Work Text:
“Dylan is pretty nice,” Tavros tells you, “but he’s quiet, and he prefers working by himself, so, keep that in mind…”
You wrap your jacket further around you, because it’s freezing in his car. Then again, it’s not exactly his fault he has to drive with the window down.
“And then there’s Equius,” he says. “And Equius…” he checks for traffic, flips his turn signal on, cautiously waits for a large gap before moving again. “He’s a bit um… hard to deal with sometimes.”
“How come?”
“Oh…” his hands knead the steering wheel and you can tell he’s fidgeting with his tongue in his closed mouth. “Um, well, he’s a bit, traditional.”
“Like how?”
Tavros sighs, like he’s all out of words, and makes this worried little glance upwards before looking back at the street. “He’s… nice, I guess,” he offers, and one of his thumbnails is flicking against his steering wheel. You feel bad for making him this anxious. “He just, kind of holds on to, traditional and, um, possibly racist and classist views, because he is kind of privileged, and um, kind of, looks down on people.”
You sort of tilt your head. “How come he’s on your crew?”
He’s fidgeting all over again, and you pat at his forearm and bring your knees up to your chest. “Never mind, it’s fine,” you say, putting your chin on your knees. “I’ll ask him later. You look like you’re pretty stressed!”
Tavros nods meekly. The poor thing gets so anxious when he’s put into new situations, and you’ve been staying at his house for a week now during a very busy time in his life.
When you first saw him you had been surprised at how put-together and mature he’d been.
Now, not so much.
Your presence probably isn’t helping.
You are driven to the garage, and one by one you meet all of the crew Tavros told you about. The last one he mentioned that he got so stressed over doesn’t appear to be here.
The garage is fascinating, and you keep asking questions about how everything works, and it’s loud and it’s busy and it’s wonderful, and you feel like you might be able to fit here.
You’d been looking up at something across the room and so you hadn’t noticed when someone very abruptly rolled out from under some vehicle or another, startling you, and you trip over his very dense side and barely save yourself with a roll.
“What the fuck!” He looks at you, shocked, when you yell, and you take in all of him: his long hair in a ponytail, his broken horn, his broken teeth, the grease all over his arms and one spot on his neck where it’s dripped, his tanktop and shorts and stupid cleated shoes, the smooth, gray, finely scarred skin everywhere his clothes don’t cover him.
The deep, disapproving rumble of his voice when he speaks.
“That is no kind of language for a young lady.”
You have this irresistible urge to smack some sense into him, and your heart does this weird kind of flip that you can’t quite explain.
You are still crouched on the floor after your front roll, and you push yourself forward onto your hands and knees to shove a stern finger in his face. “And you should look where you’re going when you roll on your little rolly thing out from cars! I could have fallen on my face!”
He opens his mouth to prostest but you’re already standing, dusting off your knees with fervor, and starting to walk away.
He sits up and calls after you. “And you should learn some manners!”
You turn, despite Tavros’ pleading tug on your arm, and you kneel right back down at him again. You stare at him. He looks a little surprised, then glowers back.
You smack him upside the head, and leave again.
You’re about ten feet away when you start walking backwards so you can yell “And wash your stupid greasy face!”
Before you turn away again you saw him stare at you, wide-eyed, his hand up to touch where you’d hit him, with something like disbelief or admiration on his face.