Little Cate

Cate
It's stormy and gray, the clouds overhead grumble disagreeably with the sun who, just behind them, vies to warm the land below. The ranch is quiet today, though that is not to say that work has ceased for the Carey family. It hasn't. The rain has only pushed the chores indoors: feeding the horses, bathing them, brushing their manes and tails and cleaning their hooves. Cooking and canning and preparing for the overly large dinners that are honestly the norm here.

Cate hasn't acclimated herself to this place yet. The Carey's are kind and have welcomed her with open arms the way that family (long lost or not) are meant to do, but despite that there has been a wariness on the part of the young kinfolk. Her eyes flitter carefully when she's offered food, waiting for the demand of payment once her silverware has been laid before her. And though it never comes - no more than helping around the ranch - it still does little to ease her concerns.

There's a porch swing adorned with comfortable cushions that she loves. It's where she sits during rainy days like this, her jean shorts cut off up on her thighs and her tshirt loose and ill-fitting. Bare toes point and short legs stretch to reach the banister of the porch, pushing the swing slow and lazy like back and forth.

Black
The reason he's here isn't important. He's here. The old truck he's only just acquired doesn't kick up as much dust with the heavy rain, but there's no mistaking that engine and the fact that it's in desperate need of a tune up. It parks near the path leading to the house and he climbs out, taking the path in quick long strides and the stairs two by two.

Black's a tall man, mid-twenties with dark hair kept close to his scalp around the sides and longer at the top. His mustache is thin and small and his skin is tan, eyes dark. His eyes skirt over Cate, up and down and then stop at her face before he tugs open the screen door and disappears inside.
minutes tick by

Then he's back out, but he's not taking the stairs to his truck. He stops near the stairs and turns to face her, the broad line of his shoulders pressed against one of the supporting columns of the porch.
"Ah dornt hink Ah ken ye, ye got a nam lassie?" He says in that thick Scottish brogue.

Cate
There's a moments pause. The stranger enters her new home and then exits only minutes later. That he pauses and lays his eyes on her with any sort of familiarity finds her arching one lone brow at him. Leg stretched, toes pointed, she continues to push the swing lazily with minimal effort on her part. She's letting gravity do the work.

"What?" Tone, irritated and eyes reflecting the same. Black may as well be speaking Portuguese for all that she could understand his words beneath that thick accent.

"Do you speak En-gla-ish?"

Black
Confusion flashes across his own expression and he rolls his shoulders then tips his head at her curiously. "Wass yer name." He says slowly, carefully, so that the words are just a fraction clearer despite the still present accent he owns.

Cate
Her eyes narrow in consideration. There's the faintest underlying hint of defiance in the amber hue of them. If he were at all perceptive he would take note of that, that thread of I do what I want that is woven so deep in the tapestry of who and what she is.

"Nora Catherine Finin." She gives him all of it because her name meant very little to her. "Who are you?"
Thunder rumbles in the distance followed momentarily by lightning.

Black 
Nora.
Catherine.
Finin.
He nods to that, to all three names and drags a hand back over his dark head of hair. He's got a mason jar in one hand and that is left to sit on the railing of the porch, not far from where her dainty toes are touching the wood to push herself back and forth.

"Ciarán Blàrach," then "Black'll do." The matriarch of the Carey family approaches the screen door while wiping her hands on her flowery apron. He smiles and nods at her, she does the same and walks away.

"Yer kin ta tha Carey's are ya?"


Cate
"I guess." The words sting the minute they leave her lips. It knits her brow together and lowers her chin briefly to her chest before she lifts it again and looks out over the rolling ranch land. "I am." She corrects herself, remembering who feeds her and under who's roof she sleeps each night. Cate's foot doesn't push off from the railing anymore and so the swing eventually slows to a stop. With her arms crossed low over her belly, the little kinswoman is watching the man with apprehension. Obvious apprehension.

"Is there something that I can help you with, Black?"

Black
Now it's his turn to let a feeling of frustration or maybe exasperation wash over his features. Dark eyes narrow and now that her leg isn't extended anymore, Black edges to the side and turns to face her, right in front of her, half sitting on the wood with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Ur ye aye sae rude Cate?" He rumbles at her, jaw clenching. "Way Ah see it, we're fowk. best we nae end up hatin' a body anither, reit?"

Cate
He slips back into that thick brogue and she closes her eyes. When she opens them he's in front of her, right on the spot of wood where she'd been using her toes to push off of. One foot finds purchase on the concrete floor beneath her and she pushes off slightly, planting her foot in Black's stomach unless he moves. Her eyes flicker away, to the barn as the youngest Carey boy is making a mad dash for the front porch, never mind the fact that he's already soaked through from the same mad dash done just an hour prior.

"I'm rude to people I don't know. And I don't know you." Sam pauses and looks at Black, then Cate and chuckles in that way boys are wont to do when the idea of kissing a girl still rings with an association to cooties.

"Ugh." She groans, returning her attention to Black. "You're a Carey then?"

Black
"Weel, we ken a one anither noo reit? sae ye can gonnae-no bein' rude Cate." Says the Fianna who catches her foot in one hand and holds it, keeping her swing effectively at an angle because of it. "Nae, a'am nae a Carey. a'am a garoo thocht, ye see. an' aam ay th' sam bluid 'at runs ben yer veins - Fianna."

He tips his head at the kin woman curiously, strong hands massaging her foot with a familiarity that might send her into a fury. "Ah guess yoo've nae a lot ay experience wi' mah kin'?"

Cate
He catches her foot. She stares. He begins to massage it while talking and she's narrowing her eyes at him, the muscles in her foot and leg growing taut with tension. "No." One word is all that Black gets from the kin for the span of three minutes.

"I didn't know anything about you or your kind until about a month ago when my dad found me." Her eyes are light brown - amber nearly - and they fix on his mouth and then his hands and finally his fingers as they knead into her foot in such a way that she can't help but close her eyes. The wind blows cool with a fine mist of rain and that's all that draws her eyelids up and her attention to focus on the man once more.

"Do you always rub strange women's feet?"

Black
 "Mmm." He rumbles at her, not pausing the movement of his fingers on her foot. His palm runs across the top of it, feeling the fine bird like bones there and around to her ankle. That she is built light is not lost on him, he can feel that she is put together and made fragile.

"Ye remin' me ay a spyug, yer anes ur sae lecht an' wee." Finally he stops and simply holds her foot against him, his body an unbelievably warm thing. "Nae aye, ye dornt seem tae be complain' thocht." A grin spreads across his face, wide and confident.

Cate
One shoulder draws up, the other slips down. She looks like a cornered animal, ready to flee at the slightest opportunity. Her palms settle on either side of her hips and she's watching him intently, one lock of auburn hair falling to rest against the curve of her jaw.

"Now who's being rude?" She asks with a rather perturbed look touching the twist of her mouth. Cate draws her leg back unless Black refuses to let it go, and she stands. "I have to go help Ms. Carey."

No nice to meet you or thank you for the wonderful foot massage. Cate excuses herself with no more than that and turns toward the door to go.

Black
She finds no resistance when she decides she wants her leg back. But Black isn't done with Cate just yet. For whatever reason - and maybe it's just the way she refuses to allow herself to consider that she might just like him a little - his hand touches her hip and he aids her body in turning toward him. Palm touches her cheek and her presses his mouth to hers.

Spontaneous and curious, and maybe even stupid. But he rests a hand on her cheek and one at her hip with his lips at her own mouth.


Cate
 It goes like this: He touches her hip and she turns, surprise evident. His hand finds her cheek and she's frowning at him, arrogant. His mouth finds the lush swell of her own mouth and her brows are furrowing, the surprise flourishes fully into shock and for the longest of moments she does nothing but stand there and allow him to kiss her. His mouth is strong like his hands, his breath warm and his tongue soft at her lips.

It isn't the first time she's been kissed. She's been kissed better and this certainly won't be the last. But the shock of it - of him and all of his bravado and audacity - find her frozen.

But just briefly, because she tugs back from him and there's the sharp crack of not thunder but flesh on flesh. Cate slaps Black as hard as she can. Her mouth is moist and wet with his kiss and she drags the back of her hand across her mouth while her feet hurry to find purchase behind her.

"Ahahahaha!" Laughs Sam, who'd been watching from behind the screen door. "Catie's got boy spit cooties!"

And Cate is scowling.
And Running.
And gone inside the Carey home.