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.