Bonfire-adjacent: Aubrey/Lou
Aubrey had shown his face late to the bonfire, everything that went against the discipline he’d been so reluctant to learn in the army — but chalk all that, the careless sauntering in and sizing up, to a holdover from the times and places where arriving at a party before midnight was horrendously gauche. Vegas, where time stood still. Where Aubrey was a rich kid with a big dick and a bad reputation. Manhattan, Montreal, Toronto. Cities wholly unlike the Capital, where 2AM last call reigned a pathetic supreme. Aubrey had parked his Range Rover on the outskirts of the property and sat there with the windows rolled down for the better part of ten minutes. He listened to the squeals and the laughter trickling on cool, lake-thick air and tried to reconcile both his own self and the wolf with a place where people stumbled over one another and the stench of untreated logs burned the inside of his nose something acrid and lingering.
The glorified Muskoka chairs strewn about the fire’s wreath were, in clear summation, not meant for a frame that topped out over 6’2” and certainly not that of a wolf who found no ease or comfort in reclining. The wolf had snarled soundlessly in Aubrey’s head when he considered sitting in one of the chairs with his back to the trees. The bonfire’s attendees weren’t predators, but that didn’t mean he was going to be stupid, did it?
Aubrey imagined flicking the tip of one middle finger against the pad of his thumb and the edge of the wolf’s ear, discrepant as the idea was when the wolf held reign in his head and shared his organs. The wolf bared his teeth and paced. The wolf’s hackles hoisted in a spiked layer of fur that was not betrayed to the outside world, because outwardly Aubrey was all man. But he heard the heavy footfalls of padding feet in the back of his head and he tasted an iron weight on the thick flesh of his tongue.
Aubrey the man was wearing impeccable shades of grey and cream, with a watch that cost more than some houses in the Neighbourhood. He might have blended into the darkness of nighttime and smoke as he stood by the fire and sipped at a Solo cup that was full of something stronger than beer, were it not for his height and the presence of the wolf. Might have, but did not. Didn't care. Didn't want.