Fine Zinc Teeth

[ninefox]

There was a time Jedao would have said that half a century was barely any time; less than a mortal life, not more than two generations. But the world has changed so much since he first put the Americans' uniform on. Even the uniform has changed - they don't call dance halls dance halls any more, for another thing. But the smell of the place - sweat, desire, alcohol - that much is the same.

He slinks in under a stranger's face, although he doesn't disguise his own scent when he smiles, glittering, at the bouncer: a flashed lure that Fives might not even notice or recognize, let alone pursue. It took a few months to get someone to handle all the things which apparently needed handling for his "retirement", and a few more to track down one particular squad of decommissioned weretroops, out of thousands, mostly paperless, in the busiest city this side of the Pacific. But Jedao did find them.

He dances without keeping track of the time, lets his face slowly slide back to its default arrangement, lets his spine relearn how to hold him up without being army rigid. He has several drinks - people buy them for him, which is nice; one or two of them he even dances with until they can't keep up with him any more. Fives rotates from the receiving line onto the floor as the night wears on and patrons get drunker, and he maneuvers himself into Fives' line of view, always moving, twisting, flashing glances that catch on Fives' eyes as the beat hits. Slowly, as if by the whim of the music, he draws closer.

Comments

[ninefox]

"It's very lovely," Jedao says, and means it to be prim but it comes out soft. Nostalgia, he supposes.

"Thank you, Echo."

[callmefives]

"You're very welcome, sir," Echo answers, ducking his head and flushing right up to his hairline with pleasure at the praise. When he looks back up he gives Fives a dirty look. "Fives didn't tell me he'd run into you. It's, uh, it's good to see you."

"I wanted to make sure he'd actually come by before I said anything!" Fives answers defensively. "I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up for nothing."

[ninefox]

"I'm sure I'll catch you by surprise without his abetment soon enough," Jedao promises unrepentantly.

[callmefives]

"You'll be coming back?" Echo asks, brightening. "You should come on a Saturday, we get amazing pastries from a local small batch baker on Saturdays!" he adds. "And on Friday nights there's almost always live music."

Fives rolls his eyes, but it's fond and amused, not mean-spirited. He loves his littermate more than anything, and he's just glad Echo's happy with his job. He's about to say something to his brother, but a group of high school students come in and Echo excuses himself to take their orders.

"This place is good for him. The owner doesn't really know squat about supernaturals, but he doesn't care, either. Just that Echo's good at his job and good with the customers."

[ninefox]

"If he doesn't join us for dinner, you should tell him I'll be back on saturday," Jedao says, carefully moving his cup to a low table next to a couch. "I think I'll be around for awhile."

[callmefives]

"Yeah?" Fives doesn't bother even trying not to beam at that as he pads after him and drops down onto the couch. "That's great. He should be off in time for dinner, but you should come by Saturday anyway. I bet he'll make you something even fancier."

[ninefox]

Jedao nibbles his danish and admires his fox some more, even if it is slowly dissolving back into the drink.

"It really is delightful. It reminds me of home," he says softly, even though he hasn't been back to China outside of active duty in a century and a half. "Candy shops do sugar painting - hot syrup drizzled fast on a cold metal plate, and it hardens into a perfect little picture of a fish or a dragon or a cock."

He says this completely straight-faced.

[callmefives]

Fives is taking a drink of his own sugary, milky, only marginally coffee concoction while Jedao talks and nearly does a spit take at the last word. He... doesn't actually have enough experience of the real world, especially of things like agriculture, to have any idea that cock could mean something as innocent as a chicken.

"They make those? In public?" he asks, wide-eyed with startled fascination at the idea. "I don't think you'd be able to talk Echo into making a foam dick here, but he could probably do a dragon... and if you mention the sugar painting I bet he'd want to learn how." And he bets he could get him to make a sugar cock in the privacy of the kitchen.

[ninefox]

Jedao snickers into his danish, although not meanly.

"Fuck, I shouldn't tease. Cock can also be short for cockerel, which is another word for rooster. Fallen slightly out of favor recently, for reasons just demonstrated."

[callmefives]

"... oh." He winces a little at his misinterpretation, but it's good-humored, and if anything he sounds a little disappointed. "Still, I bet we could get him to make a painted candy dick anyway," he adds impishly.

[ninefox]

"Sounds delicious," Jedao says cheerfully.

[callmefives]

Fives grins just about wide enough to split his face. "It does, doesn't it?" And he's maybe sitting a bit closer to the General than is strictly necessary as he cradles his paper cup in his hands... and then sighs, puts it down, and pulls his phone back out of his pocket. He's been diligently ignoring the way it's been vibrating away in his pocket since moments after he texted Rex, and now he rolls his eyes as he looks at the string of notifications.

"Told you Rex would have kittens," he tells the General, amused more than anything as he starts reading, and then laughing. "And that Cody would talk him down, at least a little. But they do want to know if you're all right with beef. And potatoes and carrots." He turns to grin at the General. "Rex and Cody have decided that roast beef is some kind of traditional dinner, so they roll it out for every special occasion." And fortunately always have plenty of beef on hand, given the calorie requirements of a small apartment full of way too many very large werewolves.

[ninefox]

"I think there's a ballad about it, actually," Jedao muses. "So it must be tradition for somebody. And yes, that's just fine."

[callmefives]

He types a quick answer in about the food, and ignores all the other questions other than to assure them that, yes, the General is actually here and is actually coming, no he's not just having them on, and to agree to keep him away for at least another hour so they can clean up as well as possible and make sure dinner preparations are well under way.

"A ballad? About roast beef? Huh." He tips his head a little and then grins. "There're definitely worse things to write songs about than good food." He shoves his phone away, ignoring how it starts vibrating again, and picks up his cup. "So, how do you want to kill an hour or so before we head over?" He's comfortable enough now, or at least making himself be, that he doesn't even have to strain not to tack a sir onto the end of every question or comment.

[ninefox]

Jedao whistles a few jaunty bars, then raises an eyebrow.

"Am I boring you already?"

[callmefives]

Fives laughs, eyes crinkling almost shut. "That's actually about roast beef?" He's positively charmed by the very idea.

"What? No. I just... I didn't think you'd want to just sit here for an hour." He assumes it'll take much less time than that for him to bore the general if all there is to do is talk to him.

[ninefox]

"The young are always restless," Jedao says with a wistful and deeply hypocritical sigh. "We just got here." He makes a futile attempt to wriggle back into the couch cushions a little more.

"What's your favorite thing about the city so far?"

[callmefives]

"Well, we didn't get much choice in that, we were designed to be, after all," he points out with a wry smile. A smile that turns into a grin at the question. "Do I have to pick just one thing?" he asks, turning to pull one knee up onto the couch between them so he can face the general more fully.

"There's so much. All the different kinds of food, and all the people. People like us, even." Many of whom don't have any interest in interacting with them because of their artificial origins, but it's still fascinating to him to see them. "And the way it's all lit up at night. And the children. They're everywhere, just... tiny people with no responsibilities but to be and to grow." And to sometimes play with eager 'dogs' who make an appearance at the playground.

[ninefox]

Jedao smiles, a far softer expression that Fives has ever seen on him before.

"You can have as many favorites as you like, Fives."

[callmefives]

Fives takes that as permission to keep going. "There's a restaurant three blocks down from here that makes food spicier than I ever imagined food could be, and they made fun of me and Hevy when we asked them to give us the spiciest thing on the menu. I don't think they expected us to be able to eat it?" He's grinning still, leaving forward a little, eager and happy. "It was amazing. They're nice to us when we come in now, and I'm learning some of the language.

"And hot dogs. They're not spicy, but have you seen all the different things you can put on them? I'm not sure there's anything you can't put on a hot dog. And sometimes the kids at the park have them." And feed them to aforementioned eager dog when he comes wiggling and squirming around to play with them. "They usually just have them plain or with ketchup or mustard, though.

"Oh, and music. There are so many different kinds of music, and a lot of what they play at the club doesn't make any sense if you actually listen to what they're saying, but it feels good, you know?"

And he realizes he's been babbling for entirely too long and winces a little. "What do you like best here, General?" he asks sheepishly.

[ninefox]

He laughs at the bewildered restauranteurs, and nods along with the rest of it, licking danish crumbs off his fingers in little pensive flicks as he considers the question.

"America is a land of people who have no idea who they are, and every confidence that they are who they want to be. I think there's something deeply lovely about that."

His mouth quirks into something bright and toothy. "And we both love overkill and going very fast."

[callmefives]

"We can't afford a car," he confesses. Or motorcycles. Definitely not a plane, though they all know how to fly them. "But Hevy and Hardcase like watching Nascar."

[ninefox]

"Men of taste and refinement," Jedao says, very dryly, eyes sparkling. "Just as I always suspected."

He finally picks up his cup - fox now regrettably dropping, mostly melted back into the drink, and runs a fingertip around the rim.

"When I first came here, it was the railroad." He gets a slightly dreamy look. "Hell to build, backbreaking, but the thing itself - like an iron dragon with one great eye, always billowing smoke, roaring relentless across the curve of the earth."

He slips back out of his reverie, fixes Fives with a look somewhere between stern teacher and the sort of bitter man who writes letters to the editor about the lax morals of teenagers. A this is an important pronouncement on the State of Things sort of look. "The fall of the railroad is a modern tragedy."

[callmefives]

Fives listens, rapt. He has an insatiable thirst for information and experience, to learn all the things that were denied them before they were decommissioned and set loose in the real world with few resources and almost no skills beyond war.

"Yes sir," he intones solemnly, eyes wide and more than a little enraptured.

[ninefox]

Jedao takes a sip of the latte, makes an odd expression, then drinks a larger gulp.

"I'm a savage thing. But sometimes even I get tired of killing. I suppose it's no wonder I'm thinking of those days. I got out of China in '64, and America felt just as ruined as I did. But it was all new, brash and square and utterly foreign, and that helped. And building something helped. I learned the language in time to be a boss for a crew of a dozen, who didn't know ten words of English between them. They'd all been in the Taiping rebellion too, of course, although I'd never met them before."

Some part of his mind can't help comparing the Dominos and the brothers who've thrown in with them to his old railway boys; it's a bad habit of his, getting attached after losing too much. He talks about the work instead, since Fives is fascinated, all the digging for flat stable trenches, blasting with raw black powder and then nitroglycerin through the Sierras, running the flatcar up the to the railhead and kicking the heavy rails off two by two and laying them on the ties. He uses a pair of straws and a sugar packet to demonstrate the proper method of bolting a fishplate.