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[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

One of the smaller perks of Harry Wells' condition is that he doesn't need much light to see by. It doesn't really matter that it's getting dark out by most of the lake. He can still navigate, even at full speed- and full speed is what he's doing right now, as he's working towards beating his sub-four-minute-mile time of a few months ago. Tonight wasn't a time attempt, just practise, so when he approaches the Bar proper he starts to slow down. He could probably do with a bit of walking around in circles to cool off.

Comments

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Got a record to beat," Wells answers, turning to face the speaker. He can cool down just as easily this way, after all. "And I can't do this at home, it spooks the livestock."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Most of 'em, yeah," says Wells. "Comes of the slow ones being picked out for slaughter on a regular basis. They know they've got to be fast to make it through the year."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Wells snorts. "I raise goats. I'm not a fucking Scotsman," he says. There's no rancor in the profanity- it has the sound of a word used more frequently than punctuation. "Meat's got to come from somewhere, though, and it's raise 'em and kill 'em myself, or else go hunting."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Personal best time for the mile distance," Wells says. "The last time I clocked myself it was three minutes, fifty-seven seconds and a couple of hundredths. Damn near walked into a tree afterwards trying to cool down, but it was fuckin' well worth it, I'll tell you."

"Name's Wells, by the way."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Could do with one, yeah," says Wells after a moment's thought. "You new here? I don't remember seeing you around before."

Smelling, he means, but most people find the seeing a little easier to handle.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Wells follows. He tends to cool down pretty quickly anyway, even from the record runs. "Smart idea," he says. "The place's a hell of a lot bigger than it looks."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Bar is plenty happy to provide. Wells usually gets Bass anyway, or Guinness on days that aren't quite bad enough to make him reach for tea. "Thanks," he says. "I'll get the next round. Looking for anything in particular, or just exploring?"

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"If it's day to day operations you mean by that, that'd be Bernard, the Head Barman," Wells says. "The owner's supposed to be the Landlord, but I've never heard of him actually showing his arse around here. Bernard's all the running this place needs- him and Mikey, the other Barman."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Teach, mostly," says Wells. "Physical education, self-defence, small group tactics, that sort of thing. And there's the farm, of course. You?"

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Wells looks over the man a moment; he doesn't look like a salesman...

The question is, what does he smell like? At least, so far as a werewolf nose can tell without getting all obvious about it.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Ah," says Wells. "You didn't strike me as the salesman sort. Small batches with hot-process lye, is it?"

Not that he's had to make it himself, but you pick up a few things when you spend long enough working at odd jobs up and down the length of England.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Christ on a bike," says Wells. "People're willing to pay that?"

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Wells' brain doesn't work quite the way some men's might.

"What, heroin?"

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

Wells shakes his head at the cigarette, and then stops for a moment to think about the other thing.

Unfortunately, the last time he encountered any significant deposits of human fat that were not still attached to a real, live, moving-around human, they had been extracted from someone he knew. And before that, the fat was still on the human, it's just that the humans were hanging in an abbatoir...

"I'm going to tell myself you've got a day job in a medical school somewheres, and there's a fucking huge lot of cadavers with most of their bums and thighs missing, 'cos I don't have the sort of imagination that lets me come up with anything less sociopathic than that," Wells mutters.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

It takes a moment for Wells to rein in the urge to growl; fortunately, it is a moment in which he thinks to take a good, deep breath. And what he smells is not the sour rotting-flesh reek of someone who gets blood under his nails or into his clothing. Neither is it the antiseptic smell of someone who spends too much time washing himself clean. So...

"All right," Wells says, settling back onto his stool. "All right. You've got another angle, then."

The shift in reaction is really pretty remarkable.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

There is silence. Then...

See the icon?

Like that.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"Worry? No," says Wells. "Put me on edge? For a second or two, yeah. Got a couple of fucking unsavoury memories that rear up at times, and they're not always the sort of thing that makes for proper discernment, y'know? I had to stop and think properly, is all."

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"I'll keep it in mind," Wells says. "I'd offer something reciprocal along the lines of curried goat, but I just do the meat part, if it comes right down to it." Pause. "'s damn good goat, though."

He's had to floss enough of it out of his teeth to know.

[milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com]

"I'll remember," Wells calls back. "See you around, Durden."