On The Subject of Indian

IC Time: Early Evening
Location: Peninsula Apartments: Apartment 108
Synopsis: Newcomers to Forks discuss the possibility of checking out the local supernatural haunts, as well as dinner.
Submitted by: Steve


Rick is in the kitchen.

Given that Rick is never in the kitchen of his own volition, this is probably a bad sign all by itself.

BUT here he is, wearing sunglasses (in case the sun gets too bright in here?) and prodding a pair of silvery tongs idly into the large black pot he has boiling on the stove. In the pot are eggs. A dozen of them, in fact. Every egg that was in the refrigerator when he opened it intending to make a sandwich fifteen minutes ago.

On any given night, it could be the sound of paws padding heavy on the carpet that heralds Rick's roommate's arrival not quite as often as human foot steps, but all the same. This time it would be the latter, bare feet from somewhere around the bedroom as Steve makes his way into the more general living space of the apartment, quickly becoming lived in the long they stay in quaint rainy Forks. He has a newspaper in his hand, folded over, and this he reads as he walks and talks.

"I'm kind of thinking we could go for Indian tonight. Not like there's a lot of variety but…" When Rick doesn't immediately appear to be in the living room, Steve has to blink and turn towards the open space of the kitchen. There's a small crinkle from the newspaper from one small fidget of vague worry as he asks, "You're not cooking or anything, are you?"

"No," says Rick with a dour kind of directness, which is only a lie if you believe that boiling a massive amount of eggs that don't actually belong to you constitutes cooking. There is the fact that the stove is on and the water rolling in the pot is steaming in drifts and hiccups around the curious prod of his tongs. Bubbles sift in irregular streams from beneath the overlapping white bulk of one egg over the other, extra excited when he clamps hold of one to lift it deftly out of the water.

"Do they deliver?" is his first question, seeing as Steve already seems to have dressed down and settled in with the paper. "How do you know when they're done?" is the second.

Drifting on towards the kitchen, tucking the paper under the wing of one arm which folds with the other, Steve rests his shoulder against the doorway and gives the pot a look. Cranes his neck enough to see what's in there before allowing a series of bewildered blinks to go by before he kind of just. Accepts it. "You gotta time it, and— with that many in there, probably longer than usual. You're gonna pick us up another dozen, right?"

Wrong, probably, but hope springs eternal. Steve extracts the newspaper out from his clasp and waves it vaguely. "They deliver, unless you want to get out of the house. It's them or pizza, basically. Bored?" is a hopeful guess.

"Probably not," conceded with more honesty than he was willing to spare the initial question about his cooking, Rick sniffs carefully at the extracted egg once, twice and thrice before lobbing it over into the sink. There it smashes, hisses and sputters into a semi-liquid mess, leaving him eleven unfinished eggs and — as Steve might see past the long reach of his arm through the course of the toss, two burners active and only one pot between them.

"Indian's fine, I suppose. I don't think you're supposed to call them that, though." Back to prodding around in hot water, he doesn't answer the question about purpose at all.

Steve closes one eye as he doesn't move or say anything quick enough before Rick begins his petty destruction of perfectly good food, opening it once more before he moves into the kitchen to assume control as necessary. The newspaper is flipped onto the counter. "Wrong ethnicity," he states. "But good try. If you wanted to try the other kind, we've been cordially invited to the local Reserve, you might remember."

He's reaching past Rick to patiently turn off the unneeded burner, ducking to evaluate how hot the other pot is. Then, reaching to take tongs off the other werewolf as if perhaps it were a pair of unchildproofed scissors and Rick was maybe the better part of a century younger than he is.

Rick does remember, as a point of fact. It probably has something to do with the uneasy knit of his brow when the subject rears its head again. Also the way he's frowning, although the latter reaction occurs around the same time as he's in danger of losing his tongs. "Get your own," is nipped off in a nasal huff which would be harmless if it wasn't backed by a crocodilian snap of blazing hot tong grippers at Steve's near leg.

He's probably quick enough to get out of the way. Probably.

"I do remember," is not confirmed until he's plunged his tongs back into the water, which is too hot, and his eggs, which are quickly on their way to being too well done. "Jason with his wig-waams," his accent drags haughtily after the a, "and his pow-wows. You do realize if the vampires have any ambition at all they are probably watching these people."

Steve manages a side step that only has the tips of the boiled hot metal nipping at denim, exasperation communicated in the funneling of air through nose and mouth, flaring nostrils and hissing through teeth. On the break of sunset on a night not too far off from now, tongs may have been more imperative to steal away if only for the principle of the thing. Human enough right now to know that horseplay in a kitchen with boiling water is probably a terrible idea.

Probably. "And you do realise we can't hide away forever. Safety in numbers has worth, and he was… I dunno. Nice. Nicer than we've tolerated before. The other guy was kind of weird, but…"

"Forty years is of success so far is nothing to snuff at, you know." Forty years of relative success since the last time they were both nearly slaughtered like domestic piggies, that is, only to go wee wee wee all the way home instead. Lucky for them. Unfortunate, maybe, for Forks.

Expression half screened by the black gleam of his glasses, Rick uses his tongs to dribble superheated water over onto the recently shut down second burner, where it hisses into violent little spits of steam. "Neither of them seemed very intelligent. At least promise me you won't throw in with them in exchange for hugs or…buffalo jerky recipes."

"Jason probably wouldn't cook all of the eggs on a whim, at least. I hope you like cereal for breakfast." There's a rattle of cutlery as, as ordered, Steve browses around for a second set of tongs, snapping them once in victory of his find before he's attempting to push his way towards the stove if only to get Rick away from it. "I'm not going to throw in with them. He drew a line, anyway — didn't you notice? My kind and his kind. I dunno if it's a racial thing or what, but they probably wouldn't have me. I just want to check it out."

"Cereal sounds fine, actually. I hope you like it dry." Irritable reprisal comes easily, as ever, even as Rick allows himself to be shouldered away from the stove top and all the terrible things he might accidentally (or intentionally) do with it. What happened to the milk shall remain a mystery. For now.

Tongs still in hand, sunglasses still black and suit still pinstriped, Rick retreats well into the living room to flop himself drearily down lengthwise on the couch. Hot metal clacks aimlessly after the corner of a pillow; cranes it over onto the floor. Reaches for another. "You'd make a crap Indian anyway. Chief Bee in Bonnet."

"I think you're being racially insensitive to our fellow wolven brethren." The oven is turned down to make the water simmer instead of boil, and once eggs are arranged evenly, Steve discovers the pot lid and clamps it over. Then, the running of water, and pieces of shell are delicately extracted while half-cooked eggy mess is encouraged down the drain. Not too long later, Steve is emerging from a kitchen restored to peace and harmony, looking across at Rick with—

Worry. For no reason he puts a voice to. But it only lasts for a few seconds. "You should come with me, when I go. Also let
me know what you want from the menu." The supplementary Indian restaurant brochure slotted into the pages is tossed with care enough for it to slice through the air and land on Rick, rather than flutter and fall midway.

"I think you're being reckless," is the sort of thing that Steve probably never expected to hear Rick say. AND YET, out it rolls while he lounges and plays construction crane operator with tongs still too hot to touch the ends of. "Generally I think when they skin you, you die before it grows back. And that's assuming they aren't polite enough to see that you're dead before they get down to it."

"I believe the human girl at the docks was eavesdropping on us to boot, and both of them stepped in like overgrown terriers before I could clout her over the head."

It isn't particularly what he expected to hear, no, dismay writing itself in Steve's expression from where he stands at a limbo between living room and kitchen. His hands find themselves on his hips, drawing his spine up as he listens before tilting his head a little in yeah true, except— "That prrrobably would have drawn more negative attention our way than some girl having the barest clue about what we are without any idea about who we are. As far as I understand, they do have a police force here."

In case Rick thought they were this backwater, which, to be fair, they've been in such places. It just doesn't happen to be Port Angeles, or even Forks. "I don't like vampires. I'm not gonna be looking for vampires. And I wouldn't go if I thought I'd run into any looking for me. If you don't want to go, then…"

Rick is silent for a while. Broodily so behind his highly unnecessary Ray Charles glasses and open tongs, which he's taken to scratching at his scruffy head with — evidence that the heat has probably died down somewhat.

"I'll go," sounds less enthusiastic than it could, the way teenagers sound about being guilted into early morning Sunday sermons by nagging mothers. The glasses are eventually plucked off his narrow face with the tongs, folded over and tossed after the scattered pillows as he crosses one leg long over the other. "You should probably check on your eggs."

There's a half-smile at the agreement finally wrangled from the other 'wolf, which is quick to vanish in place of an eye roll. "Yeah, I probably should," is sarcastic, but— Steve turns, and trundles on out to disappear into the kitchen, trying to remember if any exciting recipes have room for one less than a dozen boiled eggs.


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