ninefox | Fine Zinc Teeth

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Fine Zinc Teeth

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.

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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.

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.

Fives hardly blinks, he's so caught up in the General's story, trying to imagine the places and people and things he describes, picturing mountains and metal and men instead of the mundane surroundings of the little cafe they're sitting in. It makes him wish he could have been there: the magnificent vistas, the harsh conditions, the camaraderie of men doing any truly dangerous work, be they soldiers or laborers. He wonders what it would be like to build something with his brothers, something solidly tangible and important, rather than kill and destroy, or scatter their separate ways trying to earn a living in this alien world they've been thrown into unprepared.

"You don't mean nineteen sixty-four, do you?" he asks at the end, brows furrowed slightly as he looks back up at the General. He has little sense of history and knows almost no details of it, not even of this country he ostensibly served and now lives in, let alone anyplace else. "And what was the Taiping rebellion?" Even if he had the time to devote to trying to learn all the things he and his brothers missed in their brutal and single-minded upbringing he wouldn't know where to start, but the tidbits the General drops, casually, just a part of his life, are irresistible glimpses into a fascinating, wider world.

"Oh - no, eighteen sixty-four. The rebellion was..." he frowns, and takes another gulp of latte. "A man named Hong Xiuquan thought he was the younger brother of god. He had a power base in the southern capital, and the surrounding provinces - perhaps thirty million people - and the Qing Emperor wanted the cult put down. It was total warfare, fields and cities burned everywhere you marched. Anything that could be used by the enemy was an acceptable target. We'd seen guns in the opium wars with the British but never in a major conflict on the mainland before. New wars for a new world."

He shakes his head. "The American civil war over African slavery was the same time, but a decade shorter. North against south, brother against brother, just like us. That was the one thing that stayed familiar, the raggedness of grief.

It's so much new information he doesn't know where to start with the questions he wants to ask. "Guns were new?" That's a strange idea to him, when they'd been such a central and constant part of his life before being decommissioned. One of his first memories is of being handed a gun and given his first lesson in how to shoot it.

The General's last words hit much harder home, though, and his brows furrow in something like distress. "They made brothers fight each other?" The thought makes him feel more than slightly ill, the memory of Krell and his atrocities skimming to the surface when he generally works so hard to forget any part of that campaign and the myriad horrors of it.

"Oh, nobody made us, exactly. We just....thought it was worth it, somehow." He slips a flask out of his pocket, spikes his latte, and then downs half of it.

"... oh." Fives' shoulders hunch and his expression twists a little, and he tries to hide it by gulping down some of his own drink. Tries not to remember his brothers' haunted faces after Krell, or the empty places in their ranks and the knowledge that it hadn't been the enemy who'd made them. That he hadn't done enough. Hadn't done it soon enough.

His hands start to shake and he has to put his cup down abruptly before he ends up wearing half the contents, though he tries to cover quickly by tucking them into his armpits.

Jedao nods, and stares into the coffee, turning the cup around and around in his hands.

"So you can see why I wanted to be on a completely different continent and dig ditches until I fell over without a spare second to think in," he murmurs. It's not the kind of tone that really requires a response.

He leans over a little on the couch, the weight of him pressing against Fives' side, quiet and present and warm.

Fives leans gratefully into the warmth and pressure, too caught in the spiral for the moment to be embarrassed by it, though he probably will be soon enough. It wouldn't bother him at all if it were one of his brothers, they all have these moments, all help each other through them as best they can. Enough that right now, the way the General's pressed against him is a familiar sort of comfort.

Echo's casting concerned glances their way, but for once Fives isn't focused on checking in on his brother and doesn't even notice. "I'd like to see your railroad someday," is what he finally says when he finds his voice, though it's low and a little strained. It's also true, though he doubts it'll ever happen. One more dream to add to a long list... and maybe someday some of them will happen, when they reach the point where they're doing better than just scraping by.

"Most of it isn't in service anymore. But there's a few hundred miles that run in our original trackbeds - mostly in the Sierras, where blasting new ones would be a pain even with modern equipment. There's even one passenger train that takes our route about a hundred miles, from central Nevada to Sacramento - gorgeous stretch, all desert and mountains. The actual equipment's been replaced, of course, but there are abandoned parts where you can see the old work. Perfectly preserved in the dry air." His mouth quirks into a small smile.

"You boys would be something else on a road trip, I bet. I'd love to show you."

The General's voice settles him, lets him ease back into the easy part of the story he'd been telling. Away from the memories of blood and death and the shell-shocked, betrayed faces of his brothers. Back to thoughts of mountain vistas and a different group of brothers helping to carve out a new world.

"Echo and Tup love road trip movies." He smiles a little and glances over to where his littermate is taking someone's order, smiles a little wider when he catches him looking their way at hearing his name. "They'd probably love the real thing... and Rex would probably want to micromanage everything," he adds, unmistakably fond despite the ostensible criticism.

"And Hevy and Hardcase would probably leave a path of destruction behind us despite all Rex's planning." He's obviously more amused than bothered by that thought. He also hasn't stopped leaning into the General.

"Get a gutted old tour bus, maybe. Something covered in horrible eighties rhinestones." Jedao also doesn't sound at all disapproving. "I've never even had a car of my own, actually. I learned to drive on army jeeps, same as you. But it does look fun in the movies."

"It does, doesn't it? I don't know what rhinestones are, but I hope they're bright and colorful, and that Tup could paint designs all over it. You should see his art, General, he's going to school for it and everything." He sounds almost comically proud.

"Maybe we could even do it someday," he adds, a little more quietly and with a hint of wistfulness to it. "Have you ever been to the Grand canyon? We watched a documentary on it a while ago and it looks amazing. It just... it just turned out that way. No one blew it up or anything." He sounds a little awed.

"Cheap fake crystals, they sparkle like crazy and you can stick'em on anything," Jedao answers happily.

"Once." The memory makes him pensive. There isn't much that makes him feel small, and even less that makes him feel young. "In China, there are dragons in the old rivers, but none of them made anything quite like that. I thought I felt Old Colorado breathing on my shoulder, a few times...maybe he's sleeping, deep in the cliffs. There's little grey foxes there. They all called me a fat half-coyote." He's fondly amused at the memory. "It's a world of its own, that place. Maybe a couple worlds."

"They sound perfect," he answers, almost squirming with pleasure at the description.

"Oh," he breathes, eyes going wide at the idea of a majestic, powerful old dragon sleeping in the cliffs of the ancient canon. The awe doesn't last long, though, washed away by the image the general's last words paint, and replaced by a quick grin and a bright, startled laugh. He's only seen the General's fox form a scant handful of times, but fat is not a word it brought to mind... and the urges it had brought to mind are probably best not thought of when pressed against him.

Edited 2018-05-21 10:51 (UTC)

Jedao - giggles would probably be the word for it if he weren't a baritone. Chuckles, maybe, turning to press his face briefly against Fives' shoulder. "Oh, yes. No respect."

Fives freezes for a bare fraction of a second, then does something he's sure his brothers would find unthinkable and unconscionable, he turns his own head just enough to brush his nose through the General's short-cropped hair and breathe him in. It takes no more time than the stutter before it had, but he flushes with embarrassment and worry as he fixes his gaze resolutely on his hands.

"I've, uh, I've never met a real wolf." He almost stutters the words, trying to get them out there as a distraction from what he'd just done, and absolutely refusing to look across the cafe to where he's sure Echo must be giving him a horrified look. "I guess they'd probably think we're just as screwed up as the local weres do." The dog genetics added into their mix to supposedly make them more biddable and loyal hasn't done them any favors with natural born weres in the city.

Jedao hums a little, eventually sitting up and reaching for the dregs of his coffee-and-whiskey before they cool down enough to become truly foul.

"Pure animals are very...straightforward, in a way. Timber wolves are wary and territorial, and they'd kill any pure were that came into their range alone. They know they can't stop an incursion from their magic cousins in force, so they want to nip that in the bud. With you...sometimes they'll play with dogs, if they aren't under food scarcity pressure. Dogs odd enough and gregarious enough not to trip competition instincts every time. Although I'd want to test it cautiously if i were you."

"Really?" He sounds startled and pleased (at least part of both being that the General didn't take offense at him taking liberties), and he sits up a little straighter and turns back to him more again. "I wonder... if there are any wolves near here. Not in the city, I mean, but-" He gestures in a direction that's vaguely north and west. "You know... somewhere not too far away." It's not something he'd ever thought to look into, but now he's curious and fascinated.

"Most of the stable populations are out west. Michigan's probably the closest. You might get red wolves down in the carolinas, though. Those are smaller, speaking of half-coyotes. Maybe less inclined to give you trouble, but they might just run. Or flirt a lot, possibly," he adds thoughtfully, grinning.

"... oh." He deflates a little at that news. Michigan's too far to go to just because it sounds interesting, he's sure. But then he perks up again when the General mentions the carolinas.

"Red wolves?" He doesn't care if they're smaller, or even part coyote... he and his brothers are part dog, they have no room to judge. He just thinks it would be interesting to meet and interact with even a distant sort of relative, especially when the closer ones they have here in the city think they're mongrels and beneath them. "Would flirting be... bad?" He's not sure if he should be bothered by that idea or not, and he doesn't think he is so he should probably check to make sure.

"Nooo, I didn't say that. Everybody needs some slutty friends. It's an honorable calling."

He is. Rambling.

"You do need to be careful with any females in estrus, though, you wouldn't want a pup transforming in the middle of the woods with a mother who didn't know how to deal with that."

The malamute mothers at the mills didn't really know either, but they were at least acclimated to human presence, and the breeders - for all their many, many other sins - were invested in keeping most of the pups alive.

"... estrus?" His eyes go wide and he shifts uncomfortably at the thought of what the General's... much more than implying. "No. That... it would be bad. Definitely. Careful would be good." Not doing it at all would probably be better, he thinks, especially since females of any species still set him on edge in a way he wishes he could get past faster. They're. Fascinating. And entirely too intimidating to even consider doing more than looking at wistfully from a distance, even when they actively flirt with him at the club.

Jedao pats him on the arm.

"It's only really a risk factor during spring, but the smell is a little crazy-making, just to warn you."

"Oooh." His expression goes an odd combination of strained and dreamy when Jedao brings up the scent. "Is it worse than human women?"

They'd had to learn early and learn the hard way not to react to that, at least not outwardly, but he still remembers the first time one of their female commanders had examined them on parade while in estrus. Remembers being instantly, achingly hard at the scent of her and wanting desperately just to throw himself at her. Remembers the three boys who'd broke ranks being shocked back into line and beaten bloody for it later. The barracks had been a chaotic mess or horny, confused and frustrated pre-teens that night.

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