Xander #4
Then again, he had put Reno back on track with barely any effort from that brief interaction.
And while he had in fact given me a memory I clearly would not forget anytime soon, he had dealt with the aftermath somewhat gracefully.
He hadn’t fought the punishment duty despite being here for only an hour, two at most, and he wasn’t acting skittish over what had happened either.
In short, I was more wary than before, but at least Colin was showing enough fortitude and sense that I couldn’t completely write him off…so far.
Movement in the doorway made me look up, and I stared at Trevor, who looked as if he had swum here rather than walked, as he stared at Colin, who was studiously watching the meat as if expecting it to do something special.
I wasn’t surprised that the quiet man said nothing, not with his words anyway.
His forehead was creased in confusion, and his mouth was twisted up ever so slightly at the corner as if he were seeing something that amused him.
I waited until Colin came out of his own little world, jumping slightly when he saw Trevor and breaking into a wide smile.
“Oh, hi. Uh, not sure how many guys are wandering around the place…or how big the place is, but there’s a decent chance that you’re the Trevor I heard mentioned a couple of times? ”
“That’s me,” Trevor said, his deep, ringing voice touched by the same amusement I was pretty sure had been on his face. “I thought we weren’t getting anyone new.”
“I told all of you we were getting someone new,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “This is Colin; he’s supposedly our new long-timer.”
“Oh, the stitcher,” Trevor said, straightening to his full height, which was considerable, even compared to the other guys. “I’m Trevor. Everyone calls me Trev.”
“Laziness at its finest,” Colin said with a snort, holding out his hand. “Like he said, I’m Colin.”
“At least there’s someone else who can cook around here,” Trevor said as he shook Colin’s hand, his eyes drifting toward the stove. “I can’t.”
“I can manage, that’s about it,” Colin said with another shrug. It was quickly becoming a predictable and somewhat annoying habit. “Best keep your expectations at ‘edible if not reasonably tasty’ and don’t hope for higher.”
“Better than me,” Trevor said, falling back to lean against the doorway and glance in my direction.
As much as I appreciated he wasn’t a yapper like Reno, or God save me, Jake.
The way he could say something without actually saying it, while staring at you as if waiting for you to get around to saying what he expected you to say, was irritating.
Then again, my father would have said it wasn’t hard to irritate me.
His mother had been the one to say it was easy to find something to appreciate about someone.
Personally, I thought it was better to be realistic and just admit people irritated me, so best not to pretend otherwise.
“Everything good?” I asked him, not caring if I sounded annoyed.
“The Reader is damaged. Mick isn’t going to be happy,” Trevor said. “Main paths are crowded.”
“We gonna need the heavy-duty cleanup?”
“Maybe, hard to tell in this weather.”
“Check in the morning, then.”
Trevor nodded, turning to look at Colin. “You?”
“What about me?” Colin asked, sounding confused. Seeing his confusion at Trevor’s truncated way of speaking almost made up for the goddamn eye-full he’d given me…almost.
“The road here,” Trevor said, tilting his head slightly like a curious, if exasperated, cat.
“Oh, full of holes, but a tree came down a few miles back. I’m not exactly sure where, might want to ask Jake since he was driving.”
“You’re going to trust his judgement?” I asked, more curious than anything. “I know damn well he lives for driving like an idiot in weather like this.”
Colin glanced over his shoulder. “If you really think that low of him, I have to wonder why you sent him up to pick me up in this weather. Either you don’t care about your people, you wanted to give me a good scare on the way here, or, and I hope it’s this one, you actually trust him to do what he’s supposed to do when it counts.
I’m going to have some trust and say it’s that one and that yeah, I think the guy who can handle a vehicle in weather like this probably has a better lay of the land than me. ”
Trevor stared at him for a moment before nodding. “Mick should show up soon; I saw him on the way. You can give the news.”
And then, as quickly and quietly as he had arrived, Trevor was gone, leaving me to glare at the spot he had been standing.
There was no way he didn’t know that I had seen the way his brow had quirked when Colin had called me out about Jake.
Not that I was petty enough to ‘punish’ someone for being right or calling me out for being wrong.
I could have done without him making himself seem ‘gracious’ enough to ‘forgive’ me for my comment, and making me seem like an unreasonable asshole, but…
that might be more about me than anything he’d done.
Still, he was on thin ice as far as I was concerned.
“Who’s Mick?” Colin asked, and if there was any smugness at being right, he had apparently learned to hide it because he seemed intent on the food and little else.
“Mikhail, he’s…our weather scientist, for lack of a better way of putting it.”
“Like a full-on scientist?”
“PhD and everything.”
“Interesting. I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised that they have someone out here studying the weather; there’s plenty of it.”
“He’ll explain it better, but be careful, he can talk your ear off more than Jake if you get him going,” I warned, even though I believed experience was a far better teacher than word of mouth.
Colin laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And he’s one of us, not just because he’s here, but because he’s trained too.”
Colin turned. “Wait, you’ve got a whole ass scientist out in the field, saving people and shit?”
“And shit,” I said with complete seriousness.
“It was his choice, I’ll point out. He went through the training; he keeps in shape like the rest of us, and he knows how it goes.
The lab coat shit is for when we don’t need all hands on deck.
Most of his equipment does it for him; he just…
I don’t know, analyzes it or…hell, I don’t know what he does in that garage of his. ”
Colin nodded. “So there’s more to this place than just this building?”
“Yeah, and when the weather clears up, someone will give you the walkthrough.”
“Someone.”
“Yeah, not me.”
“Mmm, I got that much. Just wondering who the sacrifice will be.”
“Keep up your jokes and the only sacrifice will be you tied to a tree for a bear to get,” I told him, getting up to set the bottle in the sink.
“Rinse that out and put it with the glass recycling out back. We try to be eco-friendly around here. We have our waste separated, so you’d better keep on it. ”
He eyed the bottle and then me before turning back to the food, a sparkle in his eye that I didn’t like, but at least he was smart enough to keep his thoughts in his head. If only he could do the same with his dick and his pants.
I really needed to stop thinking about that.
“And don’t make a mess if you don’t want to be here all night cleaning up,” I snapped as I marched out of the room and left him to his cooking.
One more idiot to add to the mix, yay.