if i warn people they don't let me do it.

[Liadan] Whenever Robbie returns to Eugenie Terrace, Líadan isn't there. There's no sign that she's been there, no added clutter, no shifted papers, no lingering smell of dinner. He doesn't know her schedule, where she went tonight, or even if it's normal for the Fianna kinswoman to stay out until the post-midnight hours on a Tuesday night.

That's when she returns, though. It's well past midnight when her key slides into the lock, the door opens, and someone enters the apartment. Despite her best efforts, her camera bag is dropped to the floor. She kicks off her Chucks, leaves them where they lie rather than putting them on the rack by the door. She slides out of her brown button-down, revealing a black camisole beneath - the over shirt is tossed onto the back of a dining chair as she makes her way to the kitchen. Her steps are shuffling and unsteady, but she gets there. And she goes to get herself a glass of water.

[Robbie Murdoch] Liadan's apartment is silent when she returns. The TV isn't on. Her unexpected houseguest isn't playing her video games. The place doesn't smell like food, or like cheap soap, or -- to her relatively insensitive human nose -- like anything at all except what scents and smells she might associate with her home. Maybe he's gone. He said three days, maybe. It wasn't a definitive answer, and it certainly wasn't a promise. The way he came may well have heralded the way he'd leave: utterly without forewarning or explanation.

It might be a relief. It's got to be uncomfortable having him here. She knows almost nothing about him, except that he comes from somewhere northeastern, he expects and respects hospitality, and he sleeps like a stone, solidly. He was asleep long before she was and he was still sleeping when she left this morning. Her sleep might've been a different story. It couldn't have been easy, falling asleep with a stranger and a monster in her living room.

When she comes out of her kitchen with her water, though, he's there on the floor, sitting up from behind the armchair, a silent shadow in the dark. It's not until he leans over and fumbles a floorlamp on that she can see he's not being a goddamn prick or a heart-attack-inducer on purpose. He's bleary, rumpled, rubbing his face with his hand as he squints at his kin.

"Time's it?" A pause; she's barely had time to take a step. Half-asleep or not, he's that quick to pick up on it: "What's the matter with ya? You drunk?"

[Liadan] [whoa shit I forgot about you!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Liadan] What the day she's had, the things she's seen, and experienced, she forgot all about her unexpected house guest. The only light she's turned on since she entered her apartment is the entry light. The glow spills into the dining area, providing just enough light so that she doesn't stub her toe on something. She doesn't even bother with the kitchen light. She doesn't have to. Lee's lived here for over six months; she knows where everything is, or at least where it's supposed to be.

Robbie is hidden from her view by the half-wall dividing he dining area from the living room, which is all dark. All silent. Just the way it's supposed to be this time of night. She hears him before she sees him, hears the rustle of fabric, his clothing or the blanket she'd left for him last night. She freezes in the doorway to her kitchen, her hand tightening on her glass as she squints. Her brain won't work, though. She wants to calculate the odds of her escape, if she could make it to the elevator before whatever is lying in wait for her can catch her, if she can make it down to the security desk and buy herself some time to get to The Brotherhood. But the thoughts are hazy and muddled.

A light flares to life, and she blinks at the bleary face peering over the half-wall at her. Even standing still, she sways unsteadily, her balance off. He notices.

"No," she says, leaning against the wall leading into her kitchen. She takes a drink of her water. "An Ahroun threw me into a wall." And then, because even in her muddled state she realizes that's not helpful, she adds, "It was that or get eaten by fomorikids."

[Robbie Murdoch] "Oh."

Maybe with that rage, one would expect him to fly into a frenzy. Look for the culprit; look for the kids. Look for someone to put through a wall. He is a Fiann, after all. They hate it when their kin are fucked with.

He doesn't, though. That's all the response there is. Well; that and the frown that sets a line between his eyebrows, deeper for the instant between threw me into a wall and it was that or get eaten. Then she explains, and he seems satisfied enough. He mops a hand over his face again and yawns, then drops his long forearms over his bony knees, sits there looking crammed into the space between the coffee table and the sofa. Truth is, Robbie looks a little crammed in just about anywhere.

For all she knows he's been there all day. Sleeping on her floor. In reality, he woke up sometime in the mid-morning, and by then she was long gone. He made eggs and sausage like he said he would. He had breakfast and then he wandered around her living room for a little while, looking at her furnishings, touching the fabrics and woods and metals, the textures. He stood at the window for a little while, looking out on the city. The air was on inside, and it looked cold: stormy and overcast. It wasn't cold. It was hot and muggy, overcast, oppressive.

When he got to the Caern, the Guardians were short-tempered.

Dinner, hours later, was at the Brotherhood of Thieves. And hours after that: he came back here. She wasn't home, so he let himself in the other way and bedded down to sleep more.

"That sort of shit happen a lot around here?"

[Liadan] Lee hasn't known very many Fianna. Well, that's not true. She's met quite a few since her half-brother found her back in October. They're the ones in Ireland, though, at the sept in Galway. Though her visits are infrequent and brief, she's always gotten a sense her Garou cousins there would tear apart anything that so much as looked at her funny. Then there were Hatchet and Curata, guardian and sometimes lover, lover and sometimes guardian. They were close to her, in a way. The Galliard is not.

She doesn't expect him to rage and roar, to tear apart everything between him and a perceived threat to her. They only just met last night. Pure bred kin of his tribe or not, Lee doesn't expect strangers to leap to her defense.

"Yeah," she says, pushing off from the wall and making her way into the living room. There, she adjusts her jeans, and she climbs into the armchair, actually climbs in. She sets her foot into the seat cushion, and the rest of her follows. The tall kinswoman folds up into the chair, drawing her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs; there's a plastic band around her wrist, the kind people get when they visit the hospital. She makes herself small. Somehow, drawn in like that, she looks more comfortable than she had last night when she stood in the dining area.

Her hair is down tonight, left loose to fall in waves of red tugged over her pale left shoulder. In the dim light, with her hair in the way, it's impossible to see the scar there. She lifts her glass, stops, lowers it again.

"Who told you where to find me?"

[Robbie Murdoch] The stranger -- which is an easier way to think about him than Robbie, Murdoch, Robbie Murdoch -- looks relaxed, too. Crammed in, but at ease: his fingers loose and half-curled, his hands draped. His head turns to keep her square in his vision as she moves closer, tucks herself into her armchair. She can't sense his pure breeding, but he has it. Just a little bit. Just like he has a little red in his hair, a little green in his eyes. Add in his auspice and he's the stereotype of their tribe watered down a hundredfold.

He's nothing like the affable, hot-tempered, extroverted stereotype of their tribe.

And he shrugs, the broad-boned rack of his shoulders rising and falling. His fingers are long and dextrous, and they move easily and they move well, though all he's doing right now is raising a hand to scratch at the side of his face. He's more or less cleanshaven: more than he was last night. Less than he was this morning.

"Some guy on the told me 'bout you. Came through here a few months back. Asked about the Family some when he was here, remembered ya name. I met him out in"

she might expect him to say Albany or Poughkeepsie or Newton or Bangor, but what comes out his mouth next is

"Marrakech. Told him I was heading to Chicago. He passed the word on. Easy enough to find you." His hand drops back to loop loosely over the other, wrists over his knees. "Think I'll move into the Brotherhood tomorrow or day after, but wanted to meet Family first."

[Robbie Murdoch] [on the ROAD. my god.]

[Liadan] Lee is fumbling with the band on her wrist. Holding onto her glass in that hand, she slides her thumb under it and pushes it toward her hand. It's not the most effective way to go about it, and it certainly isn't going to get the thing off. She needs scissors, or a knife, or at the very least she needs to put her glass down.

Someone on the road told him about her, knew her name. The corner of her mouth twitches, but the movement never resolves into any sort of expression. Her head bent, she ends up looking at the Galliard over the rims of her glasses. His face is foggy and indistinct that way; she can't make out the stubble, or see the green in his eyes, or what lines may have carved their way into his flesh.

She stops messing with the bracelet at mention of Marrakech, lifts her chin so she can look at him properly. Whatever location she had expected him to mention, it clearly hadn't been that one. She probably did think he was going to say someplace in the northeast, or at the very least somewhere on the North American continent.

"Someone in Morocco knows I'm Kinfolk?" she asks incredulously. Just as he didn't offer to help her move last night, she doesn't offer him a more permanent living space with her in her new place. "The Brotherhood's a good place to stay."

The fact that it was easy enough to find her will trouble her later. Now, her attention returns to her wristband.

[Robbie Murdoch] [What's that expression!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Robbie Murdoch] [reroll on 10: SHARP EYES!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Liadan] [that look was: EE! Someone in another country knows about me for whatever reason! *happy flail*]

[Robbie Murdoch] He sees that flicker at the corner of her mouth, of course: he sees bloody everything with those eyes as clear as glass. It's almost unfair. She can't see him at all, except as a blur -- a large, lanky blur folded into the space between her couch and her coffee table.

Reading it, though, is something else altogether. His head cocks to one side for a second. Then he has it.

"Why does that make you happy?"

[Liadan] She finally admits her defeat at the hands of the wristband. It'll just stay where it is for now.

It may seem unfair that she can't see his face clearly in the light of the nearby floor lamp when he can see her so clearly. For Lee, it's just a different way of looking at things, letting them get blurred. Colors running together, shapes fuzzing out. She's in no frame of mind to study Robbie, anyway. Her head is as fuzzy as her vision. At least the concussion was mild. She's not so disoriented that she's in danger of vomiting. There's no threat of permanent damage.

His question has her trying to pull her mind free of whatever thoughts have it mired. She blinks at him, confused.

"What?"

[Robbie Murdoch] A good night's sleep -- because he's had far worse than a rug on a hardwood floor -- hasn't done away with the unexpected little flashes of impatience. There's another one, scoring across his face, making him twist his head on his shoulders as though to writhe out of invisible bonds.

"I said someone on the road told me about you. You kinda," his hand makes a halfdefined gesture, "smiled a bit. Why?"

[Liadan] He's impatient. She's concussed. Granted, she didn't tell him she was concussed. All she said was she was thrown into a wall by an Ahroun. No mention of forms. No mention of lingering injury.

She tips her chin up a little, defiantly. "Do I need a reason?"

[Robbie Murdoch] He comes right back with, "You always this fuckin' scrappy?"

[Liadan] That seems to take her by surprise. "Does it seem like I am?"

[Robbie Murdoch] "Nah. Anything but. Ironic question." He rubs his knuckles over his jaw, then nods at her wristband, previous question abandoned. "Hospital?"

[Liadan] "Hm." She finishes off her water. Letting her arm drop to her side, Lee leans, stretching to set the glass on the coffee table. It wobbles, rocking on its base before ending upright. "Yeah." Curling back up again, her arms folded close to her chest. "I have a mild concussion."

[Robbie Murdoch] That glass doesn't wobble long, actually. It rocks back and forth, back and forth, back and -- Robbie's fingers on the rim stop it, tapping it gently and firmly to the tabletop.

Silence again. His eyes come back to her. His eyelashes are paler than his hair; red-gold, nearly invisible like this. It gives him a sharp, eagle-eyed look, utterly unsoftened.

"Come here," he says. That word wants to slip into nonrhoticity. He doesn't let it. He reaches his hand out -- for hers, one imagines. His palm is long and lean. His hands would be elegant were they not so work-hardened, calloused, big-boned, rough.

[Liadan] For a second, it doesn't look like she's going to move. There are times when Líadan doesn't look her age. Sometimes when she dresses a certain way, she could pass for a college student. Or a little younger, an older teenager.

And sometimes, despite her height and her womanly figure, her attitude makes her seem much, much younger. There is no one alive who would remember how she once sat on the sectional sofa at The Brotherhood with a young Black Fury Theurge, a plate of food set on the cushion between them, when Lee passed him her last bite like a child passes a plucked flower. Maybe it's the concussion, or something else, but she seems that young now. Robbie stretches his hand toward her, and Lee tenses, like she wants to curl up tighter.

It passes quickly. With a gaze as sharp as his, he probably caught that hesitation. She unfolds herself and, reaching for his hand, slides to the floor.

[Robbie Murdoch] The werewolf's hand is a blade of muscle and bone, very warm. Palm meets palm and hard fingers wrap around the outside of her hand. As she sinks down he shifts his posture, crossing his legs indian-style.

Now they're face to face, and some strange sense of ritual hangs around this. It's enough to fill the space with silence without need for anything else. Gripping her hand still, the Galliard reaches behind himself to grab the big backpack, which is a little more full now than it was last night. He's put his spare clothes back in. Washed, one hopes. There are coin-op laundromats on the streets; surely he's found one.

That's beside the point, though. He unzips one of the side pockets -- easily large enough to fit a one-liter canteen -- and pulls out a leather pack. There are a few small gourds inside, and if she's seen one she already knows what's coming.

Or maybe not quite.

It turns out he's not holding her hand to put the gourd in her palm. He's holding her hand to hold her in place while he palms a talen and -- quick as that, with absolutely no warning -- slams it down on her head. Right at the hairline. Fast, with a single downward push of his arm like a man spiking a volleyball over the net. Which, given his height, he might have actually had some practice at.

The gourd shatters between his palm and her skull. The throbbing concussion headache is instantly incandescent. His hands are fierce and strong and unshakable, though, one at her wrist and the other splayed over the crown of her head, holding her still while some eldritch energy, some spirit-light burns itself to ash in his eyes

and fades, and with it, the pain, the nausea, the dizziness, the fog obscuring her awareness. He lets her go.

"If I warn people 'bout that," he says, maybe by way of apology, "they don't let me do it."

[Liadan] If it weren't for the concussion dulling her senses, slowing down her thoughts, she'd be realizing even as she slides out of the chair that she needs to be ready for the unexpected with him. Lee has had to be healed a lot in the past year, in many different ways. With a touch or with a talen. She's seen a rite of cleansing performed, and she's watched, pinned in place as it was performed on her.

But this. This she was not expecting. She doesn't have time to cry out or try to pull away. She barely has time to draw a breath, to squeeze her dark eyes shut and start to pull back before he slamming the healing gourd into her head. She starts at the contact, cringes.

When she opens her eyes, they're clear and focused again. Lee no longer looks dreamy or unsteady.

"No shit!" she says, more startled than anything. He might be expecting her to be angry, or at least annoyed with him. He might expect her to throw a fit, flailing her pale arms at him ineffectively. Most kinfolk of this city would. Not, Lee, though.

Líadan Whelan, smiles a crooked smile, and she lets out a low laugh.

"You're crazy," said the pot to the kettle. And she starts to gather her long legs under her, preparing to rise.

[Robbie Murdoch] The Garou of this city have figured out better ways. They crush it between their hands and sprinkle the dust on the wound. Robbie, though -- wherever he was fostered, whoever taught his ass about these things -- the way he learned it, you save every last ounce of the gourd-dust for the wound.

So, of course, you smash it right on it.

That was unexpected, though. And it's unexpected that she doesn't get angry. He was ready for that, prepared for it, bored with the possibility already -- and it doesn't happen. That brings that animal tilt back to his head, and then she laughs.

This, too, is unexpected: he laughs back, a low rough breath of it.

"Ya welcome," he says, and turns to stuff his talens back into his bag. "You go and get some sleep, Liadan Whelan."

[Liadan] There are a lot of things Lee does that aren't what a normal, well-adjusted person has learned to do. She laughs where someone else might be angry. She's brave when others would run away. Sometimes, she crumples at the strangest and most unlikely provocation. It's unexpected when those who don't know her see these traits in her. Sometimes, it's unexpected even when they do.

She pulls herself to her feet with considerably more grace than she'd lowered herself. Upright, she smooths her camisole over her stomach. Laughter still hangs in her throat, her smile continues to lift one corner of her mouth above the other. And she looks down at Robbie Murdoch, Fianna Galliard, when he mispronounces her name again.

Lee doesn't correct him. She tilts her head to the side, her hair shifting like a waterfall of red over her shoulders. And she says, "You can call me Lee."

It's late, and she's had a long, rough day and a worse night. Maybe they say a few more words to each other, share a little more information. Neither seems the type, though. It doesn't take much convincing to get her to disappear into the closet-hall. The door from the living room stays open a crack. He can hear her bedroom door close softly behind her.