Re: Pat & Lou: boxes
A good leader. The guy leading the old pack had been a good guy. Could get mean. Could dig in and let you know that he was going to wait you out and you were going to lose, no matter which direction you drove in. Lou hadn't had a father around. She figured it was the same exasperating tactic that a parent would use. Alice hadn't been big on parenting. But a good pack held together around the alpha and the kid was telling her there was none. That made it dangerous.
The bed was done. There was a box nearby labeled 'soft stuff' and Lou emptied it on top of the bed and didn't care if the sheets landed or where they landed. It was a box, unpacked. It could go in the stack of stuff that was done instead of the stuff piled in the hallway in cardboard and all of it didn't exactly matter. It was stuff. She lived without it for a while. She lit out of the room for the kitchen, with a warm pat of hand to Patrick's shoulder and an unthinking squeeze of thumb as she passed. It was about as pack as Lou got, which was like family. The two were the same and the pack touched, it was grounding. And it wasn't anything you could do in jail.
"You can unpack pans. Drink your beer, work out what kind of pan they are and tell me," she suggested Listened too, to Con who was there and gone, back and forth. Whatever was in California, Patrick hasn't gone with her. Lou's face was focus on Patrick's, not a whole lot given away except that she was thinking. She levied pans out of cardboard, and she dumped them in a cupboard without looking at them much. And she thought about California.
"I barely knew any of you. I figured she would stay. She didn't. Guess California's got a lot of pull." She had been there before. LA. Weird fucking place.
"Now?" Lou cocked her head above the box; it was surprisingly lupine. "Find a job that pays, keep a roof, find a bar, stay entertained, keep the cops off my back. That's about it." Which was not the same as not causing trouble, or getting into it. It was not getting caught.