Her Mouth Was An Empty Cut Who: Ren and Imogene Where: Dog-Ink When: 8:25pm
The end of the shop day was always a good time for Ren -- on most days. People left him the hell alone, cleared out, left him to his own shitty evenings. He was feeling cranky, thirsty and frustrated. Too much time spent with Remy without being able to really talk to her would do that to a man. He wanted to say something, but he didn't have the first clue as to where he should start. Instead of trying or even hinting that he wanted to, Ren let it drop. He let Remy leave when she was done with hardly an upward glance, and went about doing what he needed to in order to get the shop closed down before leaving. Really, at this point he was just sorting through papers just for the sake of having something to do. Eventually he ran across the application Imogene had filled out, eyes scanning it for the first time. He hadn't actually read it when it'd been handed to him. Now that he was though, he noted something of interest that he probably should have known before now. There was no trace of an address, no trace of a phone number... it was as though she'd just... skipped it entirely. How could somebody skip something like that...?
Ren looked up from the application, aware suddenly that he hadn't seen Imogene leave just yet. "Gene?" he called out, voice gruff and louder than he'd meant it to be.
"What? They were dusty." Imogene looked up with a scowl from where she'd just taken one of the framed pictures down from the wall to dust. "Am I not supposed to touch 'em or something?" She just assumed she'd done something wrong, since that was usually why people yelled at her, but she was usually pretty good at figuring out what she'd done wrong. She carefully hung it back on the wall and turned to face him, hands on her hips.
Ren blinked at Imogene when she answered him, confused - and blatantly so - as he stared back down the hall at her. "No," he finally said, shaking his head with a snort. He picked up the application in one hand and walked to her, swaggering as he made his way, his free hand smoothing back slickened hair. It wasn't because it had gel in it, either. "Your application," he said, showing it her as he got within distance. "I was reading it... finally. I uhh... you didn't fill it out all the way." He waited for her to take it, brows raised expectantly.
Fuck. She'd hoped he wouldn't look at that too closely. Would he really kick her out now? It wasn't like she was doing a poor job. With a sigh, she took the paper from his hand. "Uh, yeah. I can't really give you anything for those sections right now." Somehow she didn't think he'd accept her favorite tree as a legal address. "So what? It's not like it's stopping me from working or nothing." She handed the paper back, trying to look confident and unconcerned, though the way she shifted her weight betrayed her nervousness. Was she going to get kicked out after only a few days of work?
Openly staring at Imogene, Ren blinked a few times and took the application back after she'd explained herself. "You mean... you trin' to tell me you just..." Ren looked back at the door, imagining her going off to sleep under a bridge or on a the street somewhere. "You just go off when you leave here and... what? Do you eat? Where the fuck you been staying?" He couldn't help but be curious, trying to find the information out from her in a rush of questions.
"Oh, geez..." Imogene ran a hand through her hair, scowling. Should've made up something, stupid. "Of course I fucking eat, how could I not? A friend taught me how to find shit to eat in the woods and all. I ain't starving." There was a difference between always being hungry and genuinely starving. "And I stay wherever I feel like. It's not like the weather is too bad. Might buy a tent or something once I've got enough saved up, but I ain't hurting for not having a roof." Why did he even care? She couldn't stand it when people thought she was some sort of waif in need of help. She actually liked roughing it, despite the occasional longing for a full, hot meal.
Ren stared at her, chin tucked in close to his neck as though he were having a hard time with what she'd told him. He didn't make it a habit to socialize with the homeless, although it wasn't becaues he was too good for them -- not by a long shot. He was mildly in shock, though, even if it did explain her strange approach to getting a job in the first place. "So let me see if I've got this straight," he started, coming back to life a few moments later, "When you leave my shop at night, you just... sort of wander off into the forest and just... sleep wherever? And you eat... the things you find out there? Like... what, garbage and shit?"
Imogene had to take a couple deep breaths to keep from getting too angry. His questions were reasonable, she supposed, although she'd tell anyone who wasn't paying her to fuck off. "Yeah, that's about right. Except less garbage and more roots and berries and shit. Look, I've been doing this for months. It's not like I'm stupid or anything, I know what I'm doing. I find shelter when it's raining and save food up for days when I can't find so much. 's no big deal." She turned to take the picture down again, concentrating on dusting it for a minute so she could avoid noticing the way he was staring at her. She was homeless, not a two-headed freak or anything.
"Huh," Ren answered, letting it out as though it'd been previously stuck in his throat until now. "That's... really interesting. So have you eaten anything today?" He folded his arms over his chest, the worn tee-shirt he was wearing stretching out over his slender frame. He hadn't actually eaten much himself aside from a brief lunch, but... well, he couldn't help but ask. And then another, stranger feeling sank into his stomach and Ren shifted his weight, uneasy in the sudden face of this knowledge. How could he just... let her leave when he knew now that she was going to sleep on the ground somewhere?
This particular picture was getting quite well cleaned as Imogene worked her dust-cloth into the corners and grooves of the frame. "Yeah, got some breakfast." A handful of berries and grubs, but it was breakfast. Being a bear, she had very little trouble eating things that would make most people cringe, and she was thankful for that. It made her current lifestyle a fuck of a lot easier to maintain. And she looked well-fed enough, although that was mostly an illusion caused by her rather robust natural build. Back in Arizona, when she'd still been living with her mother, she'd definitely had a bit more padding on her.
Ren nodded and moved to set the application down again, considering it. Was he allowed to employ homeless people? He was, wasn't he? Not that it really fucking mattered. It'd be the least of his worries if the authorities chose to have a problem with that particular detail. He hoped that was all they approached him for, if they ever eventually did. "You hungry?" he asked her, not even really looking back at her. He fussed with the pens on his desk and picked absently at the seam of his jeans. He had been planning on hitting the bottle the second she'd gone, but... Well, whatever.
"Why?" She looked over, eyes narrowed and suspicious. Imogene was rather too paranoid and distrustful for someone her age, but she'd always been a bit on the grumpy side anyway. "Look, I don't need charity. You're already paying me to work here and all." Her stomach, however, decided to answer for itself at the moment, growling loud enough for everyone to hear and to make her give a small sigh of resignation. "Yeah, I'm hungry."
"What?" Ren said, turning to look her in the eyes. "Why? What do you mean, why?" He almost argued with her, almost brought up that now he knew better and that he hadn't technically even given her anything yet -- but then, Imogene's stomach did the talking for her and he smiled. "Sounds like it to me. I have food upstairs. You..." He really couldn't believe he was doing this, turning to lean against the desk. "You can come up for a bit if you want, get something to eat... whatever. It's a little messy, but maybe I'll just pay you to take care of all of that too." He laughed a bit, a grin cracking his otherwise gruff features.
After a long, calculating moment, Imogene let out a rather unladylike grunt. "Fine, all right. But I'm not your fucking maid." She tossed the rag into her bucket and hung the picture back up before she gathered her stuff up to put away in the closet. "Just for some dinner." Imogene was easily swayed with food, though she wouldn't admit that. It even made her consider Ren in a slightly kinder light. "Don't worry, I won't bother you for long."
Ren nodded when she agreed to come upstairs for food. It would be his good deed for the year, he supposed. He didn't make it habit to invite people to eat his food for him, so it would be interesting at the very least. Not even Remy ever really came upstairs all that often, unless she had to... or... "I hope you don't mind that I don't tend to do a ton of grocery shopping for anything of any real substance. I have ramen, different kinds of noodles, hotdogs... uhh..." He shrugged and headed toward the staircase that to his upstairs home. "Other shit like that, too. Milk, beer, bologna..." He would manage to throw something together, he was sure.
"What, never heard of vegetables?" Imogene smirked a bit and shrugged. "I'll eat just about anything. Let's see what you've got." Not that she was planning on eating much. Just... to take the edge off. Yeah. "Hot dogs sound fine." She followed him up the stairs, wrinkling her nose a bit as they got up to his apartment. If she didn't know about the housekeeping closet downstairs, she'd suspect he'd never even heard of things like soap or mops. Not to mention putting things the hell away. "How do you find anything up here?"
Ren laughed as he entered his living room, stepping on the clothes and fast-food wrappers strewn all over the place. There were open playboys, empty packs of cigarettes, liquor bottles, beer cans, coke boxes, plastic baggies... everything he used ended up on the floor at some point. "What do I need to find that's so important? I got the couch right there and the fridge back here." Ren headed into the kitchenette and to the fridge to open it, ducking down to peer in at his supplies. "Yeah, got hotdogs... how many do you want?" He stood up with two packs of eight and raised his brow expectantly, and in the back of his mind he was reminding himself how young she was.
"Eh, just... a couple." She gave the packs a sidelong glance. Sure, she could probably eat a whole pack easy, but she wasn't about to get herself too far into debt with anyone. The mess annoyed her a bit, but it was a familiar sort of annoyance that she easily cast aside. Some of her 'friends' back home had places as bad as this, or even worse. Besides, you never quite knew how awful the housekeeping really was until you got up close and personal with the floor, and since she wasn't planning on getting too smashed to stand, she doubted she'd have that particular privilege. Thank god. She didn't want her poor, sensitive nose any closer to that carpet than it had to be. At least she didn't see any needles - bare feet and those didn't mix well.
Ren was stupid on many levels, but not quite stupid enough to leave needles laying around on the floor. They were all in the trash can in the bathroom, if she cared to look. "Alright, a couple it is." Ren slit the pack open with a knife sitting aimlessly on the counter, obviously slightly used from perhaps nights ago. He dumped the pack of hotdogs into a bowl from underneath the counter and set it all into the microwave -- it was his magic lifesaver. "Just a couple'a minutes..." He turned it on and then moved to find them something to drink. He had a shit ton of beer... "You uhh... you want milk or beer? That's all I got."
Imogene had had friends more stupid than Ren, in that case. It wasn't strange, considering the sorts of crowds she tended to fall in with. Despite her chosen associates, Imogene had managed to stay fairly clean. Except for the booze, cigarettes, and pot. She'd only tried the harder stuff once or twice, but hadn't quite been hooked in. Yet. "All right." There was no point in clearing off a chair cushion to sit on, so she perched easily on the back of one of them, balancing quite well and perfectly comfortable there. At the question about drinks, she smirked. "Beer." She didn't even have to think about it. "I'm, ah, lactose-intolerant." Well, it was partially true. Either way, she liked beer a hell of a lot more than milk.
With a brief shrug, Ren pulled out two cans of piss-beer from his fridge, a smirk on his face as he walked back to where she'd perched herself. "Here ya go," he told her, handing off one of the cans. "As good as it gets." It was clearly a joke, but he didn't quite laugh. Instead he popped his can open and drank from it eagerly, listening for the sound of the microwave alarm. "How long you been living on your own?" he asked.
Imogene chuckled and took the can, popping the top quickly and taking a gulp. It was clear that she was used to the horrid stuff, since she didn't even bat an eye. "Eh, I've had worse. At least it's booze." And not boiled stream water. The stuff got really old after a while, and tasted downright odd. "How long? Since May, I guess..." Her eyes darted to him suddenly and she grimaced. Oops, that might be too obvious. She hoped he wouldn't make the connection to the Light. "...but I've known how to take care of myself for a long time."
"This is pretty much it," he told her, shrugging before taking another drink. "I think I have this more than water, probably." And it was probably true. Ren didn't drink very much unless it contained alcohol or caffeine. "Since May, huh?" He eyed her carefully, his mind making the connection faster than she could have imagined. He was by no means completely stupid. Rather than being book-smart, Ren was clever, and picked up on subtly all too quickly. "That's not too long... so, then... what happened to you? You know, to leave you like this...? On your own."
At the question, Imogene eyed him sharply and took a larger gulp from the can. "I left home for my own reasons. It's none of your business." It was possible to actually see her guard go up. Her back stiffened and her head lowered as she eyed the older man. Experience had taught her not to trust anyone with her secrets. Why should Ren be any different? While her current situation might look like the product of a selfish teenager's sloppy attempt to gain independence, Imogene had convinced herself that this was the only way to protect the people who mattered to her. What was left of them, anyway.
"Ah, okay." Ren smirked and turned to go back into the kitchen as the microwave beeped, musing in his head that he was probably bing lied to. It wasn't like he'd never lied before in his life, so he couldn't fault her for that, necessarily. Still, he was definitely curious about what had really happened. Living on her own, only really out since May, problems with her temper...? Ren brought the hotdogs out (all eight of them) and set the bowl on the coffee table, plopping his ass down on the couch near where she was seated on the back of it. "Come on, dig in. I made all of them because I'm going to have more than two. If you want ketchup, it's in the fridge. Dunno about mustard." He grabbed one of the hotdogs and hissed a little, breaking it open to try and let it cool down.
Imogene grunted and reached forward, tossing a 'dog from hand to hand for a moment before taking a bite. She was too hungry, impatient, and nervous to wait for it to cool properly, and something as small as a burned tongue would heal in no time. If she couldn't taste the hot dogs... well, from the looks of them, she wouldn't exactly want to, anyway. They were the cheap kind that had a highly suspect ingredient list. "Don't need no ketchup." It only took a few large bites for her to finish off her first, washing it down with another gulp of beer. It was good that he wasn't pushing her, but she couldn't help but feel a bit nervous now. She squinted at him, looking for signs that he had made some sort of conclusion about her.
Ren worked on his own hotdog eagerly, chowing it down without tasting much of it on the way. The truth was that he didn't tend to eat indoors more than once a day, and so having common etiquette or clean dishes had just never been a priority on his list. Not recently, anyway. It was so much easier to just... go out and hunt for your own food. You didn't have to pay for it that way, or worry about doing the dishes afterward. It just was what it was. "I'm a damn good cook," he said, snorting as he pushed up to his feet to grab another beer. He'd finished the first, and left the can on the coffee table near the plate. "You want another one?" he called back, already grabbing for two before her answer had even come. He would drink it if she didn't want it.
Imogene often felt the same way about food - that's why she mainly foraged, rather than bothering to buy or steal. Of course, she had the advantage of being a natural omnivore, so her food was less likely to run away from her. At the comment about his cooking prowess, she smirked and held up her second hot dog. "This one's cold in the middle, Master Chef." But she ate the rest anyway, before he could even offer to give it another shot in the microwave. "Eh, sure, why not?" She finished her first beer and absent-mindedly crushed the can in one hand. It was a cheap can, and she was a solid girl, but it still took far too little effort on her part. She tossed it over to land on the largest pile of refuse she could see, then took the new can from Ren. "But no more."
"That's a pretty good grip," Ren said immediately. He'd been watching her every move, and after laughing at the comment about her hotdog, his eyes had been on her. He sat down beside her and crushed his own can, just as effortlessly as hers. It was tossed into the pile as well, and he leaned back with another 'dog in his hand, chewing at it a little absentmindedly. "That's either a real good arm you got there or there's something wrong with you." He smirked, then shifted to pull his legs up onto the couch.
Her eyes fastened onto him as she let out a soft snort of surprise. The full can nearly met the same fate as she tensed again, but after a moment Imogene made herself calm down. "Let's go with good arm, hm? There's nothing fucking wrong with me." She muttered the last part, half to herself. "You think I survive out there by being a wimp?" There was something sharp and dangerous about her words now. He was getting too nosy, hitting too close to home, and it made her agitated. There was even a bit of fear in the way she clenched her jaw, but it was calculated and defensive. She wasn't about to give him any more to snoop into.
"Oh," Ren taunted, sitting forward again as his curiosity piqued. He couldn't stop it from happening, and it was about to go downhill from there. "There's nothing fucking wrong with you?" he asked. "Are you sure about that? You seem awfully defensive about it... I don't think you survived by being a wimp, but... you definitely had something going for you." He took in a long breath, mostly trying to figure her out, to catch some kind of scent that would be helpful. All he got was the same thing he'd received before -- she was different. He'd never been able to pick up scents very well, and it varied from person to person.
"There ain't anything!" Imogene stood up, glaring at him and setting the can down defiantly. There was a bit of a growl to her voice now. Ren was prodding a very sore spot, and she wasn't the sort to smile and bear it. "Thanks for the goddamned hot dogs. I'm leaving." Her nostrils flared a bit and she turned, heading towards the door. Being raised by a human and completely surrounded by humans, the girl knew neither how to spot another were nor how to hide her own tells. She hadn't needed to, before her friends and neighbors started looking for vampires and werewolves and whatnot in everyone they knew. But in this town? It seemed like everyone could look right through her, making her feel exposed and nervous, like prey. She hated it.
"You're welcome, you fucking ingrate," Ren said, though it was without passion. He didn't really care all that much, grabbed the bowl of hotdogs and pulled them closer to continue eating after she stormed out. "You have a good night out there in the woods, sleeping in the leaves. If you change your mind, you know where this place is. I have a couch, after all." Ren grasped the bowl and picked it up, taking his can of beer with him as he stood to leave the room. Today had been an unbearably long and shitty day, and what better way to end it than to end up on the floor, passed out after a good dose of intoxicating substances?
He didn't get a reply as Imogene slammed the door behind her. It wasn't entirely in anger, Imogene was mostly just in a hurry to leave, but it didn't make her look any more repentant about her behavior. Dammit, why'd he have to keep after her like that? She worked for him, that was all. She didn't owe him her life story, just her work. Hell, as far as she saw it, she didn't even owe him the time of day outside of work hours. "...Fuck." She paused outside of the shop and glanced back for a moment, imagining how comfortable a couch would be compared to a tree branch, then shook her head. Well, she'd have to come back tomorrow, anyway. She just hoped he wouldn't make a deal out of it while she was trying to work. 'Gene shoved her hands into her pockets and trodded off towards the woods, the beer sitting heavily in her still mostly-empty stomach.