Decker Rohl

[homecoming; rock; breakfast; bruises. future scene]

Decker Rohl

Sun 04:51PM EST
Weeks pass. Did it really matter how many? Life goes on the the Whispering Pines condo complex...one utterly devoid of pines, one might note, except for a few sad specimens planted in neat rows at the edges of the tastefully designed, curving and non-linear parking lot. Sun comes up and people go to work. Rune goes to sleep. Sun goes down and people come home. Rune stumbles out of bed, sometimes ejecting a sleepover buddy or two, and stumbles back into bed. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve midnight rolls around, the music starts next door, and doesn't stop until well past dawn.

Weeks pass, and then one night out of the blue, a cab pulls up under condo suite 26A. The back door opens and, without too much pomp or ceremony, the Modi ducks out. Slamming his palm on the trunk door until it opens, he lifts a dirty Jansport backpack that might've once been dark green out of the back, pulls a poor-boy cap out of his pocket and then the wallet buried underneath, and circles around to pay the driver. No tip.

Taillights flash and turn at the corner. Darkness settles, and silence broken by the muffled bass rumble of his roommate's stereo. In his sleeveless jersey and his soft grey cap, backpack slung over one shoulder, he was somewhere between 1800s immigrant, street thug and high school dropout-to-be as he mounts the stairs two at a time and knocks on the door. There's a new tattoo on his right arm, from shoulder to elbow, a series of jagged, stylized, intersecting lines.

Ten minutes later he was still pounding on the door. He'd let the backpack slide to the floor by then. Everyone inside was either too drunk, too stoned, too passed out or too deafened by the music to hear. Giving it one last go (no cigar...), he circles away from it, hands on his hips, and then running back over the fresh-shaven stubble of hair on his scalp. Could probably go Umbral and slip into her bathroom, but who knows who her friends were, and if they were really drunk enough not to question where he came from. Could do that, but probably wasn't too smart.

So he picks up his backpack, fumbles through it, finds a scrap of paper and scrawls a note to stick in her door. Am next door. Turn your fuckin music down next time. Decker. That done, he vaults over the balustrade to the neighbor's balcony and holds the doorbell down over there.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:01PM EST
It's four fucking am in the fucking morning. The sound of her door bell she is half rolled out of the bed, hand reaching for the phone in an automatic response. Most of the time she is woken in the wee hours in the morning, it is to answer the phone. To go to a crime scene. Blue eyes crack open as the door bell continues an eyebrow lifting as she forces herself out of bed, having entered it only two hours ago (her neighbour's music isn't a deterrant to sleep, but her own work is. She was poring over files well past midnight, and then was reading a book to wash it all away afterward.

Hands grab jeans from where they were discarded over the back of the chair. Sliding long legs into them, and pulling a shirt over her bra as she pads down the stairs, bare feet making dull sounds against the wood. One hand drags through her hair as she opens the door, foot behind it, until she recognizes who it is, an eyebrow arching, "Mornin'," she says in a voice devoid of sleep, a practiced tone of someone used to be woken at all hours of the night. Even her hair shows little signs of being drawn directly from bed. Drawn straight back into a harsh bun, only a slight rumpling indicating she was drawn from her bed.

Decker Rohl

Sun 05:08PM EST
By the time she got to the door, he'd just about giving up on it. The doorbell had (FINALLY.) stopped ringing about twenty seconds ago, and he was two or three steps down the stairs, backpack held by one strap in his hand, when he hears the door behind him.

Turning, he looks up at her for a moment, and then comes back up the stairs, one hand idly reaching around back to itch at one of those impossible-to-reach spots at the center of his back. A distant car catches his attention, and then it's back on her, grey and somehow unendingly confident.

"Feelin' hospitable?" He lifts his backpack as some sort of token of his travels.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:14PM EST
"jesus wept," she mutters a crescent of a smile, more amused than exasperated. A soft clearing in her throat as she glances at him for a long moment, her own eyes blue as the purest of lakes, drifting up to follow the path of the care before looking back at him for a moment, bare feet scraping softly against the wooden entryway, as she steps back, drawing the door open the rest of the way to permit him entrance into her home, "C'mon in, then."

Decker Rohl

Sun 05:20PM EST
He doesn't even bother to explain why he couldn't get into his own place. If she couldn't figure that out for herself, what with the latest 146bpm noise coming from next door, that was her problem. Brushing past her, he doesn't scuff his feet on the welcome mat, but does take his shoes off a few steps into her condo. Considering the twigs and mud clinging to them, it was a good thing.

Not quite so ill-at-ease this second time in her place, he goes to the couch and sits down, unzipping his bag. "Wake you up?" he asks (gee - ya think?). "What time is it? Cab had a broken clock."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:26PM EST
"It is...." Pausing for a moment to glance at the clock, "Quarter past four, now." A glance toward his roomies home indicates she knows quite well what it is that caused him to come to her mat instead of his own (borrowed as it is), and she walks quietly across the living room, to level herself into one of the overstuffed chair, curling her legs beneath her as she watches Decker unzip his bag. "S'alright. Had ta wake up to answer tha door anyway." she replies, with a vague shrug as a hand passes across her hair, "How was yer business trip?"

Decker Rohl

Sun 05:30PM EST
He pauses long enough to shoot her a smirk. "Sorry," he mutters, and then straighten up to toss her something small and round and heavy. Shrugging, "Did all I meant to. Got you a souvenir."

It's a....rock.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:35PM EST
She smirks back, "Sleeps overrated anyway," she replies dismissively before she reaches out to catch the rock mid-air fumbling with it for a moment before finally getting it trapped between her long fingers, as her hand reaches up to turn on the light beside the chair, bathing the living room in light, pushing away the darkness.

"S'a... rock...." she says after a moment, arching an eyebrow at him.

Decker Rohl

Sun 05:47PM EST
"Yeah," he agrees, and leaves it at that for a minute or five while he continues sorting through the junk in his bag. Eventually, zipping the bag back up, he tosses it into the corner with an easy overhand arc of his arm.

"From the Legendary Realm," he adds. "This place where legends replay again and again. 'S the rock Fion MacCumhail brought the Balor King down with. His image, anyway. Was one of yer tribe's big heroes."

He gives a shrug, then, loose and half-arrogant if not for the tension of awkward running an undercurrent beneath. "Found it on the ground crossin' the field to my own people. Do what you want with it."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:50PM EST
She peers at the rock again, mind trying to cast back to stories she had not been told, but had to overhear. After a moment, she nods, perhaps recollecting the story or perhaps at least deciding to believe what he said, "Thank you," she acknowledges after a moment, placing the rock on the side table of the chair.

It's another silence as one of her hands reaches up pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment before glancing back at him again, "What was it like?"

Decker Rohl

Sun 05:55PM EST
Just a grunt for her thanks, as he gets up and heads into the kitchen. Finding a cup upended on the counter, he assumes it's clean and fills it from the tap. Gulps it down. Didn't eat or drink much in the Umbra - somehow, he never really seemed to need it - but once he got out, it caught up to him fast. At once starving and parched, it's an effort not to go rooting around her fridge.

"What?" - the entirety of his reply, as he comes back, glass in hand.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 05:59PM EST
"Whatever that place is called. Where this legendary realm is." She replies, waving her hand slightly as she turns to look at him as he approaches once more. "Are y'hungry?" she inquires, either out of good luck (for him) anyway, manners (at four in the morning), or because she can hear his stomach growling from here (bingo).

Decker Rohl

Sun 06:08PM EST
"Uh," he says, grappling for phrases that aren't there. Though he returns to the living room, he doesn't sit, instead going to the window where he didn't feel her eyes on him so keenly, waiting for him to describe it. One hand on the windowsill, weight half-leaned, half-flexed on it, he looks out at the night and coaxes the words out. "It's...endless. Everything's there. Everythin' man or beast ever dreamt up as a paragon or somethin' to look up to. Like God was made in the image of Man, this is made in the image of man's heroic deeds and fantasies."

It gets easier as he goes along. Halting at first, he gradually falls into a sort of rough rhythm, never one to rival the Skalds. "Most of 'em I ain't ever even heard of, but as long as someone somewhere still remembers, they're still there, doin' their deeds again and again. You can find whoever you're lookin' for if you think of 'em hard enough, and you join 'em too if you want. Some cubs get sent there for their Rite of Passage. Lot more before, my elders tell me, but these days there's too much shit to take care of in the real world, and hardly no one wastes time sendin' cubs off to prove themselves doin' a deed that's already been done.

"Why you askin'?"

Turning, then, he makes some sort of noise, half a grunt, half a chuckle. "Yeah. 'S all right, I'll get somethin' when Mickey D's opens in a couple hours."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 06:16PM EST
She listens to him tell his story in his untrained way (the words of a fenrir full moon has nothing on the words of her cousins), one arm drapping around her curled legs, resting her head lightly against the curve of the head rest. "I guess it's not worth repeating ol' steps when tha whole world is screaming fer ye to fight tha new ones." She notes for a moment before actually answering his question, "'Cause I 'ave ne'er seen it before," she replies simply, "I wanted ta know."

A faint chuckle, "Suit yerself," she replies as he says he'll go to Mickey D's.

Decker Rohl

Sun 06:21PM EST
"Oh." Back against the cool windowpane now, the glass in his hand splits artificial light from without. For a moment he holds a distorted spectrum in the palm of his hand, and then a shift of his shoulder shades the glass. Shadow.

"Ever wanted to be full-blooded?" So sudden, so jolting a question. What's the proper answer to this?

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 06:29PM EST
She tightens her pose as he asks the question, staring at him for a long moment, as if the question has trapped her somehow. In a way it has.

It's a moment before she answers, sitting in her pool of light from the lamp, casting alternate cracks of brightness and unending shadow over the edges of her frame. "Probably, once or twice," she answers directly, "So long as I'm not a sheep, and living my whole life in the dark."

Decker Rohl

Sun 06:34PM EST
He watches (stares at) her for one, two, three endless seconds, and then slips into a smirk. "Full-blood's overrated." Finishing the last of the water, he sets the glass down on the windowsill and folds his arms over his chest. "Gonna go back to bed? When you got work?"

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 06:39PM EST
She stares back at him, blue eyes creasing into triangles as he smirks and speaks, her lips twitching just slightly along the edges, "It's not a perfect world," she replies easily as she shrugs.

Would you rather it the easy way?
No, okay then, don't cry.

Her eyes flickering to the clock, she speaks again, answering "I work in about three hours 'r so. I'll likely just stay up; be worse off if I went back ta sleep now."

Decker Rohl

Sun 06:46PM EST
"Yeah okay," two words almost run together into one new, postmodern creation, more acknowledgment than agreement. Lowering his head for a minute, he scrubs his face with his hands as though to wash tiredness clean off, and straightens. "Let's get breakfast. Can drop me off before work. I'll take a bus back."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 06:52PM EST
She rubs at her eyes for a moment in a similar reaction, nodding slightly, "Right, then." She can shower at work, and get changed there too. She always keeps an extra set of clothing in her locker in case of emergancy; though the emergancy wasn't really meant for the Decker variety. Walking over to the front hallway, grabbing a set of keys, sliding her feet into a pair of running shoes, turning to glance to see if he's following, a hand flickering to a light switch, the lamp by her chair extinguishing.

Decker Rohl

Sun 07:02PM EST
Hopping after her on one foot while he shoves the other into its shoe, he pulls the door shut behind him. Down the stairs, under the well-trimmed, polite shade trees, on the winding paths through the professionally manicured garden, out to the asphalt and the parking spaces. Overhead, the stars were beginning to fade, the east showing the faintest hints of deep blue. At around five in the morning, the air is clean and crisp, edged with cold in early September.

Following her out to her car, he doesn't say much, pausing only once to dig in his pockets for something or other, finding a stick of gum, and popping it in before buttoning down that particular pocket.

When he gets into her car, the first thing he does is roll down the window and put his elbow out. Doesn't buckle up. Probably wouldn't be a car crash that kills him, and anyway, she looked like the careful type. Maybe she'll prove him wrong.

"So," he says as she pulls out, one of his typical one-word riddles, "why?"

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 07:07PM EST
She pulls a brown suede jacket on, her offending tattoo disappearing beneath the carress of cowhide and lined fabric. Her eyes drift toward the east where her irises echo that exact same shade of iris. She drops herself into the car, pulling the seatbelt across her torso, clicking the lock shut as she ignites the engine carefully backing out of the driveway. She's not uncareful, though she drives fast, her foot pushing teh accelerator as the needle dips passed fifty, before she replies to his question, a typical riddle that she hasn't quite grasped. He has a habit of assuming that she can somehow read his mind.

It is, after all, a useful gift for any kin to have. "Why what?" glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes, a flash of blue.

Decker Rohl

Sun 07:13PM EST
He's stretching when she replies with her own question, hands interlocked, arms pulling back, then flexing forward. Clarify, Decker Rohl, I don't know what the fuck you mean.

"Why do you do this?" A curl of amusement, bemusement, something in his backwater Southerner's light drawl. "Talk to me, lemme wake you up and drag you out to breakfast. That shit."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 07:18PM EST
She makes a soft sound in the back of her throat, somewhere caught between a snort and a chuckle as she drives down the road, opening her window a crack to allow some of the crispness of the promise of fall to seep into the car. "You're a fair change from the dulldrom of company I receive normally. You know what I know. You know more than I know." A slight shrug as she changes lanes, a cursary glance over her shoulder. "It's a change."

She's silent for a moment or two, glancing sideways at him for a moment, "Why?"

Decker Rohl

Sun 07:26PM EST
The tail end of his stretch settles into an easy sprawl, one elbow out the window. A sideways glance at her. "'Bout Garou?"

Then, moving his shoulders in some sort of vestigial shrug, "Just wonderin'. Big-city M.D. and all," smirking, "hangin' with the village idiot. They'll say we're in love."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 07:31PM EST
"Yeah, I guess, 'bout Garou. But there's other shite too. It's more than that." She shrugs her shoulders slightly dismissing it as an odd fancy.

Her lips curve into a smirk of her own shaking her head as she turns a corner, "You're no idiot." She says after a moment before glancing at him again, "MickeyD's, right?" giving him a moment to answer before speaking again, "Ye misunderstood my question. Why do you come around, talk to me, wake me up in the middle o' tha night and drag me out ta breakfast? That shit."

Decker Rohl

Sun 07:35PM EST
"Yeah? What else?" - one of those blunt questions, stubborn as a hound, that just won't be evaded.

Then, a nod. "Yeah, whatever." MickeyD's is good for him. Deepfried junk food. Nothing better to remind him that he was back on planet earth. A pause, until she thinks he either didn't hear the question, or was deliberately avoiding it.

Finally, "Don't know."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 07:40PM EST
She shrugs again, "It's hard to say without soundin' like a wanker." She smirks self depricatingly, before continuing, "There's Garou, an' there's ... more. Whatever it is ye fight, an' do, an' that there's something else beyond what's on the surface. T'is really there an' ye look fer it. Openin' yer eyes does wonders fer curing blindness."

A silence echoes his own as he says he doesn't know, "Huh." a sound of acknowledgement.

Decker Rohl

Sun 07:46PM EST
And the silence drags on, perhaps because he didn't know quite what to say to that. Didn't quite know what she meant. The thought rises, unbidden: you'd make a better Garou than me.

Miles later, "For that, I guess." Might take her a minute to figure out he'd looped back to the previous subject. "Yer take on it all. Kin that don't wanna mate, don't wanna babysit with the other kin. Like an outsider's look, but not."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 07:53PM EST
Perhaps she would. Because she obviously doesn't make a good kinfolk. It does take her a minute, her brow puckering in thought before he continues to speak, helping her draw the conclusion on What the Crazy Fenrir Meant Now.

It's her turn for silence as she turns into the parking lot of McDonalds, empty and tinted strange unnatural colours in the slowly rising sun, the beginnings of dawn. "There has to be something more," she mutters as she pulls to a stop, unclicking her seat belt, before pausing, stopping to glance at her rage filled companion, "Didn't ask. Would ye rather just get the food and eat somewhere... " after a moment's pause, "where there's not tha possibility o' so many people?"

Decker Rohl

Sun 08:05PM EST
"Well," cutting her off, snapping suddenly, "maybe there ain't. Maybe this is all there is. A ragtag army of would-be heroes waitin' to die, and a fuckin' colossus waitin' on the other side of the Apocalypse Plain. Maybe that's all there is, is that so fuckin' hard to believe?"

There's a long, charged, crackling silence, unseen but felt, a sunrise of rage on the horizon. Then, drawing a breath, he looks out the window, releases it. "Listen," he says, low, and without looking at her, "I think maybe it's a nice fantasy to have. Great War 'n shit. Heroes, like the stories. Who knows, maybe some out there, they're like that. But not me. I do what I gotta because I gotta. 'Cause it's me or nobody. I ain't asked for this, and far as I can tell, those who think it's generally a good thing are the first to die screamin'.

"You look under my surface, though, and you ain't gonna find a hero. All yer gonna find is me starin' back at you, claws 'n teeth, a murderer who got put on the side that someone randomly decided was 'good'."

His door clicks open. Conversation over on his side. "C'mon," he says, though he wouldn't be surprised if she put the car in reverse and squealed out of there. "Food."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 08:21PM EST
She stares at him through the outburst, quiet and perhaps a little frightened of his tirade. After all, he is of a breed where if you get too angry, get too out of control, whatever is nearby ceases to be, beneath claws and teeth, in a spray of blood and spent passion.

She doesn't put the car in reverse and doesn't squeal away, reaching out and grabbing the hand brake and jerking it up as she slides out of the car, slamming the door behind her, resting her arms against the framework, "It's better ta do it 'cause ye must than do it because ye want to. But at least ye can fight, instead of sittin' back and watchin' a lost battle." Keys jangle as she shoves them into her pocket, walking after him, in no hurry to catch up.

Decker Rohl

Sun 08:30PM EST
At the swinging door already, he turns with one hand holding it open. Tired-looking mother and two children there on the inside, waiting to come out, and they just stand there.

It's called the Curse.
What?
The Curse. Rest of your life, boy, no one's ever gonna look at you again without thinking, way back deep in their mind, about how you might suddenly turn on 'em and rip their throats out.
Oh.

It's called the Curse, and it never stops hurting. Wheeling on her, he fires back, unstoppable, "Fuck, you can fight too. Just lay back 'n spread yer legs, that's all they want outta you."

He's already starting to regret it. The mother clamps one hand over one of each of her wide-eyed children's ears and gathers up the nerve to march past, lips tight with anger. His eyes follow them for a second, and then he turns and walks into, the door swinging shut behind him.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 08:37PM EST
She snorts faintly, "an' be a soundin' board, and be a walkin' womb, an' listen to the rages and the fury. An' be there when they get home, an' be normal, an' be submissive, but not too much because they can never respect that, and if they can't respect you, you're dogmeat, the first time you mouth off, ain't nobody gonna care if yer teeth get punched out." The words are a near soundless hiss as she walks past him, glancing over her shoulder.

It's called the Curse.
What?
The Curse. It's why they can't live in society and live like humans do. It's why we, as kinfolk, must go and do what they need for them. Because this is the one thing they can't do. Look like the rest of the flock. Way back, deep in the human's minds... they remember...

"What d'ye want?" she asks because it's very likely the man at the counter would never serve Decker, and if he did, he would be so nervous he would get it wrong.

Decker Rohl

Sun 08:44PM EST
Maybe it's the hissing whisper, maybe it's the glance over her shoulder. Either way, as the door shuts, but before he's out of the little half-enclosed foyer area that every McDonald's seemed to have, he reaches out and grabs her by the arm, hard enough to leave a bruise on that fair Cornish skin.

(--aw shit he was gonna kill her--)

And that's there too in his eyes, which are grey like a wintry day; murder, bloodshed, a trail of blood longer than he could walk in a year. That's there too, but what he says after an interminable delay is, "I shouldn'a said that."

Letting her go, he glances over her head at the menu and pulls out some cash to give her. "Sausage Egg McMuffin with cheese. I'll wait in the car."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 08:51PM EST
She is whipped around and forced to face him as he grabs her arm, eyes automatically downcast and looking away because she cannot look into that amount of hate,

It's called the Curse
no more than any of her kind can (and she has more gall than most), her body is tense and vibrating part fear, part fury (fight or flight) that relaxes only marginally as he speaks, because the fact that he would have killed her, if he had not won the control, vibrates through their air like the last note of a song. And there truly was no one to care if he knocked her teeth out, or smashed her head in. Not him, not the man who half cowers by the counter. She reaches into her pocket shoving her keys at him to open the door, simaltaneously pushing the money away, "Put th' money away, Decker. I'll pay this round," she mutters, waiting for him to release her aching and bruised arm, fabric crushed against her flesh.

Decker Rohl

Sun 08:58PM EST
"I don't need yer fuckin' char--" he begins before shutting up fast and pushing back out through the door.

Outside, he naturally finds the car locked, and so waits sitting on the hood, feet up on the bumper. Wondering where all that came from, wondering why four weeks off in another fucking dimension learning 'wisdom' didn't seem to do one bit of good, wondering how much of him could be separated from what he is, what hangs over him, and what runs in his veins. One thing after another. Couldn't even stop the violence if he tried.

When she reappears with the food, he slides off the hood and takes his portion from her, waiting by the passenger's side door for her to unlock it. The car rocks as he gets in, and the paper crisps and crinkles in his hands as he unwraps his McMuffin.

"I'm sorry," he mutters.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 09:07PM EST
As the door shuts behind her with a swing and a rattle of plastic glass, she inhales slowly, before walking over to the counter, feigning perfect nonchalance, ignoring the stares as she orders a sausage egg mcmuffin with cheese and a bacon egg mcmuffin. To Go. Pressing the heel of her hand against her forehead for a moment as she waits for the food, pausing for a moment to glance at the red hued depressions he's left against her fine milky flesh, already beginning to tinge blue.

She pays the gentleman and turns and walks away holding the bag in one hand pulling her keys again to open the door, placing the bag between her and the passanger seat as she unlocks the side door, permitting him entrance. A moment of silence as he opens his McMuffin. "I'm--" she had begun as he spoke, shutting up as he speaks as well, her lips moving in the echo of a grim smile as he says what she'd been about to say too. A fraction of her mind considers it odd that he said it first. That he said it at all.

"Me too," she says simply as she begins to unwrap her own McMuffin, the grease already beginning to stain the wrappings.

Decker Rohl

Sun 09:24PM EST
It's said, but clearly not off his mind.

"Everybody's sorry," he says under his breath, and wolfs down the McMuffin in half a minute flat. Barely took the edge off of his hunger, which was waking more by the minute, but he wasn't about to let her buy him another meal. Clearing his throat restlessly, he wipes his hands off on his pants until he remembers the napkins in the bag. Uses them.

While he's pushing the wrapping paper and stained napkins back down into the bag, he slides a glance at her. "You all right?"

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 09:44PM EST
The sun has been rising as they argued, drove and bought food, the weak warmth of it cutting the crispness from the air. After a few moments, she removes her jacket, reluctantly, because by removing it, the marks against her arm are made visible. She broods silently, berating herself for idiocy. You don't push a Garou. You sure as hell don't push a Fenrir. You don't piss them off, you don't take back, and you sure as hell don't do it in a crowded area where someone other than herself might be injured by her stupidity.

A kinfolk's life is full of don'ts.

and win or lose
just that you choose this little war
is what kills you
and either/or it's that this war
is maybe also what thrills you

She has eaten half of her McMuffin by the time he has finished his own, and there is little more than silence, beyond his clearing of his throat. The kind that must be cut by a knife. As his voice strikes through the air, she glances sideways at him, flickering flashes of blue as she glances away and back to half eaten McMuffin. She doesn't tend to eat too much in the morning, and while when he'd first mentioned it, the thought of greasy food had appealed, now faced with it, it's making her feel mildly sick. Considering his reaction to her paying for the food (as far as she knew, he had no regular source of income, and it's not as if paying for breakfast and McDonald's would have beggered her), a thought of offering the rest to him is quickly squelched.

She takes her time answering the question, not quite sure what kind of answer he wants, nor yet which kind of answer she wanted to give. Several tendrils of firey hair has fallen across her face, little corkscrews of titian. Her hand reaches up to brush the strands away as she savages her lower lip for a moment, unconcious of the movement. The moment she is, her teeth leave her flesh setting her mouth in a firm line. "Aside from a bit o' mental floggin', I'm just fine, thank ye," she replies honestly, after a moment, once again deciding to take the direct approach. One because it comes more naturally to her; it's not in her to lie. Two, because she suspects if caught, it would not be appreciated.

Decker Rohl

Sun 10:22PM EST
Crumpling the bag into a ball, he cranes around to make sure there was no one around to see, and then tosses it out the window where it bounces on asphalt, skitters across the lot on a stray wind, and lodges under a chain-link fence for some poor gull to choke on. So much for a greener earth.

Another glance at her, and he doesn't look away quite so quickly, or so awkwardly, this time. He touches the imprint of his fingers on her arm - no way anyone at work was going to mistake those for bruises from bumping into a door, and she'd probably have to wear her sweater all day to avoid commentary. A frown crosses his eyes, and he draws back again.

"Thanks." Thanks? "Fer bein' honest."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 10:31PM EST
When she gets to work, she'll wear her labcoat, she decides, and that failing, a suit jacket will hide the marks. Making sure she's showering alone won't be that hard of a prospect, she's one of the few female forensics pathologists in the state let alone for this county. She doesn't move away as he touches her skin, no more than she did when he run a thumb across her tattoo, weeks ago.

A widening of summer blue eyes indicates her surprse and shock as he thanks her, before creasing slightly as she smirks faintly, "Yer welcome. I think."

Decker Rohl

Sun 10:39PM EST
A shrug: anytime. Didn't get much honesty from kin. Or anyone, for that matter. Usually they sat around trying to figure out what he wanted to hear, then said it without ever meaning it. Got old.

His composure was starting to settle a bit again. The problem wasn't gone, and it still wasn't quite okay, but it seemed better now. He leans back in his seat, eyes half-lidded against the increasing glare of the morning sun. Exhaustion was finally starting to catch up, a pleasant sort of ache in his bones. It's a less tense silence he exudes, and coils in.

A little later, "When do you get off work?"

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 10:46PM EST
She could never do that. Say what they wanted. Bend over and take it, as she put it in her rather poignant brutal way. Honesty came naturally, and it was only when she thought she might be in danger that she stopped to consider what they might want to hear. And even then, sometimes her mouth spoke first and the mind reacted later. That's where the mental flogging came in.

She exhales slowly, eyes drawn to the watch on her wrist, gaguing the time, and then gauging the day of the week, how many people would be in, how many people would be dead. "Six 'r so," she replies after a moment, "Maybe earlier if it's slow, but not likely," she has the benefit of working in a job that never quits. There is never a lack of dead people in New Jersey.

Decker Rohl

Sun 10:52PM EST
Decker grunts, doing a quick calculation in his head. X hours of work on Y hours of sleep. Sucked to be her. "Should I let you get to work? Rune'll probably be sleepin' by the time I get back. I can get in."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 10:59PM EST
"I've got an hour yet. I ken drive ye back," she replies, re-wrapping her half eaten McMuffin, and placing it on a coffee holder to be thrown out at a later date. She doesn't wait for his answer, beginning to buckle her seatbelt, releasing the parking break and sliding her keys into the ignition.

Decker Rohl

Sun 11:05PM EST
"Don't need yer charity," he mutters, but without the bite, and without really meaning it. Getting driven back was better than hitchhiking, or taking the bus and all its fifty million transfers.

"Makes me feel fourteen years old again, no car, coppin' rides," he comments with a snort of laughter as she pulls out.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 11:10PM EST
She chuckles, "Yeah, well. It gives me somethin' ta do. S'either that or leave ye in the parking lot and show up fer work some forty-five minutes early. Consider it an intervention ta keep me from being a workaholic." Now, admittedly, she's including in her calculations that she'll need to shower and change when she gets to work, meaning that had she left him, she would have been there an hour and a half early, but that's beside the point.

Decker Rohl

Sun 11:18PM EST
He snorts at that. "You wanna be a workaholic, that ain't my business."

Probably was already, judging from how often he, sunning on the balcony or tinkering with his truck, ever saw her doing something other than heading into her apartment from her car (alone), or heading out to her car from her apartment (alone) somewhere between four to eight hours later.

"Doin' anything this weekend?" he asks, abruptly enough.

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 11:25PM EST
She snorts back at him, shrugging her shoulders. It's easy to be a workaholic doing what she's doing. There's always something more you can be doing. There's always an extra day to be on call. "S'my weekend off. I'll probably be home," she replies just as abruptly.

It's only seven, and the streets are only just beginning to become dotted by cars. They make good time back to WhitePines, and she pulls up close to her neighbour's house, foot resting on the break. "Door to door service."

Decker Rohl

Sun 11:31PM EST
He's quiet for a minute, chewing his lip as he automatically opens the door to get out. After he shuts it, though, he leans back in, forearms resting on the rim of the window.

"Can't show you what else there is to it beneath the surface," he says, "but if you wanna go for a hike, I can show you what there is to fight for, at the surface. If you want."

Imogen Slaughter

Sun 11:38PM EST
Her hands rest on the steering wheel, lightly as she glances at him, sideways for a moment before nodding slightly, turning to face him, "Sure," she replies.

The difference between Imogen and most of the other kinfolk running from their folks is that she is not running from Gaia, or from the fact there is a war; she's running from the warriors and a spot that was made for her by tradition. The fact it's a space she'd rather not fill. If she'd been a Garou, she would have been ideal. Reluctant heroes (as he is) are the best type of heroes (those that run into battle are the first to go screamin'). In her position, it is simply a fallacy. She could simply walk away from it, womb and all. "See y'around."

Decker Rohl

Sun 11:53PM EST
"Yeah, okay," he says. "No other Garou," he adds a beat later with a quick quirk of his mouth, "so don't fret none. Later, Imogen."

Straightening, he gives the roof of her car a farewell clap and, turning, trots up the stairs to hammer on Rune's door.