Never mind how she got his number. Dances With the Hurricane is a Ragabash, she has her ways of getting the information she wants, when she wants it. The call comes only a few hours - long enough for her to get back to the city, maybe cleansed, maybe change out of her dedicated clothing - after the slender, weird Asian woman walked out of what was essentially Calden White's backyard. The call goes to his cell phone, and if he doesn't let the unknown caller go to voicemail, the voice when he thumbs the call open is low-ish, and bears only the slightest hint of a much faded accent.
"Good evening, Mr. White. My name is Ingrid Kim, we met on your property this afternoon."
Cool and cordial, that's what that voice is.
Calden White"Hello," is how he answers his phone; not a question but a statement. And: "Yep, I remember you. How can I help you, Miss Kim?"
And yes, that's a Miss. Not a Ms.
Ingrid Kim"Our meeting this afternoon was something of a comedy of errors. I would like to correct that, as well as make amends for trespassing on your territory."
Calden White"You don't need to make amends," Calden replies at once. "It was obvious that you were caught in a situation you didn't want to be in. I don't think anyone involved deliberately wanted to be in that situation, to be fair. And at any rate, it's resolved now.
"I appreciate the thought, though."
Ingrid KimA sound comes through the receiver and into Calden's ear that may be a slight huff of amusement, or could just be a sigh. Even if he saw her in person he might not be able to tell the difference.
"Is it?" this to the situation being resolved. If it was, and by something beyond her vacating the premises, it sounds as though she wasn't included in that loop. Before he can repeat himself, though, she continues. "Then allow me the opportunity to introduce myself properly. Perhaps over dinner?"
Calden WhiteHis turn to huff. It's recognizable, though: it's a laugh under his breath, halfway between surprised and amused.
"Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your intent," he says, "but I feel like I ought to give you advance warning that I'm in a relationship. Sort of." It's Complicated. That's the button he needs. "If that's not a problem, though, dinner sounds great."
Ingrid KimThere is a momentary but definitive pause. When Ingrid's voice comes back over the line, it's lost what little warmth may have made it's way into it.
"Believe me, Mr. White, the thought of a relationship with you never crossed my mind."
Calden White"Oh -- I am so sorry," he says at once, mortified. "That was arrogant and presumptive of me. I just -- knowing you're Garou, I just thought I should be as up-front as possible. Just in case.
"Forgive me. Are you still interested in dinner?"
Ingrid KimShe could explain herself and her philosophies, but why? He's the kin of another tribe, and besides, they've only just met, and under inauspicious circumstances.
"I am," she replies. Because that hadn't been her intention in asking him to dinner. "Although I confess I'm new to this city and am unfamiliar with what would be suitable." Lies. "Is there some place that you would prefer?"
Calden White"You don't strike me as a woman who has no idea where to get a good meal, Miss Kim." He sounds like he's smiling. "I think you're just being polite. At least give me a general cuisine, and I'll find us a decent spot.
"Tomorrow at eight?"
Ingrid KimShe neither confirms nor denies her motives in allowing him to choose the restaurant. "American is fine, Mr. White. Tomorrow night at eight it is."
Calden WhiteAround six the next evening she gets a text:
Park & Co on 17th and Pennsylvania -- Reservations @ 8 under White -- See you there.
Park & Co., it turns out, is an Uptown burger joint. It's a nice burger joint, with the drop-lighting and exposed brick decor so popular in today's trendiest and wannabe-trendiest restaurants, but it's still a burger joint. Broad windows up front give a glimpse of the rather narrow dining room inside; the building, which is small and square, is almost entirely dominated by the kitchen.
There's plenty of patio seating outside, though, and that is where Ingrid will find Calden. He's alone at a small table at the back edge, and he's dressed not significantly differently from what he wore when she met him. Which is to say: blue jeans. Casual, rumpled buttondown shirt, the sleeves rolled to just below the elbows. Boots under those jeans, heavy-soled and durable.
No hat, though. At least there's that. He has a menu in front of himself, which is rather exceedingly simple. He also has a beer. It is rather amusingly named Avery White Rascal, which is half the reason he got it.
Calden White[oh, here: http://parkandcodenver.com/ ]
Ingrid KimOut on the patio, Calden may not notice the sleek little black convertible that jets down 17th and up Pennsylvania, after all, it's just another sleek little car with its soft-top up. He sees the Ragabash, though, when she makes her way around the patio and toward the front. She's dressed simply, or simply for her. Her dress, cranberry red interrupted by the occasional horizontal bars of cream and brown, has been tailored to fit her slender, lithe frame. She stands a little taller than he saw her last, in a pair of heeled sandals with straps criss-crossing over the front of her foot. Shoes like that give her the illusion of height, the illusion of legs that go on forever, the illusion of a lot of things, really.
A few moments later she's there, walking out onto the patio all alone because the humans working here, they don't want to stay near her, not for long. She is beautiful, but they know on some instinctive level that she is deadly. She is the wolf in sheep's clothing. They don't know whether to snarl her down or expose their throats to her, and so they do neither.
Ingrid doesn't pay it any mind. She strides across the patio, weaving through the tables and chairs and other diners with a fluid, almost unnatural grace. When she reaches his table toward the back she pauses.
"Good evening, Mr. White. I trust you weren't waiting long?"
Calden WhiteCalden is not reading the menu by the time Ingrid emerges. He's not fiddling with his phone, either, which seems to have become the standby timekiller in today's world. He is just
enjoying his beer, sipping it slowly as he watches the doorway idly.
So when Ingrid appears, he sees her at once. She approaches, and when she's about four or five strides away he pushes his chair back and rises, gentlemanly, circling around the small table to pull her chair out for her. After she's settled, he retakes his seat.
"Dreadfully long," he deadpans. "Another ten seconds and I would have stormed off in a fury." He passes her a menu. "I'm getting a classic double, but I've heard good things about the state fair burger."
Ingrid KimAt the table she pauses, because Calden rises to pull the chair out for her like a gentleman. Her mouth curls into a secretive kind of smile at that, one that doesn't quite leave her face as she takes the seat offered. Without the sunglasses she was wearing that obscured her face, he can see that her eyes are wide and dark and almond shaped.
She sets her small clutch of a purse down and picks up the menu in its place. Looking at her, seeing the way she's dressed, how perfectly made up she is, one might expect her to turn her nose up at the very name State Fair Burger. This woman, having anything to do with a state fair? The answer to that question may very well surprise people.
"Colesaw on a burger," she muses, and she sounds like she's actually considering it. Then again, this is the woman who once put salsa on her Thanksgiving turkey. That was a long time ago, though, with another tall, broad-shouldered man, a younger one, too.
Calden White"Yeah, I wasn't too sure about that too. That's why I'm sticking with the classic." A pause. "You could always go for a turkey club, though. Or a tuna sandwich. Or a salad."
There's a small, devilish little smirk living in the corner of his mouth.
Ingrid Kim"The New Yorker," she says, closing her menu rather definitively, and for a moment the curve of her mouth becomes a little less secretive in general and a little more secretive in particular. It's almost kind of nostalgic, that look.
It passes as her eyes slide toward the kinsman. Her head tilts in an animalistic way. "I tend not to eat too much of the food my food eats, Mr. White." This to the suggestion she eat a salad.
Calden White"Spoken like a true carnivore," Calden approves,
and soon thereafter the waitress -- a smart, hipster-looking girl in darkframed glasses -- approaches. Calden orders for the both of them; earns himself a disapproving look. He can almost imagine the waitress's thoughts. Chauvinist. Still better than what she'd think if she took Ingrid's order directly from her, though: monster. murderer. she's going to eat my head.
Ice water arrives on the table, as well as whatever drink Ingrid might have chosen. While they wait for their meal, Calden shakes out a napkin and lays it over his thigh. The sun hasn't set yet; its westering light brings out the faint ruddiness to his complexion, the hint of auburn in his hair. A son of Stag, through and through, even if the purity of his blood is rather diluted. A small silence settles between them, but it doesn't seem uncomfortable. He lounges in his chair and he sips his beer.
Presently, he sets the bottle down and looks across at his dining companion. "So," he prompts, "new to town, you said."
Ingrid KimIt's better when they don't look directly into those cold dark eyes. Soulless, some might think, the eyes of an animal. The nice clothes, the cultured demeanor, they don't do much to hide her nature. It still prickles along the girl's skin, sets the small hairs on the back of her neck to rising, though she can't place the source. Calden orders for them both, gets Ingrid's New Yorker down and a bottle of Great Divid DPA.
Left alone, the pause that settles over them is considerably less tense and uncomfortable than the Shadow Lord has become accustomed to. At least when she's spending time in the company of kinfolk. It's why she does it rarely.
"Mm," is the answer to the question. "I only arrived at the full moon."
Calden WhiteCalden smirks a little. Only a werewolf would count the days by the moon phase. Then: "Planning on staying long?"
IngridShe smirks right back. "I thought you were in a relationship, sort of." It sounds coy, because it is, but teasing.
Calden WhiteCalden's smile turns a little quirky. "I am. Does the length of your stay depend on that? I'm flattered. And admittedly a little confused."
IngridHer own smile shifts away from smirking toward something...not warm. Never warm. But different. "I'm teasing, Mr. White. I'm not in the habit of basing my future on men I've known less than an hour."
Calden White"That's a good policy," Calden approves, smirking.
Moments later they're interrupted, albeit politely: the waitress returns with their food. His burger, her sandwich -- which is so meaty that it may as well be a burger. Calden glances up at the woman, smiling as he thanks her, and asks for a second bottle of beer. Same label, yes.
She leaves. He takes the top off his burger, piling the lettuce and the tomato atop.
"So what do you base your future on?" he asks.
IngridIt's not until her food arrives that Ingrid unfolds her napkin and places it across her lap. Maybe it's on purpose that this keeps her from looking at the waitress, thus keeping her from unsettling the woman further. It's not, though. It's a happy coincidence that Ingrid has more interest in the kinsman of Stag than terrorizing the local human population. Tonight, at least.
Her sandwich really is a burger, with the third pound of rare beef topped with corned beef and other things. It doesn't really feel like New York, but then, it's only a burger.
"I don't base it on anything," she replies offhand, her eyes on the burger she's dressing up to eat. "Not right now."
Calden White"Not much of a planner, then?" Calden tops his burger with a good squeeze of ketchup, smushes the top bun down on the pile. "That actually surprises me a bit."
Ingridngrid places everything she was given onto the meat of her burger. Saurkraut, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce. So much that when piled there's no way she could possibly bite into it.
As she starts to smush hers down as well, squishing it down into something she can at least get her hands on, she pauses, angling her head so that she can look at him.
"Why is that?"
Ingrid[Imagine I didn't cut off that first I]
Calden White"Well, because you just seem so..."
Calden's sentence sort of trails off. He's distracted, you see: he's watching Ingrid assemble her hot sandwich with growing alarm. The sauerkraut -- okay. The pickle -- fine. The onion -- Calden lets that one squeak by. But when Ingrid tries to put a slice of tomato on her corned beef, Calden can't bear it anymore.
"Okay, no," he reaches across the table, "no no no no. Please, I can't bear to watch," picks up the slice with his fingers and tosses it back onto her plate with a wet splat. "Corned beef, Miss Kim, is one of the few cultural treasures of the Irish-American people. It is to be eaten with mustard," he sets the bottle of brown mustard down in front of her with a decisive thunk, "pickle, sauerkraut if you really absolutely have to, but nothing else."
IngridIt's the trailing off that catches her attention and gets her to sort of slow down in her desecration of the corned beef burger. She doesn't stop, though. Her hands shift away to the side and she looks down at the hand that's reaching for her food, her food, and she looks up at him, her expression a combination of perplexity and borderline irritation. So many questions flit across her face in that moment. What are you doing is the obvious one. Do you have a death wish would be another. He's touching the food of an unknown werewolf. A beautiful, well put together werewolf, but one who happens to exhibit far more wolfish traits for a homid-born than any other homid-born.
She doesn't claw at his hands, though, doesn't even manage to get a growl out. She looks back down at his hands, getting who knows what in her food in the process. Her eyes shift to where the tomato hits the plate with a splat. Her head cranes, the motion lupine at the remaining food, then toward the bottle of mustard. Her eyes twitch and almost narrow, but then her expression shifts. It changes into something less suspicious, less animal, and more composed. She smiles.
And she reaches over for the bottle of mayonnaise.
"I prefer mayonnaise and catsup, myself," she says, eyes on his face, mouth curved into a slight smile.
Calden WhiteSo he -- perhaps only half-joking -- raises a hand to shield his eyes. "Oh, god," is all he can say. "Well, do as you must. You godless heathen."
And he stays that way, eyes shielded, until she's done applying whatever desecrations she means to apply to her poor corned beef sandwich. When the top slice of bread is safely on the meat again, the devastation within hidden from sight, Calden picks up his beer and drains the last of it.
Right as a new beer arrives. What timing. There's that smile again, and that thank-you. As the waitress departs, he picks his burger up and takes a big bite.
"One of my friends supplies this place," he mentions. "Fred Rickers. Good guy. I'll avoid telling him what you did to his pastrami." He nods at her sandwich. "How does that blasphemous thing taste?"
IngridThe kinsman hides his face from the horror, oh the humanity, and that smile on Ingrid's face grows. It blossoms out into something fuller, wider, more amused. It's not the same smile some Ahroun saw so many months ago in a club somewhere on the other side of the country. It had been a good night, that night. Ingrid had danced and drunk and only she knows what else until she crossed paths with that Ahroun again and got him to wear - and destroy - her heels. Although Ingrid has once again twisted and influenced a man to do what she wants, it's not on the same level as that time. Her smile is beaming and smug and oh-so-proud of herself, but there's no display of her teeth. Her eyes don't crinkle almost completely shut.
With his eyes shielded Calden may miss it, because it doesn't last. He might miss the way it lessens, the way she banks that amusement as she instead picks up the bottle of mustard and tops it with that instead. The top of the bun is replaced and smooshed down with the flat of her hand. The other reaches for her own beer bottle. For a moment it seems completely natural that this woman in her lovely, knee-length dress and her expensive high-heeled shoes and her hair and make-up done just so would be in a place like this with a man in jeans, eating burgers and drinking beer from bottles.
That, too, passes with her first bite of the burger, which contains almost more meat than her carnivorous Ahroun friend would know what to do with. That bite is smallish, as demure a bite of a burger as anyone ever could make. She chews thoughtfully, thoroughly, and swallows before she replies, "Adequate."
Calden White[to his CORNED BEEF. *was thinking of pastrami* and, sorry no post yesterday! had like a 17 hr day D:]
"If you hadn't slaughtered it with mayonnaise and buried it in ketchup," Calden retorts, "it'd be a lot more than adequate."
He's quiet a while, then, while he eats. All around them, the ebb and flow of neighboring conversations. Summer's in full bloom. The streets are full of life; the terraces and patios and balconies of restaurants and residences alike alive with people. It's a nice night to be out.
"So," a little later, this, "what were you doing at my house yesterday, anyway?"
IngridIngrid does not correct him on her use of condiments, nor does she elaborate. Nothing could be done to this, this burger that could make it more or better than adequate. It would always be angus and corned beef on a potato bun on a warm dry summer evening. It tastes like Denver. It doesn't taste like home. Like corned beef on rye in a little deli near Prospect Park, packed to bursting on a sweltering, balmy summer afternoon when the air's so thick a body needs gills to breathe it.
Adequate. But different, so that's something.
They eat in comfortable silence for a while. There's something animal in the way that Ingrid eats. She is lovely, elegant, poised. She doesn't attack her food, doesn't come away from it with mustard and sauce all over her lower face or dripping down her hands and wrists and arms like a heathen. She pauses to use her napkin, to drink her beer, to look out beyond the fence that currently pens her in, to watch the useless human sheep go about their Saturday nights. But there's something about her, some undefinable something in the way her teeth snap down that shows there's something else, something feral that shifts and moves just beneath the surface of her skin.
Calden either doesn't notice it or doesn't mind it or he's used to it, and he makes the evening more pleasant because of that.
She's drinking from her second bottle of beer, brought sometime in the course of their quiet meal, when he asks his question. Her eyes slide to him briefly and she sets her drink down.
"I believe Rabid Jack," she says his full name as formally as she says Mr. White, "wanted to introduce me to his pack."
Calden White"Well, sorry if I ruined your first date with a pack," Calden says, not sounding terribly sorry after all. "I just thought I ought to put my foot down on the guest-of-a-guest-of-a-guest thing before Kevin Bacon showed up on my doorstep."
He grows serious then: "It wasn't anything against you. You know that, right? You just happened to be the proverbial last straw."
IngridHe doesn't sound sorry, and she she smiles because she doesn't expect him to be. "Someone took advantage of your hospitality," she says mildly, as if that explained everything, at least on his side. "There were other straws that came before?"
Calden White"Well," Calden shrugs, "I don't want to sit here speaking ill of those who can't defend themselves. I don't think anyone wanted to be a straw, or meant to be rude. But I suppose I was raised with different values and different definitions of guests and hosts.
"Anyway," he picks up his beer, holding it out to clink necks, "fresh beginnings, yeah? What's past is done, and what's done is past."
IngridShe angles her head, listening to him with a keen interest that doesn't fade even though he won't satisfy her curiosity. Not about this potential pack, at least. Then he's lifting his bottle to hers, and she, smiling in that sly, secretive way of hers, lifts her bottle in response.
"Fresh beginnings," she echoes before taking a drink. And clean slates. And honor restored. These things are in her mind, but she's not consciously thinking about them, not then even though that was the reason for the dinner outing.
Ingrid[and now they are mated, the end]
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