Re: Bonfire-adjacent: Aubrey/Lou
The wolf was restless, and he didn’t like Aubrey’s nonchalance about walking into a crowd without careful consideration. The laughable part was that Aubrey was careful - - criminally so, compared to the sort of person that he used to be before Iraq, before the fangs. Never cautious. Never fearful, because fear didn’t exist when you were a lethal weapon and barely-tempered rage packed tight under a human veneer. But it was impossible not to think about the exits, about the heartbeats thrumming in time around him with senses cranked into overdrive and a decade of military training carving out the notches of his spine.
So you can appreciate the absurdity of this animal pacing in his head and complaining that he was too sloppy, while standing near a bonfire and drinking warm scotch from a plastic cup. Or maybe not. The point being that Aubrey was both annoyed and exasperated, and the scotch was doing fuck all to take the edge off his irritation. If anything, that edge was getting filed down into something far more deadly.
He’d turned before he even realized that it was happening, feet planted with his weight perfectly distributed a shoulder width apart. They’d smelled her together but the wolf had been first to recognize what it meant. His eyes and mouth remained perfectly neutral as he lifted his cup to take another swallow of scotch, but the arch of one eyebrow lifted with something like amusement.
“I had to quit. Couldn’t handle the smell on my clothes all the time.” Aubrey’s gaze slid to the glowing cherry of her cigarette, then back to her face through the flickering glow of the bonfire.