papetoonvulpine:
There they were again, it was becoming routine for them. Somehow they’d found common ground once again in the rift left by their conjoined stupidity. How odd, or not–perhaps expected–that Falco held his delicate thoughts where none could see. It was safer that way, it was safer to front the air of indifference. No, he’d not said that–but it was easier for James to assume the worst, too. It was just easier to front the smile, those affable pleasantries while seeking the crags in every personality he ran afoul of just as he had as a boy.
It was safer. Better–but it wasn’t true.
James followed brief flash of light that caught the stone’s surface before it was lost to the mire of swirling dunes. The wind was turbulent, and hot, like fire and only tempered by the absolute lack of verdant life to keep the threat of wildfire at bay.
He could smell a storm on those winds.
Falco’s grumbled words were somehow more compelling.
“–Yeah, maybe. Maybe. … heh, It’s a hard thing to turn your cheek at.”
That was an understatement. The older vulpine flexed his artificial digits, troubling the thoughts he entertained without a word.
“–but that person I cared about is dead. Both of ‘em. –Only got a few of those now. N’ a man of his word should be just that–punctual. . . What happened to me doesn’t matter, but what happens to FOX does.”
He sighed, and scratched for the frames of his sunglasses, pushing them along his snout as had become standard even now–years later. The smile was not long to follow–that easy going gesture that had encompassed his veneer since his days in the cornerian military.
“–Guess that’s why we got people like you. Gotta have people that talk sense when you’re actin’ like an asshole.”
You’re not an asshole.
But he didn’t say that.
“If you mean that -- ”
Falco leaned over, swiping up that half-sack of water he’d left on the wayside. He tossed it his way - let James figure out what happened to it after that. He’d already done too much, said too much; that smile of James’s was a bit to close to something like concession, and for some reason, it was the last thing Falco wanted to see.
Maybe it was the compliment.
Back to your basics, then.
“Then leave a damn note next time,” he said. “So we can at least track down the bits of you we gotta scrape off the pavement when it’s over.”
There was a pause, here: the time he needs to push the rest past his gag reflex, or whatever you’d call that inexplicable block between him and the air between them.
“And,” he added, “maybe make that boy of yours the first thing you think of instead of the last. Makes you smarter. Everything else is none of my business. Deal?”