[CCCDT] Routine |Rook, Daniel, Nathaniel|

[Claire O'Riley]

  Claire smiled a little to herself as she watched her manager trying to run from his car to the door of the bar. He was unsuccessful at protecting whatever paperwork he'd been holding, and she crooked an eyebrow at her best friend, Rook Boswell, who was pouring her anger into a series of derogatory forum posts on a website she'd taken to trolling. She didn't make any move to help Daniel, though - not until he threw the stack down and announced he had more in the car and wasn't going to fucking bother. Claire liked the rain.

  She looked at Rook and smirked. She was also wearing a white shirt.

  "I'll get them, Coop," she said casually, a smile on her mouth. She didn't even give Daniel time to process what was going on because he was too busy stripping his soaking jacket and overshirt off. Down to his plain white t-, he flung the other two items behind the counter. A knock at the large front window caused him to look up, and Claire made a key-motion with her hands. He'd locked the car.

  By the time she came in, she was thoroughly soaked. Claire wore the wet look well, though, and smiled brightly as she held up a miraculously dry notebook - with all of the bar's accounting information in it. "Here you go," she sang, holding it out at arm's length to him. She was biting her lip with that smile on her face, and she could feel Rook staring at her over the brim of her laptop. Rivulets of water were running down her arms, chest - her hair was a mixture of wet and dry, curling slightly. And then those big brown eyes...

[Rook Boswell]

Was Rook paying any attention whatsoever to what Claire and Daniel were doing?  Absolutely.  She could spare glances up between furious typing, snickers at the lamers that were completely losing their shit over the massive trolling they were receiving, and the sharp, angry hisses she'd release when she found that they'd tried to IP ban her again.  When would they learn?  She thought it was funny that Daniel got himself absolutely drenched, and smirked at Claire when she got that funky eyebrow look over the man's less than dignified entrance, but she was way too interested in what she was doing on her computer to guess what Claire was thinking. 

That was really too bad, because she tried to make it a point not to be surprised by Claire's antics, especially where Daniel was concerned.  They were on the same page when it came to causing that man grief, but Rook definitely avoided using Claire's tactics.  She was just as sneaky about it, without the sexual overtones, and had actually taken advantage of Coop's delightful pole-axed expressions when Claire did something particularly awesome to cause him further grief when he wasn't paying attention.  The pinnacle, up until now, of her success had definitely been the time that Claire had worn a short, short skirt and bent over into the cooler in front of Daniel while Rook dropped laxatives into the bowl of soup he'd been trying to eat between helping out around the bar, and the best thing had been the way Diego and Chad had been blamed for it.  Daniel seemed to have thought that Rook and Claire were far too sophisticated for something that crude, and Rook was sure not to pick on him when nobody was around to take the blame in her stead.

Obviously, she was broken up about the fact that she didn't have anything worked out to go along with the wet t-shirt contest.  That Daniel was doubly confused because he hadn't been paying attention when Claire volunteered and ran out into the rain only would have made it more satisfying, but she couldn't say that it wasn't interesting enough already.  She was totally taking a moment away from her raiding to watch this one play out.

Of course, it was hilarious.  By the time Coop realized what exactly it meant that Claire was running out in the rain in her white t-shirt, it was impossible for him to do anything about it except watch, and he didn't actually have anything at all to say as she handed him the notebook, which was somehow dry.  He just...stared, then realized he was staring and tried NOT to stare without being awkward, and he failed all around.  Today was obviously not his day, since he held up better on others.

"I think you broke him, Claire," she remarked, for the first time letting on that she was more than half-interested in what was happening, and she smirked right back at her friend.  Claire had definitely managed to make a spectacle of herself, and Rook was so not surprised that Danny was having issues. 

[Claire O'Riley]

  Claire only smiled more broadly as Rook commented about her having broken Daniel. She let go of the notebook, which he was still holding onto, and leaned forward. He was taller than she was, so she rolled onto the toes of her tennis shoes to do it. "It's okay," she whispered. "You can stare." And the smile turned into something more of a smirk as she shoved by him forcefully - which from Claire wasn't much, despite being a shapeshifter. "I'm going to grab a towel," she announced cheerfully.

  She turned as she moved so that she was walking backwards. "Coop, mind if I borrow one of your shirts for a little? Mine's, well, soaked," she said, taking that innocent sort of town to her voice. She laughed and turned fully, bounding to the back.

  When she came back out, one of Daniel's large button-down men's shirts on, she had graciously already buttoned and tied it. The light blue fabric still smelled like his cologne, and she couldn't help but smile a little more as she crammed herself into the booth next to Rook, eyes instantly on the computer screen.

  "User has been banned," she read aloud. She looked over at Rook and smiled. "Shame on you. What happened? Was it epic? Did someone accidentally paste their password into chat? Because if they did, you should hop a proxy and talk to them like you're a regular. Scroll through the chat logs and find out someone else's username and get their e-mail. I bet it's the same password," she suggested.

[Rook Boswell]

Wow.  Rook couldn't help herself, and actually laughed at the way Claire leaned towards Daniel and didn't her whispering.  That girl was just too much, but it was perfectly delicious to watch.  Rook didn't know how exactly she could do it, but she somehow managed to make it obvious that she was doing it while simultaneously sounding ridiculously innocent.  Coop's indignant snort and attempt to get back to work, brought on by Rook's saying Claire broke him, was cut off by Claire's actions once again, and that only made it funnier.  Free entertainment ftw.

"Oh, believe me, he doesn't mind," Rook called out with a quirky sort of grin, both because she knew that Danny wasn't going to answer and because it was so totally true that it wasn't funny.  Seriously, what guy didn't like seeing a hot chick in his clothes?  Guys loved that, and the way Daniel got awkward sometimes just proved that he was just like the rest of the male population in that regard.

What Rook wasn't going to say was that she could smell Daniel's cologne on the dry shirt that Claire was wearing when she returned and crammed into the booth, or that it smelled good.  Daniel was already rolling his eyes and taking his paperwork, both the wet and the dry, to the end of the bar away from them, like he thought he might actually be able to get something done.  Not likely, but he got an A for effort.  Rook was betting it wouldn't be long before he was glancing back at them, or before Claire was doing something to draw his attention.  Basically, he had to take paperwork home if he was going to get it done. 

"Well, yeah, user's been banned," she agreed, taking her attention off of Daniel and the fact that he had some kind of crazy awesome cologne so that she could focus on her raid again.  "It's been epic.  Someone posted gore, and the locals are losing their shit.  This is probably my tenth ban, because the furries haven't realized it doesn't work.  It's just annoying as hell."

She copied another line out of an idiot's username and started pasting into chat repeatedly, and once she was into a pattern, she grinned at Claire between pastes.  "You should join my interweb army.  You have exactly what I need in a troll partner," she told her friend with a wide grin, more than telling the truth.  Claire had just the right kind of thinking, but she didn't do it often enough.  "Fact is, this all started because one of my friends found a password in a chat.  Idiot thought that if they just spammed the box, it would go away and nobody would notice, but we've been casing this place for weeks.  We DID break into the email, and we locked the idiot out, but it was only a mod.  We can't delete the things we want to, but it's started a crazy bit of confusion.  We keep taking turns impersonating people in the cbox, sometimes three of us at a time.  I think the admin might just implode."

Oh, yes, she was proud of herself.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Daniel finally asked, looking totally confused.  He'd never been huge into the computer stuff, just enough to work out the interesting, easy stuff.  Pretty much everything out of Rook's mouth was foreign, but Claire seemed to understand. 

"It's serious business, you wouldn't understand," Rook teased, winking at Claire.  She didn't flirt with Coop, but she liked teasing him, all the same.

[Claire O'Riley]

"What was her password? I bet it was something fucking fail, like petspot or bellaedward," she snarled, scooting in to look at the mayhem. Every forum had been locked. They'd been able to do damage, but nothing permanent. "Looks like her account would only let you delete posts in certain areas. I hate that she's not an admin. Oh well - hey, she's talking about some Yahoo group? What is it and can you delete it?" she asked brightly, looking up at her.

  Really, Claire was a nice girl, but when it came to forum trolling...  She glanced back at Daniel and smiled. "You're ten feet away trying to do paperwork and you're listening to us instead?" she asked him. She couldn't help but laugh as he made some sort of gesture to his paperwork, like it wasn't going to get done as long as they were around to distract him. She stood up and wandered over, putting a hand on his shoulder - patronizingly, not flirtatiously.

  "Now, Coop, the art of trolling the intatron is serious business. I don't think we can begin our tale just yet, or we might really break you - or, as they say, Townsend rapes the mare," she added. She cracked up into laughter, Rook's cackle not even muffled a little as the girls relived the memory. To Daniel's confused expression, all she could breathe was "Horse roleplay. Horrible linear threading. Forum.. only posts were in a section called "breeding grounds". And there was a "fast breed" and a "slow breed"," she said with an obnoxious snort of laughter.

  If his next question was in regards to whether or not her dad knew what she did on her own laptop, she was going to make him regret it. As it was, his befuddled expression was enough to set her off again, and she looked up at Rook with tears in her eyes.

  "The horse... who wore... a dress... " she wheezed, laughing so hard she was doubled over. She was giving Daniel a good shot of how nice his shirt looked on her, particularly the part where she'd left it buttoned low at her chest area, but on this instance Claire was guilty only of laughing too hard to be devious.

[Rook Boswell]

"I got one better for you," Rook cackled, having much more fun now that Claire was in on it with her.  "It was luciuspotter, the freak, and her username had to do with Snape.  Can you believe those Potter freaks?"

The question was mostly rhetorical, especially since Rook began typing frantically to some of her fellow trolls, trying to find out if anyone knew what Yahoo! group the victim was talking about.  Sure enough, someone was on it within seconds, and Rook offered Claire a pleased sort of nudge to the side.  "Guaranteed, it's the same passy," she offered, and when Claire stood to go tease Coop about not understanding the netspeak, she jumped into some more raiding, just to keep things exciting.  That only lasted about ten seconds, though.  Why?

Because Claire just had to mention Townsend and the mare.  "BEST.  ENDTHREAD.  EVER!" she howled, cackling right along with Claire as Danny looked from one to the other like they were both cracked.  They were laughing about rape, so it wasn't like he didn't have a reason, but he just didn't understand.  At least he just looked confused, and not disgusted.  "Forget the horse in the dress!  Remember the dual roleplays, with the horses and the kids?  Those writers had to be, like, TWELVE, and all they cared about was rape and horse sex!  What the HELL?"

If she had anything else to say, it was lost in the laughter that she succumbed to just at the thought of that place.  It got to the point where she could hardly make a sound, she was laughing so hard, and Daniel was still staring at them like there was something wrong, though he seemed to be trying rather hard rather suddenly not to look at Claire, and just as Rook was starting to regain her ability to breathe again, she realized why.

Claire was so totally flashing a hell of a lot of cleavage as she leaned over to laugh that it almost wasn't funny, and Danny had noticed.  "Oh, my god, Coop," Rook wheezed, then erupted all over again.  He shot his head towards her, looking both guilty and confused all over again, like he didn't know if she'd caught him or not, and it wasn't like she could say anything just yet.  She was actually glad that she had a shirt that wasn't showing off what cleavage she had and pants, or she might have been in Claire's boat right then. 

[Claire O'Riley]

  Claire managed to straighten herself back out, hands on her cheeks as she rubbed them. Her face was bright red as she tried to de-stress her muscles with her fingertips. She'd been laughing so hard that her face hurt. When Rook started laughing again, she looked at Daniel, and then reached out to push his knee lightly.

   "Tsk! Naughty!" she accused, mockingly grabbing either side of the shirt and pulling it close to her as though she were covering up modestly. "Between you and I, it looks better on me," she said, pose relaxing as the door opened. The last thing she needed was someone coming in while she looked like she was about to hit Daniel up for a lap dance. Her brother had a bad way of just showing up when she was slow at work, like he knew he was more likely to catch her doing something she wasn't supposed to be.

  The scent of wolf hit her before he was inside the door fully. The fact that Daniel had left his MP3 player hooked up to the sound system and that Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot" was playing just as he came through the door was enough that if Claire hadn't been so stunned she'd have blurted out a joke about the ironing and then cackled along with Rook at her internet-speak. As it stood, though - Claire's first instinct was curiosity, mingled with fear. Neither Rook nor Daniel were wolves, and they couldn't possibly understand that as a sub, Claire's position was never one of strength. It just so happened that she was also suddenly in the presence of a mountain of a man who was not only unfamiliar in appearance but also in scent and radiated alpha-male, which spelled out t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Claire had seen what happened when other packs came into the area; Thane ran a tight ship, and that was... that.

  She stopped all of her antics with a quickness and slinked back over to the booth with Rook, sitting down so close to her friend that it looked like she was trying to meld with her. She was sitting straight up by indication of her spine, but had leaned left at an awkward angle, almost as though she were situated slightly behind Rook; background, not foreground. Claire's brown eyes were probably the widest Daniel would have ever seen them, and she was only vaguely aware that she was holding her breath.

  What she didn't expect was for the stranger wolf to walk casually up to where she'd just been standing, speaking in his baritone voice as he did. "Retirement must be nice," he said just as Cooper had fixed his eyes on him. A smile cracked on his face. "S'up Coop. Told you I'd make my way from SoCal eventually," Nathaniel said. He had seen Claire, of course, because he'd have had to have been blind not to, and he also quite quickly determined that she wasn't a threat. He wasn't over-confident, but he knew that low-crawl, even in human form, when he saw it.

[Rook Boswell]

It was one of the weirdest things Rook had ever seen, the way that Claire went from being so happy and playful to fearful and silent, which was why she also straightened and took in the newcomer.  It was sad, because he was attractive, but even she got the feeling that there was something off about him.  Not necessarily bad, but...wild.  If Claire's reaction hadn't been so worrisome, Rook might have been more interested just because of that, but she trusted Claire when it came to wolf stuff.  That was what this seemed like.

Then, out of nowhere, the mystery man went all friendly with Coop.  What?!  It actually made Rook a little angry that someone Coop was friendly with was upsetting Claire so much, and for as laid-back as she usually was, it only made her want to somehow protect Claire.  That was some real ironing, since Claire was definitely more durable than the human Rook, but it was still there in her body language as her friend tried to meld into her and disappear behind her.

Straight up, the absolute last person that Coop expected to walk through that door was Nathaniel, and he actually stared for a beat while the man crossed the room and Claire started slinking away into the 'safety' of Rook's presence.  By the time Nathaniel spoke up, Danny's surprise had turned into an outright grin, and he nodded his own greeting.

"Retirement has its perks, and it's about time you made it over here.  I figured it just wasn't going to happen by now.  What the hell is up with you?" he asked, closing most of the remaining distance for one of those manly handshake-hugs.  "Did you finally get bored over there, or what?"

Oh, okay, so they DID know each other.  That presented something interesting, since this new guy was definitely something else.  Rook never would have pegged Coop for being friends with someone who wasn't a 'good guy', since that's totally what he was, but this new one wasn't easy to pin.  She just...didn't know, and if he was a wolf?  Wasn't that trouble for Claire's family?  God, she hoped not.  The O'Rileys were pretty crazy about taking care of their own, which was good, but it meant that Claire would be under constant watch if they thought it was a problem.

That seriously limited what was okay and what wasn't, and how much Rook would see her.  She didn't like that, and if that was how things were going to work, she wouldn't like this new wolf, either.

[Claire O'Riley]

It was comical, the manshake, but Nathaniel wasn't going to be a hardass about it. Daniel was one of the few people he could greet like that - his own family was slightly more violent when they saw eachother. That was the Fenris family, though. You were just born fighting. He leaned against the bar next to him, sideglancing the girls again before he spoke.

  "Lucas, actually. He's checking out the city. He's thinking about coming this way, so I told him I'd come along. You can guess how that went. I finally left the department after getting too many slaps on the wrist," was all he offered as to his reason for being local suddenly. Daniel had been his partner once upon a time, so he would be no stranger to Nathaniel's temper. He also knew the man was a wolf, and a particularly large one. He'd never even seen Claire in her own form, or Kieran for that matter, so his size comparison wasn't scaled properly, but nonetheless, Fenris made them look like toys. Curses will do that.

  He couldn't stand to see the girl sitting so stiff-backed, though, and finally, he looked over to the dark-haired duo in the booth. "It's okay, sweetheart," he said. He would have offered explanation, but he didn't know who she was, who Rook was, and didn't feel like having the discussion. He settled with trying to reassure her she was safe, and then looked back at Daniel - as if to pretend that this wasn't embarrassingly like it always happened. The Fenrisúlfr line was bred alpha true generation after generation, and it never failed that anywhere he went with other wolves, particularly those who were submissive, there would always be some sort of thing.

  Claire, meanwhile, was about where Rook was in reasoning. She looked at Nathan incredulously when he spoke to her, but she wasn't convinced. Slowly, she got up from the booth and made her way over to him. She was going to have to check him out, but she wanted to do it with Daniel between them. It might have been ill of her, but the way Claire reasoned, Daniel was higher on the food chain than she was - and Nathaniel was an alpha, which put him at the top. If things went down, she wanted a buffer that was more capable than she was in the middle of it - despite the fact that if Nathaniel were really a threat, he'd have had no problems with most humans separating him and the after dinner mint that was Claire.

  Luckily, this was not the case.

  She crept around Daniel's side, positioning herself behind his chair. She'd taken the long way around the bar to do it, and she'd never taken her eyes off of the newcomer the entire time. She hated to admit it, but she was trying to bury herself in that shirt of Daniel's, now not so attractively knotted and hanging untucked and more unrevealing than it had before. She put her hand on the back of his chair, white-knuckled, and warned herself not to break it on accident.

  "Hey," she said softly. Her brown eyes were tinged with amber - she was not pureblooded like the rest of the O'Rileys, and she had to try just a little harder when it came to using her wolf senses in human form. Thane had let Odette stay human at her request, something that ultimately got her killed. The rest of the pack could reach with their lupine scent or hearing with great ease - for Claire, she had to let her adrenaline flow, like she was preparing to shift. Since he was in such close proximity, it didn't have to be much, but it was enough to give her eyes that pretty, yet all too familiar, golden sparkle.

[Rook Boswell]

"You would have," Daniel remarked, shaking his head and grinning just a little.  Nathaniel had always done things his own way, especially when he got pissed off.  It was something you just accepted or didn't.  There wasn't usually much middle ground.  "Does that mean you're staying out here, then?"

Plenty about this situation could have been comical, under the right circumstances, but Rook really just wasn't seeing it.  Claire was way too upset by it, and didn't seem too reassured by the stranger's statement, but she got up to go investigate.  Raid forgotten in favor of taking care of her friend, Rook slid out of the booth a little more quickly and less gracefully than her lupine friend, which was hilarious considering the fact that Rook really wasn't a clumsy sort of girl, but it was something you got used to when your best friend wasn't human.  For once, it looked like Claire was looking for strength in her human companions, hiding between Daniel to test the waters with the new guy, and Rook came around the bar the shorter way, which took her closer to Nathaniel than Claire had opted for.  Stupid, maybe, but Rook was probably the more aggressive of the two girls, despite being the human one.  She had the personality to push back, even if she was outmatched, if she had to.  She didn't usually feel like it was necessary, but now? 

Yes, now she did, and she wasn't even aware entirely of what she was doing, but she knew to do it.  Claire moved along the longer path about as quickly as Rook's slightly more leisurely walk, and they essentially flanked Nathaniel as they met behind Daniel.  Too bad they really just didn't form any kind of threat whatsoever.  Really, Rook was only in the way over here, but she understood the concept of support better than she thought Coop would, and that was her purpose.  Her concern was all for Claire, and Coop as a secondary if things went South.  It was Claire that mattered.

You'd have thought that Coop would be used to weird shit by now.  Hell, he had hunters, shapeshifters, vampires and all sorts of things in his bar all the time, he had a deal going with one of those hunters for help if things got too hairy for his people to handle, and he not only employed supernaturals, but was friends with them.  Really, weird should be nothing new to him. 

It still caught him off-guard pretty much every time.  The thing about this kind of situation as opposed to the sexual tension and teasing of before was that it had a different kind of charge to it.  Whether they all liked it or not, it was a sort of tension that he recognized.  It was the kind that could go bad with just the right trigger, and he was seriously hoping that none of the other O'Rileys walked in.  That would be all that was necessary, he'd have bet his life on it.  Hoping to diffuse the situation after watching Rook and Claire abandon their booth to stand behind him, his face smoothed out into a pleasant, neutral sort of expression, blank.  He was preparing for the worst, really.

"Nathaniel, this is Claire and her friend, Rook," he started, gesturing to the girls as he said their names.  "Claire, Rook, this is my friend, Nathaniel.  We were partners for awhile back when I was a cop, before he went out West.  He's a good guy."

He glanced back at them, trying to assure them that even if they didn't know for sure, he did.  He trusted Nathaniel.  "Nathaniel, Claire is the daughter of the local alpha," he offered, hoping to put them all where they needed to be.  No last names, not that it would be hard to figure out, but enough information to hopefully keep everyone informed enough to avoid trouble.  The devil was in the details, always. 

[Claire O'Riley]

While Daniel's introductions had been brief, they had been very informative, especially on Nathaniel's end. He didn't need Claire running home to tell her father that a new wolf was in town with a brother in tow - he didn't need the headache if she knew his family line, either. He smiled regardless of his internal thoughts, and it managed to capture the warmth that he needed it to.

  "It's nice to meet you both," he said. "And yes, we were definitely partners. We got eachother into more trouble than was necessary most of the time," he added, though he failed to mention that it was usually Daniel covering for his irrational anger most of the time. It was why he'd transferred, in the end. He didn't need to drag someone else's career down in flames, and it was what would have happened eventually.

  To Daniel, he laughed. "We're staying in the city. Lucas is actually somewhere apartment hunting right now. I'm not sure what I'm doing here yet, if I'm staying or not, so I'm at the Hilton for a while. I figured I'd sight-see for a few days before making up my mind, and meanwhile he's all but dig his heels in. I don't know if the city is big enough for the both of us, though. He's still every bit as shitty as he was when you last saw him."

  Lucas needed no introduction of his own, ever. He looked like an angel and was as ill-tempered as a wolverine on a cold morning. Really, he was just surly - at least when Nathaniel had seen him, most times. He was definitely a chop off of the block that was their father; Nathaniel knew that a lot of it had to do with his personal history and how he'd just given up trying to fight the anger as it came along. He was what Nathaniel didn't want to become.

  Claire narrowed her eyes a little when Nathaniel had mentioned he was staying at the Hilton. That was where Diarmid worked, which would be where this new wolf had to stay, wouldn't it? She managed a wry sort of smile, wondering how long it was before the two ran into one another. Nathaniel, she gleaned, was a hard man to miss.

  "It's nice to meet you," she said politely, though she still hadn't made up her mind. He was definitely attractive, but Daniel telling Claire that he was okay didn't necessarily make her wolf-senses agree. She was going to make an effort, though. "Did you want anything to drink? I'm technically at work, so..."

  She glanced over at Rook, a brow every so slightly arching. That would have been a signal for Rook to come with her to the kitchen, which she hoped that the girl would pick up on. When Nathaniel shrugged, she held her breath a little.

  "Sure, I'll take a Guinness if you've got it," he said after a pause. He looked at Daniel. "Doesn't do anything for me, but when they say that the taste grows on you, they're right."

  "'kay," she replied. She let go of the chair that she'd been holding finally, not even bothering to give Daniel the usual brush of her hand on his shoulder as she deleted herself from the situation. The fact that she wasn't throwing herself at him indicated that she was still not down with the situation, but Nathaniel wouldn't have known that unless someone had told him. As it stood, he was working off of very little information.

  Claire headed to the kitchen, taking Rook's hand as she went. It was girl talk time.

[Rook Boswell]

Daniel didn't see the need to specify the fact that, yes, the 'trouble' had generally been Nathaniel getting them in over their heads because he had a short fuse attached to a whole lot of TNT.  Fortunately, Daniel himself was pretty level-headed, and had actually developed even more patience and 'smoothing over' capabilities as a result of being partnered with Nathaniel.  They balanced each other out, mostly.  The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Daniel was a tiger, or something else that was big enough to keep a huge freakin' wolf in check.  Coop had only had to get in front of Nathaniel once when the man was in his wolf form, and that thing still showed up in a nightmare or two every now and then.  It was big, it was scary, and it had taken more cajones than he'd thought he had to look at it, remind himself that it was his friend, and not panic himself into running and getting himself killed.

God, if he never repeated that performance, he'd be satisfied.

That didn't mean he had any intentions of staying away from Nathaniel, and he was a slightly different person now.  For starters, he wasn't a cop anymore, and he'd learned a little more about dealing with the supernaturals, which he'd learned was a difficult task for plain, vanilla humans.  "Well, if you promise not the trash the place, you're welcome to crash with me if Lucas starts to drive you up a wall," he offered.  He knew how the two of them got with each other, especially after a lengthy period of time.  If the city might not be big enough for the two of them, then a hotel room sure as hell wouldn't be. 

Rook actually missed the eyebrow arch from Claire, having been watching the two men after she'd nodded and said her hellos over the introduction.  It was interesting to see their body language, especially Daniel's.  She didn't know Nathaniel well enough to know if he was acting at all strange for his usual, but Daniel had her curious.  He wasn't exactly tense, but he definitely wasn't as casual as he usually was, almost like he was bracing for something.  She wanted to know what.  Actually, she wanted to know more about this whole situation, which was probably one of the things that made her actually sound like she was related to her sister, but she felt better about it because she managed it without being boring and all over the old, crusty books. 

She noticed that she was supposed to follow after Claire asked him what he wanted to drink, especially since her friend had her by the hand and was taking her into the kitchen, whether she liked it or not.  Girl talk time, for sure. 

"Wow, what's the deal with him?  Come on, spill," she hissed as soon as they had the door shut.  There was a huge overhead fan close enough that she hoped the wolf outside couldn't hear them.  She knew that Claire had to have SOMETHING to add to what she already had in mind, though.  Given her behavior, it was obvious. 

[Claire O'Riley]

"Do you think I can fit on your couch?" he asked with a snort. "Don't you remember the night we got in late and I crashed on that pathetic love seat you had? I wore your couch it was so small," he joked. Those had been the post-academy barely-scraping by days where a one-bedroom apartment was considered luxurious if you furnished it with something besides wicker, which had to happen in Daniel's case for at least one object with which to seat Nathaniel because while he was big - despite lacking the comically so edge - he still had mass that didn't parallel his actual size, and he was prone to breaking cheap plastic chairs.

  In the kitchen, Claire pulled a Guinness out of the fridge and popped the top off with her hand. She poured it slowly into a frosted glass as Rook began asking questions, and she turned to her friend while she finished what she was doing. She threw the bottle in the trash can by the counter and then leaned against it, arms propping her up.

  "I don't know," she whispered. She looked at the door, and then moved to the other side of the kitchen. "He smells... weird. I've never smelled anything like that before. I mean, maybe it's just that all of the alpha males I know are family, but I don't know." She trailed off, waving a hand up with an expression that was easily MySpaceable had the situation not been so dire. "I've never had anything like this happen before - and I don't have anyone to talk to about it except you, and I'm not hating, but you're not a wolf, so you can't even tell me if this is normal or not."

  She sighed and went to nervously playing with ends of her hair, strands of which were curled amid straight, depending on what had gotten wet from the rain. She noticed that Nathaniel was pleasantly and mostly dry, and she didn't see how because he was so big, he took in the doorway when he'd come in, and then he made her feel so small. She looked up at Rook. "I hate being a wolf sometimes," she hissed. "Do humans have this kind of thing happen?"

[Rook Boswell]

"Hey, whatever, dude.  I loved that couch," he laughed, shaking his head.  He actually missed that love seat, but it had gotten so ragged that he just couldn't justify moving it out.  Some single kid was probably rocking it in his first apartment right at that moment.  He hoped so.  "I remember.  You were all limbs, all over the place.  We got a picture of it once you actually fell asleep, you know.  I still have it. 

It was strange, because he hadn't really thought about how much he'd missed having this guy around until now, so he hoped Nathaniel decided to stay in town.  They'd done a lot together.  "My couch now is a little bigger, and it folds out into a bed, so I think you'd be fine."

Rook tried not to be obvious about craning her head around to see out the kitchen window for a brief instant, and then her attention was all on Claire again.  She was getting into the wolfy stuff, and that was really pretty interesting to Rook.  She wondered what it'd be like, honestly.  "It might be because they're all family and he's not.  The only way I can think of to test that would be to pull in another wolf and see if they notice it, too, but I don't know who.  Your brother is just too male.  They'd probably try to kill each other.  Maybe your aunt?  She'd tell your uncle, though.  Hey, he said he was staying at the Hilton, though.  Just wait and see if Uncle Di says anything about it," she suggested.  Sometimes she went ahead and called some of Claire's relatives the same thing that Claire called them, just from hearing it so much. 

At the whole 'not hating, but you're not a wolf' thing, Rook snorted and gave Claire a dismissive wave, like this was unimportant.  "I'm not hating, either, but you guys do some weird shit, so even if you have some cool points in your favor, I'm not sure I mind not being one," she pointed out.  Of course, Claire was born a wolf, so it wasn't weird to her.  Rook found a lot of the pack business to be strange, though.  "No, this kind of thing doesn't really happen to humans.  Well, not me, anyway.  I mean, he's big, but what worries me about him is how he freaks you out.  Until he starts juggling refrigerators, I don't have to ever accept the fact that he can crush me with his pinky, so he doesn't scare me."

It was absolutely honest and blunt, and completely stupid.  Rook knew that, but she was being honest about it.  She knew that she was stupidly refusing to accept the fact that Nathaniel was dangerous, but it just wasn't how she was to let him scare her.  With Claire around, she was willing to back down even less.  Too bad he really would annihilate her if it ever came down to it.  She knew who her money would be on.  "I don't know, Claire.  I think your nose is pretty smart.  If it says he's bad news, then maybe you should just treat him like he is.  If it really worries you, talk to your dad.  He's not going to flip his shit on you, I'm sure."

She offered up one of her quirky smiles, hoping it would be reassuring this time, and gave her friend a slow, gentle hug because Claire still had a full glass of beer in her hand.  Otherwise, she wouldn't have worried about how she moved.  Claire was much more durable than she was, that was for sure.

[Claire O'Riley]

Claire's eyes went wide at the thought of telling her dad about Nathaniel's presence. "No way!" she exclaimed, almost too loudly. She looked up at the door, but when nobody came in, she looked back at Rook. "We can't tell my dad anything - OR my brother, for that matter. As far as anyone knows, this never happened. If my dad comes down here to see for himself it's going to go nitro fast. He'll make me quit!" she added. She didn't really know if he'd make her quit, but she wouldn't put it past him.

  She leaned on Rook with the side of her body that didn't include a glass of nasty dark beer in her hand, a half-returned hug. "Listen, seriously, this is between you and I, okay? Until I can find someone not related. God, I'm related to like, every wolf in Ramsa besides those Westing chicks. Except I can't ask them because they're different," she muttered. The Chai Red Wolves had an entirely foreign system of doing things to Claire, and she didn't even want to open that can of worms. No, she'd have to wait until she met someone who would be able to tell her things without having a bias to them.

  "This is frustrating. I never realize I can't talk to anyone until something happens, and then it's like, who can I go to? Maeve will literally pick up the phone as I walk out the front door and by the time I get home, my dad is already on me. It's like, how am I supposed to learn things without always being in trouble or being sheltered? God, my mom so wouldn't have put up with this shit," she said, and that was under her breath. She must really have been on edge because bringing up her mother was something she didn't do often.

  "And for the record, he himself isn't what's freaking me out. If Coop says he's good, he's good. It sounds like he used to be a cop, anyways. It's this reaction I'm having. Maybe it's all in my head - I mean, he's not doing anything weird, is he?" Claire moved to the door, standing up on her tiptoes to peek out of the window. She saw Daniel, who was facing that way, and made eye contact with him. She got an expectant sort of questioning stare in return, if that was possible, and turned, back to the door.

  "We should probably go back out there," she said, voice breathy, like she wanted to laugh the whole situation off and then pretend it never happened - which she did. Claire didn't like not knowing what to do, but right now, she sure felt like the baby of the group. It didn't help that she was, though.

  When the girls came back out, Nathaniel didn't make any comments as to what had taken so long. He hadn't tried to listen, either, but he could hear them buzzing around - just didn't try to pick up what they were saying. He wasn't honestly sure if he could have, but he wasn't going to invade their privacy; he didn't know them like that.

  "Thank you," he said. His eye contact with Claire was so commonplace that it was easy to overlook, but since wolves were canines and they didn't much do the looking each other in the eyes bit unless it was a threat or other serious business, it was more significant than it appeared. Was he testing her? Claire didn't have it in her to hold his gaze, and so she looked away, at the clock, making a noise indicating that he was welcome.

  "That couch was awesome, but it was awesome when I was like, the size I was when I was twelve, dude," he laughed, trying to get back to the happier level of conversation. If he just immersed himself in this, he might forget the tension in the room. "But now that I see you've upgraded to a fold-out bed I might have to take you up on that offer. The Hilton is nice, Lucas in the next room with his personal rain cloud is definitely not a selling point," he acknowledged.

  Claire sat at the bar behind Daniel and effectively removed herself from the conversation directly. She drummed her fingers on the counter until she finally broke in. "We're dead. Can I leave? I want to go to Rook's house," she said. She looked at Daniel with an impatient expression, and flicked her eyes between he and Nathaniel for a moment, like she was waiting to see what they were going to say. She'd told him where she was going because it was habitual, and it hadn't really occurred to her that it betrayed how dependent on others she was.

  You'd never catch Kimber telling someone where she was going as though they were entitled to know.