Although he paused to grab a nearby rag and wipe his hands so he would not defile a Cobra, even a model one, with dirt and sweat, Slav did take it back. With the sort of reverent care that was usually reserved from other people for items like the Holy Grail or Merlin's left shoe.
Even though the racing stripes were not perfectly parallel, the left seat belt was on backwards and the bottom of the right rear fender had a spot of black paint where it should be uniformly blue, Slav still thought the car looked fantastic. The entire time he had been putting it together, he had been imagining getting to drive one of the real thing, as he had with each of the half dozen models scattered around his room. The few that had made it past Bianca's occasional 'clean-up' raid, when she said he had too many and had to get rid of them. And this car represented the beginning of it all, for the last ten years he had just had the poster on his wall to go all sticky over.
Oh man, he was never telling Nik that story, the one involving the real gleaming vehicle and needing to change.
"I'm not mad," the younger of the two instantly returned, as soon as he was able to focus on anything besides the little car he held carefully in his hands. And really, he was not. Not anymore, because, he had pretty much forgotten about most of it already, it was just how he rolled. So to speak, and never couched aloud in those terms. "I just didn't think-"
Slav picked up his gaze from the car to send an almost fearful look at his older brother. "You're not going...to do anything crazy, are you?"