Re: Sonrisa: oliver & hunter & appearances by cris
Oliver didn't have any animals, although he supposed that in the loosest sense of the word, he had a raccoon. Had was a strong word for the relationship that had developed between thieves both furry and not. Oliver had only seen the animal once when it squatted in the kitchen on colder nights and found its way into pizza boxes for the stale crusts left behind by brothers. One night a box of poptarts was victim, not taken, but strewn across floor and windowsill like confetti's bits of cardboard, cellophane, and sprinkled pastry. It seemed like a very un-Jude thing for Jude to do, and so Oliver reserved his suspicions for the raccoon, although he hadn't seen the thing since.
That relationship wasn't a close one, and Oliver would not smell like raccoons. If anything, he smelled like long walks through the local woods, the sting of paint chemicals that lingered sometimes for days, and also whatever detergent that Jude found both cost effective and gentle enough for clothes that were already worn too thin to handle more aggressive abuse. The dogs sniffed at his shoes and the knees of his pants, and Oliver, having absolutely no familiarity with dogs, edged back the few inches that the shelves at his back allowed for.
He didn't really know what he was supposed to do, and he glanced with query to Hunter and then to the Sheriff. He watched for clues, followed the curve of Hunter's fingers when he scratched at the oldest of the dog's ears. Experimentally, he knelt to let the littlest one sniff at the back of his hand, which he doubted to hold much interest as he'd been handling coffee and paint tubes that morning, not kibble or cats.
"Do you know how?" It seemed like a question worth asking. Oliver imagined that professionals usually did these kinds of repairs, but he didn't discount Hunter as being a professional anything, not because of the theft and not because of the dogs. He'd never met a window repairman, so maybe Hunter was one. The Sheriff, Oliver speculated, should not know how to fix the window. Or maybe he did and was simply not a good Sheriff in exchange. To Oliver, abilities were compact, perfected and small enough to be kept in a pocket, not spread out all over, not watered down.