Ben
Maybe it's break time, maybe it's a day off, maybe Ben hit one of those flaky times where he fell into a bottle or a needle or a line or something - who knows? Regardless, it's a relatively nice day - gray and damp and occasionally misting, a bit cold to the desert flower, but still greening, turning towards spring. Soon, trees will have buds and flowers will be pushing to the sky. Now, though? Torn jeans with thermals underneath, a work jacket and a flannel open over the matching top to the bottoms.
Open. And a skinny, runt-ish, hispanic (at least part - maybe part white, too, but no one's guessing) lying on the wet brown-gray-green grass looking up through the tree branches above him, lost in something only he sees or hears.
How long he's been here is anyone's guess.
Georgie
Georgie is storming down an avenue bordering on a park, looking highly affronted in a pair of jeans, ankle boots, and her long grey coat buttoned nearly to her knees. Moisture from the constant drizzle that hangs over this city, its weather baseline, weighs down the waves of her golden hair, causing little tendrils of it to curl and almost frizz annoyingly.
Her blue eyes are stormy and her cheeks are flushed in the way they get when she's upset. The source of her agitation is a couple of blocks back. The source of her salvation is a couple blocks further in the form of the nearest bus stop that goes in the direction of home.
Ben
Angry steps tattoo along the sidewalk and as they come closer the Uktena kin winces, almost flinches, and gets up. He's a bit on the sluggish side, but already defensive. There's no Noah here, so there's not really any reason to draw attention to himself . . . and yet, when he sees a certain blonde princess Ben's lips tug into an amused smirk. Of course it's here. And he's just out of it enough . . .
"Hey, princess. Someone didn't bow low enough?"
. . . to tease. Yeah, he thinks he's funny; Noah'd probably laugh, he thinks. And then make him drink all the water in an attempt at detox.
Georgie
Hey, princess.
The semi-familiar voice calling out to her makes her stop up short and look around, confusion all over her face. Then she sees him. Then she sees his smirk. If she weren't already fighting off a wave of upset she might simply snap at him and keep going.
But she's already fighting off that wave, and his words just make it crash over her. Face reddening further, her pretty face screws up in a most unpretty way.
"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" she yells, voice breaking as she ends in a sudden and wholly unwanted sob. Standing in the drizzle on the sidewalk, she starts to cry.
Ben
Normally, Ben would apologize, try to make nice - he's the kind of guy that most people like, after all, once they get over the part where he's a blind spot in some pretty important primal ways - ways that most people don't even realize matter. Now, though, he frowns and looks at her for a moment, considering. It's a moment for tough love, maybe.
"Then . . . stop acting like you think you are one?"
It's a question, not a statement. And certainly not an order.
Georgie
Georgie has no idea what Ben would normally do in this situation, he's only ever been mean to her. The worst kind of mean, too. He makes jabs at her with a smile on his face, stabs at all her softest spots (which, to be fair to the Uktena kinsman, there are many) with the infuriating air of friendliness. Georgie has always ignored that tone and responded to his words, his remarks about her size and lake thereof and the assumed habits that make her that way.
"You!" she says, jabbing a finger at him. There is something she wants to say, something she can't quite place in her mind and can't quite fathom into shape. Something about how he treated her in that seven-eleven, something something. But she's too upset, face red, angry, bitter tears streaming down her cheeks. She shoves the pointing hand into a pocket of her coat, turns away from him, and continues to make her stormy way down the sidewalk.
cameron hart
Cameron is just there. There's no particular reason for him to be in the park, no purpose that he can attest to and nothing that seems to be anchoring him there on the bench with long legs spread wide and arms cocked back with elbows hitched on the back of the seat. The looks are the same (surly expression and dark stormy eyes, hair that's in need of a trim and the scars that haven't magically gone away) and the clothes aren't much different (long sleeve shirt and slacks - pressed) either.
His movements are slow, slow like a body moving through water. Running to stand still. He leans forward with elbows pressing into knees and covers his face with his hands. People avoid him naturally, all of that Rage unspent is too much for the majority of humanity to bear, and so when he looks up from between splayed long fingers (claws) it's not because anyone skirts too close to the circumference of his personal space...no, it's just the mere vibration of Georgie's presence.
That singular, familiar vibrating pulse that part of her sends out to wolf's like him. The yell just cements her presence in his mind and his eyelids hover at half mast before closing slowly, his hands drag back up his face and for a long period of stillness and silence he just sits there, face in hands focusing all of his attention on the beat of footsteps and the pitch of a yell.
Maybe she'll miss him. Not even notice he's there in her mad tirade or whatever the fuck is wrong with Miss Georgie on this fine Wednesday, but he's sure that he's got about as good a chance of that happening as she had of him not noticing her.
Like calls to like, baby. It's just the way that it is.
His hands slide back down his face and he cuts deep brown eyes toward the sound of her voice and ...Ben's. Hackles raise, or would if he ran on four legs, but his teeth bare faintly...pearly whites exposed between pink full lips. She can't miss him now. No chance of it, she's headed right his way. A deep rush of air fills his lungs and slowly the tall Ahroun uncurls his body from where he'd been sitting for who knows how long and starts to straighten the cuffs of his shirt.
Habit.
"Why are you crying this time?" He says to Georgie, quiet considering the distance still between them but the deep roll of his voice manages to close the space between his lips and her ears.
Georgie
[wits+etiquette: conduct yourself respectfully, Georgie. let's say base diff +1 for cryface]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )
Ben
Something about how he treated her at that Seven-Eleven - of course. Of course it's how he treated her - because that's how it is with entitled princesses, isn't it? Sure, he was a jerk - he'll admit that. But not at first, oh no. Never at first. And now? Well, again there's that thought and then he's keeping pace with her because why not? It's more difficult than it seems it should be, given that she's taller, and he's (probably some kind of) stoned.
"Hey. I'm sorry I was a jerk - but not about the princess part. That's just fact - if you act like you're the queen and everyone else is a bunch of nothing below you, people are going to respond to that."
It's common sense, he thinks, and there's a wall of Rage and he hauls up as another voice breaks through the haze. Why are you crying this time, it says, and the Uktena kin can't help snickering a bit. Quietly, of course. Into his sleeve.
"Hey, I remember you. From the diner."
Georgie
The Uktena kinfolk catches her up and she angles away from him, not letting herself curl up, trying so hard not to let him see just how well and truly he's added to her upset. It puts her to the very edge of the sidewalk, where one misstep could have her toppling into a street which is, for the moment at least, fairly quiet. She steps away when he almost apologizes.
Stopping again, she turns on him. "I'm not a queen! I'm not anything, okay? I don't have an eating disorder and I can't afford fucking Starbucks, okay? Will that get you to take a hint and leave me-"
She hadn't noticed the Rage, not on a conscious level. That'd be the byline of Georgie's biography: Too wrapped up in herself to notice the world around her. She notices it when he rises, that slow deliberation catching her attention mid-sentence and yanking it away from the kinsman. When she sees the older Garou her chin lowers abruptly, shoulders sagging, all the fight in her, all the upset abruptly melting away. Rubbing beneath her eyes with her thumb, she misses Ben's snicker. That's probably for the best. Or maybe this is the best time for him to get in all his jabs, all his laughter, all his mocking taunting of the differences between them.
Looking away from the Garou, she says with as much dignity as she can muster (which isn't much), "It's nothing."
cameron hart
His shoulders roll, like a big aging lion woke from slumber in the noon day sun. They roll and with the movement his hands fine their place in the pockets of his slacks. A furrow settles along his brow and though his eyes remain on Georgie he speaks to Ben. "Yes." A pause, "The brave one." The statement (compliment? slight? who the fuck knows with Cameron...) is met with a quick dash of his eyes to the kinsmen before looking back to the kinswoman with that same perplexed expression on his face.
"I shouldn't think it was 'nothing'." He rumbles at her shifting his weight evenly on both feet. Georgie is free to move along the path as she intended, all she has to do is step around the six foot something wall of pulsating Rage.
With a faint cock of his head to one side he looks at her again, studying the rubik's cube made flesh that is the much younger woman in front of him. Finally he leans in, from the waist up only, and situates his lips not far from her ear. His Rage is a heat that pulsates from his flesh outward, warming every thing near him.
Stop crying. Not here. Not now.
Those few words are a rumble of sound. Human words formed on an oddly comforting inhuman growl.
Straightening his spine he looks away from her. He isn't so dull as to not know that his eyes on her aren't helping matters any. "What was your name again?" Is said to Ben, and that quickly the spotlight is removed from the young lady in front of him and shifted to the Uktena kin.
Ben
"Then stop. acting. like. it. And for fuck's sake, try not acting like everyone and every thing is below you." He can get not being able to afford Starbucks. after all; a lot of the time he can't either, though it's never bothered him. A lot of the time, he and Noah are lucky to have a roof over their heads.
Or, that was what he would have said, but then there's a fucking giant leaning in to the princess (who is in another castle on another planet, as far as Ben's concerned - though given their interactions he hasn't really stopped to consider her youth (not so much younger than he is anyway, really) or attractiveness. She's a brat of a girl who treated him like dirt and, given his background and series of chemical imbalances and neuroses, he can't help wanting to prove her wrong. Nor can he help when he steps nearer to her at Cam's leaning, all 5'7 of him that's about a hundred seventy five pounds soaking wet if that, frowning. "Hey," he says, and it's calm and nice but there's a surprising amount of steel there behind the voice that's gained a quaver, behind the skin that's taken an unnatural pallor. "Leave her alone, yeah? I don't know what her deal is, but she's obviously having a bad day."
It's funny how sweet he can sound, how quickly and easily he becomes most people's best friend - and it's funny how there's nothing on the air that speaks of him. Just Georgie and exhaust and the park awakening in spring, and empty space where 'the brave one' should be.
"I'm Ben. Jackson."
Georgie
The irony of Ben telling her that she acts like everyone and everything is below her, is that she is currently cowed into something at least resembling submission. It's also that she has tried, mostly and in the worst ways possible, to get him to leave her alone and he, for reasons she cannot begin to fathom, won't. But at the moment it's mostly that she is most definitely not behaving as though she belongs on whatever pedestal he has imagined her onto.
And there's some irony in Cameron telling her to stop crying. If she were the same spoiled girl she'd been when she first left home in December her tantrum would immediately intensify and she would explode at him that she's trying while also crying harder. The irony here is that yes, she has been trying to stop crying since long before she even started. The wall of Rage leaning in close to her makes her wince, the angry heat of him so far outside of his control too much to bear.
His words cause the hastily formed and flimsy dam she'd erected around this current surge of out of control emotion to break. Eyes squeezed shut like that might actually help in some way, the tears that had barely stopped for little more than a second leak their way down her cheeks again.
The greatest strangeness of all is that Ben, who has done nothing but needle and stab at her weaknesses since the day they met, moves in closer to her, almost defensively. Georgie lifts her chin just slightly, looking at him with open confusion. He's taller than her, actually, or would be if they were both in bare feet. The slight heel of her boots makes them about even. Weirdly (to her), it bolsters her.
She does not move any closer to either male, in fact looks a bit like she's trapped between spike walls closing in, but she lifts her chin a fraction higher.
In a voice that is soggy despite her deepest desire that it not be, she says to Cameron, "I mean it's not important, sir."
cameron hart
There are things that Cameron can't possibly know about Georgie or Ben - or they about him. They're all going on what the cover says about the content inside the book that is all of them and ...well..sometimes the outer sleeves read far easier than the content on the pages between. Cameron doesn't even know himself. He doesn't know his past any better than he does either of the kin before him. But, like Georgie, it's not the past that wakes him up at night sweating and teetering on the edge of exchanging skin for fur and fingers for claws ... it's the future.
Ben can't stop himself. Cameron is familiar with the disorder that plagues the dark haired kin, that inner motor that drives a man to protect the things they feel need protecting. The difference between the two of them is that Cameron carries a wolf inside of him. It paces just behind his eyes and shakes his bones until they tremble. He's a full moon too and because of that suffers from a territorial streak that cuts through him like the main artery to his heart and the nerves to his brain.
On instinct his body straightens though it doesn't tense up necessarily; he is loose and limber, but the vibration and anticipation of action is palpable to each of them standing there and those that skirt a wide berth to go around them. A slight dip drops his chin a little toward his chest and he takes a step forward, head cocking once again faintly to one side. The growl that had brought to Georgie's ears words now only bring a warning to Ben.
"Don't." Is the most he can manage for the young kinsman, and that word rumbles and rolls from between his lips. He told Georgie that he could control himself. He wouldn't hurt a kinfolk. And he makes good on that promise, his own Willpower like a choke chain tightening around the animal waiting for release.
When his eyes lower back to her, his expression threatens to soften. He almost looks helpless for a flash of a moment when his eyes roam over the glistening of tears that rolled hot as his Rage down her cheeks. Dark eyes lower to his hands, appendages not made for comfort or healing or holding but instead are designed perfectly by a Goddess for killing and destruction. It wasn't always that way though....he can remember, in confusing flashes, that he was once not so long ago very...very much like Ben.
Ahhem.
He clears his throat and looks back at Ben. "Don't tell me what to do." Then to Georgie, "I'm not sir..." Though that is said much quieter than his warning to Ben.
Ben
[Oh, what the hell.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ben
The step back, ceding ground, is instinctive - but so is the posture that straightens. The eyes that clear, at least for a moment, are more physiological, but still; there's a lot to be said for this reaction, so different than fight or flight. And Ben's still there, not quite between Cameron and Georgie but definitely in a spot that means he has to be passed to get to the girl . . . not that that's difficult.
"No, you're right," comes not-bumbling-and-not-straight-either but somewhere in between - he's not the brightest, is the Uktena kin, but maybe he's not the dumbest either. "But I didn't tell, I asked. I called to whatever empathy you have, which is quite a bit all things considered, if I can trust your eyes. And you almost always can, you know - trust people's eyes, I mean. Yours are probably the least scary part of you, or at least have been both times we've met."
This last is with a rueful smile - and yes, Ben knows he may well be talking himself into a hole. There are only so many things that feel the way Cam does, or that act the way he does.
"I'm just sayin', girl's upset and towering over her all menacing isn't going to help any. Letting her use one of us as a punching bag might."
Georgie
The difference between the kinfolk could not be more marked than at this moment, and that's saying something. There are the obvious class differences. On the surface, there's the muddled genetic pool that created Ben Jackson and the (mostly, almost) carefully pruned tree that ostensibly leads to Georgina Kingsley-Lockwood. There is his tattered and faded layers and her in her coat whose retail value would make a significant down payment on a new car. A new new car at that.
But Ben grew up with a novice Ahroun, was there from the very beginning of that shift in their story. He has grown with a fledgling Ahroun, can tell the moods that come from the Rage and which come from the man. He can see past it, too.
Georgie did not. If her interactions with Garou in this city tell them anything it's that her exposure to Garou and the ways of the shifters is limited, if she's had any at all. She is the daughter of kings, the granddaughter of queens, but she can't stand to be around them. She doesn't know what to do with them. Before she treated them as any other person, but she has learned to be afraid of them. Of all of them. Cameron says he's not sir and her frown deepens as she continues to refuse to look at him.
Ben's words move her, though, much as she would hate to admit it. His comment about Cameron's eyes draw Georgie's attention to them, if only for a moment. Just long enough to see how achingly human they are, despite the Rage. It brings to mind their conversation. Their other conversation? There was something that he said to her then, something that hadn't seemed so important at the time but wants to make itself known now. Before it materializes, Ben keeps talking.
Her head jerks back like she's just smelled something awful suddenly. Her nose even wrinkles like she has. "Look whatever you think, I'm a bitch, whatever, I don't hit people." She looks like she'd rather walk into traffic than try. Looking vaguely in the direction of Cameron's collar, she says, "And taking a step back wouldn't be the worst thing." Sniffing, she takes another swipe at her face. The crying hasn't stopped but at least it has subsided to a light trickle.
cameron hart
Ben's words bring the dark tumultuous eyes of the ahroun land squarely and completely on him. There's a lot hiding behind those eyes but there aren't enough people with enough courage (and lack of smarts) to stare into them for that long. There's no pack to speak of, no mate though his ring finger is tattooed with intricate swirls and hidden glyphs. Maybe there's someone - somewhere - that's waiting for Cameron Hart. Someone who worries about whether or not he'll be coming home or not.
Or maybe there's someone like Georgie sitting in a palace somewhere hoping that he doesn't...
Their words bring him back a step or two, his eyes jerk away from Ben and flash to Georgie. He gets lost sometimes, Cameron does. In his thoughts or dreams. In the red places that never amount to anything good when he crawls out of them. His wide, generous mouth is drawn thin and tight and he takes one more step back. One more look at Ben, then Georgie.
"Maybe you should." He says to her, his tone that same low rumble of sound that drags his words to the both of them. "Hit people." ...to clarify.
There's a nod from the Ahroun another step back and to the side before he starts to make his way around the pair and further down the path.
Ben
Maybe she should, but Ben is visibly relieved to not have that to explain to his brother - princess-sized fist prints in his tender flesh would be a problem, he's sure. Noah doesn't like it when anyone puts hands on him, and for good reason. "It was a figure of speech, Pri . . .Georgi . . . GG." It'll do for now, at least, until she deigns to give him something to call her. "I really hope you don't hit people - or me, anyway. And that if you do, you do it somewhere I can watch, and take bets."
There's amusement there, almost always. But Cameron - whose name Ben still doesn't know, is taking off and Ben gives his back a wave of clearly broken-more-than-once fingers. "Good seeing you again. Maybe we should make a habit of it or something."
Georgie
She probably should. At least one of them would take bets. It is all so mad Georgie can only look between Ben and Cameron's clavicle like both men have lost their damn minds. On the upside, her crying finally stops completely, the turn of conversation having shifted away from Georgie's behavior and attitude and in particular the unfortunate meetings she keeps having with this idiot boy who makes her so mad and upset so easily (which only makes her more mad and more upset).
Cameron makes his way around them then, making his way away from the kinfolk. Georgie's first instinct is to go trailing in his wake. Her next instinct is to bolt in the complete opposite direction. Ultimately, she does neither, not exactly. "Goodbye," she says, chin lowered and eyes away from him as he moves around Ben, not aware that by being overly polite and avoiding him may be just as damaging as her usual fiery attitude. Garou treat their kinfolk differently, wolf to wolf and tribe to tribe, but they are drawn together. There is a simbiosis that exists between the two halves of a single whole whether attraction or deeper interest are present or not. They aren't meant to estrange themselves from each other as Georgie tries to do.
Behind him, Cameron can't see her roll her eyes, but he can hear, "Georgie, not GG. I'm not your pet poodle."
She rubs lightly at her face, too genteel to really scrub at her eyes in public. "Thanks," she says to Ben when she's finished. There is a kind of grudging respect in her too-blue eyes, still murky from crying.
