Good to Have [Izzy, Gina, Howard, Hunter]

[Izzy Montoya] "Jesus Christ, O'Leary, it's not... Yes. I know, just... I know it's not protocol! I don't care, just find out, alright? I can't..." She pauses, and pinches the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb, and purposely takes a long breath. She holds it, then lets it go again. Softer now, with feeling. "I just can't. Ok? If you hear anything..." a beat. "Thanks. I owe you."

She hangs up, and slides her phone into the pocket of her jacket, only to begin to search her other pockets in the most ritual of searches - until she comes up with her pack and lighter. She lights a cigarette, takes the first drag, and exhales as she leans back against the hood of her car.

Just another day in the 'Green, right?

[Winston Barks Secrets] Another day in the 'Green. That consisted of violence, gangs and drugs, poverty and depression. There were the occasional pockets of honest hard workers, but really all that this part of town saw them as was victims, fodder for the fires if you will. You'd feel out of place if you didn't find errant needles or bullet shells somewhere within a block's radius. It would sound eerie and too quiet if you couldn't hear sirens at any given time, or someone shouting at another someone in their apartment above your head, or in an alley that you walked past and tried to ignore so you wouldn't get dragged into the mix as well.

In the 'Green, you should expect anything and everything unpleasant. For Izzy Montoya, that included work-related stress, probably Nation-related stress, and the plight of Winston.

She's leaned back against the hood of her car, smoking a cigarette. The unfortunate (occasionally fortunate) thing about that habit was that it dulled your sense of smell. When you had cigarette smoke in your mouth, throat, and sinuses, it killed your ability to smell things around you. This took away the only warning that the detective had to the Bone Gnawer slinking about, spotting and smelling her Breeding from a mile away, and sauntering on over. Motives were questionable, he could be planning to rob her blind, commit suicide by way of officer, or he could just be bored and looking for someone to antagonize.

No matter the reason, he made himself known to Izzy by speaking up, having somehow found his way to leaning against the side of her car, right in her blind spot, and picking dirt from under his ugly fingernails. "I heard that after the first couple months wearing those belts the average officer starts to get rid of some of the weaponry that he's been given. Does that mean they become cockier, better at their jobs, or just so damn jaded that the only things they'd want to do is kill with a bullet or beat with their fists?"

[Gina] *Chicago in winter. A far cry from the sunny stretches of Italy this time of year. Biting wind sweeps across the great lake to scour at tawny cheeks, Strider kin's bright red scarf crumpled under her nose against the chill. Cabrini held memories on every corner. There was where she'd first met Kemp. A half hours walk away sat the pack house where the kin had found refuge with the mad Godi and lusty Ahroun. She'd spent many a night laughing with Drew and Lonna in their ramshackle apartment building south of where she stood. The three of them carefree, or at least playing at it for awhile. The thought teases a hard smirk under her scarf, and hand drags through long dark hair, heavy with resignation. No bangles clink, no music to the action. Only the gusting wind and the silent whisper of ghosts. Hello Again Chicago.

Of course, the first thing she should see would be a cop, and a vagrant. Ah, Windy City. You never fail to - Dark eyes narrow to disbelieving slits as something about greasy brown hair and casual animal menace strikes a familiar chord. Ghosts not so intangible tonight as they should be, a pikey finds herself striding with purpose towards the pair, boots crunching loudly on icy cement.*

Hooligan, who ye botherin the now?

[Izzy Montoya] The smoke can be said to dull one's senses, but that doesn't take into effect that Izzy is damn good at what she does, who she is. Tonight, however, she simply doesn't care. More accurately - she is too tired to care, as our Good Detective has not been sleeping well, at all. It shows in the way she leans, despite the fact that his appearance causes a twist of tension to wind up her spine, through her shoulders. She is alert, she is focused now, again, and she...

doesn't care.

"Two things," she says, as she takes another drag. He may expect her to ask who he is, why he's leaning on her car, or - given her reputation - to simply pull her gun and shoot him. Instead, she exhales and comments dryly. "First - I'm not wearing a belt. Second," she turns her head to study him a moment, before she smirks. "I'm far from average."

Neither of which answer his question at all.

She looks up as someone asks who the hooligan is bothering - the voice familiar, the stance and the way she walks the same. Izzy just arches a brow, slightly, but doesn't call out. She'll be close soon enough.

[Winston Barks Secrets] "Awww, now, look at Miss Adonis here." Winston's smile was more like a sneer, an uncomfortable thing to behold. His teeth didn't set comfortably, he had them spaced a little when he 'smiled' like that, like he was more used to having a mouth full of fangs rather than the blunt bits of bone that humans chew with. He was dirty, dressed in many layers of clothes because the only way to keep warm out here was to insulate-- the topmost layers being a gray sweater with a green flannel shirt left unbuttoned overtop, a pair of jeans that were bulky to suggest he had something on under them, and shoes that were more duct tape than anything else. His hair was an unruly mop of greasy brown curls, his face unshaven and thereby dominated by a poor excuse for a mustache and goatee with patchy scruff along his throat and cheeks.

"Whoever said I was askin' about you specifically?" Eyes gleam nothing but menace. It's nothing new to Izzy, she was sure of herself, and this guy had a whistle to his breath that suggested illness, which meant he would probably go down easy-- she might not even have to use her gun. The manic animal lines to him suggested desperation and carelessness, though, which could count up to danger. Maybe she should use the gun just in case.

Hooligan--

Attention from the dirty man immediately ratcheted toward the voice that sounded like it was sang through a golden flute, and that sunken, dirty, scruff-dusted face lit up like a thousand-watt light bulb. He wiped whatever it was he had collected from under his fingernails (congealed blood and mucus, largely) onto the driver's side window of the car Izzy leaned against, then pushed away from it to stand up straight and wait for Gina to reach them. His chest was puffed out with pleasure, and his hands wiped on the belly of his shirt while he spoke.

"Well I'll be straight fucked-- sugartits, I knew you couldn't keep away."

[Gina] *Short steps bring the pikey to within civil speaking distance. Or what would be civil speaking distance if any of the three of them played at being at all civilized. *

Ah couldnae darlin. Ah followed yer smell.

*A generous jerk of her chin to Izzy in recognition.*

Thes town sure daes like tae toss we folks taegether. Bloodshed fer certain. Hope yer armed Iz, on account o' Winston here es nae dynamo fer fighten'...

*Winston's dressed like he got his clothes from a hobo second hand, his leering features given a quick look over to ensure he was still intact. A few months away have been kind to the strider kin. Hollowed cheeks have filled out, time in the sun has added a luster to dark skin. Hell, were it not for the bitter grin on her face, Gina'd look good as new. Her scarf jerked to hang loosely across a second hand peacoat as she comes to a stop at Winston's hip to inspect him more closely.*

[Izzy Montoya] "Haven't you heard?" She doesn't seem put off by his look, by the menace. She's simply too tired to really care. "It's always about me."

Being civilized is something Izzy has to play at far too often, so she doesn't with friends. Or enemies. Or people in between. Come to think about it - it's rare she plays nice at all, let alone civilized. Izzy lifts a chin in return for Gina, and then even manages a chuckle for Gina's hope she has her gun. "Always."

At least one.

[Winston Barks Secrets] Winston looks over to Izzy and chuffs at her answer, continuing to wipe the palms of his hands along his shirt and the thighs of his ragged old jeans like he was doing his best to scrub tree sap or something similarly stubborn off of them. "I swear to god I read that on a bumper sticker once."

Gina came close enough to inspect him, and she did a thorough job of it while talking to Izzy about how there was bound to be a fight of some sort. Winston looked like he lived on the streets, like he was an Omega and sickly on top of that. His figure only appeared to be acceptable because of all the layers of clothing he was wearing, his cheeks were slim, his eyes a bit sunken. Were it not for regenerative abilities he'd probably have lost his toes and fingers to frostbite by now. He needed grooming badly, but what Bone Gnawer didn't? The more notable thing would likely be how his breath whistled in and wheezed out. Cold aggravated the condition of his lungs. Sometimes he really missed Mexico because of it.

Izzy confirmed that she had a gun, and Gina stated matter-of-factly that Winston was more or less useless in battle. He didn't act offended by this as many a male Garou would, didn't puff up, snarl, or defend his pride. Instead he put an arm out in askance for a hug. Asking first, rather than just seizing as he might have roughly nine or twelve months ago. Things had gone down since then, the Rat Fink was good at hearing and knowing all things on this level. So he asked with the arm and wagged his heavy eyebrows at her with a sharp-toothed grin.

"C'mere and let me smell the spice, huh? Chicago settled Winter because you left, without your face it's been snow and ice."

[Gina] Wha's the word Officer? Jes on Rounds?

*Winston's arm finds an easy perch around narrow shoulders, his words garnering a bump of a him and a smile. Gina settling against his scrawny frame with all the quiet comfort of a favorite blanket. Small woman's head tucking under the gnawer's chin as she closes her eyes and sighs deeply.

Only to grimace upon the inhale, leaning back and eyeing Winston's cruddy fingernails with something akin to alarm. Dear christ the creature needed bathed, and soon.*

Jaysus Winston.

[Izzy Montoya] "Detective," she corrects, absently, as she watches the reunion without any emotional attachment to it at all. On another night the look might be calculating, studying. Tonight it's more of the 'too tired to bother looking elsewhere' type.

She does, however, answer the question, as she flicks the ashes off the end of her cigarette, only to lift it to her lips to create more on inhale. She exhales away from them - though lord knows it couldn't make him smell any worse.

"Just off shift."

[Winston Barks Secrets] "Hmmmhmhmhm," it's a mix between a hum of happy approval and a chuckle when Gina accepts his arm and leans against him, tucking her head under his scruffy chin and shutting her eyes and sighing happily. His hands, awkwardly large compared to how scrawny and hunched his frame was, perched on her shoulders like large animals of their own accord and his arms wrapped her in for a good, solid hug. His nose ducked down, buried into the top of her head, and he breathed in.

Spice and road dust, it was good to have her back.

She took in a breath way too close to the collar of his shirt, though, and drew back to eye him and his disgusting fingernails with mingled alarm, disgust, and scolding. He grinned and held his hands up, palms out, in surrender and apology both. "Hey, they don't let me into the shelters anymore." Stories behind why were unnecessary, it was easy enough to figure out reasons why no normal people, even those used to dealing with the homeless, would want him around.

He looked over to Izzy, eyed her cigarette and the ashes that fell from it, and sucked in a breath like he was going to go on some kind of long-winded tirade that would make a certain ass out of himself, but it caught funny in his lungs and instead of speaking he quickly hiked an arm up to cover his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow and turned away from the ladies, leaning against the car and coughing with loud, harsh, barking sounds that came from the gut, wracked the body and scraped raw the throat.

Metis were such disgusting, sickly creatures.

[Gina] Bollox tha. We'll swing round. Gi'em a talkin tae. Unlessin ye pecked a fight ye selly foo-

*Winston's hands slip away from her, Metis horking and hacking into his own shoulder, buckled in on himself like a cheap knife, causing Gina to take a large step back. Alarmed, but grateful that he didn't simply begin coughing globs of phlegm into her hair.*

Sae..

*Gina begins, fishing for some common ground to start from, the pickpocket settles into rubbing the Metis back as she considers Izzy.*

Detective... How's the Kin coalition theng-ma-whatsit comin along? Monty stell en charge?

[Izzy Montoya] He starts coughing, and leaning against her car, and Izzy confines her reaction into a single expression of disgust, which is soon wiped away into something far more mild. The consummate professional, Izzy.

Gina pats his back and finally broaches a new subject, something where they might have common ground. Unfortunately, the answer is "I haven't a clue. I believe it fell to the wayside and broke apart. They quit calling, anyway." Which could, in truth, mean anything at all. Izzy on the best of days has been described as a 'handful'...

[Hunter] Two familiar faces come waltzing into Izzy's view. One, a mop haired cunt by the name of Howard Ivers, the other is a stocky strange idiot gnawer who flintstones'd his bike into her car a week ago. Hunter wears a brown leather jacket, hands stuffed into the pockets and a cigarette hangs out of the corner of his mouth. Their green eyes glint in the dark.

"Shit, it's that fuckin' cop." Hunter starts trying to walk behind Howard, who is half his width, it doesn't work out very well. "Fuckkkkkk."

[Howard] The last time Howard saw Izzy Montoya, he didn't really see her: he was blazed, and inebriated, and had just jumped off a fifth-story fire escape and splattered his insides over an otherwise perfectly nice sidewalk before he'd had the chance to pick himself up and properly introduce himself. Whatever he and Hunter are up to, it's almost decided that it is going to be absolutely no good: Howard's mid-sentence rambling on about something in that exotic yet muted accent of his when Hunter curses and ducks behind him.

Hunter is three inches shorter than the curly-haired hipster, but he's built like a fucking linebacker. The Theurge slowly turns his head to look back at his compatriot, then plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and takes a drag.

"Haven't been threatened by a Viking since last night," he says, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "Let us play with her..."

[Winston Barks Secrets] Gina's rubbing his back, doing a fine job of being comforting while it doesn't do much to actually help the coughing fit stop. It ceases on its own, runs out of steam after a few dozen seconds or so, and Winston's leaning sideways against the car trying to catch his breath, wheezing and whining like a pitiful old car engine that's in its last two minutes of life before it breaks down on the side of some long stretch of desolate desert highway.

He snorts something back, clears his throat, haulks what was dredged up on the street away from his and Gina's and Izzy's feet, then straightens back up and winces, rubbing his shallow chest tenderly and looking toward the voices that piped up on the sidewalk. One eye is squinted up against the lingering, echoing pain in his chest, against the burning that came with each breath, fresh from the coughing fit though it would fade back to a dull, persistent ache in a minute.

"That's 'That fuckin'---", pause, wheeze, cough once into his shoulder, "--detective' to you, pal." Winston clarifies this to Hunter, then scrubs his hands together in an effort to bring feeling back into the stiff, red-cold digits.

[Gina] *Once upon a time Gina was a cheery social little creature. Hopping from bed to bed with a cheeky grin and a whimsical outlook to carry her forward. Strangers were friends in the making, and trouble was just fun with an edge.

Not so now. A few years in chicago enough to wear her down, temper her into something harder and colder. Kohl rimmed eyes narrow on the newcomers, pikey suddenly as comfortable as a cat in a Chinese restaurant. That lovely voice of hers stopped up silent as she touches Winston's wrist for reassurance she hadn't needed a year ago, attention riveted to the boys approaching.*

[Izzy Montoya] They're antics aren't unnoticed. Izzy pauses with her cigarette halfway to her lips, and narrows her gaze at the troubled twosome sauntering into view. And headed their way. The big one decides to try and hide behind the other, and she snorts, before she lets her cigarette finish it's journey and takes a final drag. She flicks it to the side to sputter to death in the gutter.

When Winston corrects them, though - that? That actually gets a chuckle from the normally stone-faced, perpetually pissed off Detective.

"What he said." She tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat, and crosses her legs at the ankle, comfortable in the assumption the duo won't be running anything into her car. This time.

[Hunter] Hunter lifts his eyes and steps out from behind Howard, gives Winston a look like he's lost his god damn mind.

"You snivlin' little fuckin' rat cretin' shit out of a sewer snakes asshole." He grins, this is how Gnawers say hello. His arm drapes around Howard and he pushes him forward.

"Have you met this cunt? Names Howard."

And his eyes flick to Gina.

"N'I'm Hunter. Yo Detective Montoy." He adds rather sheepishly and waves a hand whilst peering at his shoes. For all that intense rage and physical presence he looks rather like a puppy sometimes.

[Howard] This is the first time Gina has encountered Howard; Gina, who used to know everyone in the city, it seemed, who used to be the first friendly face a lot of wayward travelers encountered their first time in Bronzeville, or the Brotherhood, is not the one who initiates conversation when the two strange young men amble up. There isn't anything particularly special about Howard, nothing that could possibly explain the dichotomous amounts of both amorous and assaultive attention he receives on a regular basis. With black aviator shades on even at night his eyes are obscured. It is the first air of mystery afforded the young man, and looking at the rest of his ensemble only ends in heartache: he wears combat boots, seafoam green twill pants, a vibrant blue-and-purple scarf, and a black leather jacket whose zipper is missing. His hair is a brown, curly mop, and even though he's just bogarted Hunter's cigarette he's gnawing on a piece of gum.

"Whoa," he intones when he's knocked forward, stumbling slightly but not wiping out. He shoots a shit-eating grin Winston's way, flicking his eyebrows without saying anything, as if he can somehow sense a fellow pain-in-the-ass.

A beat, and then he thrusts the cigarette at Hunter.

"This the poor copper you ran into with your fuckin' crotch rocket?"

[Winston Barks Secrets] Gina's fingers find Winston's bare wrist, marked haplessly with some scrawl of numbers in black ink, and Winston answers the touch by wrapping his large, grimy hand around hers and closing about it securely. He didn't squeeze, didn't crush, didn't trap, but there was attentiveness to it. He was paying mind rather than taking her hand and forgetting about it a second later.

Izzy chuckles-- that earns a gleaning and sharp-edged grin shot in her direction from the Ragabash-- and Hunter spews out some disgusting vitriol of curse words when greeting Winston, and shoves his curly-haired counterpart (curly hair, thin build, awkward and gawky-- he was like a darker toned, cleaner, slightly taller reflection of Barks Secrets). He spins a grin in his direction, and Winston meets it with a wag of his eyebrows and the kind of answering grin that was too hungry and on edge. It gave way that while Winston could wear the face and clothes of a man just fine he'd only being doing it for a few years. He could fake it rather well, but things like smiles, eyes, and reactions were all hardwired to be more beast than animal, more animal than human.

"Gentlemen," Winston greets them and leans more comfortably back against the car, claiming it as his turf for the night without even half a consultation with the Detective. She'd yet to boot him out so he'd yet to relinquish. "How's the night treating ya? No hellish beasties nipping at your heels and begging to be killed? No strapping young ladies to whisk away?"

All done, all inquired, with Gina's hand in his. Curious, you'd think a Kin with that body, that face, that breeding would find a sturdier wall to brace herself with.

[Gina] *Hunter looses forth a torrent of expletives that don't seem to relate to one another in any discernible fashion, and the toffee skinned strider kin is suddenly eyeing him sideways. Peering at him with all the trust one might invest in a rabid dog. Curious, and yet wholly prepared for him to go batshit at any moment, his rage fraying at ragged nerves. Short, slim fingers curl a little more tightly in Winston's cartoonish mitt, whatever was under his fingernails suddenly less of a pressing concern.

A tilt of her head to Howard and Hunter in turn, pikey murmering to Winston, accent restrained best she can, her voice none the less a lullaby for everyone's nerves but her own. Certain things she couldn't control.*

You know these folks Darlin?

[Izzy Montoya] She eyes Hunter for a moment, and then lifts a chin in hello, before looking over Howard, idly. In answer to his question "Yes. And you're the fuckin' idiot who jumped off a balcony so that drunken twat could almost piss on your head."

The boys aren't the only ones who can cuss, it seems....

"And it's Detective Montoya. Not copper."

[Howard] His attention is drawn away from the much shorter, much grimier Bone Gnawer and placed on the kinswoman. It's subtle, indicated only by the movement of his head, and when he speaks his tone is cheery to the point where an accusation of some sort of chemical influence wouldn't be too off the wall.

"Yeah, but 'This the copper you ran into dot dot dot' rolls off the tongue better than 'This the Detective Montoya you ran into dot dot dot,' doesn't it?"

[Hunter] Hunter is stocky, muscular, but without the height that most Chicago males find themselves with. He has a jawline like a pitbull albeit a pretty one and green eyes that carry something of the beast in them at all times. He wears jeans, covered in blood and oil stains that just refuse to wash out. They were once blue, those jeans, now they are some sort of sick grey almost yellow colour in parts. Above it they can see a white t-shirt that is absolutely covered in blood around the collar, drenched completely red. The brown leather jacket doesn't hide much of it.

"Ye, that's her, probs --." He pauses, double takes at Izzy and Howard, then cracks up laughing. "She ain't no street cop man, she's fuckin' homicide. S'all she's tryna' say. Just like you sayin' you ain't not fuckin' cub. Though you fight like one."

And his flick back to Winston.

"Heeyyo Winston, who's lookin' after the tribe these days? Still Mama?"

[Izzy Montoya] HOward receives a long look, and Gina might suddenly tense, perhaps remember the stories heard, and the state of one Detective the last time she stood up to a True Born over something seemingly so simple.

Things could go very badly right about now.

Izzy simply flicks a look toward Hunter, then back again. "Perhaps. But you will soon find - or hear - that I don't give a flying fuck what flows easy for anyone. I am particular about some things - one of which is being called by my name. I have one. Use it."

Her gaze turns toward Hunter for another long, considering look. "I said exactly what I intended to say."

[Hunter] He seems amused, wildly amused. He holds both his palms out to her.

"Okay, okay, don't fuckin' blow a gasket."

Meanwhile he's waiting for Howard to say something utterly stupid and get them shot at.

[Howard] Back to Hunter, Howard keeps chewing his gum, his much less impressive jaws noisily working at the small piece of flavored rubber as he explains what Izzy was trying to say. A moment later, the detective clarifies what he might or might not have heard about her, that she doesn't give a flying fuck, that she's particular, and Howard claps his hand over his mouth to stifle a yawn so he doesn't rudely interrupt her as she's getting to her point.

She has a name, and he's to use it.

"Oh, alright," he says, on the tail-end of his yawn. A sharp shake of his head, and he continues on, aimlessly gesticulating upon reaching the proper nouns in the sentence, as though they're separate entities, "So you'll be callin' me 'Mister Ivers' instead of 'that drunken idiot who jumped off a balcony,' yeah?"

[Winston Barks Secrets] Gina leaned in and whispered a question as to whether he knew who these two men were near Winston's ear, and the Gnawer glanced down to her and rolled one shoulder in a shrug, tapping the pad of his thumb against the top of her hand a couple of times while he nodded his head toward Hunter. "That one, yeah. The other? I guess he's Howard." He lifted his free hand to scratch at the scruffy growth along his neck and jaw, and looked back over to Hunter when the question of who was in charge came up.

The Ragabash's answer was a simple shake of his head.

"I haven't seen her in... shit, I don't know, some long time or another. I don't pay much mind to politics anyways. All I know is it sure as shit isn't me. I can't even look after myself." Winston says this with that same sharp, animal sneer on his face as he one-handedly digs a crooked and bent up (but miraculously intact) cigarette from the pocket of his flannel overshirt and sticks it between his teeth, then hunts around for a lighter to light it with.

One of these days those cigarettes really would kill him. Maybe he was banking on it.

[Izzy Montoya] She nods, slightly. "Of course, Mr. Ivers."

Simple enough, yeah?

[Hunter] "Well shit, I don't fuckin' want it either." He says to Winston, then eyes Howard and Gina briefly. "Maybe we can fuckin' hire someone else ta' do it, like a lord or somethin' they love that sorta' shit."

His hand reaches out with his own lighter and sparks up Winston's cigarette before lighting his own that emerges from the inside pocket of his jacket.

"Or Howard, Howard here would do it."

He nods his head, Howard would definitely do it. He would be great.

[Howard] "The fuck he would."

This said, without even looking over or asking what it is that's being discussed.

[Gina] *Izzy's reputation was such that it had exotic features pinching into an expectant cringe. This situation was ripe for violence, and the pikey had hoped her first day back would be markedly less exciting than all that. Gina's hand pulses against calloused fingers, Winston getting a familiar squeeze before the diminutive kinswoman is wrapping her scarf back round her mouth and chirping in a muffled singsong.*

Nice to meet ye boys. G'night. Later.

*Accent wrestled with to mixed results, a halfhearted two finger salute to Izzy, and Gina's making her hasty exit, feeling crowded and ill at ease.*

[Hunter] "Howard would totally not do it." He says, testing.

[Howard] Now he looks over.

"Do what?"

[Hunter] "Night ..." He pauses, he can't remember her name if it was given. He blinks. "Night girl, take care'n'all." A friend of a Gnawer is a friend of Hunter Matthews.

After that he looks at Howard, takes a puff on his smoke before handing it over.

"Be the fuckin' Gnawer Elder."

[Winston Barks Secrets] Gina's sweating it out, cringing at the expected violence when there's a moment of still after Izzy confronts Hunter, the Gnawer Ahroun. Her reputation preceded her, but Hunter was not Daniel, he was much more easy going, and he wasn't a Fenrir so Izzy wasn't his to discipline in the first place. Still, Gina saw a slight chance of violence and opted to opt out. She slipped her fingers from Winston's with a bit of a squeeze, fixed her scarf, and excused herself with a 'nice to meet ya' before hustling off up the sidewalk.

Winston watched her go with an obvious Hate To See You Go Love To Watch You Leave cant to his head, and called out after her with a face-crawling grin. "Later's right, sugartits, find me again!"

She's gone after that, and Winston's smiling fondly and smelling the palm of his hand where it'd been pressed to hers, muttering into it. "Damn I missed her." Like it was surprising that he would miss anyone at all and he was slightly mystified by the fact.

Hunter's trying to get Howard to be the Bone Gnawer elder they're jostling back and forth on the topic, and Winston shakes his head and talks, still from behind the palm that smelled like roads and incense and spice and must. "Nah nah nah. Can't have that, it's gotta be someone who knows how to be a Gnawer in the first place." There's a sigh interjected here, labored (it whistles a little on the way back out) and inconvenienced. "Unfortunately, the only options are you, myself, a very pregnant woman, and some elusive Metis I've heard about but never had the absolute pleasure of meeting."

[Izzy Montoya] Izzy doesn't seem to be too worried about being disciplined by anyone. After all, she has already been through far worse than most of her kind can imagine, by those on both sides of the war, and those who are simply fucked up humans, too. And now, with the way exhaustion crawls about under her skin, she simply doesn't give a fuck.

They banter about who might be elder, and that doesn't have much to do with her at all. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen."

...which is code for stop leaning against my fuckin car, winston...

[Howard] The cigarette returns his way, and Howard takes a long drag as the sickly young man speaks. He had been far too interested in verbally sparring with Detective Montoya to pay too much attention to Gina, even with her ravishing good looks and her ample body and her exotic appearance. It might have been her accent; for anyone who has spent a good deal of time in the UK it is immediately recognizable as belonging to the roving Irish criminals who are hatefully referred to as 'pikeys,' but Howard has never identified himself as ever having been to the UK despite the fact that his accent is seemingly derived from UK English.

Then again, Howard doesn't seem to discriminate based on much of anything. He is an equal opportunity offender, will pick on anyone for any reason that presents itself to him.

A number of reasons exist why an outsider leading the Bone Gnawers isn't the best idea Hunter has ever come up with. It's a joke, and if it isn't, the Ahroun has taken a few too many blows to the head or tokes off of whatever it is Howard has been providing him with to smoke.

"You're just sayin' that because I'm black," Howard says, deadpan, and steps away from the car even though he was nowhere near it to begin with.

[Hunter] "Ye, no probs detective." And he sits down next to Winston and bites on his own thumbnail. "Hmm, so you me some pregnant girl or some metis girl..." He frowns. "Aight well, who these two girls, I ain't ever even seen em before. You'd think for a city like Chicago there'd be more of us right?"

He laughs.

"Stead we got fuckin' vikings and russians crawlin' up our asses."

[Winston Barks Secrets] Izzy asks if they'll excuse her, and Winston shoots her a grin, then flicks two fingers to his forehead and away from in an imitation of a salute before straightening up, hunching his shoulders forward and curving his spine so as to look more like the Omega that he has always been, and stepping away from the car and up onto the curb.

He tugs the collar of his overshirt up against his neck, scratches at his scalp with both hands in a way that made those disgusting, greasy curls bounce limply (this was no shampoo commercial), then jams his hands resolutely into his armpit in an effort to keep them warm.

The Detective is excusing herself, his farewell was mingled in with the salute, and he's looking to Howard and snorting-- then finishing the snort by spitting the result into the gutter, respectful enough not to let it splat onto Izzy's car tires. "Shit, you nailed it, kid." Even though the 'kid' was probably at least seven years older than him.

For Hunter: "I haven't met them much either. No one swings by to say hello and in my poor, fragile condition I just can't make it too far from home." Said as though he had a home, as though his fragile condition was anything new, and as though any of that mattered whatsoever.

[Izzy Montoya] She watches as they step away from her car, and then she lets herself into the drivers seat. A moment later the car roars to life - the engine in that thing is surely not what it originally came with - and she pulls into traffic, and away.

[Hunter] "Aight well, it's been real winston." And he holds his hand, claps it with the Gnawer if he can and grips his wrist. "Don't be a stranger ye? We should have'a meetin' with the others, if ya' see'em tell em' I was askin'."

A pause and he takes in a deep breath, looks around.

"Come stop by the warehouse sometime in bronze, have dinner with me'n Joey."

[Winston Barks Secrets] Winston slaps his hand into Hunter's when it's extended in offering. The Ahroun'll wrap his fingers about a knobby wrist, and Winston will do the same, though it doesn't have the same kind of heart and vigor that Hunter's grip will. That was more of an enthused warrior thing to do, and Winston was reluctant to do his job at the best of times.

"Yeah sure," is the Ragabash's way of assuring him that he'd spread the word, and that he wouldn't be a stranger. An invitation to come by for dinner out in Bronzeville is extended, and Winston meets it with a lift of eyebrows Groucho Marx would be proud of and by grinning. "Now what kind of guy would I be to turn down an offer like that?" He takes his hand from Hunter's, jams it back into his armpit, and looks to Howard. "Good meetin' you, curly." Said the kettle to the pot.

"Stay chilly." And Winston turned and walked his hunchbacked way up the sidewalk, sniffing against the cold and coughing occasionally like the unhealthy example of life on the streets that he was.

Warm You Up, Bring You Down [Cordelia]

[Winston] Frigid temperatures in the city made it difficult to find places to sleep. Winston never got a spot in the shelters because they were bursting full to begin with, and no matter how malnourished and needy he may look Rage always had him left out on the curb. He just seemed like he'd cause too much trouble, slice a throat or two while the helpless slept, take what few belongings they had and sell them at a pawn shop for his next bottle of whiskey.

It was difficult to find a proper laundry vent to keep warm and fires drew the unwanted attention of foot patrol in the park. It was stupid to wear Wolf-skin in the city. So Winston was in motion, keeping himself warm by keeping his blood flowing until he could brainstorm a better place to hunker down for the night. Winters were hard, they'd been easier in Los Angeles where the temperatures were mild and he had a pack to lay nearby.

For now, for tonight, he paced the paths that cut through the park, dressed in several layers of sweatshirts with a hat on his head and several layers of socks in his sneakers. He didn't job, that was bad for his breathing (but so was the cold). He just walked, rubbed his hands and his nose and cheeks and kept his eyes peeled for danger. Boredom was the incentive of stupidity and wrong, destructive choices, but he wasn't about to go looking for a fight either. He'd sooner avoid one if possible.

[Cordelia] It was fucking cold. It didn't get cold like this in Spain, not like she remembered. Maybe it was the combination of the foreign and the not that had her shivering. Her sister's pack was sill here, though by now they were rarely there. She'd caught talk of a push to the north, but some part of her knew that she wasn't hearing them talk about whatever was north of Chicago. No. No, they had been speaking of Canada.

She thought she would be happier, but as it stood, having her sister here was not proving to be any kind of distraction. If anything, it was a problem. Cordelia was out and about. More just out than anything. out and white and being anywhere but that nice little apartment with the pristine floors and ceilings and chunks of disloyal usurping bastard on her floor. She'd left quickly enough that her sister's pack was... confused. The ahroun had eaten his words and was licking his literal wounds while hte newer garou stood in confusion as to why, specifically, the kinswoman had fled.

Like she hadn't seen garou in crinos before. Like she hadn't seen blood before.

For some reason, she always came to the park. It's just where she went. And she walked, her head was down, her pace wasn't so fast, and when her nerves had worn down, she realized how cold it was, how badly inhaling burned her longsand how much she wished she'd grabbed a damned hat. She waits, and she listens. Someone else is walking. She knows the rustle of fabric, the sound of footsteps, and Cordelia turns in the direction of the sound.

Her eyes narrow, and she tries to get a good look at who else is out tonight, and some part of her wonders if she can outrun whoever is here.

[Winston] The rustle of fabric that Cordelia hears would be the corded knit of the top layer of sweaters that Winston wore. He manifested as city-feral as ever, always managing to take whatever mismatched assortment of clothes he had found and make them look completely natural rather than awkward and uncomfortable. His thin frame was bulked some by all the layering, the topmost being a plain black cable-knit sweater. His pants were less loose, he no doubt had a pair of sweatpants on beneath them. His facial hair was grown in again, in a full mustache with scraggly scruff on his chin, cheeks and neck, and the hair on his head was in wild ringlets once more that grew outward rather than down.

He knew Cordelia was ahead of him before she was able to recognize him in turn. He'd cut through the weak yellow glow of a path lamp, though, and his face would come into light enough for her to know who he was.

If there's one thing a Bone Gnawer knows, it's how to keep warm in the winter.

He'd meet her with a thousand-yard stare of hazel eyes for a moment before turning his head to cough into the crook of his elbow as he walked closer toward her, pace and direction unchanged by the tall pure-bred Kinfolk manifesting directly in his path.

When nearer, though, he would slow to stand in front of her. He's wordless, the cold air was aggravating his condition and making his cough worse tonight, which made his throat sore despite the rapid-healing that he carried with him no matter the body he chose to spend his time in. These things weren't meant to be relieved, they were a reminder of What He Was, and why he was Damned.

Rather than speak, he simply removed the homely brown hat with the earflaps from his head and reached up to stick it on hers, tugging to be sure the flaps covered her ears as though he were dressing a child. Following that, he greeted her with a smile that was more a flex of the mouth than anything else and a wave of one bare, pale-and-red-knuckled hand. Sup, girl.

[Cordelia] She's managed to do the one thing that Bone Gnawers don't quite seem capable of doing- putting on weight. She's not as light as she was since the last time they met. Sure, she's maybe five pounds heavier at best, but it seems to have made a world of difference with her. It fills in her chest a little better, not in the cupsize sense, but rather in the sense that her collar bonesdon't stick out like they used to. She's tall like a runway model, but she's probably always going to be thin. We don't talk about hte disconnect- about how in the supernatural sense she seems strong and capable of producing sons, but in the literal sense that just ain't gonna happen. She's too tall, too slender, and would no doubt break in half if she gave birth to anything over five pounds.

It takes a second before she realizes the person coming towards her is Winston, and she bridges the gap between them. Her steps go in double time, and she has little problem actually catching up with the guy.

They catch up. He just removes his hat, and she looks confused. Her eyebrows are together, and she's looking down at him incredulously. A hat plops on her head and is pulled down. The flaps cover her ears, and the presence of the hat itself pushes her hair out, so there is a giant halo of blonde messy curling waves displaced for the time being. It is like dressing a small child, complete with the grin that comes to her pale, pale face-

[There's something there, and her grin doesn't come easily today. She's paler than she has a right to be. Not sickly but close. Very, very close. Not sickly, but anxious. Even that is fading away to normalcy. It's been a long day, or maybe it's the light.]

"You need gloves," she announces.

[Winston] "You need a drink."

He answers so that his words very nearly eclipse hers, clipping at the tail end of her last word spoken like nipping the heels of a pup to get it to move away faster. His voice sounds horrible, like laryngitis. It's far worse than anything she's heard out of him before. It seemed they were both in an off way, she with her paleness and he with his Deformity making the better of him, even when on a day-to-day basis he can make it seem like the whistling in his breath and the cough are nothing more than the mild kind of unhealth that comes to living without shelter.

He's not guiding her to a bar to buy her a drink, or offering her shelter and a place to talk and rest. He doesn't have any of these things. Rather he's digging around in his many layers of sweaters, hooking an arm up from the bottom of the garments until he can fish out small, dense bottle of cheap whiskey with a brand name so obscure it could only be recognized by the homeless and the hipsters. He unscrews the cap for her and holds out the bottle with the kind of insistence that a mother feeding their child Robitussin as.

"Looking better," he rasps out painfully. "But pale."

[Cordelia] His voice sounds horrible. To the point that she just stares at him, with her eyes wide behind her glasses and her expression looking like it does when she's about to hug him or try to feed him or do any of those awful, terrible things that she keeps doing to him. Because, let's face it, Cordelia just keeps doing these things to the poor guy, and it has been proven that there are all sorts of awful creatures that lurk in the shadows and exist to remind him of his place.

Sometimes, it sucks to be Winston.

Like right now, because he's cold and sounds like his throat is going to fall out or he swallowed s pine cone. She looks at the whiskey, then looks at him. She looks at the whiskey again, and takes it carefully. She inspects it, and the female reads the label. It's a little known, less cared about fact that her ability to read in English is lacking in comparison to her other skills. She has the skills of a private school drop out. it bothers her that a fair chunk fo the things she sees in English take her awhile to understand- seeing words and understanding htem is different than hearing them. English doesn't play by the same rules as Spanish. And, while she is a very well educated woman in Europe, that fact doesn't quite translate the same.

We digress. She takes a drink after inspecting it, and coughs. Coughs enough that it almsot comes out of her nose and she hands it back. her cheeks flush.

"Whatthefuckisthat?"

[Winston] He watches her inspect the label as though she were reading the directions manual for her new printer, trying to figure out how to get it to wirelessly connect to her laptop. A familiar fiendish grin crawled over his unshaven face as he watched, half expecting her to delicately cup the bottom of the little bottle and treat it like a well-aged wine at a million dollar dinner party.

She takes a swig, sputters and coughs, and he laughs-- which actually sounded more like a painful wheezing than anything else, though it didn't seem to stop him from enjoying the scene. She hands the bottle back, he shamelessly licks the dribble that she'd lost when she sputtered at the fluid hitting her throat from the side of the container, then follows up with a solid swig of his own that had him shutting his eyes tight, clenching the muscles in his arms and shoulders, and stamping his foot on the ground once in retaliation to the horrific burn that the alcohol made when it hit his raw throat.

He didn't put that bottle away, though. He cleared his throat, coughed and hacked and rubbed his nose with the sleeve of his sweater like some young child, then hoarsed out his answer: "Firewater. Warm you up, bring you down."

He scratches at his lower lip with a thumbnail that really needed to be trimmed, then held the bottle out to offer to her once more. His heavy eyebrows lifted in a way that was questioning-- and not just about whether she wanted another drink or not. This was him miming therapy-- tell Uncle Winston what's wrong.

[Cordelia] she takes the bottle back, holds onto it like she's not so sure she can give it back to Winston. She might hoard it, though the female isn't squirrel-like enough to pull it off. She holds the bottle with both hands, and she started walking. It's subtle-

But it's also cold, and even if she's gained weight it's cold and Winston sounds awful. She obviously must not feel too badly about it, though, because she isn't moving too quickly. Her hips don't sway yet. Very rarelydo they ever. there's not enough there to sway. Warm her up, bring her down, something like that. Cordelia takes another drink, and this time she seems nervous to do so. It doesn't make her want to vomit, so that's good.

"My sister and her pack are here," she says, "and my apartment is a mess."

It's all she can think of to say. Before someone can chastize her over something this trivial... well... She shrugs it off. Or tries to, at the very least.

"I don't like blood, Winston."

Over-simplify.

[Winston] She takes the bottle, judges it for a minute or so more, then turns and begins to walk again. Winston falls into stride with her, hunched over against the cold and hands tucked into her armpits to keep them warmer, arms crossed over his chest to do so. Hunching made him seem so much shorter, when he stood straight he was of average height, but being born and raised and continuing to be an Omega no one ever really saw that. He was content to have his head level with Cordelia's jaw rather than having to try to compensate for a woman looming over him.

She confesses that her sister and pack are in town, in her apartment, trashing her place and pouring blood all over. Winston wheezed in a way that could be construed as sympathetic and scrubbed his shabby chin growth against his shoulder, scratching without having to take his cold-numb fingers out from under his armpits.

"Shouldn't have to," is the answering rasp that sounds so painful it has to taste like blood.

He isn't questioning further, that was enough of an answer for him, but at the same time he wasn't closing the door on the topic. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, so what better place than at the side of a Kin, even if it wasn't his right to be? Her Tribe obviously couldn't be bothered to keep an eye on her, so maybe he could pick up some royal table scraps by pretending to do so himself.

[Cordelia] She doesn't have to.

She's walking, and the temperature is still low. Cordelia has an inbound sensor or GPS when it comes to being able to find food, probably because her body is constantly angry with the fact that she doesn't feed it nearly enough for its own liking. It's not that she doesn't eat, it's that she burns calories for simply standing around. He tells her that she shouldn't have to like blood.

"But I should tolerate it," she says. It's after a long while, when she finally comes to terms with words and determines which are appropriate and which are not. Which she should use and which she can not.

[Winston] The sound that he makes is best described as a croak of disapproval. The Bone Gnawer shakes his head, ringlets that, if pulled out straight, would reach his chin in length from the top of his forehead bouncing enthusiastically along with the gesture. He took his hand out of his armpit to take the whiskey bottle back, pull another swig, and stop walking long enough to lean down, turning some curious shade of pained red while he hunched over his own legs and forced himself to swallow the liquor rather than spew it out, working past the horrible burning in his throat.

To help he scooped some snow off the ground with his bare hand, jammed it between his teeth and pressed it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue 'till it was liquid, swallowing the resulting water to cool the pain some.

As casual as pie, the bottle was passed back and he scraped out his thoughts on that.

"Diplomat Kin shouldn't dirty hands unless it's politics."

[Cordelia] "So... it's okay?" she looks at him, and holds the bottle.

No one should ever look at a Bone Gnawer like that. Especially a Fang, she shouldn't look at him like his opinion matters, or that his wisdom is something she is actively seeking, for assurance or absolution or some combinatio, of the two. He must be some kind of whiskey-having savior. besides, it made her feel warm. Winston must obviously know something that she doesn't.

She's holding onto the bottle carefully, but she's not drinking from it. Her fingertips are reddening, going numb. Cordelia doesn't quite care about this.

"Where are you staying tonight?" she keeps asking him this. Always.

[Winston] It was a shame that no one ever sought wisdom from Winston. There was a reason his name and that word were so close to one another, no coincidence for sure. It was the only thing that his name was good for-- he was honorless, he showed his belly sooner than he fought. Certainly Cordelia'd seen him put up a fight, but that was because there was a Kin at stake. Were she Garou and able to fight for herself the story may have been different. It was entirely doubtful that he was being heroic, too, not fighting because he was concerned for her well-being, but perhaps because he knew that if anything happened to her while he was around he would be skinned for it.

Or maybe he really was a martyr. It was impossible to tell with him.

He's looking up at her sidelong, giving him a shifty and crotchety kind of demeanor, looking from her face and the expression on it to her red-and-white fingers around the whiskey bottle. She's holding it but not drinking from it, her hands were bare to the sub-freezing temperatures. He snorted and lifted a hand to gesture for her to hand the bottle back over, croaking out: "Drink or give up." If she didn't have to hold the bottle then she could put her hands in her pockets instead.

As for where he was staying, this was answered with a shrug of shoulders made to look more solid than they were by the layers of sweaters he wore. She always asked, and the answer was always the same.

[Cordelia] The answer was always the same. She wasn't sure why she kept asking, but it was the ritual of it. They met, she's usually chastized for being alone, and Winston then takes it upon himself, because her tribe couldn't be bothered to be fucked over this matter. They leave, and she usually makes it home safe, and Winston goes to sleep in a trash can. She attempts to take him home, which he vehemently refuses under the grounds that someone is probably going to pop out and kick his ass for the mere thought of being within thirty feet of her.

Because, you see, her tribe couldn't be fucked to take care of her, but they could vehemently guard any claim they lay over her ever-so-sacred vagina. Because, at the end of the day, to a lot of them it didn't matter what she did. If she gave them ground or gained them influence or anything of the like- she was a well-bred young woman whose pedigree was more important than her education or her capabilities. She could be a vegetable, really, so long as she had a functioning womb she was good to the world.

We digress. She gives up the bottle and sticks her hands in her pockets.

At the end of the day, Cordelia is well aware that she is either a land mine or a golden ticket. Sometimes, both.

"Can I get you a motel room?" like housing Winston was primarily for her own good rather than his. Like him being out on the streets, cold and malnourished, was a horrible fate for her to deal with.

[Winston] The whiskey bottle was taken back into Winston's possession, and he screwed the cap back on securely, tipped it upside-down to make sure it didn't leak, then jammed it back up under his layers of sweaters and shirts, finding a pocket in there somewhere to hide the poor (but strong and effective) excuse for booze away once more.

His hands stuck into his armpits once more, he sniffed aggressively against the running nose that manifested on every living soul after being out in the cold for too long, and continued to shuffle along beside the Kinfolk.

She offered him a motel room, and he stared up at her for a second, two, maybe up to a dozen or so of them ticked by before he nodded, huffed out a breath of air that didn't appear as fog-heavy as it ought to anymore (stay out in the cold long enough even the stuff in your lungs chills up a bit). One of the first rules about being a Bone Gnawer was to cast aside your pride. If someone offered you a sandwich, you said thank you and scarfed the fucking thing down before anyone else rolled up to dispute your claim on it. If someone offered you a bed and a roof for the night, you didn't dismiss them by insisting that you'd be just fine, especially not when it was some eighteen degrees outside and your fingers were so cold they didn't even hurt with cold anymore, they were just numb and clumsy like when you sleep on your arm and your hand is dead when you wake up in the morning.

"Thanks," the Metis scratched out, and hunched his shoulders up against the cold, glancing up the path, squinting toward the open land where The Bean and Millennium Fountain were set up to be viewed by tourists and joggers and part of the arena for public events. It was hard to say what he was looking for until he spoke. "Drive? Bus?"

[Cordelia] She hasn't been in the United States for long, but in that time she has learned what white guilt is. She's learned how to function in that sort of I feel like I've contributed to society's woes so if I throw money at it, it will go away fashion. Or, who knows, maybe Cordelia actually gives a shit. It's surprising, really, because even as painfull anglo-saxon as she appears, she finds herself butting against doors and walls and glass ceilings because she's not American. For the longest time, it was because she didn't speak English. Now, it's because she didn't speak English first. Funny, because the people she had things in common with were the lower class, the middle class, the illegal immigrants who had things that they wanted and needed and couldn't quite reach because of some barrier they were trying to overcome.

that's the thing about being a Fang, though. Unlike the under-privileged, Cordelia's greatest weapon is pride. It's a tangental thought. She's never had to stay somewhere on the streets, but she has slept in closets. When Silver Fangs wake up on dirty mattresses in abandoned buildings, it's normally because they've been ransomed away... not because they got a lucky break.

"Bus," she replies That's the other thing. Why the Hell does she take public transportation. She's silent, then breaks it. "I worry about you."

[Winston] Again comes that pained wheezing that substitutes laughter, now because Cordelia confessed that she worried about him. Winston removed one numb, fat-and-clumsy feeling ice block of a hand to rub at the scruff on his throat, then clumsily dug around at the back of his neck until he found a hood one layer deep and tugged it up to cover his head. He isn't smiling so much as sneering, but then very few of his smiles were anything more than malice, perverted joy, or sarcasm.

He took over leading where they walked now, with a touch of misplaced authority in his step (because even though she was Kin she still outranked him-- scuttling crab-spirits outranked him) to direct them to where he knew for a fact the closest bus stop was.

"Shouldn't," he advised her, swallowing with a faint grimace on his face from doing so, and stuffed his hands into his armpits once more, only after tugging the hood's drawstrings so it was snug around his forehead and ears. "Waste your energy."

[Cordelia] "I do anyway," she informs him, "you're out here. Alone. All the time. Where's your pack?"

Said like whose ass am I going to have to kick for not taking care of you?

[Winston] "Darling...."

The word sounds like it's spoken from the mouth of a long-gone member of The Rat Pack, like it should be crooned over the rim of a glass of scotch, spoken from behind the thick cloud of smoke produced by a chewed-on cigar. Throat cancer, heavy drinking, curious half-appeal and all.

"I'm a Metis." As though she needs to be reminded. A hand slips out of his armpit to wipe at his mustache, to make sure no snot has run into it (it hadn't, his nose was dried up almost painfully from excess cold and a lack of nutrition), then tucks away once more. "Out and alone is doctrine."

They would, soon and sure enough, come to the bus stop, where Winston would not sit to rest but rather remained standing up, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet as though he were antsy (though it was because if he settled now there was a chance that he would simply not get back up, that he would instead crash there on that bench and chose sleep with no form of shelter. that was how stupid, careless transients died, that and those that have plain given up). He sniffed some, cleared his throat with another faint expression of pain, and shrugged his shoulders, finally answering her question about pack.

"Doesn't he hang out with the Bellamonte Queen?"
He could only imagine that Ivan was either sleeping off a wild and raucous night at a friend's house, his own place (wherever that may be), or that he was currently wrist-deep in some high class hooker. That was the kind of guy he seemed to Winston.

[Cordelia] He has to remind her, because the word doesn't even quite register. There are times where she is worldly and there are times where she is not. This is one of those times. She doesn't get it. She doesn't get that Winston's existence is inherently wrong and, as a result, he's less for it. That he exists and somehow Gaia must be repulsed or else she wouldn't punish him for merely existing.

Out and alone is doctrine.
"That's not safe," she insists. Because she can't reconcile that fact.

She sits down and folds her arms. her hands stay tucked under themselves and she curls inward. For a brief and fleeting moment, Winston is taller than she is. He does, however, answer her question about pack. However, she does look confused by this. Cordelia cocks her head to the side, "who?"

Which nails it. Ivan doesn't even mention Winston, or at least he had never done so to Cordelia. She has little reason to believe they're packed together, and the confusion on her face says it all. She's clueless.

[Winston] "Resplendent Dusk." She settles onto the bench and he stays standing. This puts her head about level with his upper chest, give a little take a little. "Ivan...."

There's a pause because his voice rasps particularly harshly at the end, cracks like he's a teenager with laryngitis. His answer to this is an expression akin to resolve, then he makes a horrific noise, the kind that you make when you're scraping all the mucus from your sinuses and throat all at once and gathering it up in your mouth to expel it. Which is precisely what he did, after a few long moments listening to that awful sound he turned his head, and haulked a loogie that was monstrous, more blood than anything else, into the street. She didn't like blood, he remembered, so he'd spat away from her, onto the dark pavement of the street rather than in the pale gray slush of snow in the gutter.

"Better," he said, and while his voice sounded raw and pained still it wasn't quite so bad, he seemed more freed up to speak. "I don't know his last name, but you have to've met him. He's a Fang."

He looked at her plainly with sharp hazel eyes, bland in color but intelligent and direct in the way that predatory eyes are-- something that he couldn't shake even if he spent most of his life past the First Change in his human skin. He just wasn't Human, and no matter how he faked it and how good he got at it some things just couldn't be shifted to reflect the act.

[Cordelia] [WP: Be nice, -2 because today sucked]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Cordelia] "Ivan can't sleep with Katherine," she says, "so why would he keep her company?"

She cuts herself off right there. It's toned down from what she would have originally said. It's decidedly more forgiving, too, all things considered. She doesn't flip her shit when she sees a bloody, disgusting loogie, though. Instead, Cordelia just... conveniently doesn't pay attention to it. Turns her back to it, and pretends it isn't there. Like world hunger or crying babies.

"We've met."

She looks at him, and she's direct. She shouldn't be that direct, because she knows better. The young woman straightens up and adjusts the hat on her head. Her hair poofs out, and for now she doesn't particularly care.

"He doesn't spend much time outside of his entourage."

[Winston] Her opinion on Ivan is obvious, and it draws one of those curling Grinch-esque grins to the Ragabash's face. He doesn't ease himself into a sit beside her or edge an arm around his shoulders like he would with a considerable number of people, fresh-faced and knock-kneed Kinfolk or hard Fostern Ahrouns alike. Rather he stays standing where he is, finds a way to wrap his arms so his hands stayed under his armpits but the crook of his elbow was covering his nose up from the cold.

"I know." That's what he winds up saying, out of everything he could have gone with. He knew what Ivan was like-- they didn't communicate in one another's minds through the bond of the totem they shared, but he could feel in small degrees when the Fang was in distress or not. He didn't know every time he had a big O, they weren't that connected, but if there was a genuine fear for life or a spasm of extreme emotion otherwise, Winston felt it like a fly buzzing momentarily into his ear. He'd slap at nothing and then go back to what he was doing.

They were a caring, considerate pack and truly worried for one another. Honest.

"Packs aren't much good to the Omega anyways," Winston explained dismissively. If he was bothered by the fact that he wasn't a part of his packmate's 'entourage', it sure didn't show one ounce.

[Cordelia] They don't intrude into each other's spaces often. Not unless there's liquor involved, and usually on her part. She's only onced draped herself across him like some anorexic blanket, and that was because her motor skills were sorely lacking. All things considered, neither of them seem to be touchy-feelie kind of people, for a completely different set of reasons.

"Don't die," she tells him. Says it like an imperative.

About that time, the sound of the bus coming closer is more audible. The female stands up, and checks her butt to be certain that she isn't soggy. She's not, but now what padding she had back there is freezing. Her hands go there, instead, and rest in her back pockets. It makes her practically nonexistant chest stick out.

She has reason to worry about him now. She knows Ivan. She knows that he wouldn't do anything bad, but she knows he is self centered. She knows he is what he is, and doesn't venture outside of his entourage, which means for Winston? That there's not much of a chance that he'll be there when Winston needs him. Of course, Cordelia has no idea of his patterns of behavior. No idea that the male has the good sense to run away, because she's never seen it. not yet, at least.

[Winston] Cordelia worried about him. She knew that his packmate wouldn't be there in his times of need, that he hadn't been. After all, where was Ivan when a couple of goons from L.A. tried to serve punishment for their boss and he got his lungs kicked in? Where was he when a zombie snacked on his leg and he had to sleep in a snow den in the woods for a week while it healed?

Winston didn't care about this, though, wasn't bothered. He didn't expect people to look after him. He was used to being a bother at best, someone that his packmate's mate abhors and leaves him because he can't tolerate the fact that he'll listen to Winston but not her. He hunched up when around loud and proud Garou because he grew up being beaten by them for kicks, to hear the sound he made when he couldn't breathe.

She warns him not to die and he scoffs at that, straightening up just a little before hunching forward again, moving his elbow from his nose while waiting for the bus to roll to a stop. When it does he waits for Cordelia to get on first, bringing up the rear and muttering to her shoulder blades: "Everyone does."

[Cordelia] "Not violently," she says, "don't die because someone else was stupid."

She boards first, and her shoulders are back and her head is high and she pays for two people to get on the damned bus. Which, of course, indicates that this nice girl is aware of the fact that there is a smelly, greasy hobo getting on the bus with her. He scoffs at the notion of not dying. She sits down somewhere in the middle of the bus, and positions herself by the window so she can see, exactly, where she is going and where she's been.

There aren't a lot of people out tonight. There's a hipster with dual-toned hair sitting at the back, and a couple making out at the front of the bus.

Cordelia doesn't pay either set of people any sort of attention.

[Winston] "Everyone like me dies violently."

This correction is rasped out and followed up with a clearing of the throat. Winston climbs onto the bus after Cordelia, winking at the 60-year-old bus driver and making a point of tapping the male out of the couple making out on the top of the head so he glances his way, then licking his upper lip and teeth suggestively at the female. The female looks disgusted and a little bit scared and the male looks outraged but is unwilling to stand up (thank you, Rage). Once Winston's gone by the girl hits the boy for not defending her honor and the making out is put to an end.

With that done, Winston flumps into a sit next to Cordelia, tucking his hands resolutely between his thighs to warm them and leans forward to rest his forehead against the back of the seat in front of him.

There's a time of quiet before Winston speaks, and this is after the bus jerks into motion once more.

"Why do you insist on caring, huh? Don't you have your own people to look after? Shouldn't you be making sure Ivan doesn't asphyxiate on his own vomit after an all night binge and trying to make him into a better person? Because I'm nothin' but a lost cause, and you'll get nothing out of saving me."

[Cordelia] "You can't work with something that has no substance," she informs Winston.

[Winston] "You can't tell me he has no substance." His Groucho-esque eyebrows lift skeptically, and he turns his head to look up at her without leaning back or taking his forehead from the seat back in front of him. His hands stay between his legs, his spine would be showing through his back if he was wearing a thin T-shirt rather than innumerable layers of clothing to keep insulated in the freezing cold of the city. All put together he looked like a child, or like he was recovering from a terrible hangover.

"Not if you're going to turn around and insist that I have some."

His eyes fall back to his scuffed and salt-stained sneakers. "You're fooling yourself, thinking that you can save a mutt. It's a dead end and you've got... I don't know, money, political, diplomatic things to be spending your energy on. Maybe finding a plane ticket out of the city, if you know what's good for you. Or chasing after your absent lover. Anything would be more productive than your taking pity on me.

"...not that I don't appreciate the motel room or anything."

[Cordelia] "If I pitied you, I wouldn't be here right now," her voice is surprisingly even. Not insistant. Not defensive. Not a lot of things, her tone is just even, as though she's commenting on the color of the sky or the texture of the grass, "pity is insulting."

Because she's not a Bone Gnawer- because she will always have her pride.

"This is diplomacy."

It seems like she might explain this. The wa she's sitting, too comfortable on public transportation and looking at winston with a head on look and nestled comfortably between the window and her chair might make it seem like she's going to go on a tirade. Her hands are in her lap. Her posture is straight, because very rarely does the femaale slouch or do anything to diminish the fact that she is very tall and very aware of it.

"You don't think very highly of yourself," she remarks.

[Winston] "No such thing as diplomacy between a Fang and a Gnawer, toots." He may have downright ignored her concept of pity, what it was and wasn't, because that wasn't the point and the both of them knew that. The point was that she kept finding ways to waste her time and energy on the Gnawer, and while he certainly appreciated charity because it kept him alive, and appreciated the company because, despite it all, wolves and humans both were social creatures, and while he was neither he was the result of mixing the two with a monster-- that meant he was still social. He'd take what attention he could get, negative or otherwise.

"There's cutting deals, there's using each other, but there's no true diplomats and no true relations."

He cleared his throat again, yawned in a way that had his tongue curling some behind his teeth (again, the wolf showing through the man-skin), and closed his eyes, face aimed toward the floor.

"Lady... Cordelia. I'm a goddamn Metis. And a Bone Gnawer on top of that. I'm lucky to think high enough of myself to open my mouth when people look at me at all."

[Cordelia] No such thing as diplomacy between a Fang and a Gnawer, toots.
"That's because both sides of this equation aren't looking at it from a standpoint that involves negotiation. Fangs can't get anything done because they're too busy being tied up in birthright to realize what leadership actually is, and in the process?"

She perks up and covers her mouth like she just saw a mouse or something else that would have surprised her. Her lips come together and form the perfect little pouting O shape. She's pretty when she's being sarcastic.

"Don't get anything done."

After that... he doesn't call her lady, doesn't call her toots, just calls her by her name and lays it out. Her shoulders fall for a minute, and it really is like explaining something to a child over and over again. No matter how many times you pour the water back and forth, the substance is the same. He's always going to be Metis. he's always going to be a Bone Gnawer, and there is nothing she can do abou that, and there is nothing that is going to make anyone else make things any more different than they are right now.

She just sighs, and looks at the ground instead.

[Winston] Cordelia and Winston weren't a touchy-feely pair of people. It was because Cordelia was diplomatic, a lady all regal and business-like when she wasn't inebriated or compromised. It wasn't within her regimen to be that way, to reach out and give hugs and touch hair and cheek and be soft and gentle. That was for other Kin, other women, but it wasn't her. Not right now, not for a few years at least.

Winston, though, it wasn't because he didn't want physical touch. Any sort of touch that was non-aggressive was appreciated, really. Even someone getting close and brave enough to shake his smelly hand was a rare thing, a hand on the shoulder or the head even moreso. Bone Gnawers were dirty and smelled bad, and Metis was a stigma, people didn't want to get too close for disgust and fear alike, as though his condition might be contagious even though they knew it couldn't possibly be (not at all unlike AIDS).

She sighed, her shoulders rounded, and she looked at the ground. Winston peered at her with one eye, watched for a moment, then reached out and cupped one surprisingly large hand to the back of her neck, at the base of her skull, and tucked fingers into the blonde curls of her hair, tossing them about a little in a way similar to scritching a pet's ears when they look bummed out.

"Don't let it get ya too far down. It's just a fact of life."

[Cordelia] Fact of the day- when Christian was around, they didn't make out in public. They didn't hang off of each other, they didn't do much more than hold hands. Sure, they were attached. They were quite attached. People weren't sure what Cordelia did behind closed doors, but she certainly didn't seem the type to touch or caress or show her affection any way aside from proximity or the occasional touch. Not in public, at least.

Which is odd, because she can dance with someone and not care. She can be all up in someone else's space and it doesn't matter because it's not affection. Because it doesn't mean anything. Dancing was just dancing, and it was what it was.

On the topic, she sighs, her shoulders round, and the ground is interesting. His hand is in her hair, and it toussles. she leans back. It's probably instinctive; Cordelia honestly couldn't think of anyone who didn't like it when someone messed with their hair. Even if the hands doing it were dirty and would probably leave grease stains. All in all, she was as easy to comfort as a teacup poodle, and probably just as inbred.

"I don't like it," she informs him.

Cordelia reaches up, and carefully removes his hand from her hair. Instead, she redirects it to her shoulder, and she leans to the side. It's not a lustful gesture, or even that intimate of one. Just comfortable.

[Winston] His hand was moved by hers, taken from the back of her neck and head to settle on her shoulder instead. She places it there and he's content to leave it that way. The rest of the bus ride was a quiet one, ended on the note of her saying she didn't like the way things were. There was no answer to that, he may or may not like it himself. Everyone could hate it, but it's the way it was. No words, no amount of comfort, nothing would change that or even cushion it.

The bus would rock and jolt and Cordelia and Winston would bump along with it. They'd get off eventually at a stop not too far off from a cheap motel with no chain name or tall glowing sign to shine toward traffic on the interstate. The 'open' sign in the window flickered and that was all. Cordelia would fund him a room for the night, perhaps even see him into it. He wouldn't advise that she stay for too long, maybe to chat for a moment and say goodbye, but anything beyond that was dangerous.

"They can track you just by knowing your name and face, toots. And they will if that means the chance to jam a foot down my throat."

So they'd part ways, and Winston would say thank you, out loud rather than just in his own fucked up way, and revive his frozen body parts with a punishingly hot shower before collapsing in a bed for the first time in ages.