Re: Garage: Elijah/Aubrey
Aubrey’s hands were mirror images against the counter, the most tension found in pinkie and thumb and the rest in a relaxed curl, because he didn’t require much effort to hold the breadth of his frame in a just-barely vaulted bow over and into the other man’s sanctuary of space. “Now, see? Something we agree on.” Not about the salient conclusion regarding the Humvee’s status as a vehicle, but about the futility of men and women in body armour acting on the whim of swollen politicians who languished in air-conditioned assembly ten thousand kilometres away. “And you probably thought we had nothing in common. But that’s not so true, is it?”
His head tilted to one side just slightly and the smile moved easily into mild, inquisitive, as he looked the man over high and low. The mineral buzz of the radio in Aubrey’s ears was something faint and annoying, like a fly trapped between window panes, but it didn’t make his blood boil until he wanted to crush the plastic and bits of wire under a palm. He read terror in every line of the guy’s body like a familiar passage in a well-worn book, but his nose wasn’t filled with the stench of sour sweat popping out of pores.
“What are you?”
He hadn’t known he was going to ask the question until it was already out there, plopped onto the cold surface of the counter between them with a slippery suddenness that made Aubrey think of organs steaming in white snow. His gaze dragged back up to level against eyes that were far too wide to be undaunted, and he realized the man had found it in himself to muster the absurdity of defiance. Stupid, yes. But interesting. The rabbits who escaped back to their burrows unscathed weren’t the ones who got into staring contests with carnivores. Which meant that this one probably had an emergency exit plan — though not one that he was eager to use.
For the record, trying to stare down an alpha was a very efficient form of enacting a death-wish. The wolf might have been muzzled, but there was no scenario in which Aubrey would blink or look away first. And since he didn’t relish the idea of killing anyone today, even the annoying weirdo, he lifted one hand off the table and reached around to slip his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. Flipped it open and pulled out a neat third of the bills within, all hundreds. Reached farther across the counter than he had yet and set them down parallel to the far edge, where the man had made his retreat (running away from a hunter who had you in his sights — that one was just stupid, without the aspect of interest). Held them in place with the tip of his middle finger on one hand.