memorable.

[Lukas] It's not quite 1am, which is late for the working world but early for clubbers and werewolves everywhere. Not that there are many of either on a Tuesday night.

And this isn't actually the Mile. This is about three blocks off the mile, in a slightly shadier part of town where the nightclubs and the lounge bars reside in great big concrete block-buildings -- ex-warehouses and ex-shipping centers. Most of them are shut down for the week, hibernating until Friday night.

One's still open though. There's no sign out front, no decorations, no indication whatsoever that this is not, in fact, yet another boarded-up warehouse that no one uses anymore. No indication, that is, except for the line out front, the multihued spotlights that paint the plain concrete building surreal and unearthly colors; the bouncers at the door with their velvet ropes, and the lungshaking bass rolling out through the walls.

Lukas is not in line. He's already been inside and now he's back out. He's off to the side, perhaps twenty feet from the door, and there are stamps on the backs of his hands -- from this club and perhaps half a dozen others. He's in deliberately rumpled jeans and a vertically ribbed, sleeveless zip-front top. He's smoking. He never smokes. It's not a cigarette, anyway.

The Ahroun looks unfriendly and badtempered, like the moon was getting the better of him. He looks bored out of his fucking mind. He looks ... well; he doesn't look like he's in pieces, shattered, broken, fucked up.

He just looks mean.


[Gabriella Bellamonte] Gabriella hadn't been standing in line to get into the club. This wasn't her kind of scene, and even if it was she sure as hell wouldn't be going there alone. No, she was out because she couldn't sleep. She wouldn't. Or something like that. The encounter with Caleb had occurred only last night, and she hadn't slept then either. She'd immediately packed a night bag and left The Brotherhood, sleeping in the very still, very vacant Loft for the first time in a few weeks.

Tonight she roamed, a slave of public transprtation by choice, and had wandered off the Magnificent Mile itself for a change of pace and, perhaps, a touch of danger. Stupid girl.

Danger seemed to come, tonight, in a heavy wave of Rage that slapped her in the side of the face unexpectedly when she passed a line to a building that must be a nightclub, judging by the low thump of bass that resonated even through the thick warehouse walls. She paused, her wedge-sandals quiet on the cement sidewalk as it was, and turned to look around, only to find Lukas manifesting from the shadows some seven feet in front of her. She hadn't seen that shirt before. Hadn't ever seen him smoking, either.

Eyebrows flew up in curiosity and a smidgen of concern, and she approached him, hands in the pockets of her denim capris, dressed in a thin and dainty blouse that was a cream-color with capped sleeves, with thin and intricate patternwork of vines and little pink flowers weaving throughout the top.

"Lukas?", she asks. "What are you doing here?"


[Maija] She couldn't sleep, which is happening more and more often, as the month wears on. She'd left him tangled in sheets, sleeping the sleep of the completely satiated, snoring and muttering a complaint as she'd slipped away from hm. She'd left a note should he wake, but she fully intends to return before he needs read it.

So she walks. She's well used to covering many miles, despite the fact she's semi-settled here in the city, at least for a while. She's unsure why she decided to hear toward the Mile, as there is no real direction behind the placement of one foot after another. She just has need to move, so does so.

There's one club still open in the not exactly high end part of the Mile, with a line out front the pound of music barely muffled, the bouncers and the velvet ropes. Not much of a club type - even if she could convince the bouncer she was of age - she is passing it by, her shoulders hunched a little bit, the hood of that familiar sweatshirt pulled low to bathe her face in shadow, her hand shoved deep into the roo pocket of the hoodie. Her jeans are threadbare, and barely held together in places, often patched and mended, and her boots have seen far, far better days.

She feels Lukas before she see's him. The press of a pissed off Full Moon is not easily dismissed, and it causes a hitch in her steps as her gaze lifts and she looks for the source. That's the first thing. The second is the scent of smoke that isn't a cigarette. Another step falters, slows, then completes itself, as she watches - and recognizes the source, just as Gabriella confirms his name.


[Lukas] The Ahroun's eyes are already on Gabriella when she notices him. She comes closer. He's leaning against the wall, his feet planted apart, his back slouched down until his height's closer to six feet, closer to five ten.

When the girl nears, though, he straightens a little. Regains two inches... four.

The blue of his eyes are almost gone; his pupils are huge in the darkness. His eyes are an animal's when he studies her, coolly, rather impersonally. A single blink. Then he looks past her: the street, the brighter, safer parts of the Mile in the distance -- skyscrapers rising above the urban sprawl, the lights that glow off the clouds overhead.

"A bit past your bedtime, isn't it?"


[Gabriella Bellamonte] "Perhaps, but there's nobody around to enforce it anymore..." She answers his question with a sly smirk that's put on as an act, and not a very convincing one either. Lukas had caught her offguard. She expected that, at this hour, he would be doing Garou things-- tracking through the Umbra, having a meeting at the Caern, getting blood and ichor forced down his throat while he bit and tore into monsters of the city's nighttime underbelly.

...Not standing outside a nightclub by himself smoking a joint. She was beginning to learn what marijuana smelled like. That Hispanic girl that said nothing to anyone at The Brotherhood smelled like it a lot of the time.

She moved a little nearer, standing close to the wall but not leaning against it as he was doing, just barely outside of or within arm's reach, she wasn't sure which one it was. "...I answered you. Will you answer me?"


[Maija] Her gaze flicks toward Gabriella as well, in the back of her mind ticking off a list of things that the loners always do: Pretty. Rich. Pretty. Well dressed. Pretty. Composed. Pretty. Shapely. Beautiful hair. Classic features. Did we mention pretty?

All the things Maija is not.

The checklist isn't something malicious so much as automatic. Jr. High was not kind to Maija. High School probably wouldn't have been much better, had she attended. Either way, it is not a sense of jealous, but of rather self-preservation and checks all these off, and more. Lukas gets the same kind of once over, but it's very very fast, and is summed up in one word.

Dangerous.

She walks toward them anyway, intending to simply slip past them.


[Lukas] There's a sense he sees right through the act. His eyes drop to her smirk for a second, come back. A sort of hardness there: a blue as perfect and pale as a boron-seeded diamond.

"There's still Caleb," he reminds her, carelessly. "Our very own N'awlins royalty. Besides which, everyone knows Gabriella Bellamonte's a little mouse. In bed at 9:45. Lights out at 10. Fucking frills and lace. That's not your sister or your brother's influence, little girl, that's all you. Christ; don't you get bored with your life?"

There's an offhandedness in this. Impossible to say if he even knows he's being cruel. He drags a hit off the joint, which smells like it may have cost somewhat more than what the hispanic girl smokes all day. Then again, Gabbie wouldn't know.

The Ahroun rolls his head back against the concrete wall for a moment, closing his eyes. When he exhales, he does so with a faint, faintly satisfied sigh. And no. He doesn't answer Gabbie. He passes her the joint instead -- if she hasn't already left in a huff.


[Gabriella Bellamonte] Previously Gabriella had been looking up at Lukas with eyes that nearly matched his in color, but were much warmer, full of consideration and concern rather than clouded anger and Gaia knows what else. Looking into them was like looking at one of those Magic Eye pictures, where you had to squint just right and cross one eye and chant the magic words or some shit to see the spaceship in the crazy pattern of colors. What she did know, however, was that he was incredibly hostile.

What she guessed was that this was because something drastic had occurred, or someone had actually wounded him, though she couldn't figure out who or what would have. Maybe there was a death? Oh Gaia, not someone in the Pack, she hoped.

He mentioned Caleb, and her lips pursed together, but she didn't speak. He wasn't in the mood to hear about her spat with Caleb and how she wasn't going to listen to or acknowledge him from yesterday on out. He continued on to insult her, calling her a mouse, insulting her lifestyle (like she had a choice in it), and asking her with a tongue sharp as razorblades if she ever got bored of her life.

"Matter of fact...," she murmered, and stared at him incredulously. A scuffing of shoes sounded, and she glanced over her shoulder at Maija. She didn't recognize the girl, couldn't pinpoint Kinfolk like Garou seemed able to, so she didn't stop her or say anything to her. She just paused, then looked back to Lukas when she realized he was holding the joint out to her. She looked at it for a moment, then shook her head. No thank you.

"....Certainly you know--..." She started a thought, but cut it off, thinking twice about going down that path. Instead, she asked in perfect honesty: "Who died?"


[Maija] Part of recognizing at least one of them, is deciding whether or not to go on by. It's the way he offered the join that actually decides her, though she pulls her lower lip between her teeth to chew it contemplatively for a long moment. In the end, it's a no guts no glory kind of decision, and she steps closer.

Her voice is soft, though she expects it carries just far enough. "S'Lukas, right? Ya know Mrena." She saw them together, after all, that first night she met the woman who currently helps pay her few bills, and also terrifies the living shit out of her. Hesitance, then, softly in a rush. "Look, I ain't got no hookup here in town yet, ya got another one o'those i kin buy off ya?" Presumably the joint, of course.


[Lukas] "Finish your sentences," he tells Gabriella: that same tone, careless.

And he looks at Maija. Perfect. Just perfect. The little gawker from the kitchen. He remembers that well enough. A beat. Then he takes another hit, the tip of his joint glowing angry red, before he hands it over to the scrawny little brat.


[Gabriella Bellamonte] Then, the girl that she'd glanced to was right beside them, and this surprised Gabbie because not many people could or would subject themselves to Rage like what Lukas had. At least the girl seemed to have the sense of mind to be concerned for herself. If Gabbie didn't know Lukas, know that she wasn't in danger from him (or at least she thought she knew that he wouldn't harm her), she would likely be wanting to keep away from him too. But it seemed the want of weed won out over want of self-preservation for this girl.

So Lukas told her to finish her sentences, coaxing her into being a smartass, and passed the joint to the scrawnier teenaged girl instead. With a soft scowl, more at Lukas than at Maija, she spoke in a low tone of voice.

"Certainly you know of how bored I get with my life. This is why you've had to track me down for Katherine, why the fuss with Sam and I was stirred up, and why, no doubt soon, you'll be hearing complaints from Caleb," the rat bastard, "about my more current indescretions."


[Maija] Truth be told, she wasn't gawking in the kitchen, she was walking through. But that doesn't matter, much, once he offers her the J. Lips curl into the briefest of smirks before it fades away - so quickly that it might as well not have been there at all. Long skinnny fingers [and weak, they look weak, like she could be broken, has been broken before. In fact the pinky curves in a not quite natural way, an improperly set bone at some point in her past... but though they look weak, they are strong. Far stronger than one would imagine.] reach and take the joint with a little nod of thanks.

She lifts it to her lips, taking a long, practiced drag, and holds it as she passes the J back again. She doesn't come any closer than needed, as she's not completely without a sense of self preservation.

If she has any reaction to what Gabriella says about indescretions, there' not visible.


[Lukas] It's his own goddamn fault. He's the one that told her to finish her sentences. And then she starting going on -- she started gabbing, to be rather punny about it -- and Lukas closes his eyes and presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. He lets her get about as far as hearing complaints from Caleb when he cuts in, suddenly but rather quietly:

"Gabbie. Stop. Right now, I don't give a fuck about your sex life, or what Caleb thinks about it. Go ahead. Act out. Fuck around. Be a little slut if you think that'll help make your life more interesting, or prove how rebellious and different and memorable you are. Only, do it somewhere where you aren't bothering me. Okay?"

A beat.

"And take the brat with you." He means Maija. Whom he addresses, all magnanimous and shit, "Keep the fucking joint."


[Gabriella Bellamonte] Finish your sentences, he says. And so she does, because she knew that if she would've tried to avoid saying what she was going to say, or even tried to lie about what she was going to say, she'd get called out on it. And, in all likelihood, she'd be accused of 'jerking him around', or something of that sort, and he'd become incredibly irritable with her.

But then he interrupted her.

And Christ did what he had to say sting.

At first her eyes widen a little, insult and offense sprawling across that pretty freckled face of hers, and her mouth opened slightly, as though she might have something to say. But then he finished talking, and she remained positively silent. Her mouth closed, her jaw worked some, and expression slid off of her face like how the egg will slide off your toast in the morning if you're not careful. Eyes that had, briefly, shown hurt and outrage went dull, flickered and went blank like a light bulb that just died.

"Enjoy your evening, Lukas," she finally says, the tone of her voice bland enough to match the mannequin-blank face she wore. She then turned, not even casting so much as a courtesy glance to Maija, and started walking in the same direction she had originally been-- away from Lukas and Maija, and through the crowd in front of the club to disappear behind the mass of bodies.


[Maija] The brat. Any expression at that is hidden in the duck and slight turn of her head as she exhales long and slow, lost in the grayish plume that is released without cough, without anything but a little sigh of relief as it hits her. She's been called far worse than a brat, and she actually finds it rather amusing that this is what he chooses to call her. Not that she'd ever let him know that, of course.

He tells the other woman to fuck around all she wants, and take Maija with her, and the other woman walks off. Maija? Doesn't.

Not yet. In fact, she only moves another foot, or two away, and finds a prime piece of wall to lean against. "s'Maija. not Brat. For the record, n'shit. An'thanks." The last for the joint, of which she promptly takes another hit.


[Lukas] If Lukas feels bad about what just came out of his mouth; if he feels bad for taking a million-watt spotlight to Gabbie's life in the harshest, least sympathetic way possible, it doesn't show. He watches her take a few steps away, and then Maija's addressing him, and he's exhaling between his teeth.

"Welcome," he says, the most half-assed stab at courtesy possible. He heads back inside, bypassing the line and flashing his hand-stamp at the door.