the greatest act can be one little victory...

[adreamtorise]

"...suffice to say, it's going to be a little expensive? But we can work something out."

Anne regarded the mechanic standing in front of her car with a raised eyebrow, arms folded comfortably beneath her breasts. She'd made a point of wearing street clothes to head for the mechanic, rather than the usual hard to wrinkle sundress she usually stuffed into her over large purse for the rare occasion she posed. She'd leave her business casual in the office, get naked for the photo shoot, and slip the dress on over her head before heading out into the world.

Not today. Daddy's mechanic was out of town, her car was giving her fits, and Paw Paw would kill her if it turned out to be something she did to it...okay, so he wouldn't, but that disappointed little sigh she would get would just unmake her.

So she packed a change of clothes. Jeans, a top that covered her cleavage, and nice boots. She looked like anyone else, and too covered up to be potentially recognized--and hopefully, capable enough that no one would try to pull a fast one on her.

Except, the earnest and friendly looking grease monkey in front of her was, in fact, lying like a dog. He'd just rattled off a good two thousand dollars in repairs that she needed, and she could smell it all over him: the sour mix of pheremones and chemosignals underneath the grease and oil and rust that said liar.

So she stood there, sucking on her teeth, holding his gaze...and tried to figure out how she was going to call him out without exposing the fact that she wasn't human.

Anne Forsythe was screwed. And worst of all, she usually knew these things. Her gut was never wrong, Anne was never wrong. She had instincts beyond rival, the same ones that had Paw Paw calling her his 'little Cassandra' at every turn...

She was certain this place would be fine.

She was wrong.

"Shhhhhit." she cursed quietly, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose with a wince against the tension headache she could feel brewing.

She didn't need her gut to tell her now that she wasn't going to get to grab her lunch on her lunch break today. No, she'd be stuck at Silver Hammer Whatever for the next few hours, and the shoot probably wouldn't finish until nine that night. She was going to be raw by then...

Fuck.

Comments

[nosilverhammer]

Mad Max was listening very carefully to the conversation Fat Eddie (who wasn't actually fat and was rather skinny) was having with the woman out front and boy was it giving him a serious bout of annoyance. He wasn't aware that he was mimicking Anne's gesture of pinching the bridge of her nose but there he was, doing just that with a sigh. One hand pinching just between his eyes as he sighed and shook his head.

He should probably get out there, see if he could stop anything horrific from happening. He'd been in his workshop, testing the pneumatic wings he was building and trying to keep his cat, Nux, from getting in trouble. But Nux was an idiot and Fat Eddie was a dick and Max was too nice a guy to let this continue.

Scooping up the skinny orange and white cat and holding the feline close, he went out into the main part of his shop and cleared his throat to get their attention, Nux very happily chewing on the end of one of his paws.


Once Max was sure he had both Eddie and Anne looking at him (and Eddie was suddenly looking less sure of himself, watching Max warily), Max points in the general direction of Anne's car.

"Start your car. I'll tell you what's wrong with it and save you a couple thousand." With a pointed look at Eddie who laughs it off (nervously)

"Hey, boss. I was just tryna make sure the nice lady's ride was in good shape."

"Her ride or your wallet, dude?" It was easy to tell that soft-spoken Max with the deep, gravely voice and the tattoos covering a good portion of his skin, was a very zero bullshit guy.

"Hah! Haha. He has the jokes, ev'rybody. Hah!" And with that, Eddie disappears into the back.

Max turns his attention to the woman, setting Nux on an old book shelf that had been re-purposed into a cat tower.

"Start your car. It'll take a minute at most. Hand to whoever's listening."

[adreamtorise]

Anne was the first to look in his direction, the striking looking man with a tiny ball of fur and ears in one hand that was glaring daggers at the mechanic named Eddie. He was pretty to look at--and that voice...mmmmm...

Her peevish scowl dissolved into a curious look, then promptly bloomed into a very satisfied smile.

Apparently, her gut had been right after all.

Glancing at Eddie with a haughty raised eyebrow, she strode back over to her car, opened the door and leaned in, turning the key to let Eddie's boss hear the grinding noise that came on before it finally sputtered to life, but with an unpleasant knocking inside.

Ducking back out again after she shut it off a few moments later, she strode across the room to the bookcase where the little orange and white cat was alternately licking his paw and chewing on his own claws. Reaching out, she let him sniff her hand before she started rubbing between his ears. Surprisingly, he was happy to receive her attention with little caution--cats were sometimes a problem, too often they sensed her animal nature and got scared.

"Do you think you can fix it?" she asked hopefully over one shoulder, her smile turning a little shy. "And, uhm...can I hold him? Your little man here is so cute.

[nosilverhammer]

Max watched Eddie walk off, still frowning at the back of the mans head, clearly unimpressed. He's deeply considering sending Eddie packing. Deeply considering it. watching Anne with her car and wincing immediately at the sound.

He know's what's wrong with it right off, and this isn't his new senses telling him. It's experience. He pretty much grew up in this shop and still had an apartment nearby, so this was essentially his home. Nux was busy sniffing the womans hand and meowing very softly, clearly down with being loved on.

"Go for it. He likes hair, so consider yourself warned. As for your car, it's nothing nearly as exciting or expensive as Ed told you. You need a new fan belt and coolant and an oil change, but that's it. It won't run you more than a couple hundred, if that."

[adreamtorise]

"So do six year old girls--I ain't scared." she laughed, stroking the little ball of fur a couple times before she boldly picked him up and let him curl against her chest. The revelation about her car earned a sigh of relief from Anne, and a knowing look slid in Eddie's direction.

...one that caught the work bench he'd come from when he first greeted her on arrival, with a page from her last spread taped to the wall: a salute to classic rock that featured her in a risque take on Angus Young's schoolboy uniform, with no shirt and the lapels of the jacket barely covering her breasts.

"I had a feeling that was the case." she drawled, giving Eddie a distasteful little sneer, then offering his boss a smile. Striding over with an armful of cat she was patiently allowing to bat at her hair and try to groom it by the pawful, she leaned up to kiss the mowhawked mechanic's cheek.

"Thank you for your honesty." she beamed. "I do apologize in advance, however, for the enormous workload you're going to be taking on after I recommend you to all my friends."

She glanced at Eddie pointedly. "You personally."

[nosilverhammer]

Max watches Nux play with the woman's hair, smiling a bit. For a feline that spent a lot of time not feeling well, he sure knew how to make up for lost time with how active he was. And Max had a feeling the pictures on the work bench were why Ed was being gross. So when Ed happened to peek back in, Max points to him with the pen he'd picked up to fill out paperwork.

There is definitely an air of 'so done with your shit' in the way Max addresses his employee.

"We're talking later. You got it?"

"Sure thing, boss." And that would be Ed disappearing again. Just in time, too, because Max may have turned slightly red at the kiss on his cheek. What the hell? He turns to look at Anne, somewhat shocked and unable to get a word out for a second, stuttering out the smallest of phrases.

"Sure...uh...sure thing. No problem. I had a three month vacation, anyway, to recover from something, so I need to get back into things."

A tilt of his head towards his office, follow him, the gesture says.

"Paperwork. Nothing too exciting." Except the office, once they get to it, is decorated with pictures of him and a teenage girl with big brown eyes, a huge infections grin and an obvious love of Max. Some of them are from conventions where the pair dressed up. Some of them are screen shots from her channel. Some of them include her dad in on the shenanigans. And more than a dozen of them in a hospital with Max looking like ten kinds of shit, playing board games with the girl while hooked up to different machines.

[adreamtorise]

With her arms still full of purring, earnestly grooming tomcat, Anne happily followed the owner of the garage into his office, taking in the pictures on the walls and desk...

And the scent. The grease in the shop had pretty much obscured it, but here the room reeked of him, of fur and forest and earth.

Werewolf.

"Three month vacation...control issues?" she asked, regarding him evenly as she gauged his reaction. When she saw his look, the wariness gnawing in her gut eased a little--either he was too knew to know a feral when he smelled one, or his was one of the very rare, progressive packs out there.

"I'm not a shifter." she explained. "I'm...a distant relation. I know a little about the way most wolf packs work, though. Learning to control the shift, and the beast, takes time."

She set the cat on the desk, running her hand over his back one more time as she moved to pick up one especially sickly looking picture of him with the girl she could only assume was his daughter.

"And sometimes, cancer can be unpredictable. Many pack histories share lore about the magic or the curse of the shift, but at the end of the day, lycanthropy is a virus."

[nosilverhammer]

Max was most definitely too new. He was aware she smelled different, but what that difference was, he wasn't sure. So he didn't quite know how to ask, or if it was even polite to do so. Watching Nux bounce around the office a minute, he kind of smiles and looks up at Anne, pointing at the photograph nearest her. It was one of the hospital ones and the girl in it looked worried, even with the smile on her face.

"Terminal stomach cancer. Very aggressive. It was diagnosed in February and even with treatment, I was given less than a year. My friend stepped in and saved my life at the insistence of his kid. I took three months away because of control issues, but I tell everyone that can't tell what I am that I had my ass kicked by chemo but am now in remission. Three months cancer free."

He pauses and then digs into his pocket, pulling out a dollar and heading to a large jar marked "Swear Jar. Swearing One Dollar Fine.", shoving the dollar in.