Page 8 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
Blaze turned oncehe got through scans at the airport to be sure his babysitting assignment wasn't having a meltdown. Security staff didn't have the patience to deal with panic attacks, damn it, and they'd both end up in lockup if they got rough and Blaze lost his temper.
He would've stuck closer, but with his arsenal, he had to go through the permit line where they checked weapons' registrations and made sure no one was packing any fun unregistered toys. Longer process, though a much shorter queue than the regular, unarmed civilian line.
So far, Hazelwood was keeping his shit together, twitching and startling but not panicking. Head up as he walked past the retinal scan. Bags in front of him and hands on the rails as the automatic walkway took him through the scanner canyon. Ultrasound, millimeter wave—the little guy closed his eyes and drew his shoulders up as the MRI section thudded at him, but he stepped off at the end of the walk and picked up his bags like everyone else.
Have to stop thinking of him as little.It was a relative thing. Next to the security staff, Hazelwood was average. He was only small by Guild standards, and that was just an optics thing. Guild accepted the most physically impressive variants so they'd look more like a band of superheroes.
Not a bad-looking man, either. The combination of intense stare and carefully expressionless face were off-putting, but one had to look past those things. He cleaned up nice, his square jaw finally visible with the patchy beard shaved off, his warm brown hair the color of pecans. When he wasn't twitching, he moved easily with the grace of someone who could handle himself in a tight spot.
If he doesn't panic.
But then, without knowing the cause of his attacks, it was hard to predict what would trigger them. Some people didn't know themselves.
He was through now and only breathing a little fast. Blaze let out an explosive breath. If he had still possessed a scrap of sense, he would have called Dr. Parma and told her the deal was off. But the case intrigued him, and the weird thing about Hazelwood was he pushed all of Blaze's protective buttons as well as his angry ones. Maybe because he wasn't a whiner and tried so damn hard to be self-sufficient. Yeah, stuff was broken inside, but that wasn't the guy's fault.
Blaze shouldered his duffle and waited for his companion to catch up, careful to walk beside him when he did. No need to make the job harder on himself.
The bright glintof Emerson's hair made him easy to spot as Damien made it through security. The ginger gold was an unusual color, and since he stood at least a head taller than everyone around him, impossible to miss.
The relief he felt when they met up again was just because the hard part of airport travel was behind them. It had nothing to do with the man walking beside him. Though Damien had to admit, Emerson made him less twitchy than most people. He'd shown that he understood some things and could adapt quickly to Damien's issues, like Cummings, and that was more than half the battle right there.
Late morning on a Wednesday, the airport wasn't packed. Damien was able to shut down to some extent and ignore the people walking around him, tensing if someone hurried up behind them but not whiting out. It helped that Emerson had the glare of doom down, and travelers walking toward them parted Red Sea fashion, an amazing superpower all on its own.
When they reached the gate, he headed straight for the row of seats with their backs to the window, placed his bags on the end seat, and took the next for himself. Emerson regarded him with that speculative head-tilted expression that made him look like a huge, curious wolf. Then he set his bag on the seat beside Damien rather than sit directly beside him.
Oddly perceptive for someone so abrasive and mean.
Damien turned to watch the planes with their solar-cell wings glinting in the harsh light. How people could have afforded air travel when the vehicles ran on fossil fuels, he couldn't imagine.
"Did you go to the Western Academy?" he asked, still watching the planes.
"No. Eastern." Emerson's tone implied he hadn't enjoyed his time there. "You?"
"Me?"
"Yeah. There some invisible person here I might be talking to? We're about the same age. I know you didn't go to Eastern. I would've seen you."
Damien stomped down on memories threatening to breach. "No. I was never enrolled."
"You didn't miss much," Emerson grunted, probably trying to settle more comfortably in the not-made-for-large-bodies chair. "Bunch of snotty, cliquey brats."
Damien was willing to let it go, already regretting his attempt at conversation.
"So your parents wanted to do the homeschool thing?"
Can't think about this right now. Can't… "I hear you killed your mother."
There was a moment's frigid silence in which Damien wondered if he was about to get punched in the head.
Then Emerson snorted. "If you don't want to talk about something, you could just say so. Christ, you're such a train wreck." He pulled his PiSlice out of his coat and opened a page of text to commence a campaign of ignoring Damien.
Happy to pretend to be invisible, Damien mirrored his actions and pulled up his file forThe Castle of Llyr. Yes, it was a children's book, and Emerson would most likely suffer a stroke laughing too hard if he knew. Damien had so few things that made him feel better, though, so he did his best to practice not caring.
He did wonder what Emerson was reading. Probably a review of the latest handguns.
On the groundin the Sonoma County airport, Blaze took over the task of securing a car. He had his expenses covered, Dr. Parma saw to that, but he didn't have any confidence that they gave Hazelwood the same freedom. They needed a vehicle that could go anywhere if necessary, and if he left it to the locator, they'd probably end up with some underpowered, strictly street model. Blaze scowled while he tapped on the rental agency's screen, not happy with the selection, but he finally settled on a Watanabe Raptor, an off-roader with limited lift tech that could get them airborne at low altitude if they needed it.
He stood with his arms crossed, glaring at the delivery bay while the robotic servos and conveyors fetched the car he'd ordered. Hazelwood stood patiently beside him without twitches since they were the only two people in the rental agency's lobby.
