Currently the moon is in the waxing New Moon phase (17% full).

Stairs in the foyer lead up to the second floor, while a doorway tucked under the curve of the stairs heads down to the basement. A heavy door in the foyer with a monitor and intercom beside it goes back to the area set up for communal use by the Sept's Garou.

The sound of running water comes from the kitchen, mixed with a tuneless whistling that only the keenest of musical ears could confirm as an effort to whistle the theme from 'The Dam Busters', as Kevin attends to a couple of days' worth of washing up in Glasswalkerland.

Natalie's been in and out most of the weekend - more out than in - and wasn't around at all for this morning's usual jog, or for the rest of the day either. Now, in the mid-afternoon, she finally arrives back at the safehouse, the door closing heavily behind her. There's a muttered commentary as well as some muffled thumps before her voice calls out, "Yo? Anyone home?"

"Kitchen," calls out Kevin's familiar voice, from that direction.

Natalie grunts; some moments later the sock-footed Elder comes padding down the hallway, careful on the slippery floor. She pauses at the entry to frown at him and ask, "Something wrong with the dishwasher?" before cutting over toward the fridge.

Kevin holds up the frying pan he's been scrubbing, and which is rather badly blackened. "No, only with my cooking skills," he confesses. "I burnt the bacon. I don't think the dishwasher would clean this one without us putting it on danger money."

Natalie breathes a near-silent, "Ah," and ducks into the depths of the chill chest. "That's why I usually use the microwave to make it. --And cripes, when were you trying to make bacon that you're only cleaning the pan now?"

Kevin pulls a face. "I got mad at myself for wrecking lunch and went up to beat up the punchbag for a spell," he further confesses. "Look, Natalie, I know it's not in the same league as fighting or shifting or runes, but the more I think about it the more I feel the odd lesson in kitchen survival would do me the world of good. The can-opener attacked me last night. I had to go hide upstairs and turn glabro to heal it."

Natalie says, "Ah," again, retreating from the fridge with a basket of early strawberries. "Well, what do you want to know? And what do you know already? --Besides how to burn bacon, I mean."

Kevin gives one of his eloquent shrugs. "I don't mean how to cook a six-course cordon bleu dinner, just how not to set fire to things and injure myself, yet still be able to make more than just peanut butter sandwiches if I'm on my own in the house."

"Well, you know how to read a cookbook, right?" Nat takes her booty over to the empty half of the sink, leaves the berries there while she fetches out the colander and a cereal bowl.

Kevin gives a very cautious nod to that one. "At least, I guess so. I've never really tried..."

"There's half your problem right there," she says briskly, dumping about half of the fruit into the colander, then reaching across the boy for the spray attachment. "I mean, what do you want to make? Pancakes are easy. So're hamburgers. Most baking is easy; you just have to watch what you're doing." As she speaks she elbows on the water, turning it to cold, then sprays off the fruit in the colander.

"I've just never known where to start," Kevin says, giving the pan another scrub. "When I was at home, Mum did all the cooking for me. And when I went away to boarding school, all the cooking was done in the kitchen. So I've never needed to know how, really, till now."

"Hand me a paring knife, will you?" is her answer, nodding toward the knife block on the boy's far side. "--That makes sense. Mom and Pop used to split food duties, depending on who was around. You ought to know how to do more than just stuff something in the microwave and push a button, anyway." She gives his pan a considering look and adds, "Have you let that soak already?"

Kevin looks at the knife block, pulls out a couple of implements, and hopefully passes Nat a medium-sized blade before hefting the pan again. "I ran some water into it and added some detergent," he says.

Natalie waves off the knife with a shake of her head. "No, paring knife." A hesitation, and she turns her head to study the gangly youth for a second. "Damn, you really don't know your way around, do you? Paring knife is the little tiny one next to the... it's got the shortest handle."

Kevin slides the knife back home and passes the little one instead sheepishly. "I would say kitchens are for girls, but I know better than that now," he murmurs.

Natalie snorts good-naturedly at him and carefully takes the knife. "Kitchens are for anyone who wants to eat," she says before using it to de-hull the fruit. Jab the blade in around the stem, cut a cone, flick out a whitish hull. "You could probably live off the land for a while, but yum yum, tasty raw squirrel. --Go get one of the cookbooks, will you kiddo? Um... I think the Betty Crocker one is pretty easy. That's the one with the red binding."

Kevin trots to the kitchen bookshelf and fishes out the volume referred to, peering at it nervously as though he fears it's about to imitate Harry Potter's textbook and suddenly try to bite him.

Nat says, "Crack it open - not in the middle, at the beginning," nodding encouragement as she continues to hull. "Right up front of most cookbooks is the 'what the hell am I doing' section. Shows you how to chop, slice, measure... all that good stuff."

Kevin takes a deep breath and turns the first few pages over as he moves closer to the elder for her to also be able to observe the book. "Hmm, is this it?" he asks, flipping past the table of contents and coming to rest on the first page of text proper.

Natalie glances over, then reaches with a strawberry-y hand to flip to the next page. "There you go. What measuring cups and spoons look like, how to measure solids and liquids. Go ahead and flip through this whole section to get a feel for stuff, and then we can bake something together. I've been getting an itch to do some baking anyway."

Kevin's face sets into the sort of stolid resignation that Natalie may recall seeing before on occasions such as when she was about to teach the cub what it feels like to be shot. "Make sure the fire extinguisher's nearby," is all he says in response, as he starts reading the first few pages of the cookbook.

Natalie only snorts again and finishes hulling her berries. They stay in the colander while she returns the rest to the fridge, then pours herself a glass of milk with a, "Want anything?" for the cub. "I'm no gourmet," she adds bracingly. "But I can cook to keep myself fed. And - secrets revealed - you don't always have to cook healthy. I've had suppers of popcorn more times than I can count."

Kevin gives that remark an ambivalent look. "Yeah, milk's good for you, builds your bones," he says in response, though, not commenting on the topic of unhealthy cooking to any greater extent than that.

Natalie pours the kid a glass as well before returning the rapidly-emptying gallon to the refrigerator. Only after the berries are in a bowl, the bowl in one hand and her glass in the other does she head off to the dining room, jerking her head for the boy to follow. "So what do you want to make? Cookies? Muffins? Granola?"

"Cookies?" Kevin responds, the word delivered more as a question than an answer, and his nervousness of all things kitchen-related still plain in his tone and body language.

"Cookies it is," she answers easily, sliding into the chair at the head of the table. "So what I want you to do is find the recipe for chocolate chip cookies in there." A nod to the book. "And then read it. Those are nice and simple."

Kevin flips to the index at the back, concentrating on the small print there, and after some delay finds the relevant entry. "Here we go," he says in falsely bright tones. "Have we got all these ingredients?" He passes the book to his tutor with one finger holding onto it to mark the place.

Natalie pops a strawberry into her mouth and glances over at the tome. A few seconds chewing and she looks blandly up at the boy. "I don't know, do we? But that's good - first thing you do when you read a recipe is figure out if you have everything you'll need. You can either go hunt it down or finish reading the recipe while I finish eating."

The soft 'bzzzt' of the lock on the door between the Glass Walker area and the rest of the house can be heard, evidence of either family or a really good crook coming through. The door opens and it's the former who enters, in the form of Jon, looking around the living area as he surveys.

Kevin opens a few of the kitchen cupboards hopefully. "Well, we have flour," he says brightly, lifting out a packet of that substance. "Chocolate chips... chocolate chips... if I were chocolate chips, where would I be?" He looks around as though seeking inspiration, and sees instead an unfamiliar face through at the front of the house. He gives Nat a quiet nudge.

Natalie's over in the dining room, so it takes more than a nudge to get her attention. "Try in the cabinet next to the glasses," she suggests, turning in her chair to watch the cub's progress. "--What? Do I have berry juice on my shirt?" She looks down at her unsoiled front, then back up at Kevin, blankly.

Kevin bends down to Natalie as though showing her the recipe and whispers something to her under cover of this manoeuvre. "There's a strange man through by the front door!"

Jon, hearing Kevin and Natalie moving around in the kitchen, doesn't interrupt, but does begin to hum something under his breath as he approaches it. The observant may recognize it as Rob Zombie.

Nat says, "Huh?" pushing back from the table and standing. "What do you mean, a strange man?" Even so she waves for the cub to stay there, while she heads to the hallway to intercept Kevin's bogeyman. As soon as she rounds the corner her anticipatory scowl drops away, leaving behind a bright as daylight beam aimed straight at Jon. "Hey sweetie. You skip out of work early?"

Grey comes home sometime around this time, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it up as the door leading to the rest of the house swings shut behind him. He's not humming, he's not smiling, and he didn't really pay much attention to shaving this morning, either. His usual mood these days, in other words.

Jon's humming cuts off as he gives Natalie a slight smile and a return, "Hey," approaching her to give her a quick kiss on the mouth before pulling back to speak once more. "Since I worked over the weekend, I decided to take off at 3 this afternoon. What's going on?" he asks, looking towards the kitchen questioningly.

Kevin remains as bidden in the kitchen. A faint noise of surprise may be heard from him as he overhears Nat dub Jon 'sweetie'.

"You're a rebel," Nat tells the stranger fondly, turning so she can slip a hand into his. "Teaching Kevin how to bake cookies. --You've met Kevin, haven't you? Cripes, I guess you haven't." She nods to the thunderstruck cub. "Kevin Lockwood, lost cub and Ragabash. Kevin, this is Jon Stark, my boyfriend. He's the one who put up most of the money for the house. --Did you find the chips, kiddo?" She and Jon occupy the space in the kitchen right in front of the hallway, while Kevin is lingering in the dining room, a red-bound book in hand.

Heading into the house a bit after Thomas is Jeremy, still in his work clothes, with the exception that he is wearing his trench coat as usual when he's off the clock. He is carrying a back pack around his shoulder, his hair stuffed under a company hat, twisted backwards.

Kevin sidles out of the dining room, the book held tightly in his hands, one finger marking his place still. He looks at Jon more as though Natalie has just introduced him as Marley's Ghost, than as her boyfriend. One can almost see the little wheels turning in his head. Jeremy and Grey both get a quick blink and a flash of smile from the boy, but no more.

Grey's mouth thins into a hard line, the cheery, homey mood of the house hitting hard into his down dour mood and bouncing off like a rubber ball off a Panzer tank. Bypassing the kitchen and the cookie-making entirely, he stalks into the living room and drops himself onto the couch.

Jon gives a quick glance over his shoulder at the sound of Grey and Jeremy's arrival, the latter getting a brief grin, before turning back to the cub, disentangling his right hand from Natalie's to offer it out to the boy. "Nice to meet you, Kevin," he says with warm politeness. "I'm sorry we haven't been able to meet before now, work's had me busy."

Natalie makes a little moue when Jon's hand leaves hers, but she heads over to the cabinet where they keep all their baking supplies, letting the two get to know each other. "Hopefully in a few days we can let Cy out of the basement. She's a Philodox, assuming she didn't lie to me about her age." She probably hasn't noticed the entrance of Jeremy and Thomas.

"Hey Kevin." Jeremy calls over to the young boy as he wiggles his fingers slightly, offering up Jon a quick, return grin. "I gotcha something." He says, shifting his bag a bit off his shoulder, letting it sink down to his feet.

Kevin uses the hand that's not clutching the cookbook in a death grip to take Jon's and shake it firmly enough, responding in equally polite if nervous tones. "Hello Jon, nice to meet you." He hovers between Jon and the kitchen area as though unsure whether to attend to one or the other, until Jeremy breaks his indecision and earns the British boy's eternal gratitude. "Ooh?" He trots over to the gothkin, finger still shut in the cookbook, to seek enlightenment.

In the living room, Grey picks up the remote and turns on CNN. He's not hiding in his room, but he's still being anti-social.

As Kevin is distracted by the other Kinfolk, Jon smiles as he passes, and continues the look over his shoulder to where Grey is in the living room, before turning his glance back to Natalie. "So, I don't want to pull you away from all this, but I was thinking about going out to dinner, and wondering if you wanted to join me."

Natalie turns and makes a face when the cookbook disappears down the hall. She turns at Jon's question, head cocked to one side, expression lightening. "I'd love to. Of course. --But I was going to teach Kev how to make cookies, and Grey might have plans. If you feel up to cookie-lessons, I can go run upstairs and see if he's playing hermit."

"Hey, I picked you up something at my old work when I was visiting some buds, found some stuff I thought you may like, then I kind of remembered you didn't have a computer." Jeremy pauses as he then glances over in Natalie's direction. "So... I was going to give you the one that I had laying around but I figured it'd be best to get permission first." He wets his lips a bit, tongue ring clicking against his teeth.

Kevin's face splits into a surprised smile. He cranes round to follow Jer's gaze in the direction of Natalie, waiting with the kinfolk for the elder's thoughts on the matter.

Jon looks back in the direction of the living room at Natalie's words, informing, "He's in the living room watching TV."

Color the Elder pleasantly surprised. "Oh, is he? I'll just go ask him now, then." She leaves off emptying the shelves to cross the kitchen and 'accidentally' brush up against Jon as she passes, only to be brought up short by the cub-and-kin traffic jam in the hallway. "'Scuse me," she offers as she picks her way past the two, her sights set on the front rooms.

Jeremy shuffles out of Natalie's way as she slips past, bumping into Kevin a bit. "So um... is it OK for Kevin to have a laptop yet?" He asks the quickly departing Elder, shifting his gaze to the cub for a moment, then drops his shoulders in a shrug.

Kevin stands close against Jeremy to allow Nat to sweep through. He makes puppy eyes at Natalie, though whether she actually looks at him to see them is another matter.

Jon turns in his spot to watch Natalie go, but seems content to remain where he is, leaning a shoulder up against a wall near the doorway of the kitchen.

Grey puts up an excellent facade of paying attention to the television, though CNN wasn't able to capture his attention for more than a few minutes. He's flipping channels now.

Natalie pulls up short at the question, looking first at Jeremy, then back at Kevin before her eyes flip back to the kin. "What? Oh sure. I was thinking of giving him Josh's old one, but I don't know where that got to." A quick, distracted smile and she continues on to the living room where she waits through two channel-flips before clearing her throat. "--You have any plans tonight, Thomas?"

"Cool." Jeremy says as he hands the laptop bag over to Kevin, raising up a brow. "Here, this is yours then. Its my old four year old iBook. One of the first twelve inches with the white casing. The software is updated and I bought you a how to speak Japanese software package and loaded it on there. So you and I can have a secret code." He says with a wink.

History Channel. Look, Nazis! Grey glances up, giving Natalie a hooded look. "Not as such," he says slowly, guardedly.

Kevin takes the bag from Jeremy in one hand, the hand not occupied with the cookery book. "Monster!" he exclaims. "Jeremy... thanks. Secret code!" He laughs, in slightly exaggeratedly silly style. "I'll just leave it here for now, I've got cookies to learn to bake..." Dropping off the bag with care by the wall, he trots back into the kitchen happily.

"Then would you mind sticking around for cub-sitting at supper?" Nat asks, all open and artless, the complete opposite from the Philodox. "Jon wanted to take me out, but since I've been dumping on you the last few days I figured you've got first crack at some free time."

A brief flicker of a smile touches Jeremy's lips at the cub's happiness, then glances around the room for a moment, blue eyes searching behind thin rimmed glasses.

Grey shrugs faintly and turns back to the television screen, for some reason finding the Nazis to be terribly fascinating at the moment. "No problem," he says curtly.

Natalie hesitates a moment longer before nodding. "Thanks. --Fresh cookies in a bit." She hovers at the entry for a few seconds while the solemn-voiced announcer drones on about the Gestapo in 1941, then ducks back down the hall to join Jon and Kevin back in the kitchen.

After a few silent moments, Jeremy makes his way to the other room and peers in at Grey, offering a slight wiggle of his fingers into his direction. "... Um.. Hey Thomas."

[End of log]