“Let us remain objective,” Harry says, but he’s the only one who’s nervous about it.
“But I didn’t mean to do this at all,” Remi looks half-way between apologetic and affronted. This is partially achieved thanks to a little trail of crimson drops arcing across his forehead in the form of a false eyebrow, giving him an artificially arch and ironic expression. He also picks this moment to reevaluate his state of dress (incomplete) and his the state of his armament (abundant) and thus provides something of a distraction, so Harry doesn’t throttle him. Finding the state of things satisfactory, Remi begins the less interesting task of trying to figure out what’s got hold of his feet.
Harry is more interested in where his coat got to, anyway. He decides to hang his mood upon the state of his coat, because that seems just about as reasonable as anything else. He also responds to Remi: “No, not like ‘have an objective’- we need to ‘be objective’.”
“Like... um... not ending sentences with prepositions?” Remi, God bless his steadily beating little heart, lifts his foot up out of the inches deep puddle of molasses in which it sits, which makes an absolutely horrendous noise. “Sounds like the swamp,” he says, with a fleeting smile, focusing on not falling over.
“No, that’s having an object,” Harry replies and totters himself. He might’ve seen a coat sleeve somewhere past the wreckage of the block and tackle crane they’d used to lift the barrels, and subsequently destroyed with a high-velocity dog-cart.
“But I didn’t mean to do this,” Remi says again.
“No, that’s having an objective,” Harry says.
Half a dozen chickens voice their objections (which are also not objective), disturbed by his tiptoeing through tiger-eye puddles of blood and molasses pooled amongst the cobblestone docks towards his coat.
“Ah,” Remi says, making the horrible squelching happen again. He wiggles his toes joyfully, both his shoes and concerns about contact with bodily fluids long gone and well forgotten. “And we’re ‘being objective.’”
“Correct,” Harry says, and leaps some of the crates smashed about, snatching what turns out to not be his coat from the upended axle of the dog-cart. Wherever the dog got off to, he hopes the place is plagued with ankle-high rains. It might’ve been the closest animal to Remi’s Hell Hounds he’d ever encountered.
There is an ominous silence, where only the whistling of the winds on the docks and the creaky turning of one forlorn an ineffectual wheel break the constant low clucking of the chickens.
“Like a lens,” Remi says hopefully.
“No.” Harry replies firmly, bracing tongue between teeth to clear a very slowly moving rooster as he hops to safety. “That’s an objective.”
Even as he says it, Harry knows what’s coming. If he had any capacity for emotion left, he’d probably be frustrated. However, given the course of recent events, being frustrated seems so sadly inadequate as to be no longer possible. To wit: his frustration would be as appropriate as a bout of hearty laughter, depending on the mood in which one receives the circumstances, however, were he to even allow the tiniest giggle, his immortal life would be endangered by the fact that he might never stop, and end up hysterical as a woman in an opera or confined to certain medical wards of note. He absolutely must find his coat.
Remi knows what’s coming too, however the legal and, more importantly, social ramifications can be easily dealt with by a simple explanation of the circumstances. One can hardly be blamed for a stabbing when one has been unwisely surprised by the victim- and, anyway, the secretary of the Brotherhood should’ve known better (and his employ would make the stake Remi used seem more job-appropriate and less... medieval). Surely they (they being law enforcement and any witnesses that did not immediately flee the previously impending inferno) would understand.
There was no need to include any individuals who might’ve been in a state of undress, the presence and disappearance of several exceptionally disagreeable nocturnal Carpathians (in point of fact, not vampires as one would logically conclude), or what exactly was being done with the Welsh corgi (definitely a Hell Hound) and its load of smuggled chickens (Hell Hens?- a matter undecided), or the effectiveness of molasses in fighting a small warehouse fire, in the inexplicable absence of buckets on the dock.
Anyway, more important than all that was the fact that he knew what he was going to say.
Yes, all of that was an aside to the fact that he knew he was going to say what he was going to say, and that Harry was going to give him the look that signified he was beginning to be swayed by certain up-and-coming biological theories having to do with apes.
And yet.
“But... I... didn’t meant to do this.”
Harry looks at him, signifying his beginning to be swayed by certain up-and-coming biological theories having to do with apes.
Remi smiles at him, in a way that he can only hope conveys the sincerity of his efforts to be in Harry’s good graces, and somehow elaborate with the promise that he really, really won’t stab anyone in the next town in which they stop. Really, really, really, for certain this time. As a sign of his sincere interest, he joins the search for Harry’s coat.
It’s somehow wedged under a small stack of watermelons that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Harry does not apply thought to this matter.
“Look,” Remi says, pointing to the coat, big brown eyes akin to that of the adoring mastiff puppy, who seems, if not to know it will grow into a 200-pound behemoth more on the order of a small equine than a dog, to be a little sorry for the possibility. “No tears or stains or anything.”
The unlikeliness of this scenario is so overwhelming, Harry finds himself going over the details of the evening in his head (from which he can make no accounting for the watermelons) and thus is consequently reminded of much earlier, when whilst removing his shoes, Remi fell into his arms, giving him more or less the same look, only up from the vicinity of Harry’s own unbeating heart. Of course, then, as now, it immediately began to beat again.
Harry puts on his coat.
Sniffing, Harry extends a hand to assist Remi through the sludge, “Well, I didn’t want to come to Cambridge in the first place.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Harry,” Remi says as he squelches through the puddles. “I promise it won’t happen again.”
Harry chose not to comment on the sheer astronomical improbability of that as Remi took his hand. Technically, Remi could keep his promise, and that seemed well enough. “Good.”
He shrugged to himself as they picked their way away from another ‘scene of the crime’. After all, his coat did survive.