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8:55 AM
HANNAH LAKATOS + AUSTIN JONSON
talk of their next move, payback for a prank
talk of their next move, payback for a prank
JUNE 27th - afternoon | The Lookout | PG-13
Bartending at The Lookout was… kind of working?
It probably wasn’t the best place to work, as a werewolf, but she couldn’t do Temptation for more than one night a week and she needed something to keep her busy. There was a good chance she’d run into Daniel, but she’d already run through the scenario (and her exit) multiple times. The door was strategically placed enough that she had a few seconds to disappear into the small kitchen area if she smelled him. That and she was banking on her younger sister keeping their older brother home a majority of the time. Christian had been right, though, and she needed to tear the bandaid off sooner rather than later.
Popping off the cap of a beer bottle on the edge of the counter, she glanced up as a sort of squirrel-y looking kid walked in. Kid being anyone younger than her. As the washed up hunter in front of her cast a glance and scoff in the kid’s direction, Hannah shortchanged him. It wasn’t a dick move when the guy had basically been making inappropriate comments to her about her ass since he walked in and sat down.
“Fuckin’ nancy boy must be lost,” the hunter grumbled before belching.
Hannah quickly reached for her own open beer behind the bar to take a swig for the sake of not saying anything nasty in return. Tucking the bottle away underneath, the werewolf moved down the bar and offered a warm smile. “What can I get ya, bud?”
“Ha! A Shirley Temple!”
In researching Seven Devils, there were a few things that came up. Lots of rumours that led back to the witch trials, lots of old animal attacks that made no sense, lots of questions with few answers. And that was fine, Austin liked a mystery, really. But there were only so many trails someone could follow which led nowhere before he got fed up.
The Lookout wasn’t on Yelp!, it didn’t really have much of a media footprint, but when he’d asked around it seemed like there were specific people who went there. Apparently, it had a ‘scene’, so to speak. At first, Austin thought maybe it was a dive bar, but none of the college kids seemed interested in it. Then he wondered if it was a biker bar, but that didn’t seem to be the right atmosphere either. He knew it wasn’t a tweaker place, if anything Sheriff Hilts did not seem the type to allow a bar like that in his town openly.
So, the only thing to really do was to go there and find out.
Which was probably the second worst decision he’d made in Seven Devils -the first being to wander around a cemetery at night and get shot at (sort of), and it was definitely not something he’d prepared for at all.
Ignoring the guy down the bar, Austin glanced at the bar for a moment before settling, “Beer? Whatever’s good.” Because he didn’t want to go through numerous beers just to be told they didn’t have those.
The comment from the hunter made her purse her lips in annoyance — subduing the urge to punch him in the face and strangle him with a dish towel. Thankfully, he wasn’t a local hunter, and would hopefully be gone from town in a few days.
“Sure thing.” Hannah smiled a little wider and went to the large cooler to fetch a bottle of a local brew that she liked. She hadn’t done much exploring in the town, having spent her focus on familiarizing herself with the woods mostly so she didn’t end up getting lost in the mountains, away from her clothes, during her first full moon. But she’d at least sampled the local IPA’s well enough.
Hannah made her best effort not to get distracted by the young man’s smell simply because it was new; her nose insanely more sensitive since being bitten. “Ignore the meatsuit, you’re more than welcome here,” she insisted, popping the cap and passing the bottle over. “At least when I’m working, I can make no guarantees about the others,” she added.
Feeling unwelcome in places wasn’t exactly new to Austin. It’d been something he’d kind of felt most of his life, so this wasn’t new, and he didn’t really care for the dismissiveness of the elder man, but hell, it wasn’t like it was aggressive.
“Thanks,” he managed to give the bartender a small smile, because it wasn’t like the whole atmosphere of the place screamed ‘strangers welcome’ either. “I’m kinda new to the area, had no idea what this place even was.” But she hadn’t made a big deal about serving him -and it wasn’t like he didn’t look over 21 anyway, so it was a bonus in that aspect.
“Probably not a great idea to just wander into places though, I guess.” But then again, it was literally his past time.
“Hannah,” she told him when he thanked her.
His explanation and admittance to being new in town made more sense, and any suspicions she might’ve had about his intentions quickly disappeared. She grinned faintly and nodded a little in agreement. “I mean, it’s smart that you wandered in when it’s still light out because you just have to worry about the sad day drinking types like that one,” the werewolf explained, thumbing in the direction of the elderly hunter. In reality he was no different than a Vietnam Vet sitting at the bar, rough around the edges and critical of every young guy who walked in. Though, the young man sitting before her didn’t exactly scream ‘hunter.’
Still, evenings typically drew a significantly rougher crowd - especially toward the end of the night.
“I’m relatively new to town, too,” she admitted. “Been here about a month or so, just enjoying the quiet and the mountains before sucking it up and getting a job.” Not that Hannah needed to — the Men of Letters were letting her stay at their safe house free of charge. But, truly, Hannah really needed to find something to keep her busy, or she would have gone crazy or annoyed Christian so badly that he changed his mind on her being a werewolf.
“So where are you from originally, then?”
“Austin,” he offered it since she offered his, and it only seemed polite. She was probably right about the day drinkers too, because if this place was packed with guys like the gnarly one glaring over his drink, well Austin would’ve just had to turn around and walk out less he be murdered just because.
“Yeah, I heard the mountains were something to see.” Among other things. “I’m from Texas, little place called Dripping Springs,” he didn’t expect anyone to really have heard of it, honestly, and he’d moved a few times that it wasn’t exactly home. “It’s actually a little like this place, minus the Blue Ridge Mountains.” It would’ve at least been something to do.
“But I write for a travel blog, and apparently National Parks and mountain ranges are the next big thing, so I got to visit here and check it out.” So far it didn’t suck, it helped dramatically that Seven Devils also seemed to boast a lot of involvement with his side project too.
Austin. He looked like an Austin - she smiled softly at how fitting it was. “I’ve never been,” Han told him, reaching for her beer and taking a swig. It was interesting that he claimed his hometown was similar, and it made her wonder if he was aware of all the underlying supernatural things, as well.
“Better be careful,” she warned ominously with a small grin. “Them woods are dangerous,” she said in her best local accent, though failed miserably. And her warning didn’t really hold any true merit - at least in her experience of the woods so far. Then again she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d react if she came up against something other than a wolf.
“Ever get lost in your adventuring?” the werewolf asked curiously. It was something she worried about. Even before being bitten, Hannah enjoy a nice hike - but always on trails. Having to shift into a wolf under a full moon, well it wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted caught by tourists or on trail cameras. Which meant deep woods were essential.
She trusted her nose, but not that much. Not yet.
Austin almost choked on his drink at her warning, not because of the warning itself so much as the voice she decided to use. “So long as there isn’t gold in them there hills, I think we’ll be okay.” At least he hadn’t choked so bad he’d spat beer in her face. That would just mean he needed to crawl under a rock and never leave.
“A few times,” honestly, getting lost was sometimes beneficial, he found some strange places, and sometimes it was just terrible. But the best places were ones that people weren’t easily traipsing through. “I got lost in Texas one time and my phone died, after that I figured learning how to read an actual compass was important. Supposedly if you travel north all the time you’ll eventually find something familiar.”
He wasn’t sure how true that was, and while there was GPS in everything, there was the chance that batteries would die and he’d have no idea where he was. Reading a compass was just smart.
Hannah laughed at his reaction - and what could have been an embarrassing clean up and reason for a shirt change. In a lot of ways he reminded her of her younger brother Mike which did absolutely nothing in helping her homesickness for her siblings.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise when he admitted to getting lost more than once. She honestly hadn’t anticipated the answer. Though it was a testament to how scrappy he truly was — which was nothing but a compliment in this instance. “That.. seems like a bad place to get lost?” She was just throwing it out there, having never been to Texas after all.
“So basically you just admitted you either weren’t a boy scout growing up or you didn’t pay enough attention and thus didn’t get a lot of merit badges?” Hannah questioned teasingly.
For Austin, pretending never seemed like the best way to go. He wasn’t the most coordinated of people, and he knew that, but he made up for it with enthusiasm and curiosity, or so he thought, really. People probably thought it was reckless and stupid and after he’d gotten bitten he should’ve stopped with the weird antics and gotten a proper job and stayed out of dangerous and dark places.
But no one accused Austin of being the brightest bulb either.
“It’s not the best place, I mean, there’s no mountain lions or bears, but there’s enough wildlife to make it pretty stupid.” Like the snakes and alligators, and other rather vicious little monsters. “I once got chased by an aardvark that was determined to show me who was boss.” The aardvark absolutely was, and Austin had run for his life, convinced it was a carnivorous cryptid.
The Blue Ridge Mountains were, by far, more vast and likely more dangerous, but it had yet to really put Austin off. “I was never a boy scout, I moved a lot, it seemed stupid to join clubs and then leave them.” And the less people he interacted with the less likely someone would notice anything. Austin learned that one later. “How about you? You a mountaineering girl, I mean woman?”
The werewolf blinked and stared for a moment - the imagery of the young man before her, running and (probably) screaming from.. an aardvark, was truly comical. “An aardvark?” she asked, just to be sure. “The thing that looks like a slightly slow kangaroo?”
Hannah attempted to hide the grin behind the rim of her beer bottle as she took another drink.
He had a point - there was no use starting something if you were just going to pick up and leave shortly after anyway. Hannah wondered if his parents maybe were hunters, or just military as that was a normal thing. She wasn’t getting any younger, so she tipped her beer in his direction and took the compliment while she could. “No, but I could beat any one of those idiots silly with a hockey stick,” Hannah insisted, nodding in the direction of the small brood of hunters.
“You might be too young, but if I had to pick a Spice Girl to identify with it’d be Sport with a dash of Scary,” Hannah admitted teasingly, aware he was of drinking age but honestly he didn’t seem much older than that.
Austin was somehow nodding and shaking his head at the same time, “So like, they’re kinda like kangaroos, but also a bit like pigs? And maybe a little like an anteater?” It was hard to explain, “But it was in the dark, and I’d already kinda creeped myself out by that point, so I was sure it was some kind of--” He was about to say cryptid, before he remembered people didn’t always know what that was, “desert slash swamp monster thing.”
Much better.
“Guess that’s a pretty good skill to have when you work around here?” It might not be too rough a place, but bartenders who could handle the locals when they got out of hand? That seemed like a pretty key aspect. “Ah,” the Spice Girls reference didn’t go over his head though, “I’m right on the cusp of knowing what you’re talking about. Mostly because of the reunion thing, and a little because of my little sister.”
He was admitting to nothing else. “A Scary Sporty Spice would’ve been something though, I mean, that’d be the real female empowerment movement right there.”
His explanation helped his case a little more but his pause? Well he faltered on the ending a little bit. “I hate it when I run into desert slash swamp monster things,” Hannah told him with an amused grin.
On the cusp; oh he was a good five years younger. Probably more. “I suppose you could say tha—”
The drunk haggler of a hunter sprouted off another slur in Austin’s direction, interrupting her, and she finally snapped. Hannah turned her head to look at the older man, exaggerating an overly sweet smile. “You’re made outta spare parts, aren’t ya, bud?”
She turned her attention back to Austin and shrugged a shoulder and simply said, “Scary-Sporty.”
Hannah then pointed at Austin sternly, returning back to their conversation. “Hey. You better not ever bring your sister into a place like this or I’ll kick your ass, got it?” She didn’t even know a single detail about the kid’s sister, but Hannah knew enough about hunters and well.. the younger woman definitely didn’t need that in her life.
“Listen, it’s hard to know what’s out there,” and he was edging towards being a weird nut that shouldn’t wander places, so he just trailed off at that.
Austin couldn’t help but glance over at the other guy at the bar, although he thankfully wasn’t expected to say anything, since he definitely wouldn’t have, even if Hannah hadn’t interjected at all. Austin wasn’t great with conflict, and even less so with adult men, so yeah, he’d just stay quiet and deal with it anyway.
“Scary-Sporty is definitely the best.” Yeah, he was sure they likely wanted to hire intimidating but friendly women to work here, if only to hold their own against guys like that.
“No ma’am,” it automatically slipped out, the mild Texan drawl that he’d worked a fair amount to drop through time, but Austin just held his hands up and shook his head, “Never would, scouts honour.” Even though they both knew he hadn’t been a scout now. Chuckling a little, Austin shook his head, “She’s still in Texas anyway, going to school to be a lawyer. She got the brains in the family.” Which wasn’t hard, since Austin had a head of broken biscuits half the time.
Hannah laughed softly as he trailed off. It was indeed scary how much he reminded her of Mike. Which was probably why she felt the need to deflect the unnecessary drunk bullying from the hunter at the end of the bar.
The werewolf nearly corrected him on the ma’am-calling, but she chalked it up to being a Texan thing and let it slide for now. Cracking a lopsided grin when he gave her scouts honour she nodded with a quiet “uh-huh.”
She made quick work of getting herself another beer, still listening intently. “A lawyer? Dang.” Her thoughts instantly changed to Rose and how exceptionally bright she was. And, according to the stalking Hannah was doing of her younger sibling’s social media, her future college career would be starting soon. It was hard not to feel proud. “So did that leave you with just the adventuring and questionable navigation skills?” Hannah added jokingly.
“Yeah, Prue is pretty impressive,” Austin rarely talked about his little sister, it wasn’t because he wasn’t in contact or proud of her or anything, just that few people really asked or bothered for it to come up in conversation, “Clearly, I got the looks too.”
Not entirely true. The scar didn’t make him unattractive, but he knew it was a flaw, one that Prue didn’t have. But they had the same sharp facial features, the same blue eyes, so typically speaking, Prue had the looks working for her too.
“I definitely have all the adventuring and lack of navigation skills though. Probably a lot of the poor choices too.” Case in point walking into this bar like it was a good idea. “Isn’t that how genetics works though?” It was not, but still. He half wondered if it was too forward to ask Hannah if she had siblings.
Hannah tilted her head as if considering him for a moment before she smirked. “You are kinda pretty,” she told him. “You know, I wouldn’t get lost in the woods around here because of that reason,” the werewolf added as seriously as she could before chuckling.
“I’m not quite sure how many qualities can really be divided between seven siblings,” she admitted with a laugh. Though they all weren’t living, sadly. A detail he didn’t need to know. “Rose and I are the only girls so we clearly got all the looks, and the brains,” she told him matter-of-factly. “Dan… definitely got all the testosterone. Benjamin likes to think he’s funny, at least. And Mike got.. spoiled.” Hannah cracked a fond smile.
“And the rest got—” she paused abruptly. Killed? Murdered? What they’d asked for with pursuing a life of hunting? Hannah wasn’t quite sure anymore. She waved her hand in the air as if it didn’t matter.
The door opened and one of the regulars walked in. “Heyyy, Lakatos!” he greeted before taking a seat at the bar between Austin and his arch nemesis. Hannah seized the opportunity to pour a scotch for the new hunter and passed it along before returning to Austin. “Haven’t seen my family in a while so.. any way,” she said, more than hinting for a subject change.
Coming from her, it was probably better than anyone else that might hang out in this bar, so Austin wasn’t too concerned. “I mean, if I’m worrying about that stuff I shouldn’t go anywhere after dark.” All kinds of stories and things to worry about out there in the big wide world.
Seven siblings, that was a lot, Austin couldn’t really think of having more mouths in the house than what they did. But it might’ve been completely different if he’d grown up with a big brother or sister, or maybe if he’d just have more younger siblings that he’d constantly have been worried about and protecting. But still. “I’m sure you’re the brainiest, you and your sister. Girls are always the brainiest.”
Although he did at least pick up on the cue that she didn’t really want to talk too much about her family, maybe being far away was too much. “Yeah, I’m not really looking forward to when I need to go home, the guilt about being missing for so much is laid on pretty thick. I might get lost in a forest around about that time.”
She shrugged a shoulder and pursed her lips as if to agree with him not going anywhere after dark because he was pretty. Snickering softly, Hannah took a drink of her new beer. “Rose more so than me,” Hannah smiled fondly.
But when he joked about avoiding home because of the inevitable guilt from being gone too long - the werewolf was hit with a rather large reality check.
“Don’t,” Hannah told him quickly. “Don’t put it off any longer than you need to.” Great advice, coming from her, as she was doing just that out of her own fear and worry. “Especially if you and your sister are close,” Hannah said, shaking her head, “I’m sure she misses you something fierce and it’s not fair to—”
Hannah gathered herself, leaning on the bar lightly to tell him more quietly. “One day you might actually get lost in a forest and she won’t have any closure, so… Don’t waste moments while you still have them.”
Austin was a little surprised by the seriousness in Hannah’s tone, the quick argument that he shouldn’t put it off, and he knew she was probably just thinking about how crappy it was to avoid home, but home was sort of crappy.
It’s not fair to…
Maybe it wasn’t, since Austin put a lot of his own issues on other people, but he couldn’t avoid it forever. Even if he wanted to. Picking at the label on his bottle, he contemplated a throw away comment, dismissing how him getting lost in the forest wouldn’t actually be that big a deal. “Yeah,” it would be something of a big deal, he knew that, but he and Prue weren’t close like that. And he couldn’t fault it, but it did diminish a lot of his life. “We’re… we’re not that close, really, but I kinda get what you mean.”
Worrying the corner of his top lip between his teeth, catching a little on the scar before he let it go, Austin quickly took another drink to try and dislodge the feeling in his stomach. “Even if Texas weather sucks around now.”
Hannah realized how intense she’d just gotten, and the heavy mental load she’d just unleashed on the poor guy. And how he picked at his label and admitted that he wasn’t that close to his sister? Well it left Hannah feeling bad for putting him into a corner basically. “Sorry, nobody ordered a side of serious bartender,” she told him genuinely, attempting to mull it all over.
His little anxious tick with his lip caused her gaze to naturally flicker up to the scar - subconsciously making her reach for her forearm which was covered with a wide sweatband that she used to wipe her hand off when needed. It worked, for the time being, and hid her bite scars. “I’ll bet,” she added with a softer smile, her hand finally leaving the armband.
“I’m not a fan of this humidity or the terrible insects who seem to thrive within it,” Hannah admitted with a huff and grimace. She could imagine Texas wasn’t much better.
“It must be a free side order then, I don’t really mind it.” He didn’t mind so much, sometimes people didn’t exactly care about where you came from. And other people meant well. He could tell that Hannah wasn’t just nosing in, so it wasn’t too bothersome that she wanted to give him advice, maybe based on her own distance from siblings.
“At least it’s not Washington? Pacific Northwest is the worst, it’s constantly just rain and damp and grey.” He didn’t mind it really, he’d found a few instances that maybe more than wolves took up the wooded areas in Seattle, but he’d not pushed much further on that given how fucking damp it was.
“I guess missing the Texas heat is one thing, then again, when you’re in the Texas heat, you do not miss it at all.” Sticky and hot was worse than sticky and cold.
She was grateful he wasn’t offended, or at least put up a good act to insist he wasn’t. Still, the subject was gracefully dropped by the both of them in exchange for the weather.
Since being bitten, Hannah found herself less tolerant of the heat. Of course, spending the majority of her life in Canada didn’t help either. But her body actually running a few degrees warmer than it normally did had a lot to do with her discomfort for the South and her constant praise of air conditioning.
The thought of Washington, just from his description, made her feel sticky - and glad she hadn’t followed the Men of Letters there, instead choosing Seven Devils and her family. She took another sip of her cold beer before shaking her head in a ‘do not want’ kind of way. “I’m from Quebec. I like snow, it’s my natural habitat,” she told him. That and she swore she learnt how to ice skate before she could actually walk, but neither or her parents were around to ever really argue that fact. “First week here I thought I was melting every time I walked outside,” she insisted jokingly.
It was probably cliche, letting things devolve into talking about the weather, but Austin could understand how it was a safe topic, there weren’t exactly triggers in discussing where it was rainy and where it wasn’t afterall. “Man, you really shouldn’t go to Texas ever.”
Snow wasn’t something Texas really saw, maybe on the one off instance of a cold front coming in, freak weather moments. But it wasn’t something you’d expect.
“I had to go to New York to see snow for the first time.” And that had been an experience, he hadn’t realized the world got that cold honestly. “I don’t think it’s for me, you know? I’m okay with being too hot, I don’t think I wanna be cold.”
He wasn’t sure what Seven Devils would be like in the winter, he wasn’t even sure if he’d be there in the winter.
“I’m going to do my best not to,” she laughed. And it was true; really anything more South and she would probably be absolutely miserable 24/7. Though honestly, she’d go anywhere her siblings were in a heartbeat, regardless of the weather or how uncomfortable it’d make her.
“New York isn’t too bad, though I could do without much of the citidiots,” Hannah said with a shrug. City life was convenient but, not so much her thing anymore. It simply couldn’t be anymore even if she did like it. Holding up her beer bottle she grinned. “To polar opposites,” she toasted him before swigging back as much alcohol as she could.
Hannah smirked and tapped the bar lightly in front of him with a wink; “Don’t ever go to Canada.”
Tags: austin jonson, hannah lakatos