Work Text:
“You pervy fuck,” I accused.
John shook his head, one sharp jerk of a motion. His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “That is— no.”
“We are in your head,” I enunciated each word. We’d already gotten in and out of mine. Lots of fire, lots of cold, an empty world of death. John’s was a different ball game altogether. “You pervy motherfucker.”
I shook my hands at him. My fingers were weighted down with rings. Kinetic rings, a signet ring with a fucking M stamped into it. At least two were pure decoration. An eclectic mix of metals, like John couldn’t decide which color worked best with my skin. Apparently I’d still made it all myself because nothing was perfect, but they’d been built on an altogether different budget than I usually worked with. Rubies and emeralds embedded everywhere for extra storage power.
My shield bracelet was evidently a favorite of John’s because it hadn’t changed much. Twice as many shields, though. “I jingle,” I hissed.
John didn’t get red. His lips just pressed together. Thin and helpless. “Are you quite finished?” he asked. The turn he made at the light was smooth and controlled. He even used his signal. We still had to be extra careful of the cops. No dreams of legitimacy here.
A bigger man than me would have let him off the hook. I knew better than most how little control we had over our subconscious. John hadn’t made much of a fuss about my deep-down shit. He’d looked around the empty world and pinned me with a brief, cutting look. “Your lack of self awareness continues to astonish, Mr. Dresden,” he’d said.
Maybe there was something to that, because I’d been so distracted by John’s fantasy additions to the city’s skyline when we first dropped in that it took me slapping at a mosquito to figure out why John kept staring at me. Doing a fine impression of someone recently hit by a sledgehammer.
“I was wearing a collar,” I snarled. John’s eye twitched. His knuckles a pop of white. My good deed for the day was not mentioning I’d seen him pocket the thing after he helped me get it off. “I haven’t even started.”