Re: log; marina & russ Russell didn't know whether he was going to order a pizza or call CPS. The thick eyebrows lowered over the bridge of his nose, and Russ swept the machinery aside from the workbench with the back of his hand with more force than was strictly necessary. He didn't watch her walk out. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction, nor fan the flicker of panic that burned true and small looking at the kid on the floor. Speak English, like the kid didn't and Russ remembered boxes of mac and cheese and the television-babysitter, the slam of the trailer door as his mom went 'out', if she ever gave him an explanation before she left, reeking of cheap perfume, booze and cigarettes.
He didn't remember the last time he'd watched a kid. Certainly not since he was legal to make the fuckers.
With Nathan parked on concrete like nothing more than another addition to the panoply of broken down things left to be restored to their eventual owners' guardianship once again, Russ gingerly resumed his seat. He went back to tinkering, tuning deliberately into the radio and ignoring the quiet, whisper-talk the kid had going with the action figures, too quiet to listen to and it felt intimate, intrusive. No one had dumped their kid on him. He'd slept with women who'd taken him back to places where one room had Tigger and shit painted on the walls and he'd gotten gone too quick to be around for them waking up.
As the minutes slid past into the half hour, the iron winch of his shoulders slid free some. The kid didn't look up. The radio kept playing, a roulette of songs he didn't much care about but didn't take offense to. The problem with the engine on the table was routine, but it was fiddly, and his fingers were too large for much of the delicacy required. It needed the use of tools, and Russ lost himself in inching out one part at a time, before there was a tap on his knee-cap.
Russ looked down into a face full of Ford's eyes and Marina's mouth. Nathan observed him back critically, around a mouthful of his own thumb. Blue eyes met blue eyes, both solemn, both a little wary. "You want pizza?" Russ didn't know what you were supposed to feed kids but he was pretty fucking certain it wasn't delivery.
"Where's my mommy?" The small voice was tremulous. It wobbled around the possessive like a storm readying itself to roll in.
Russ felt panic climb his spine like a cat trying to find high ground.
"She ain't here," it wasn't the right answer. He knew it wasn't the right answer the minute the lower lip jutted out like a punctuation of the brief, so brief period in which he may have gotten away with it. The blue eyes filled, the lower lip wobbled once. If Russ had had anything to give the kid, the kid would have won. But it wasn't a hand of cards.
"You were playing," Russ said, desperation a passing note in the back of his voice. "Go back and play, I'll call for pizza." The action figures lay ignored on the concrete.