[Connorverse] [Theme 2/100] [Connor, Anoobie] [Rated T] Agreeing to Disagree
Title: Agreeing to Disagree Theme: 002. Aggravated Fandom/Pairing: Connorverse; Connor, Anoobie Rating: ESRB Rating of T for Teen < implied violence > Summary: Connor argues with the biggest dog he's ever walked. That might be unwise. Notes: Remember this dude? Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what's going on, either.
The waning gibbous moon is orange, so orange it looks like a great rolling pumpkin. Connor spares it a single glance, tilts his head and watches it a moment, before looking back at the ground in front of him as he walks. Leaves crunch underfoot and he's distantly aware that he should be cold. It's night, it's autumn, this is Virginia: he should be cold. But he doesn't feel it, hasn't felt cold in more than a hundred years.
The studded leather of the leash digs into the meat of his hand, into his fingers. He looks down at his hand and notes that his fingers are trembling and twitching on the leash, which has plenty of slack.
"You know, that's the lousiest impersonation of a dog I've ever seen," he tells the dog attached to the leash.
This is perhaps unwise, because the dog is massive. Connor's only ever seen this sort of size in rottweiler/labrador mixes. And the dog's jaws could quite easily do nasty things to him.
The dog rolls one lazy eye up to look at him and then stops moving altogether. He doesn't even pretend to sniff something interesting.
Connor, who hadn't stopped moving, ends up being jerked by the leash.
"You're still mad at me, aren't you?"
The dog says nothing in reply, but there's something strange in his calmness. Something that's patient and biding its time.
Connor shivers and hates it, then shivers again and hates it more. "Look, I've said I was sorry at least a dozen times--"
The dog growls.
"No, no, I did mean it."
Another growl.
Connor gives up, tossing one hand in the air. It's not his way to give up for long, though; he's always been the one to go for the largest knife in the drawer. He lifts the flap off the messenger bag that has been bouncing emptily against his hip. He reaches in, digging through the few belongings he bothers to carry with him, until he finds it. The old collar. The one that Sandra Davis hand-painted to read "Anoobie" with terrifyingly cutesie little pawprints on either side, with that twee little bone dotting the i.
He holds out the collar threateningly and ignores the third growl that the god formerly known as Anoobie lets out through bared teeth. "We can always go back to this."
Anubis stays where he is, opening his jaws just enough to let Connor know that it will hurt when he bites down on the vein in the back of Connor's knee. It's an understandable reaction.
"So we're at an impasse. I'd leave you mortal and you'd leave me without a leg."
Anubis closes his mouth, peeling back one lip derisively, then stands up at begins to trot at a carefully measured pace. It's too deliberate to be the action of even a fastidious dog and Connor fights not to laugh. Maybe the consequences of his first favor from Anubis are funnier than they are irritating.
Anubis deliberately gets in his way, nearly sending Connor sprawling. And that tears it. If Anubis were anyone else, he realizes, he'd be getting a knife straight to the spleen, immortality or no immortality.