Vic & Dani: 12:15PM
Coming to the food truck for lunch had been Fordham’s idea, so Dani lay the blame for the situation she found herself in squarely at her co-worker’s feet. Burger She Wrote was parked beside a broken hydrant today, and what looked like the entirety of the LBJ district had decided to come out to run through the resulting spray of water. As a result, the typically long wait for food was worse that usual. Fordham had offered to stand in line for both of them, in a surprisingly generous gesture, but it left Dani with nothing better to do than stand at a safe distance from the ‘splash zone’ and watch the scene taking place at the nearby hydrant.
She recognized Olivia straight away, soaked from head to toe and not a bit bothered by it, along with a few other familiar faces. There was also Hellhound contingent, of course. They were everywhere these days, easily recognizable even without their leather vests by the fact that most of them were massive and often tattooed to boot. As Dani tilted her head to try to make out the ink on one man in particular, he turned enough that she saw his face. She knew Viktor Scherbatsky immediately, from his photo on the freenet.
A more timid person might have turned away immediately, embarrassed, and resolved not to glance his way again, for fear of being caught looking. Dani did not. The chances of her ever having another chance to observe Vic without his knowledge were slim, and she wasn’t about to pass up the chance to take his measure. Max spoke of Vic like he was more superman than mere mortal and, for the life of her, Dani couldn’t imagine why.
"Hey," Vic said, unintentionally interrupting Dani's thoughts. He'd recognized the woman from Max's phone, having noticed then -- as he noticed now -- her striking resemblance to Cherry, and he'd thought it was about time the two of them met. He felt like he knew way too much about the woman at the hospital by this point, and what better time to make it happen than when Max was otherwise occupied at the water party?
He knew he had a tendency to physically intimidate, but it couldn't be helped when he was so much taller. Still, Vic attempted to at least be on good behavior for Max's sake, opting to extend a hand out for her to shake instead of crossing both arms over his chest. "You're Dani, aren't you? I heard a lot about you."
Despite the fact that her sunglasses offered some protection from being the direct focus of the enormous man’s gaze, Dani pushed them up to sit on top of her head. For some reason, it was very important to her that Vic not think she was in any way afraid of him. She placed her smaller hand in his much larger one without hesitation.
“And you’re Vic.” It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him that they’d actually exchanged words once before, during an ill-considered prank that involved commandeering Max’s phone to make a false declaration of love to her. At the last moment she swallowed the words, and instead went with, “I’ve heard a great deal about you as well. Given that I know Max tends to highlight a person’s best attributes at the expense of the rest, I hope I don’t fall too far short of what you were expecting.”
"Yeah. That sounds just like him." Vic shrugged -- an enormous full-body gesture on him -- and shook her hand. It was hard to not feel kinda irrationally displeased at the thought of someone he didn't know knowing Max that well. Becoming a functioning part of Austin's new society was one thing, but working past the barriers in society was another. He could do it, though, for Max's sake. And maybe one day he'd even hear what Dani had heard about him. "He said you were smart and pretty and one of his good friends. I guess I'm thinking, if y'all are such good friends why haven't you ever come visit him?"
Even mildly spoken the words sounded like an accusation, or maybe a condemnation. The carefully neutral expression dropped off Dani’s face as her jaw tightened, her automatic self-filter trying and failing to hold back the first rejoinder that sprang to mind. “That’s interesting. I wondered the same thing, myself, when Max told me that he was moving out of the hospital to be with people who were family to him. It was a surprise, considering no one at all had visited during his mother’s stay.”