An Unorthodox Visitor

[John] CHECK THIS SHIT OUT LAST TWO POSTS

[John] It is not painfully late. Thanks be to whatever spiritual entity is out there blessing and supposedly keeping safe the children of the earth, but the Modi who seems to attract more unwanted female attention than he knows what to do with it keeps strangely human hours. He seems when it is pitch black and the stores have shut down for the night; he awakens with the sun and sticks to a routine. There are days when he does little more than patrol, but he is not a civilian, or a lackadaisical kinsman with nothing to occupy his time but alcohol and loose women. Those of them who take this war seriously, who look at it not so much as a hard push to victory but a long, gruesome, endless campaign that sees soldiers serving multiple tours and has a high rate of mental illness and mortality, do not have nights off.

They have hours of quiet. That's all they can ask for.

That said, it's late enough that most of the businesses in the neighborhood are turning off their lights and locking up their doors but not so late that any normal person would look at her alarm clock and curse the person who does what Imogen's newest visitor does:

tap tap tap tap tap?

on the living room window.

[Imogen] Imogen's light is still on, and he can see her through the opened curtains of her sliding door, seated in a leather chair, a leg drawn up beneath her. She has a glass of scotch in one hand, a book in the other, and the shadow of his presence at the corner of her eye has just entered her awareness when he taps.

Her startle response is not exaggerated, in fact, if anything it is repressed. She turns her head, sharply, her hand with the book, lowering to press against the arm of the chair, as if she might use it to lever herself from the chair if the situation was right.

He is vaguely familiar, though, and her mouth compresses to see him. Still, she turns her book to glance at the page, before setting it down on the coffee table, and placing her whisky tumbler on a coaster beside it. She crosses to the balcony door, a click as she unlocks it, drawing it open.

Imogen is not dressed for bed, but she is at least dressed casually. Jeans, a sweater, though both are more expensive, likely, than any article of clothing John has worn. She slides the door open, though not enough to permit him entrance, her hand still resting on its edge. There is a slight tension to her brow, her jaw. He has come to her territory without permission or direction, and she does not like reminders that all her attempts at privacy are truly false when faced with the abilities of the Garou.

"Traditionally," she says, "one knocks on the door in the hallway, not the balcony." A beat. "What can I do for you?"

[John] The only time this particular Garou has been anywhere near Imogen's territory was when her car broke down, that antiquated Volvo that even the metis had looked at with a curious expression before offering to either fix it or find her another way home. It's appreciably rare for a sin-born to know how to drive in the first place, what with the vast majority of them spending the entirety of their lives sequestered in Caerns for fear of humanity noticing their tails, their horns, their scales. So few of them can pass as human, and even John, for being as suffused with Rage as he is, is handsome and well-fed enough to not have that sickly, borderline feral appearance so many of them possess.

Perhaps if he had scars on his throat, some sort of reason why a human would be rendered incapable of speech, that would cement the charade. Even without them the first conclusion drawn by the majority of individuals is not metis.

At any rate, John made it up nine flights of a fire escape, silently despite his appreciable bulk, and when Imogen turns away from her reading, he's distinguishable as little more than an impression of a person before she opens the balcony door.

It's a ridiculously warm night, compared to how it has been lately, and John appears to think it's warm enough to not wear a coat. He has on a zip-up sweatshirt over a t-shirt; blood is seeping through the thick cotton, but his respirations and color are not indicative that he's in any great pain. The kinswoman's sweater probably costs more than his entire outfit, to include the boots he wears.

Amusement stains his features but does not reveal itself in a smile when she reminds him of how it is humans typically announce their presence in a stranger's home. He seems to have prepared a statement, for the Fenrir pulls a leather-bound journal out of his back pocket, flips through it, and presents it to her without fanfare.

Amy wont stop texting me
Need to be arond other adult or going to skreem

Very funny, John.

[Imogen] Her eyebrow arches as she reads the note, resisting the urge to correct his spelling. "And you chose me, did you?" she asks, aloud, perhaps a little resigned.

Several moments of silence pass - Imogen does not seem to allow entrance into her sanctuary without consideration. Her gaze drifts to the blood staining and growing through the cotton of his shirt, then back to the journal.

What he can see of the room behind him is Spartan. No pictures or paintings on the walls, each piece of furniture holding a purpose. Strands of music - a quiet, instrumental jazz, plays from the stereo within, out of sight.

After a moment, she hands him the journal and steps back, giving him room to enter. "Try not to bleed on the floor," is what he gets by way of welcome.

[John] Of all the Kinfolk in Chicago, why on earth would he choose her, plenty of folks would want to know, before stopping to consider what it is that they were asking.

Unfortunately, John either doesn't understand the concept of a rhetorical question, or he thinks he's funny or charming or cute or any number of qualities women look for in men, because he scratches out a response.

You talk less than i do

Her only directive is not to bleed on the floor--correction: try not to bleed on the floor--and John bobs his head in a nod. This is not an entirely unacceptable condition. The journal is pocketed, the pen stuck behind his ear, and he steps inside.

Once there, he doesn't seem either impressed or startled by the state of her apartment. If it's what he expected, it goes without comment; if it's aberrant, it suffers the same fate. John takes a few steps in, glances down at his midsection now that he's been granted some semblance of light, then turns to Imogen. His expression becomes an inquiry, and he pantomimes hand-washing.

[Imogen] John answers her rhetorical question, and Imogen's mouth twists - not quite a smile, though something wry prompts her smirk. "I imagine that's true."

Further inside her living room, he sees much of what he had seen from the small slice of the area through her balcony door. A media centre in the corner, but no TV, only a stereo system. CDs and albums fill the space a television might.

She appears to favour dark furniture, and has not bothered to paint her walls. The floor beneath his feet is expensive, genuine hardwood. There is a sense of space here. The condominium is quite large, expanding well beyond the living room. She lives on a corner; the view he could have seen from her balcony was impressive; she has likely paid a lot for these privileges.

Spartan does not quite cover the description; beyond her music, there is no sense of her personality. Simply a space in which she lives and takes care not to clutter.

Her eyes drop to his hands, then lift again to his face, as she tilts her head, "The kitchen is through that door," she says, indicating toward the far end of the living room. "If yeh want a drink, there is a bottle o' scotch on the counter and glasses above the cupboard left o' the stove."

A more gracious hostess would offer to get him it. A more gracious hostess might offer him something other than what she's drinking. She lets him walk by her, before walking back toward her sofa chair, and taking her seat once more.

To the left of the kitchen is a hallway - three doors visible, only one open at the far end of the hall. The door through which he is directed swings both ways. The kitchen is clean and shows no signs of anyone who particularly enjoys to cook, granite counter-tops and appliances that are of no import, as she took no care in choosing them and likely, he does not inspect them closely. There is liquid hand soap by the sink, and as promised, scotch on the counter.

When he returns, she has picked back up her book.

[John] It's entirely possible he was attempting to ask where the bathroom was and simply didn't have a universally recognized home sign for an enclosed space where one could clean up. It's also entirely possible that he thinks Imogen doesn't actually have a bathroom, that this is like the metropolitan equivalent of a cabin where the facilities are a short hike through the forest or the shower is attached to the back of the house. He may very well want to ask, or clarify, if the lingering furrow on his brow is any indication, but he doesn't question her.

That would require writing, or more ineffective gesticulating, and beyond that: this woman has no qualms with firing off round after round at deformed Wyrm-spiders hellbent on destroying all the come into contact with. She can handle the sight of Gaian blood.

The metis bobs his head, his gratitude vaguely confused yet no less genuine, and pushes into the kitchen.

He isn't in there very long. The water runs, and the cabinets open, and a glass thumps against the counter after he takes a shot, so whatever he wanted to do while he was in there, he accomplished. When he emerges, his hair and face are damp, but he's also missing his sweatshirt and whatever he'd had on under it. The wound cut across his torso is not going to kill him, wouldn't even if his guts were strewn across his lap, but it's gaping. There is a brief flash of it as he comes into view, and then he covers it up with his gore-stained t-shirt.

John knocks on the wall should she not look up at his return. The next sign he makes is a slightly more universal: sewing. His left hand makes the movement with some degree of precision.

[Imogen] She pauses, a glance at his wound and perhaps she too, contemplates saying something. However she gets to her feet in lieu of saying anything. Easier simply to leave her question unasked than try and continue an awkward conversation with a metis.

She sets down the book, her drink again. The title of the book is "Of the Epidemics". The author, apparently is Hippocrates. Imogen does not appear to be one for light reading.

She leads him down the hall to one of four doors, one of two which are open. It is a small guest bathroom, unadorned with niceties but the necessities are maintained. She sinks to a crouch in front of the sink and opens the cupboard beneath. Where many would keep toilet papers and beauty supplies, Imogen keeps gauze and suture kits. She sets the gauze on the counter-top followed by tape. The suture kit she holds in her hand as she straightens, then offers it to him without a word.

[John] It isn't an insult or a slight that Imogen chooses not to speak though John isn't deprived of sound in addition to being deprived of speech. There are women who take his muteness as a sign that it's acceptable or desired that they fill in the gaps where normal conversation ought to go, and that's fine; those, however, are the women who spur him to take refuge in a stranger's apartment when he could easily shift to lupus and trot the rest of the way home.

The man is not a man at all but a monstrous amalgamation of his parents' inability to control themselves. Lucky that he was born into a tribe that views him as no worse than any other Cub who hasn't proven himself yet: he was not mistreated unless one is willing to look at his fostering in the scope of a far broader margin rather than containing it to his tribe.

That said, animals do not rely largely on verbal speech to communicate, and they certainly don't have written language. What he wants from Imogen, he is able to convey with his body. She leads him to the bathroom, and with her back to the metis she can't see the dawning look on his face, the realization that she does, in fact, have a bathroom.

Oops.

He stands out of the way of the door, keeping from boxing the significantly slighter creature in any more than is necessary. It isn't until Imogen hands John the suture kit that he considers walking into the bathroom after her. He flashes a tight, out-of-practice smile that shows no teeth yet briefly crinkles the corners of his eyes, hefts the suture kit as if to thank her.

Without speaking, it's hard to tell what the next step is, but it would appear as though he's waiting for her to vacate the premises so he doesn't have to squeeze past her. It's a small space, and 'small' isn't a word would would readily apply to the Modi.

[Imogen] The truth is, conversation where one is absolutely mute is awkward. It is strange to speak aloud while the other communicates in silence. As if a vital part of the interaction is missing, a gap, like someone speaking lines with no one playing the second part.

He says a silent thanks, and Imogen shakes her head slightly. "Don't mention it," she says, in lieu of acceptance of the gratitude, or even silence.

With that, she walks out of the bathroom, allowing him in, and returns to the living room. He had not asked for help, and she has not offered it.

[John] Given the location of his wound it's entirely possible he could have benefitted from a second set of hands, but for someone as dissecting as Imogen is, whose living is dependent upon her ability to uncover truth from the dead--they, themselves, incapable of speaking either--she does not get the impression that he would want help. He has no defensive marks on his palms or wrists. When he's attacked, he kills whatever it is that comes at him rather than simply fending off the inevitable.

What is inevitable, in his case, is that he'll come away from the fight victorious, without having to use his rage to keep himself there. That's the plan, anyway, though if Imogen glances at the younger creature she'll notice he has his fair share of scar tissue on his chest. Some of them overlap, and she cannot see his abdomen to know if he has taken killing blows to his midsection.

When she leaves him to his task, should she glimpse his back, there is only one scar there, the size of the average woman's fist: the ghost of a puncture. It has an entry wound covered by his t-shirt. It is the only posterior scar he carries, and it disappears when he turns around.

He's gone a fair amount of time, and though occasionally she can hear him whistling, Imogen isn't treated to his presence again until after he's stitched shut his wound, cleaned away the blood, washed his shirts, and hung them over the curtain rod to dry.

Then he moseys back into the living room, bare-chested, wound near-professionally stitched closed, and parks his ass on a chair without waiting for permission. He hauls in a breath that would be a yawn if he didn't suppress it, then lazily hauls his journal out of his pocket again.

[Imogen] John gives the impression he does not want help - Imogen gives the impression she does not want to offer it, though given the fact she owns a suture kit (a stock thereof, in fact) is sign enough that she likely could have.

It works out well.

She drinks her scotch and reads her book and tries to ignore the presence of a Fenrir in her bathroom. The knowledge lays against her skin like a wool cloak, irritating her nerves.

It is not him, but other things.

When he returns, she glances up, her gaze following him as he takes a seat. He retrieves his journal and her gaze lowers to look at it, if he begins to write. She does not put down the book until or unless he offers the journal to her, but if he does, she leans forward to take it, her gaze dropping to the words he's written.

[John] Stoicism doesn't afford one much room for the pursuit or acceptance of assistance. It's entirely possible he's here because the thought of returning to the packhouse isn't the most appealing prospect in the world, because of all the people he can think of who would willingly offer him some sort of physical contact not a one of them could claim mental stability or emotional maturity, because he wants to be around someone who isn't going to talk the entire goddamn time. That state of being able to comfortably exist in another's presence without need for pointless conversation doesn't typically come after the first two or three meetings, though, and plenty of kinswomen would have clucked and fretted over him as soon as he appeared at their doors, let alone once they realized he was injured.

It's as though the most romantic thing they could think of would be to help nurse a grown man, a Modi, return himself to a state where he could continue trooping toward the South Side; never mind that all he likely would have wanted from them was the suture kit and to be left the hell alone.

The thought of having a Fenrir in her bathroom irks her, but John is none the wiser.

When he brings pen to paper, it is not to idly sketch, or to print out a list of things he needs from the store on his way back. It's a message, the printing sloppy, the sort of handwriting one expects from a child rather than a grown man. It's incongruous with his muddy physical age. He's young, yet like most metis, life hasn't been particularly kind to him.

Clicking the pen closed, John sits up straighter, the muscles in his arms and back compensating for the damage to his midsection, and leans forward to hand her the journal.

You liv alon

There is no question mark, but should she look over at him, Imogen will see the inquiry stitched into his brow.

[Imogen] She reaches over to take the journal, but does not straighten and return to her seated position when she turns it toward herself. The sentence is short, it does not require time to read - plus, if they both become caught in a sort of pulley system of leaning forward to take and leaning back to read or write, they will likely be at this for a long while.

"I do," she says. "Though there are people who stay here from time to time."

She turns the journal back to him for him to take and write. "Fenrir, are yeh?"

[John] This clearly strikes him as strange, either because she's a woman or because she's Kinfolk. Granted, to look at him, with the last vestiges of a tan clinging to his skin, his musculature, the fact that he has several weeks' worth of scruff covering his jaws, he seems as though he would be more inclined to call rural Illinois 'home' than this metropolitan jungle into which he stumbled over two weeks ago. Without being able to speak, he could be toting with him centuries' worth of archaic traditional beliefs and no one would even know; all they have is his physical appearance, which in and of itself suggests an adherence to a way of life that is starting to die off.

The question she asks him doesn't require a written response. Even if he were to say nothing, it's practically written into his bone structure. His eyes are not the startling variety that seems to mark the insane or the visionary; they're darker, granting them a warmth that isn't typically associated with his tribe. John nods, the inquisitiveness not yet fading from his face.

[Imogen] It must be a change of pass with her - to hold a conversation with someone who is quieter than she is. To hear her voice more than any other.

One imagines, given her reticence, this is an uncommon occurrence.

He looks at her inquiringly, his eyes speaking a query or a desire to ask one, and she merely lifts an eyebrow. "What?" she asks, the question mildly curious rather than rude.

The music on her stereo has shifted now, a violinist playing something classical. Bach. She has no desire for music with words today.

[John] He has to be aware that his spelling is atrocious, or else that he is in the presence of a woman whose intellect far surpasses that of most other Kinfolk's; he doesn't immediately go for the journal when he responds.

First he points to himself, repeats the nod as close to its original execution as he can, as if to establish that they're discussing tribe; then he points to Imogen, his wrist toward the ceiling as though that makes it softer, less accusatory, and that curious expression returns to his brow. He shakes his head, slower, and returns his hand to his knee.

[Imogen] Her mouth twists slightly. "I'm sure dependin' on whom yeh ask, yeh'll get a different answer. I try not t'get involved in such things."

[John] That makes sense to him. He doesn't seem like a man capable of even passing off white lies as truth, let alone one who can so carefully construct a fallacy that it can be sold without great effort. No one ever accuses John of lying; few people, however, recognize the limitations that come along with being what he is, recognize that spending half of his life beyond the reach of humanity hasn't set him up to be completely socialized and well-adjusted.

The concept of lying for its own sake is beyond his grasp, at the moment, so when he seems as though he accepts her answer, it isn't a charade. John nods, his expression a clear Alright, and leaves it at that.

[Imogen] She nods, slightly, silent acknowledgment of his expression, her face still as it moves toward the balcony door. Her book sits on the coffee table by her drink, which is down to the final finger of scotch.

A renewed silence - or perhaps best described as a lack of conversation - falls between them.

After a time, she moves, getting to her feet easily and fluidly. "I'm goin' fer a cigarette," she says simply. "Yeh can stay, or go or -" an absent shrug of her shoulders, an ironic twist of her mouth. "Come out and enjoy the fresh air."

He is left to his decision - Imogen chooses to brave the colder weather with only her sweater, and moves to the balcony door, stepping into flat-soled shoes before she steps outside. Her cigarettes are on the stoop at the threshold, on the apartment side. These she picks up as well, drawing the door behind her.