Wolf on the run

Sober up. Aha. Yea. “Says the man who basically just downed a pint.” Maeve squinted her eyes at him, not being very subtle with her scepticism. His reasoning sounded rational enough - it wouldn’t be the cheapest trip - but it was still far from enough to convince her to simply step down. An accident would cost a whole lot more. So her hand stayed out towards him and it practically got more and more persisting and stern the longer her let her wait. The short human woman could wait for as long as was needed. And eventually it paid off! She looked to his hand as he reached into his pocket and to her delight she heard the rattling sound of keys even before they became visible and placed into her hand. A very pleased smiled immediately brightened her face and in an energetic movement she closed her fingers around the small bundle, pulling her arm back to herself. “Thank you,” she said while, quite satisfied with herself, lifting her chin pointedly. “And if it really troubles you, then you can spent the night at my place.” She stuck the keys into her own coat pocket and had already taken the first few steps before realizing how she’d just sounded and quickly turned to look back at the wolf with a hasty expression, lips slightly apart prematurely before speaking again. “That came out wrong.” Especially with her declaration just moments prior. “A couch! I happen to have a really lovely and comfortable couch that you can borrow for the night. Pillows too.” She attempted a casual smile, however, sadly she couldn’t prevent it from feeling strained. Since that was exactly what it was. Strained to cover her the embarrassment.
As the smile then softened on its own, she looked away from him and down at the street a step or two in front of her own feet. Click clack. Her hand had decided to stay in the pocket and also encouraged the other one to do the same. She didn’t really need the warmth since she was plenty warm to begin with but at least this kept her hands where she could ‘see’ them. Where she knew they’d stay out of trouble.
She was getting steadily back down from the spike of shame again when pulled her all the way out of it with his question; changing the subject completely. Visibly, it showed in how her shoulders dropped a little and stop pushing the collar of her coat up around her neck and ears. And when glancing to her side once more, the smile having gone all the way back to normal. “Athena Academy. I know: Who’d have thought?” She looked straight ahead of them. “Just a little more than a year ago I was oblivious to.. - your world, and now I work at a place like the academy. Helping students with their carrier.” Not to forget: kids who were many decades and centuries older than her. She doubted that she’d get to live long enough for that to be a surreal thought when diving into it. She’d already had discussions with other teachers like her. Teachers that understood and shared her mortality. With Lucas.

“I .. teach there too,” she added on, although sounding hesitant. Shy. Solemn. She consciously didn’t look back at him. “Art.” She didn’t know fully why that made her feel so sentimental. Maybe because that was one thing she remembered clearly from the first time they’d met. Their talk in the living room. After she’d calmed down and nearly thrown his own lamp at him. And just before the.. confrontation. He seemed to have a smoother memory then her - must be the werewolf genes - and yet she felt unsure if he even remembered that she like art. That she’d studied it and now she at the time hadn’t a carrier revolving it. But she did now. Sort of.

Maeve glances discreetly up and caught him smiling. Oh, he was smiling. Thank god he was smiling. It was a good sign and although it didn’t melt her embarrassment away or anything, it still made her feel a lot better about herself and her small phrasing error. Not to mention everything else. It was so easy to end up with the worst case scenario playing on repeat on your own head. The wolf could just as well have begun to feel extremely awkward - and uncomfortable! - around her which would obviously be the last thing she wanted to happen! But no. He was smiling. She could even convince herself that he was smiling more now than earlier but then she remembered the mirth he’d expressed after her collision with the pavement.
She shook her head. “It’ll be no trouble at all! It’s school vacation so I’m technically off of work for at least a couple of days still.” With technically she meant it as a nod to her own inability to actually keep herself from working rather than having a stack of things to do despite the holiday period and despite the fact that it was only a few handful of students that were still staying at the school and an even smaller amount of those that could potentially want her guidance. She was off the clock but she still needed the distraction. “Also, with you staying over, there’s a much smaller chance that you forget to get your keys back from me.” That thought, after passing over her tongue and sounding it out loud, made her laugh at the sudden humour she imagined. He’d have to track her down! Somehow. And the picture that face planted in her head was pretty hilarious; Rafael Silvera on all four and nose to the ground like some hunting hound. Surely, he’d throw her straight in the square fountain, if he knew.

His first reaction confused her to begin with. You’re kidding. Given more time it’d probably made perfect sense to her; the academy was in some way infamous in the supernatural world but then he dropped a whole other bomb and in it stopped her abruptly in her steps. Like his smile widened, it was instead her eyes that grow as big as tea cups, staring at him in both bafflement and disbelief. She’d never really thought thing like ‘what a small world they lived in’ but the saying undoubtedly matched the moment. “You-..” She was speechless to say the least. Her eyes grew smaller again - although they by natural design were always large - and her brows lowered to give her a befuddled expression ahead of a smile emerging back on her lips and finally breaking free from the paralyzing effect of the surprise. “That’s mad!”
Maeve quickly closed what little distance her halt had created and resumed her position by his side. “A lot, yea. I’m happy that I started while it was still summer vacation so I had time to dig into things beforehand. The rest I had to learn along the way. It’s a change, for sure.” She smiled a little bigger, a little held back pride which only carved out the dimpled in her cheeks even more.
“It was Luke who helped getting me the position,” she revealed and took her eyes off of the wolf. She knew all three he was talking about but the shapeshifter was the one she had an actual relation to besides being colleagues and saying hi in passing in the hallway. Lucas was also the one where things were currently strained. “If you know Luke then maybe you know about his girlfriend, right? - Cecilia is my cousin.” She breathed in and tried not to revert right back to where she’d been at the start of the night; hurt and mad. Her night had gotten so much better! Her mood had improved and she’d not even noticed the change! Rafael had done that without even trying, it felt. And now she almost dampened that mood again.

A sudden shimmy came over her to shake her out of it. And to bring her thoughts elsewhere again, she blurted out: “So, who’s your girlfriend if you don’t mind me asking?” She could feel already when asking, that she did in less of casual conversation or sincere curiosity and she wanted to cringe at herself. It needed to stop!.. It was getting pathetic.

The wolf continued to baffle her, it would seem. A large bit of her very out-bursting reactions were most likely due to being intoxicated - it would’ve been apparent already from former conversation topics they’d come across, really. “Ah! Good. Great. Wait! You used to live in Southside?” Her eyes blinked on sheer surprise as they found it troubling to ever really look away from him. Wide and expressive. She wouldn’t be able to explain just why that fact seemed to impossible to her other than the fact that she only knew him as living in Atheria. Again - essentially a whole other country from Gaia where Southside was located.
Southside.. A very delated realization suddenly broke the childish astonishment and her eyes dropped from Rafael like pebbled rolling down a rocky hill. Her throat closed up all on its own. And for a moment; Maeve Poe went pale. And numb. She’d been to Southside. Once. She hadn’t known it in the time she’d spent there but talking about it like this made a memory of the city signs flash before her eyes; followed by over memories that she had successfully fragmented for unwanted episodes like these. Fragmented them enough so, while she would still remember, she wasn’t treated to a full picture or film in her visual mind.
She returned as quickly as she’d been away. Brown eyes shooting back towards him and emotion and colour was right back where they belonged. Right where they’d been left off. Astonished and awed. “I can’t imagine you and Ha-.. Luke hanging out. I mean, he’s so - you know - ..” Words didn’t cooperate with her at all and she instantly felt embarrassment cringe it way through her body, which she with fighting spirit fought against. Since when had it been difficult to describe Lucas? She was a little worried about saying the wrong thing, she had to admit to herself, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have enough courage in her bear heart to blurt it out anyway. She’d already blurted out so much other stuff with no concern for possible consequences. Alas, she gave up and just left Rafael with a few telling gestures and hoped he understood. If she was lucky he knew the shapeshifter well enough to know exactly what she was trying to say. If not, she could burry herself alive later on when sober Maeve had to deal with everything.

She was drunk; not blind. How he turned away from her when she asked him further about his girlfriend didn’t go her completely unnoticed and at first she shamelessly tried to peek a look around him as best as she could from her angle - of course, without actually sneaking into a better view. That was still slightly too invasive. Victoria Fogerty. The name almost hit harder than the fact that their circles overlapped like they did. Or maybe it was just a different kind of surprise that overwhelmed her. She’d quickly straightened up and as it had not been thought possible, her eyes through to even bigger teacups. Big and brown and just staring at him. “No way,” she expressed in disbelief. “Wow.” She blinked to relax her eyes as well as leading them a bit down from him. There her brows curled and it became quite visible how gears were turning in her head. Victoria Fogerty. Out of the three friends of his, she knew, she was the one she had the least relations with at the academy. And that was compared to how her only relation to Jack was assisting his lessons from time to time. They never talked outside that. Victoria, however. She remembered the woman as very intense. Intimidating in a way. It’d seem, unbeknown to Maeve, that Rafael had already foreseen that cliff deepening. "Quite the couple, the two of you." After he had sat down by the fountain, she walked over to him to stand in front of him; only a couple of steps from him. How he spoke a bit more of her, though, Maeve calmed down again.

A soft chuckle escaped her throat. “Aha aha. Now things are starting to click into each other." She pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and let her eyes wander to the water display behind him. “But - narh. I don’t think work at the academy would fit you. If anything it would be a shame. The students would eat you alive.” With a bright smile growing onto her face, she looked at him. “And if you did I’d have to deal with all four of your at the same time. I think I might end up growing greys before time if that should happen. I can only imagine the trouble you lot was making in your younger days.” Ironically, Rafael had probably had more of a handful dealing with her this evening.
She stepped to the side and carefully sat down beside him where she made sure to tug her coat under her so to not let the cold from the marble seep too quickly up into her body. “You said ‘used to’. You don’t anymore? Hm?” she asked without the joking tone and then leaned forward while lifting her heeled feet as much up on their toes that they were flexible enough to.

She’d lie if she said that she wasn’t at least a little bit of a sucker for love stories, so as he was dwelling into the story of him and Victoria, she tuned in with a natural sense of wonder and a tenderness in her eyes. It even made her feel bad for her initial reaction - not the downright embarrassing and shameful one when he’d first revealed to be in a relationship but rather the one when he’d opened up about who. She hadn’t meant anything bad with it but, if anything it’d just astounded her. But with just how softly the wolf talked she felt that she’d come across a bit too strong.
Their story, however briefly it was told with no deeper details, sounded like the plot point of a novel. Unless, of course, you remember back on the reason Rafael was even in town that night. A fight. And the unease of wanting to deal with it.

Slightly taken back by the tone of his voice - not so much the exact words, because frankly they’d have worked perfectly with the same light-hearted banter, that she’d expressed about him joining the academy. She must’ve ended up saying something wrong unintentionally again taking from the his facial expression had changed to suddenly upon her comment. So she cocked her head, looked at him and then shook it gently. “I’m obviously exaggerating things. The students ’re great. The whole bunch, really. I get to see a lot of them not only in class but also for counselling. Now - I don’t actually know you well enough if you’d have the means of ‘putting those kids in their place’ as you gracefully puts it but why wouldn’t you? Am I right?” Her bright, mischievous smile from before had faded alongside Rafael’s drop in mood but it hadn’t gone very far as she easily brought a section of it back into a smaller, yet encouraging smile for him. Perhaps also a bit apologetic. She couldn’t me sure if she’d somehow hurt his feelings. But while being intoxicated made her big mouth even bigger and less filtered and made her more outwards-reacting and silly, it also heightened her senses for atmosphere. And heightened the effect of change in them. The wolf was hard one to read - God he was - but at times the air around him was rather obvious.
“I guess I was dwelling more on how it would be you getting position only to fulfil this image of all of you four. To someone like me, it’d be like a student choosing a class only because the teacher is good looking.” As she still took the topic pretty lightly she ended off with a short laugh. Maybe there would be some truth, after all, on how some students would indeed eat him right up.

Sitting down beside him and him looking straight forward, gave her a pretty view of his profile in the light of lampposts. His features actually looked softer from that angel. His bearded chin and 3-shape curves in his hair line. His round ears definitely did the heavy lifting to soften him from that angel. But also his nose and brow bone. His eyes even looked calmer, although they weren’t looking at her so it was probably more because she wasn’t in the line of his intense gaze. She breathed in, nodded vaguely and mostly subconsciously before looking away from him. “Yea, I do.” Yes, she did. Yes. She. Did. She breathed in a second time, this time much deeper and more expressive as she also straightened her posture. “I was born and raised in Lancaster. In the Lancashire area in England. Up north. I must’ve been around 15 years-old when my parents and I moved to Aston. Not much of a different since everyone still spoke English and the culture was pretty much the same. Only thing was the accent.” She turned her head towards him again, smiled by pushing the corners of her mouth deep into her cheeks. She couldn’t run from it. “My embarrassing accent having slipped out expose me hard in the bar. - Not that I have anything against accents, though!” she quickly added. “Mine just.. isn’t me anymore I feel.” It was silly, she was well aware of it! But she also wasn’t woman enough to fully accept how silly it was and thereby stop. She was human. Only human. Just a small person. She had had her character development.

In that moment a group of three young men walked passed them, passing one of those cheap plastic balls between each other as they walked; one doing something with his foot so the ball got into the air and perfectly landed in his hands. “.. I wanna play foosball,” Maeve Poe suddenly said, rather determined before turning attention to Rafael. “I’ve often wanted to try it out but I’ve never done it. But, I know a bar that has it among things like table tennis and darts, juuust -” She quickly scanned the area before pointing to the street diagonally across from where they sat - on the other side of the fountain. “- down there. What do you say? Think you can beat me? I might be a natural.”