Well, they didn’t rip him to pieces, which was a very good start. It was a great sign that Ethan hadn’t told them, but he also hadn’t told Todd what he had told them. That meant that he wanted Todd to piece it together, to get the feeling for the group and their intentions. Or it meant that he’d simply overlooked something. Ethan didn’t seem like the type for that, however.
So he was checking something, maybe trying to learn how well Todd could adjust, how well he fit. That left Todd with the option to observe, adapt, and survive. That, in turn, meant that Todd needed to pay attention as they addressed him, watch speech patterns and emotions as closely as he could manage. That was… a surprisingly unstressful task. He’d been doing that since foster care without realizing it, he just needed to find the pieces to create the self that could be comfortable here, and make the people around him comfortable in return.
Ethan first. Genial host that he was, Todd already knew the predator behind his smile, even if the bare teeth did nothing to stir his own animal. He reacted to the request to stand up with a sheepish smile, but rather than flow into it, he eased up to full height. The curve in his back and shoulders squared out, the relatively loose fit of his coat sat the way it was supposed to on his figure, and both his height and his build became clear to those who hadn’t noticed it already. He countered the effect it might have by slipping his hands into his coat pockets, letting him fill in the extra space that suddenly surrounded him with his bent arms.
His eyes moved when the next man spoke, and he picked up the important elements in his body and voice. Sulphur looked – not harmless, exactly. But even with the tattoos, there was a deliberate neutrality to him. He’d somewhat seen it in the album he’d kept from Malachite. Not as a trophy, but as a reminder that despite the pain he’d caused, Mal had been a human being. That Ethan, and Sulphur, were human beings. He didn’t know how much he’d need it, but he’d have it.
And of course he couldn’t miss the moment of anger. Anger was pungent, and translated too easily into body language to go unnoticed. Todd sometimes met anger with anger as Cryptid, but more often, he relaxed in the face of it. Sulphur had a right to his anger, after all. It was the fact that he didn’t turn it on Todd that finally settled the part of him that suspected this was a trap, because anger like that often came unbidden and caused mistakes. Even if Sulphur wasn’t the type to make mistakes, his rage would have more direction if he knew its cause was in the room right now.
All this in the time it took Todd to smile experimentally, with just a little tooth visible, and tell him, “Just Todd is fine, really. Mr. Fowler makes me sound like a banker.” He’d used that line on employers before, and usually it got the point across and pulled a laugh out of them.
When Sulphur walked past him to the bar, he caught the breeze in his wake, the smells that defined him writing themselves into memory. The faint hint of something that wasn’t quite vanilla; some kind of wood; secondhand smoke; then gunpowder, and some kind of ink. Pragmatic smells. Dangerous, but not to one of his own pack.
Then Rhodonite – Rhody – spoke up, and he looked at her for the first time. In her soft features and pastels, he had almost written her off. No, not that. He’d almost not noticed her, the way his slouch and awkward, friendly smiles could let people go without noticing him in return. But because of that, hers were the first eyes he actually met. And like him, she was hiding something hungry behind her harmless appearance. The glint reminded him that he was among wolves, that all of these people were capable of the same kind of violence he’d experienced at Malachite’s hands.
The soft face around those eyes reminded him that maybe, a fox and a wolf were not quite so different.
Maybe she’d see the moment of understanding in his eyes before they turned toward Hematite, distracted by his movement. He returned the hat tip with another sheepish smile and a real tip of his own cap. Like Rhody, there was certainly something in his eyes, but there was no lie in the friendliness he put forward as he got up to greet Todd. Noticeably, he was the one who smelled like metal – not the copper of blood, but real metal, steel, maybe, the way a new engine smelled. There was leather in there, too, and whenever his dreads moved, Todd caught a little bit of his sandalwood shampoo.
He reached out and let Hemie take his hand to shake almost without thinking, and only realized after that both the bone-thinness and the strength of his normal grip would be very noticeable. That all only lasted a second, though, because Hemie pulled him in and clapped him on the back, momentarily surrounding him in expensive fabric and the smell of metal before pulling away again.
And to his surprise, Todd realized that he hadn’t even suspected an attack that time, despite the abrupt action. Despite the danger, his instincts were giving him the all-clear, and the longer he stood here in the middle of them, the clearer the lack of fear was to himself. Even as he became aware of the sharpest set of eyes turned towards him, the kind that he’d been able to ignore the way someone might ignore a stranger at the bar. But it’d be rude to keep treating her like a stranger, and so he turned his head back to her.
She wasn’t hard to read at all. In fact, she was projecting her intentions into him, waiting for a response. He met her eyes without hesitation, despite the hunger behind hers, and returned her head tilt with one of his own. She was sizing him up, and she’d be able to tell he was letting her as he took her in, as he did her the courtesy of watching her up until she passed him.
She carried the scent of floral perfume, the cheap kind that was very noticeable and clearly fake to anyone with a good nose. But underneath that was something else, something equally inorganic. Ozone, maybe. Clean and crisp.
“The pleasure's all mine,” he told her as she finished passing, but in that dry kind of tone that implied that it was simply a formality, the best response to her own introduction.
He could feeling her watching him from the bar, and knew she’d see the crooked little smile and miniature head shake to brush her off without further words. Whatever effect she had on him was mitigated by years of experience rebuffing somehow more obvious efforts in cheap pubs and sports bars. Even if he hadn’t had Sam, she wouldn’t have even been a temptation.
He started to make lists, to create folders for each of them in his mind and senses. And of the things that he noticed about them, collectively. Their shared theme of stone names, even if he’d never seen hematite or rhodonite. Each of them shared the hunger to some degree, even if it was most obvious in Ethan and Lapis. And somehow, his inner predator was comfortable with that, despite the fact that their teeth could turn on the outsider at any second, because it was clear that they didn’t want to.
So he walked, without the usual awkward shuffle he might have in a group of near-strangers who might perceive him as a threat, and read a couple of the labels on the counter before picking up the rum and looking at Hemie and Sulphur.
“Is there any cola back there?” he asked, although he could see it from where he was standing. He’d get it himself, but again, this wasn’t his place. He might be more comfortable than when he walked in, but he knew convention, and it was more polite to ask than to intrude. He stayed on the outside of the bar, kept himself separated, waited for invitation. He could make himself a quick Cuba Libre without any kind of fuss about specific ingredients.
He was in that stage of exploration in new territory – the absorbing stage, where he wouldn’t intrude, but wouldn’t argue against being intruded on. Where he took in questions and information, and gave back enough to get a taste of what was actually coming. Give no fuss, get no fuss; follow, don’t lead, because this territory wasn’t his. Not yet, and might never be.
