It is currently 17:58 Pacific Time on Sat Jun 25 2005. Currently in Saint Claire, it's a sunny day. The temperature is 69 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from variable directions at 5 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 29.92 and falling, and the relative humidity is 50 percent. The dewpoint is 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius.) Currently the moon is in the waning Gibbous Moon phase (74% full). Safehouse: Common Area The foyer of this house is set off from the living room with its octagonal bump-out by a four foot high halfwall. Stairs lead up from the foyer, turning and disappearing to the right, and a wooden door with a keycard lock claims the wall opposite the living room. The rest of the main floor is taken up by a small bathroom across the hallway from a dining room which is separated from the kitchen at the back of the house by another half-wall. The decor is decidedly sparse - white walls, beige carpeting in the living and dining rooms and down the hall, unremarkable vinyl in the foyer and kitchen. A used couch and a pair of recliners are grouped around a coffee table in the living room, with a foursome of wooden chairs claiming the bump out for quieter conversation. The dining room boasts a white laminate table with four aluminum and vinyl-upholstered chairs - too new to be 'vintage', too old to be trendy. The appliances and cupboards in the kitchen are new - or at least refurbished to look like it - and a door leads out to the backyard from there. Up the stairs are a number of empty rooms where anyone affiliated with the Sept can crash and an office for private meetings. The Glass Walkers have their own area accessible via a locked door off the foyer. The main doors themselves lead back out to the front porch of the house. Grey enters the house from from the backyard, coming into the kitchen with the overall grimy air of someone who's spent most of the day doing unpleasant but necessary outdoor chores. The weather was pleasant enough that the halfmoon isn't dripping sweat or anything, but even on nice days, yardwork isn't for the fastidious. His first destination is the fridge and the bottled water chilling inside. A few minutes later, Kaz, singing "I Just Met A Girl Named Maria" extremely loudly, bustles in the door. She's got a few paper grocery bags in tow, To her credit, she stops singing immediately when she sees Grey. "Yo, hey. 'Sup?" Grey, bottled water in hand, closes the refrigerator door, glances briefly at Kaz, then shifts his eyes away as he twists off the plastic cap. "Not much, at the moment. Thankfully." He takes a swig and looks back at her, giving a nod toward the bags. "Need help with those?" Cheerfully, Kaz shakes her head. "Nah. I figure, the more I poke around while puttin' things away, the sooner I'll get the layout of the place." Suiting action to words, she starts putting the frozen materials in the freezer. "What were you doin' out there, anyway, takin' a dust bath?" Grey leans against the halfwall between the kitchen and dining room, out of the way. "Yardwork," he answers succinctly, after taking another drink of water. "How are things with you?" Kaz opens a few cabinets, finding the pot-and-pan cabinet and the crockery cabinet, before finding the paper-goods cabinet, and unloading some plates and some paper towels. "Me? Sokay. Ain't gotten no territory figured yet; hangin' out down near Regan Hope some, but it ain't... quite right. Bored my pants off guardin' durin' th' Hunt last week, but I figured someone like me'd only slow 'em down. I know my own strengths, an' fast runnin' ain't one of them. Otherwise, it's pretty good. Gnawers need some espirit de corps--" she pronounces it correctly, for a wonder-- "But them cubs, I think they'll help a lot with that. How's you?" Grey's mouth thins. "At the moment, wishing I'd known you were on guard duty during the Hunt. I was, too. You're right about it being dull." He pushes hair off his forehead and out of the way of his good eye. "Any particular reason you're hunting down territory?" Kaz's cheerfulness could be almost preternatural, given the stubborn way she clings to it. She says, with a small grin, "I wasn't any good company, honest, I was too busy bitchin' out every squirrel I saw for bein' too normal for words." She finds the spice rack, and sticks some salt next to it. "As f'territory-- Um. Well, ain't got pack yet. I'm kinda testin' out Birdseye, kickin' the tires, see if I like the idea of joinin' a pack I ain't created, but in the meantime, I figure I can do some good on my own." Grey takes another drink of water as she speaks, unsmiling as his eyes follow her bustle about the kitchen. He seems even more dour in contrast to the Gnawer's determined cheer. He grunts. "Birdseye's probably one of the saner packs around these days. Tu's level-headed, at least. I don't know the others." His tone's terribly neutral and matter-of-fact. "They're kinda angsty at the moment, what with their Alpha dyin' and all. You know how it is." She holds up a finger and declaims, 'I Shall Avenge Her.' 'I Shall Live Up To Her Name.'" She shoots him a faint smile, apparently ignoring his grim attitude. That kinda stuff. "They're kinda angsty at the moment, what with their Alpha dyin' and all. You know how it is." She holds up a finger and declaims, 'I Shall Avenge Her.' 'I Shall Live Up To Her Name.'" She shoots him a faint smile, apparently ignoring his grim attitude. "That kinda stuff. But they're all good kids. But... They /are/ all kids. Which is kind of a problem." Grey grimaces faintly, then points out, "Tu's not that young. And level-headed. But the other two..." He shrugs and gestures vaguely with the bottle of water. "The Sept's full of children. I swear that the damned Nation gets younger every damned year." Curmudgeon much? This manages to knock an edge off Kaz's cheerfulness. "Yah. Buncha kids. An' strangely enough, they /act/ like kids. Emotional see-saws with no off button. It's fuckin' /tiring/. I was ok with it with Trouble 'cause I had Tim as a balance, but I just ain't got the energy no more." Grey drops his eyes, his jaw tightening in what might be a grimace and might be a guilty wince. "Tell me about it," he mutters. He shifts his weight, glances back at her guardedly. "Thought about forming your own?" This brings the grin back, and Kaz hops onto the table, her focus turning solely to the Walker. "Yeah. It's crossed my mind." Her tone is even, with a world of fond amusement lacing it. "An' you were one of the folks I was thinkin' about askin'. /If/ I was gonna form my own. 'Course," she adds, "I'd have to ask you where the fuck your head is at, at the moment, 'cause it seems like it's all /over/ the place." Grey's eyebrows go up, surprised, at the bit about him being someone she was considering, and then that guarded look returns as the Gnawer continues on. He looks down at the bottle of water as though the list of ingredients was suddenly very interesting. "It's been a fairly unpleasant year," he says evasively. "And then some." Kaz shrugs a shoulder. "Yeah, ain't that the truth. I assume that's why you're bein' th' Walker's version of the one true hermit?" Grey grimaces tightly. "I'm just... not in the mood to put up with bullshit." Kaz nods affably. "Yeah, an' there's sure enough of it around. Is Rina bullshit, or is Rina just someone you got so much history with you don't know how to deal with it?" Grey shakes his head firmly. "Rina's not bullshit. She's one of the few people I can trust." He adds, deadpan and sourly, "I'm just an ass sometimes, that's all." There aren't any footsteps leading up to it, but suddenly, there's a jingling of keys in the lock to the front door. Quite a bit of jingling, in fact, as the keys are turned this way and that before their user seems to figure out that the door wasn't actually locked to begin with. Oops. Then the door opens, aided by Jeren's left shoulder. She's carrying a paper grocery bag under her right arm, her hair is a horrid mess, as per the usual, but it's also pretty damp from sweat, as is the rest of her face and neck, in spite of the mild weather outside. The Ragabash steps in and allows the door's weight to close itself. Kaz says, as if feeling it out, "It... seemed as if you've both done an' said enough stuff, lately, that you don't really know where solid ground is, in your relationship." She glances automatically toward the door, as if she had x-ray vision, and then snorts quietly at herself. Grey stiffens at the sounds coming from the front door, walls starting to shutter down over his eyes. He straightens up from his lean and answers Kaz somewhat distractedly. "Rina and I... have a lot in common. Too much, perhaps. But it works." He glances back over at the Gnawer. "We trust each other." Jeren isn't exactly loud about coming down the hallway to the kitchen, but neither is she overly quiet, so both Garou have at least a few seconds warning that they're about to be invaded, so to speak. She glances only briefly towards them once she steps in, offers a thin, fuzzy smile, then turns to put her bag on the counter. Kaz's smile is almost wistful. "It's good. T'have that." That said, she's sliding down off the table and offering a cheerful, "Hey, yo, how's it goin'?" to the ragabash. Grey's defenses have all gone up by the time Jeren shows her face. He takes another drink from his bottle of water, all but finishing it. Jeren pages: Her eyes aren't quite focused, and she's got a rapid pulse. Enough you can just see the tic along her neck. Plus the sweating. Not alcohol. Her only answer to Kaz's question is a rather neutral sounding, "Mmm." Jeren's jaw clenches for a moment, though the rest of her expression doesn't seem to want to follow suit with any sign of tension. "Brought some things." She draws a jar of pickles, two bottles of Smirnoff's vodka, and, of all things, a can of Mug rootbeer out of the paper bag. One of these things is not like the other... "Y'want any?" Kaz says, mildly, "That good, huh?" At the array of Stuff (tm), Kaz's eyebrows go up. "Wellll... If I drink the Vodka, you'll get a crinos me in short order, so, um, no. An' there's only one root beer. So I'll stick with Coke, thanks. I got some shit, too. Some healthy crap, some junk food. Jus' poke around." Grey just glowers at Jeren and downs the rest of his water with a final swallow. On his way to the kitchen trash to throw the plastic bottle out, he looks sidelong at Kaz and remarks, sourly, "You were saying something about see-saws?" Jeren 'mmm's again, a noise that is followed by another jaw clench. She leaves the pickles and vodka to sit on the counter, taking only the rootbeer with her as she walks approximately three feet, turns around, and settles herself on the floor, with her back to the wall. The hiss of the can being opened is the only other sound from her direction. Kaz mutters, "Yah, really," and heads over to get her Coke. "So," she asks, leaning against the wall, "Seriously. What's up?" Grey gives Jeren another sour look, then goes about putting away the jar of pickles and the bottles of vodka. The latter, in fact, get somewhat hidden, put /way/ in the back of one cabinet. Jeren squints one eye at Kaz. "Hnn? Nothing, really. It's been a pretty quiet week." You know, if you ignore the whole Great Hunt, and silly things like that. Abruptly though, her attention shifts back toward Grey as he goes about putting her 'groceries' away. "--They're f'you." Kaz nods vaguely and settles back to watch, much as if she were watching a tennis match. "The thought's appreciated," Grey says tightly, closing the cabinet door rather harder than is truly necessary. Jeren tips the can to her lips and begins to drain it in a slow, steady series of gulps that hardly allow time for air. Her eyes hood, and now she's not actually looking at either one of them, but rather the floor inbetween. Kaz wrinkles her forehead, and eventually says, "You people confuse me. Are you supposed to confuse me?" Grey turns toward Kaz, his body language tight with controlled anger. "I'm sorry. Maybe we should continue our discussion another time." He flicks a look toward Jeren, his jaw clenched and /not/ because of any pill. Jeren lowers the can to her lap. She regards Grey blearily for a moment, eyes still hooded. Then the Ragabash rocks forward to her feet, standing up. "Nah," she says, nonplussed. "I'll go. Carry on." "You can go all you want," Kaz says to Jeren, "But I gotta go hook up with a few people. So I'll catch you--" she directs this to Grey-- "Later. And we're gonna continue this discussion, or ones like it, f'certain sure. I'm stubborn, I am." Grey looks both wary and resigned over this statement from the Gnawer. He gives her a nod, then heads for the front of the house, to the doorway leading to the Walker side. "I need a shower anyway." Jeren taps her finger a few times against the can. She's looking at it now, studying it carefully. Then she lifts it again and drains the rest of the rootbeer. Kaz shrugs at Grey's back. "It ain't like I'm gonna kill you dead if you don't talk t'me..." She trails off. "Anyways, catch y'all later." She tromps out the front door, starting to sing "Memories" before she's fully closed it.