns her into this bizarro prison-planet-Jesus, and then subjects us to about fifty repetitive xenomorph-eye-view sequences of aliens running through ugly-ass industrial tunnels. Come on."

And that seems to decide him. He clicks Aliens. They settle in, and Celia eats the whole time, and after a while -- with a bit of reassurance from Celia that no, really, she can only eat one of the paninis in addition to everything else in the bag, Erich eats the other. Or starts to, and then pulls it in half and swaps that half with half of hers, so they can both try the chicken and the turkey. People die horribly onstage. The Alien Queen makes her first appearance. Erich is riveted. Celia says the immortal line with Ripley: get away from her, you bitch. Erich reaches over for a high-five, laughing, eyes glued to the small screen.

The movie ends. Ripley, her adopted cub, and her semi-token mate, blasting off into deep space. Erich leans back, satisfied, determined not to think of how Aliens 3 ruined it all. He's finished his coffee a while ago. He's sipping an Izze too, his grapefruit-flavored.

He feels her watching him before he quite even becomes consciously aware of it. He glances at her, then looks at her. The bag is still full, but now it's full of wrappers and napkins and empty cups and bottles. There's one more cranberry bliss bar left, which he nudges toward Celia.

He doesn't say anything to disrupt the silence, either.

Celia de Luca

"I don't remember it as well," Celia says, of Aliens 3. "Maybe I just like the image of her bald." She smiles at that, and he's talking about Newt like a 'cub', smiling at the way he says mother-warrior-queen like that, and

he picks Aliens, and yes, she tells the queen to get away from Newt right along with Ripley. And she eats. She eats sandwiches and brownies and scones and whatever else he got. She eats pita and hummus. Celia eats slowly, but steadily, even after her hunger's edge is gone. They share the sandwiches. Celia high-fives him and her palms are soft and the little slap is very light, as though she's wary of hurting him.

At the end, Celia looks sober but sleepy, looking at him quietly. He glances, then turns and looks. He nudges the bar to her and she purses her lips and blows out her cheeks for a moment, then exhales. "Nope," she says. "I'll just throw up." She says that decidedly, like it's a choice and not just a worry or an uncontrollable inevitability. And then she thinks she could stop here and go back, rewind two hours and try to explain to him what she meant or what the point was or what she was trying to get across to him, but really... it doesn't seem to matter. It, or stuff like it, will come up again, she's sure of it.

So she looks at him, and then glances over at the Starbucks. He catches her in profile then, and though her hair is semi-dark, streetlights and building lights catch some of the finer hairs around her and limn them with gold threads that normally don't stand out, giving luster but otherwise hidden. She exhales. "We should probably go back. Or I can walk from here." She turns back to look at him. "Do you want me to change first?"

Erich Reinhardt

She can walk from here. He gives her a wry look. "You can," he says, dubiously. "But I'll give you a ride. My momma didn't raise no louts."

He reaches out to close the laptop. It's getting late. Starbucks is still open, but not for much longer. With the laptop closed it's a little bit darker still in the back of the Mustang.

"I don't mind if you wear my stuff back," he replies, "but I guess it wouldn't look good if you showed up wearing my clothes. I'll get out so you can change."

Celia de Luca

"Yeah," she says slowly. "He never comes to my hotel room, so having them there wouldn't be an issue, but... these are pretty obviously not my sweats." And she doesn't say it again, but they both know: she may be being watched. Reports are quite possibly going to her paramour. He doesn't want to get played. He doesn't want to be made a fool of by some pretty young thing. He doesn't want to lose. He doesn't trust her yet.

A little more, every time he finds himself wrapped up in her arms and her legs. A little further, each time. He digs his own grave.

He says he'll get out so she can change and she looks aside at him, frowning. "Seriously? You can't even handle me changing in front of you?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich hesitates. Then he smiles a little, and it's not so much amusement as it is a sort of ache.

"I can handle it. As in, I'm not going to jump on you and hump your leg. But for one, my momma didn't raise a lout. I'm told it's considered polite to step out when someone changes." He starts to wiggle himself out of the back. It wasn't easy for Celia to squeeze back here, what with all the stuff he carries in his car. For Erich, it's a monumental, time-consuming task. "For another, I don't want to see what sort of lingerie you wore today. You might accidentally end up in my mental fap material bank, and I don't think you'd appreciate that."

Celia de Luca

"I don't give a fuck," she says, her words a verbal shrug. She means it. He's crawling into the front, she's moving up on her knees and starting to untie the drawstrings -- pulled quite tight and neatly knotted -- of his sweatpants. Not easy in the dark, but her fingers are deft and familiar with such things. "I was taught different things."

Of course she was. A father and four -- then two -- brothers. Then a commune of Black Furies and their kinswomen; if there were men around they were likely outnumbered. She doesn't care if he sees her naked. She doesn't care if he sees her in lingerie. She doesn't care if later tonight or tomorrow he thinks about her, jerks off to the thought of her.

"Just as long as you're not, like --" and here she affects a low voice, a pale mockery of anything really masculine, "-- hurrrr, I totally got off thinking about you last night, hurrrr."

For what it's worth, when the sweatpants come off, she's behind the front seats and he's in the front of the Mustang. He'd have to actually be looking back at her, peering in the dark, catching glimpses of her in what light comes in from outside. She isn't waiting for him to get out, but she doesn't yell at him or yelp if he opens and closes the door to excuse himself suddenly. In either case, whether Erich looks pointedly ahead and keeps chatting with her -- or goes stonily silent -- or gets out of the car entirely, it doesn't take her long. That's partly because in the end, Celia doesn't pull her lingerie out from her purse to put it back on. The sweatpants come off, and then the zipper of his hoodie slides down and the hoodie itself is shrugged off her shoulders. She puts on her coat, then, longer than some skirts she owns but not touching her knees yet. Does up the buttons one by one.

Erich Reinhardt

"I do not hurr," Erich points out, mock-offended, as he squeezes between the front seats and half-sits, half-slumps into the passenger's side. Which she's undoing the drawstring of his sweatpants -- which sounds far more interesting than what's actually going on, though what's actually going on isn't altogether uninteresting either -- he's tossing his backpack into the trunkspace again, shifting things around. There's only so much room in this car. It's like one of those puzzle games where you have to move all the pieces just to move one piece: if he wants to move from point A to B, everything between point A and point B have to move as well.

And, since she's so liberal and forward-thinking about the whole deal, he doesn't get out. He doesn't go stonily silent. He doesn't even stare pointedly forward. He takes a glance or two over his shoulder. The second lasts a little longer than the first.

Scandalized, "Are you seriously going to walk back to your room wearing nothing under your overcoat? One gust of wind and it'll be the Seven Year Itch all over again." He's just full of random pop culture references.

Celia de Luca

"You might," Celia argues, because that's what they do, but she's undressing while he's puzzling out the interior of his car.

He doesn't get out; she notices that. And since she didn't demurely turn her back to him when she started getting naked, his glances over his shoulder are not merely silhouettes, the slope of her back, her shoulderblades. Erich sees her half turned towards him when she shrugs his hoodie off, which is when -- for a moment -- she's completely bare to him. It's the second, longer glance that she actually notices, while she's closing that white coat over her middle, her fingers smoothly inserting one button into one hole.

She smiles at him, the corner of her mouth curving sly upward, but there's something strangely tender mixed in with the amusement. She really is unperturbed by her own nudity or his viewing of it. What he can see of her belly between the white folds of her coat is smooth, the tone light but visibly athletic. She is not slender because of self-starvation, and she does more at the gym than burn calories on the treadmill or elliptical. She will never have much muscle mass, but her limbs are firm.

Black Furies don't tolerate weakness any more than Get do.

So there's that smile, meeting his eyes when he glances back the second time. He is aghast, as she's finishing up the buttons and moving into the front seat again, looking for her heels. "To tell you the truth, it wouldn't be that much different than what I was wearing under it before." She finds one shoe and slips it on, looking at him. "Don't be so Puritanical."

Erich Reinhardt

Truth be told, that first glance makes him turn away again almost immediately. It's some mix of heat and guilt: she's completely bare, and even though in the shadows she's little more than an impression of softness and strength, he feels his cheeks warming again. He looks straight forward for a while after that while they argue -- playfully, this time -- about whether or not he says hurr.

The second glance starts with a flick of his eyes to the rearview mirror. Which is at entirely the wrong angle right now, but that's not why he turns. It's because something about that feels low and demeaning, both to her and to him: to peep at her in such a cowardly way, to make her nothing more than body parts in glass. So he turns. And this time he looks for longer, and she's not as naked, so that makes things easier, and she smiles that sly smile that makes a sudden pulse of lust beat through his arteries.

He doesn't look away. He faces her with an odd sort of boldness, letting her see that he's flushed, letting her see that he's uncomfortable and entirely too aware of what she is and isn't wearing, letting her see he feels inexplicably shy even though she's the one disrobing (and re-robing) in his tiny den.

She calls him a Puritan. He snorts a laugh, turning forward again to roll a knot loose from his neck. "Oh come on. My ancestors used to tie Christian priests to rocks exposed by the low tide and tell them to pray to their God that the tide wouldn't rise. I think that automatically disqualifies me from being a Puritan, seeing as how they burned the folks they didn't like. My people just didn't undress very often, is all. Too cold up north. Not like you hedonistic Mediterranean types with your naked Olympics and indecent statuary."

She starts crawling into the front seat. It displaces him out the door. He pulls the duffle bag from her legspace, and then deposits it in the back along with the bags from the driver's side seat. Then -- puzzle-solving completed -- he climbs back in the driver's seat, flicking the headlights on.

"Drop you off around the corner, right?"

Celia de Luca

There's something bold and naked about his turn, his look, that second time. He's looking at her while she's naked. She knows he's looking. He's turned on by her, wants to look at her, wants to not look at her and want her and see her and all of it. She knows that, too. She's as unashamed as Eve before the apple. It's unhidden, it's honest, and it's raw. That's why she smiles at him when she does, the way she does. It isn't a caught you! smile; it isn't that coy or playful. If anything, it's simply knowing.

Knowing how uncomfortable he is. Knowing how shy it makes him feel. How exposed, when though she's the one that's naked. And even though she's the one that's naked, she feels far less vulnerable in that moment than he.

"Okay, so not a Puritan," she concedes. "Just a prude, then." She doesn't argue about hedonistic Meditteraneans. But she glances sidelong at him when he mentions the Olympics and statuary, lifting her eyebrows. There's a pause, tense for her, before she says, rather blandly: "I'm Italian." Like he should know that. Her name is Celia. Geez, Erich. Nevermind that she doesn't pronounce it as the Italian form is pronounced. Americans wouldn't follow suit, anyway.

They rearrange. She settles into the seat and stretches her legs out in front of her when the bag is out of the way. She gives a nod to him. "Yup."

[manipulation + subterfuge: inspires trust]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID

Erich Reinhardt

[There was a roll here!

roller @ 7:39PM
Roll: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 7) ( success x 2 ) VALID]

Celia de Luca

[SHE IS NOT ITALIAN.]

Erich Reinhardt

"The Romans had statues too," Erich replies just as blandly, "though I'll give you a point for the Olympics. Besides," he puts the car in gear and his hand thumps onto the back of her seat again, "you're not Italian."

Celia de Luca

To that, Celia says nothing. Not at first. His arm is open, his hand planted behind her head on the back of her seat. She looks out the window. Then, quietly and evenly: "And the girl in the Seven Year Itch never had a name. No one seemed to mind." There's a beat. "Or notice."

Erich Reinhardt

Not for the first time tonight, Erich stops what he's doing. The car idles where it is, blocking the narrow corridor between the rows of parked vehicles, but for the now there's no one behind them.

"I think that's because she wasn't a character. She was one of those women who are just plot devices. The impetus for the hero to complete his character arc. Like Estella in Great Expectations. Or the pregnant girl in Children of Men, even." He stops for a second -- wants to explain, lamely, that he watches a lot of movies. He has Netflix, after all. And he doesn't have a lot of friends.

He doesn't, though. The thoughts are only peripheral in the end. His attention is on her, quiet but probing. "Is that why you tell people you're Italian? Because you're playing the part, trying to make yourself the canvas for a fantasy they're so eager to believe that they can't see what's beneath?"

They, he says. Even though she lied to him just the same. Maybe he's being polite and not mentioning that. Maybe he wants to believe, too. A few more seconds steal by.

"I noticed," he says. "You're not Italian. And I don't really think you're a hedonistic Greco-Roman any more than I'm a bloodthirsty Viking."

Celia de Luca

Celia is still looking out the window, even when the car stops. She pauses then, her head half-turning, then turning fully to look at him again. There's that guardedness in her eyes again, giving the crystalline blue a soft halo of green around her pupils. Great Expectations, Children of Men. Seven-Year Itch. Moulin Rouge. Alien, Aliens, Aliens 3, and Alien Resurrection. She's losing count of how many movies he references per conversation. Some she's seen. Some she hasn't. She has opinions on almost all of them, though.

Is that why -- and she exhales, which could be as good as an interruption, but she doesn't look away and she doesn't bite down on words because none are coming. He goes on, and a muscle moves in her cheek, and he can see as clear as anything that he's irritated her again, but she doesn't snap at him. He says he noticed. And Celia looks away again.

Maybe he waits. If he does, it takes a few seconds. Several. She isn't angry. It hasn't reached that level of intensity. But moments later she speaks, whether he's begun driving or is still sitting there, and says: "A wise question is one in which you stand boldly within your own ignorance." It sounds, like a couple of other things she's said to him, like a recitation. A lesson learned, a maxim repeated to her often enough that it stuck.

Erich Reinhardt

He's still sitting there. Sort of. He's getting ready to drive again, shifting from reverse to first, lips tightening because goddammit he did it again, he put his foot in it somehow. He's never met a girl -- or a boy, or an anything -- that flicked so quickly from one emotion to another. Or maybe he's just never met anyone he's consistently said the wrong thing to.

It's different this time, though. This time, she doesn't get angry. She's annoyed, but she takes a few moments, and then

she throws him a lifeline.

He looks at her, quickly, gratefully. His lips twitch; he almost smiles. He thinks a moment himself. Then: "Why did you want me to think you're Italian?"

Celia de Luca

She could have said more. Really given him a lecture like the ones she used to get, and frequently. There's tension between them again when just moments ago they were fine. They were smiling at each other, teasing each other. He was also looking at her naked, his cheeks hot and her lips curved. They're on a constant pendulum. Maybe it's her -- what was the word he thought? -- tempestuousness. Maybe it's him sticking his foot in his mouth. Maybe it's just the combination of the two of them together, a compound that shifts from bitter to sweet and back again by its very nature.

Celia's mouth twitches, too, because she didn't need to lecture him or translate what she said for him any further. "I don't care if you think I'm Italian," she answers. "As long as you don't talk about how I'm not."

Erich Reinhardt

She doesn't need to lecture him. There is that to be said about Erich, and perhaps about all Garou raised by the Fenrir or the Lords: they learn fast. They have to. They learn that not learning fast leads to pain, to punishment.

She doesn't care whether he thinks she's Italian or not, she says, as long as he doesn't talk about how she isn't. He quirks an eyebrow, and here finally is when he puts the car into gear. They start rolling out of the Starbucks lot.

"Can I ask why?"

Celia de Luca

"Because even if I knew I could trust you to keep your mouth shut," Celia says, "there are ways for information to be extracted without your will. Or even your knowledge." She gives a small shrug, looking down at her hands. Her manicured, soft hands. She needs lotion; winter makes the air dry, makes her skin look rough when it isn't. She frowns a little. Thinks of the hands of weavers and warriors, shepherds. Dirt under the fingernails. Cracks in the knuckles. Callouses. She aches a little.

Lifting her eyes again, she looks over at him. "It doesn't really matter," she says, her tone lighter than before. "I only said I was Italian because I didn't like you assuming I was Greek. I could be Sicilian or French via Corsica. Or Majorcan. You don't know." She looks at her hands again, oddly defensive and obviously uncomfortable with it even as she keeps chasing the words down, letting them out, going in circles with herself. "Not all Black Furies are Greek-descended any more than all Get of Fenris are from Norse stock. People aren't what they're born to anyway. You know that."

There's a beat. "Just don't assume anything about me," she adds quietly. Looks at him, says it quietly but seriously, as though lives depend on this. "Anything."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich smiles, his eyes on the road. "So basically... if you told me, you'd have to kill me. Got it."

It's not a long drive back. It'll pass quickly. It's already passing quickly -- this late, the lights are green more often than not, and even when they're red they don't stay that way. Downtown Washington D.C. is like any other major city's center. It empties out at night. The streets look oddly deserted; as abandoned as age-old coliseums.

"And for the record, I always assumed you were Italian." He smirks at her, sidelong. " 'Vaffanculo'."

Celia de Luca

"Well I wouldn't kill you," Celia says, and of course she wouldn't, and of course she couldn't, but it does mean someone else might. But even in that case, it ends up being a joke. "It isn't really like that," she tells him, as they drive -- not far. "It's just that there's a lot of ways this could get more dangerous for me. And you said you don't like that. So... yeah. That's all."

She breathes in, looks out the window, then leans over and puts her head on his upper arm. Just for a moment, and though she isn't cuddling against him and nuzzling his bicep, her temple does rest there for a while. It's strangely -- no, bizarrely -- comfortable and companionable given how little they know each other and how fraught with peril their conversations are. But she does it naturally all the same, breathing without a hitch or a pause at the contact.

She starts to talk to him then. In Italian. Not one curse word that anyone who has watched The Godfather would recognize, but something conversational and protracted, not a recitation but a thoughtful comment or two on... Christ only knows. He doesn't speak Italian. Or at least, she'd be surprised if he did.

They are approaching the corner where he should drop her off. She turns her head on his arm and looks up at him from a strange angle.

"Can we do something like this again?" she asks.

Erich Reinhardt

Naturally, Erich is surprised when Celia leans her head against his arm for a moment. He doesn't startle, though. He looks at her, down and over, and then after a second his arm shifts against her brow. He raises a hand and -- a little bit awkwardly -- tries to give her a side-hug. Mostly, he just manages to kind of pat her on the head.

His palm drops back to the gearshift. She asks if they can do something like this again. His grin is quirky. "Only if you admit it was a couch," he says. And a moment later: "What did that mean? What you said in Italian."

Celia de Luca

She laughs -- well, snorts -- when he pats her head. It's awkward but she doesn't mind it and doesn't flinch away. She can feel the pressure in his fingertips, the attempt at a hug that isn't really a pat, isn't really the sort of gesture you'd give a child.

"I made enough concessions about that configuration," she retorts, adamant. She means it about as much as he does. He asks her what she meant. She peers at him in the dark, her eyes so very round and wide and bright even in the darkness of the car. No wonder she looks so young. That delicate look of innocence never seems to leave her face, even at her most frustrated or most cynical.

"I was saying how I hope we're not just trying to be friends because we're both so desperate or lonely. And then I said that even if that's so, I don't really mind."

Erich Reinhardt

"I don't think we're desperate just yet," Erich replies, which of course implies they are, in fact, lonely. "But I don't really mind either."

They're at the corner. He pulls to the curb, and this time there are few cars rushing past. No one honks them. He puts the emergency blinkers on, shifting a little in his seat to face Celia.

"Goodnight," he says. "Give me a call sometime. If you want to do something."

Celia de Luca

I don't have many friends.
I don't have any.

Neither of them mind, really, if they're trying a bit too hard. Maybe not desperate, he says, but all the same, beggars can't be choosers. Celia breathes in, and nods, and then her head pulls away from his upper arm, her body shifting on the seat as she reaches for the door handle. There is almost no one on the street to watch her even if there is a stiff enough gust of wind to blow up her coat. She has her hand on the door when Erich tells her goodnight, tells her to call, and she looks back at him, giving a little nod.

"Maybe we can go camping," she says, and pulls the handle, opens the door, and swings her legs out of the car. She doesn't forget her purse. She says to him, standing outside the car: "Goodnight, Erich."