July 30, 2004
.07.30.04. - one. year [decker-rune]

[riverfront]

(decker)
Front stoop of the abandoned old factory -- feet wide, forearms on his knees, whittling away at some little wood carving that just might one day be a talen. Joint's still burning away between his teeth, since the moon was damn near full tonight. His forearms are still bundles of cords like suspension cables on a bridge; his upper arms, hard chunks of defined musculature under the black patterning of tattoos. And his head, still buzzcut. And his expression, still that ever-present glower.

The more things change, huh?

There's a small pile of wood shavings at his feet, slowly but steadily growing larger. Every so often he flicks his tongue against the inside end of the joint and ash collapses out the outside. A little more occasionally, he closes his lips and sucks a hit off, his hands staying busy on his little carving.

(rune)
The front doors swing open behind him, and a blast of merely hot night air meets the factory's sweltering closeness. Framed by the door: Rune. Not dead. Not scarred. Not agonized. Her features - the familiar dark eyes, fully made up, rimmed in liner and shadow, highlights and underlights, mascara to lift and separate the long inky lashes, the whole (usual) nine yards, the sharp pallor of her complexion, as if she'd never seen the sun, or spent most of her life hiding from its rays beneath a pastel parasol, the full, ever-smirking mouth painted a deadly crimson - are the same as ever. And the look she tips the Modi as the front doors swing open and a blast of merely hot air meets the sweltering darkness inside the pack's crash-space - with its mocking edge, its savage undertone - it, too, is the same, couched in a single glance spared from the television where some endless, savage, mindless game is playing.

"What's a chick gotta do to get a beer around here, Fenrir?"

(decker)
Front door swings open and just like that he swings up and around on his feet, his balance low, the knife suddenly flipped around in his hand and perfect for a fight.

Must be gratifying to see his jaw slacken just enough to let the joint tumble out, though he catches it neatly against his chest and replaces it between his teeth. That's all the surprise that shows, anyway.

"Behind tha main boiler, near tha 'lectric stove? There's an icebox." The blade of the knife clicks away and he drops the carving in his other pocket, dusting his hands on his ass. Or his ass on his hands. "How long ya been back?"

(rune)
She's wearing jeans - low riders jeans, of course, fitted to the sinuous curve of her hips, an inch or three of smooth white skin showing the lean definition of her abdominal muscles - and some sleeveless, spaghetti-strapped top, fabric so fine that it does not so much cling to her torso as undulate across it, waterslick, silken, edged with tatty black lace and dampened with sweat. Nothing's changed. She's wholly unmarked, untouched - perhaps a shade thinner than he remembers, but time adds weight and fullness to remembered things, and she was always lean, wolf-hungry. The two signs of neglect are almost afterthoughts - an inch and a half of blonde roots underpinning her otherwise inky hair and the unpolished, splintering nails tipping the hands that hold the controller with such negligent authority.

The game is a new one, if the Modi pays attention to such things. New to the world, new to the pack, some Beta-testing uberviolent first-person shooter, with graphics so realistically rendered that children have been known to spasm into seizures from exposure to the graphics, or at least realistic enough that the gaming community is spreading rumors to that effect. It won't come out for another six months, but Rune - who has been out of contact and incommunicado for more than a year - Rune has a copy of it, all jazzed up on some new gaming system hooked into their television like bloated pattern spider gorging itself on the mother of all weaver-constructs. At the moment, she has eschewed the elegance of the high-powered sniper-laser and the anonymity of a rooftop for the brutal violence of a big-ass motherfucking axe. Half-rotten intestines spill from the slabbed flesh, bounce on black ice like mutilated sausages. Pixilated blood pools on the pavement, reflects the simulated night sky.

Take that, zombie-fucker.

The images on the screen freeze, something in the middle of decapitation, the hard whiteness of bone, the realistic arc of arterial spray, all captured, midmotion. Look closely and the anatomical structure of cervical vertebrae are revealed, where they haven't been crushed entirely by the brutal computerized blow. Attention still half-directed toward the screen, she narrows her eyes against the gathering gloom, following his directions. "You got anything other than Natural Light?" The Glass Walker smirks, her right thumb hovering over the A-button of her new wireless controller as she wanders a few feet into the darkness. "What are you, philosophically opposed to air conditioning, now?" There's another one in her left hand, which she lifts and tosses to the Modi, thoughtlessly, shooting a glance toward the screen as she considers his question. At last: " - about one point five levels, give or take the learning curve."

(decker)
His blink is an understated thing: a bare flicker of surprisingly long honey-blond lashes against hard arched cheekbones, over hard grey eyes. Pretty eyelashes. Nothing else pretty about him. He tosses a glance at the big TV. Damned if he knew how she managed to get that to run off their gas generator -- or did they have real live electricity now? Probably not. Probably some obscure GW magic: the awakened X-box that runs off a trickle of juice.

"Nice TV," he says, and lets the door bang shut behind him. "Naw." He checks in the icebox just to be sure, and fetches himself a cold one while he's at it. Cold coke, actually.

"Think we got tha money fer A/C inna place this big?" He nods up at the vast spaces: the high ceilings gridded in tubes and pipes; the boilers squating like silent monsters in the dimness of the emergency lights and one floor lamp; the catwalks, the groaning steel, the shambling brick and mortar. He settles on a crate that doubled as seating in this postindustrial hellhole, "Where ya been?"

(rune)
Rune stares in the Modi's wake, probably making some obscure Glass Walker cost benefit calculation wherein the merits of drinking a crappy beer are weighed against the merits of not drinking any beer at all. It's a close call, involving imaginary numbers and seventh dimension shit ordinary people aren't privy to, or so it seems from the way her eyes narrow in calculation, from the way her red smirking mouth settles into a flat, calculating line. "-'ll stick with the tequila." Muttered more to herself than to the Fenrir. She didn't expect Decker to grab her a beer while he was over there. "You're telling me you can't like, call on some damned germanic ancestor spirit of being frozen off your goddamned ass to in the tundra or shit to show up and blow a bit of cold air around here?"

She glances up at the guts of the factory, the crawling agglutination of rusting pipes and wire, and makes a brief, sour face before her expression stills. Orchestral menace spills from the surround system of the factory's new big-screen T.V., a repeating theme, forever stuck on three or four swelling, minor-key bars with the game on pause, mid-murder. Where ya been? She casts him another glance and offers a bare twitch of her shoulders in a shrug, flipping the game back on from its pause. Her gaze returns to the screen, now, the last rush of the axe through the zombie's neck, the awkward, jagged impact of blade on bone buzzing back up her arm from the controller. "Here and there," is the first, unsatisfying answer, almost as good as an adolescent's clever retort, around. Her settled smirk twitches sourly at the screen, and she flips the game back to pause before the head hits the pavement. "Someone who should've been dead, wasn't. So, I had someone to kill."

(decker)
"Took ya a whole year ta kill somebody?"

Aha, now there's a difference for Rune to pick up on: there's surliness there, all right, just as expected. Sullennes. The sneering disdain of someone who kicks ass and knows it. But underlying all that, there's a thin thread of humor she mighta missed if she weren't so perceptive.

He pop-hisses his can open and takes a long gulping draught. Wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. That there's familiar too. As is the direct grey stare. The smirk.

--fading, though. He sniffs loudly, looks down at his can for a moment, and takes another drink. "Things been changin' since you was last 'round. Erik ain't hardly never 'round no more. Jus' got back yesterday. 'Fore that, been 4 months since I saw 'im last.

"Kemp -- you r'member Kemp? -- growin' up. Dire's gone. So's Luc. 'N Livin'stone." Pause, he's ticking off names in his head. "James' still 'round. 'N Tristan. Imogen." He takes another slug of coke. "We got a caern 'n sept now, too."

(rune)
"Naw - " she almost drawls, some subtle imitation of the Modi's lazy cockiness. " - took me about five fucking minutes to kill 'em. Took me a whole fucking year to celebrate." She allows the controller to slide from her hand onto some handy surface only after inspecting said surface carefully for anything, well, living, or wet, or - "You know, champagne and roses and wine and shit like that, living the high life."

Leaning back against the frame of one of the rickety couches in the close space, she curves her shoulder back and stretches through the flank as the fingers of her left hand curl into her left front pocket, fishing out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She plucks one from the slender case - turkish blend, oblong and filterless, they look more like joints than cigarettes - and slides one end into her mouth. She cups her left hand, holds the lighter in her right and bends toward the flame, but looks up, then, as Decker sums up a years worth of stories in a few sentences. She can almost see the slow crawl of the checklist, imagines them as hypertext (and hypertextualized) links. "Not to mention - " smirked around the shape of the strange cigarette, the mellow smoke spilling from her nostrils. " - the big motherfucking move. Never met Kemp. Dire and Luc checked out before I did, maybe Livinston too. Heard about the Sept, though - " Flicking the lighter closed to kill the flame with a distinct flourish, she takes a complete drag at last, then actually removes then smoke from her lips. Her expression sobers, the smirk drains away. "Y'all are BMOC, or that's what I heard - "

(decker)
"Oh," at her corrections of his timeline. Whatever. This is why he's Modi, not Skald. Stories and times weren't his role. Battles were.

Her lighting her joint -- wait, no, it was a cigarette -- reminds him of his. He takes it out of his mouth and crushes it out atop the crate, then drops it carelessly on the floor. That floor, by the way, is getting deeper and deeper in debris, junk, castoffs, refuse, and general trash. His reply to her is characteristically short: a cock of an eyebrow upwards, a word repeated. "BMOC?"


(james)
there is a singular commonality in all structures
no matter their meaning or purpose or strategic groundplan
there is always a back door - one through which the Gnawer Fullmoon trudges
backpack slung over one shoulder
green and white cardboard box weighting down arm attached to the other

must've been payday

behind the main boiler, near the electric stove? bottles rattle
longneck bottles shoved into the ever-melting ice
methodical practice some ritual to cast the day away
or find some method of ignoring the moon's glow above
grime smears across tanned skin and blends into cast shadows
obscuring iridescent ink and dark stains alike
dreads swing heavy to gravity's relentless call
reversed as bottle cap cracks and it's tipped bottom up before he even steps away

may be the reason he doesn't see the big fuckin' tv
or, yknow, even notice there's anyone else in the warehouse
totally oblivious halfway around the island of domesticity
(there's a shower somewhere off in the distance, young pilgrim)
until.... he smells that turkish blend

stop.
swallow.
stare.

(rune)
"Big men on campus. Y'know - " the cigarette is held negligently between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, almost like a joint. The difference is obvious, though, in the way she exhales the nicotine laced smoke without holding it for more than a few seconds. Stealing another drag, her left arm level with her shoulders, the cigarette managed like a half-smoked joint, she exhales another cloud. Smirks - again, this one deeper, different, something. " - Sept leaders 'n shit, you know. Head honchos. Lawmen." It's like she carries a motherfucking dictionary or something around in her goddamned head sometimes, unless she's secreted her blackberry into her ear and is reading back the list of synonyms chirped into her ear by some little electronic voice.

The cumulative detritus of pack life makes footing treacherous, maybe not for the rest of them, but certainly for someone in five inch heels. Her right hand swings back, against the couch frame, a third point of balance, and she begins not-so-delicately kicking a mound of empty coke cans, old burger wrappings, tailings from whatever metal foundry once called these walls homes, asbestos insultation flaking off the pipes, and so on, methodically away from her, clearing a circle and then the beginnings of a path, the bleed-off of restless energy. She's beginning to think that she should've had one of those cheap beers the Modi had stashed, if only to swallow a handful of Xanax, when the door swings open and she lifts her chin and stop/stare/swallow. She stares back, over Decker's shoulder, familiar as hell, practically fucking unchanged, except for a half-inch of blond roots and a mangled manicure on the hand holding onto the turkish cigarette, which is fine stuff, if not her usual brand. "James." It's a greeting from the Fenrir playbook; her voice is even, her animal stare opaque.

(decker)
He just grunts at that, neither confirming nor denying that particular rumor. Guess she'll find out when she finds out, eh? And in the meantime he'll go on being the Modi posterchild. Grumpy. Surly. Silent. BMOC? Irony in that particular expression being, it's doubtful whether Decker ever even set foot on a college campus. More likely some blend of superficial disdain and subficial insecurity kept him far, far, far away.

He too glances over his shoulder as Rune does. And he too, even and opaque as the face of some weatherworn granite boulder, mutters a pointless greeting.

"Sup."

(james)
James, for all rights and purposes, looks like he's seen a ghost
and to his mind - he has
(he thought she was dead)
practically fucking unchanged
deep umber eyes locked on opaque animal stare
Eagles' PR guy seems to have lost his touch
bottle raised for another swallow in this sudden (continued) silence

"Ru'e."

it's the third time he's ever used her name
or at least today's semi-reasonable facsimilie of it given the notable slur
easy enough to see that he, on the other hand, has gone through some metamorphosis
weight's lost, and the Gnawer looks more than tribally expected hagard
dreads hang closer to lumbar spine than shoulder blades she last saw
there's a few more scars visable, and worse things lurking beneath the surface of his skin

"...... beer?"

open mouth of the longneck tips back towards the cooler
brow tips towards the frame of ropey 'locks incorporating both the other fullbloods
struggling to compose a pseudo-cognizant phrase as mind screeched to clattering halt
offering a Rolling Rock saving face by keeping his jaw off the floor

(rune)
"As long as it isn't the shit Decker offered me before you showed up." He would've seen that buried in the half-melting ice: Natural Light, near brandless, about a half-step above the generic crap in black and white cans that just says "BEER" in big sans-serif letters, like the extra flourishes might confuse their target demographic. The Glass Walker catches and holds James' gaze: stares. Stares, staredown - even when it's just a look, even among the most civilized of these animals, savage instincts crawl beneath the surface of the skin - something almost like it, the urge to dominance, whatever gets held and whatever gets held back. He breaks the glance, or she does, and it passes like anything else. Her eyes flicker down over the bottle in an almost obligatory 'brand-check.' "Fucking generic shit, no more than the strained piss of drunks. That's true, by the way. There was some big expose a few years back - saw the text on the net - where they caught the big brewers doing just that." When you don't know anything - make shit up. "But I'll have one of those."

She tips a nod toward the green shadow of a bottle of his hand, shifts positions against the the sofa until she's not simply leaning, but half-sitting on the broken-down frame, her weight a considerable strain on the dry-rotting wood encased in cheap polyesters, but not so great as the stresses this group has no-doubt subjected it to. Rune glances back at Decker and starts to say something. Opens her mouth at least, before snapping it shut into the sketchy shape of a usual red smirk. "You people sleep here, too?"

(decker)
"Sleep out back," says Decker, with a lazyass tilt of his head that way to show the direction -- like maybe if he didn't, she wouldn't know.

The trailer would look appropriate here, rounded edges and aluminum sidings. It would, but it's not the trailer. It's a step down from the trailer: a tiny shack out back hammered and bolted and wrenched together of corrugated steel, with a hole for a door and a hole for a window, dirt for flooring. Hot as a microwaved sardine can under direct sunlight; probably assfreezing cold in the winter. One mattress pallet for a bed, a stack of old porn mags, some clothes strewn about, and boxes of Deckerphenalia... ah, the existence of the Modi.

"James 'n Kemp usually sleep 'round here though." When they were off with whatever kin might take 'em in. But then Decker couldn't bitch; he spent a couple nights a month AWOL too.

It's like the shellshocked mundanity of holocaust survivors. What, Rune back? Whaddaya mean, that's unbelievable? Decker seems to be taking it all in stride.

(james)
it's just a look
a year ago his gaze faltered and dropped without second thought
tonight - it falters simply because he can't take his eyes off of her
(... un. real)
hospitality someone fortunately ingrained years ago pulling the Hood back to earth
direction reversed to revisit the cooler

"Nev'r." two syllables! he speaks! "'roun' payday we get remin'ed Garou'r step 'bove th' dr'nks."

at least it wasn't his first response that some of them had more class
three bottles pulled free - you can bet he's slurped down the rest of that first one
empty glass cast away to some pile that will never be recycled
(beneath it remains a trashcan they'll all swear wasn't that full last they checked)
one's slung underhandeasy to the Modi if he wants it, otherwise kept in clasp
with the GlassWalker - he dares walk right up and hand it to her
(can she see how bottle trembles at length of outstretched arm)
looking around at the mess in question with something resembling a wry grin in face of sketchily usual smirk

"Nuh. Kemp stays 'roun' mos've th' time. More'n me."

maybe the wry grin waxes self-conscious
realizing the startling clarity of speech impediment
(something about a pauper at the feet of.....)
so much has changed in the past twelve months
lambent hope quelled before the ideal request would form
(he'd still fall to his knees before her)
not expecting a lot of things to be as they once were

"Gotta place few block a here."

(decker)
Decker shakes his head for the beer, holding up his half-finished Coke in demonstration. Then, the stares James is giving Rune gets through even his thick skull. Or maybe he was just sick of the pending loveydovey shit. In one seamless motion the Modi slides off the crate and lands on his two feet, solid bone and muscle.

"Gonna hafta take ya ta see Eagle again," he says, and he don't mean the Blood Eagle. Then, offhand, "Good havin' ya back, Rune."

On his way out, he finishes off the Coke and tosses the can in the vague direction of the trashheap. The back door of the factory, the same steel as the front, slams shut and echoes off the shadowy high ceilings.

(rune)
"The factory's too classy for you Fenrir, is that it? Always gotta be one step removed." Her gaze shifts from James as Decker speaks, dark eyes twitching to following the tilt of the Modi's head out back; her eyes widen, and a brief disbelieving shake of her head dislodges the fine strands of her dyed hair from the sweaty plaster against her skull. She reaches up to push the fingers of her right hand through the tangle, levering the smoke against her hip with her left hand. The interior heat and humidity are not kind to her fine hair, and the unflatteringly tonal strands cling to her lean fingers greedily as they drive through the mess. Quirk. " - I'm surprised you didn't drag your trailer outta the fucking dump all the way to Illinois an' park it in the parking lot at Imogen's building."

The smirk stills, dies, dives away and disappears into the sharp planes of her features, as James approaches and offers up the bottle of beer. Rune's eyes track over his haggard face - the ravages of the past year show more clearly on closer inspection - and she absorbs the changes expressionlessly, accepting the bottle and then tilting it bottle toward him in lieu of verbal thanks.

Her chin rises, dark eyes tracking the Modi as he heads back out to his pup tent, ice house, guard shack. "Missed you, too, Fenrir."

In the shadows, the uncertain light, the flickering television set gleams with the glow of spraying blood, the slow-creep-crawl of the health meter lower and lower and lower as victory in level one point five of the nameless game bleeds away from the nameless protagonist. In the bloodied axe held out before the first-person perspective, beneath the sick and subtle curl of brain matter over the matte edge of the blade, some reflection of what must be meant to be the face you never otherwise see wavers in then through the simulated silver blade: your face, somehow. Her face, pale and dark, smeared red, light and shadows and contrast. Other Glass Walkers are all about new frontiers, Weaver fighting Wyrm, Wyld fighting - oh, hell, the permutation were too fucking complicated to contemplate. Other Glass Walkers hacked into corporations or instigated hostile takeovers or what the fuck ever: Rune was just in it for the toys.

The lack of light only heightens the fucking drama of her make-up: smoking eyes and a crimson mouth, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else; but it renders the hollows in the Bone Gnawer's face even more hollow, carves out a few new gutters of its own in his visage. "You look like hell."

(james)
Decker exits stage left - James. doesn't. even. notice.
he's still trying to convince himself this is reality
and he's not going to wake up once level one point five is over
hand stays hovering now sans bottle of beer
fingers flashing to fist when realization eventually comes through
(earth to Jamey-boy, helloooOOOooo)
another smile works its way - forever - crookedly across his features

"Yeh?" laughter ebbs free on waves of mid-chest growl "Y'r bein' kine, fr'm wha' th' rest've tol' me."

shoulders lift in haphazard shrug
he knows the shadows are deeper
the lines of wear and tear are harder
the sorrow seems to linger in the corner of earthen umber
(even if the light is grappling to return)
there's a notch along the lines of strong jaw
skin gnarled elsewhere as testament to all-but-fatal mistakes
it's in these shadows their truths reveal themselves
(the Elderman's nothing more than a ghost in the darkness)
lean, cut, and rawly naked behind that which should provide comforting sheild

"Las' year ain' been easy."

and he stops
there's a million questions forming behind lingering confusion
so many things he's desperate to ask, secrets he longs to unravel
but it all culminates into a singular, essential thing
pre-empted by that empty hand finally organizing a goal
reaching to drag calloused fingertips down strand of blonde-rooted hair
afraid - Gaia's mighty Warrior, afraid - to push far enough so the illusion shatters

"You.... stickin' 'roun' f'r th' nigh'?"

never has he requested nor demanded her allegiance or time
but by the unspoken impressions held so carefully in check.....
(please don't leave me again)
..... dark eyes falter before their fortune can be read

(rune)
He reaches out to touch her hair, and her chin rises. The lank strands of her sweat-stained hair flatten against the grain of his touch, catch in the rough grooves of his calloused hand, fray and feather beneath his fingers. The cigarette smolders in her left hand, still, the flat, brownish paper burning steadily away, sizzling and sparking now as the fire sinks closer and closer to her clenched thumb and forefinger. "I would've - " she's looking at him, a full-on glance, all closed intentions, unreadable. Whatever she was going to say, she thinks better of it and tilts her head away, lifting the remainder of the cigarette casually to her lips, some old man's extravagent gesture, some old man's extravagent drag to suck the last stimulation out of the dead ender. Holding it out from her mouth, about to take a hit. " - you've gotta be stronger than this, James. I don't like what I'm seeing, here."

This time, she holds the smoke in like she was smoking marijuana, hoping for the maximum high, holding the breath inside as long as she could, to increase the contact between her blood and the drug and flicks the last quarter inch of paper and tobacco away as casually as Decker discarded the remainder of his joint. Her head is canted to the side, 45 degrees from horizontal, her dark eyes shadowed by the sweep of long, mascara-encased lashes. She studies him from that angle for a long series of moments paced by the measured crawl of her breathing once she has exhaled the lungful of smoke. She breaks the look a moment later, dark gaze flickering down in appraisal so distant it seems impersonal, until her eyes lodge on something at the level of his waist. Her right arm swings out from the shoulder, bent at the elbow and wrist, and - quite precisely, deliberately, unselfconsciously - she crooks her right index finger through one of the belt loops of his BDUs, tugs back, like she's testing the workmanship of military surplus, these days.

"But yeah - " her gaze remains downcast, watching her finger crooked at his waist, as the press-pull becomes more insistent, an undercurrent of darker force beneath it: riptide. " - I'm sticking around for the night."

(james)
bottles clank as a stretch lets them slide onto the couch proper
one hand's occupied with rediscovering the finer feathering aspects of her hair
the other rising in a fit of lonely jealousy this cadent mirror
it finds the serpentwolf's shoulder as he's tugged closer by beltloop leash
dark eyes slide closed when dreads swings as his forhead leans against hers

"Yeh?" murmured, now, for their animal senses need no volume "How strong ya think I had a be... t'wake up each day'n keep fightin' a War I was losin' faith in..... jus' cause I hoped it'd be th' day you walk' back through tha' door ev'n though ev'rything tol' me tha' w's a pipe dream."

he, too, watched the crook of finger at his waist
simplistic physical bridge another shortening of the distances created
arms slide around her shoulders, workday grime transferring through glue of sweaty skin
as if the refamiliarizing of each other's scents on flesh needed some visable marker
(scent, it's said, is the most powerful of all senses)
and for all that's shifted for better or worse, something surfaces that's practically fucking unchanged
a grin - that grin - flashing in the shadows

"..... then I guess y'll need s'me place a stay." silence, and his eyes finally lift to seek the smokey shadows surrounding hers "s'a bit more high class'n this."

she doesn't have the chance to answer
not with the way he's lain claim across smirk painted so viciously red
actions speaking intentions his dumbstruck loss of words will never gratify
blood spilled when they were apart for just a week..... what will become of them this first night after a year

Posted by james at July 30, 2004 12:00 AM