Fuck it.
Near hopped. (No “how high,” but maybe that only went with jump ...) Or: he maneuvered himself out of the truck with as much springy grace as he could muster, which at this point was somewhere between zilch and zero. It made for, he suspected, a more ludicrous show than if he hadn’t put the effort in and just rolled out and fell on his half-numb ass, but it wasn’t like there was anyone whose opinion he cared about in the general area. He brushed himself off from his skewed landing on a patch of spongy dirt and shook his head.
Jude, honest to god.
“If you need to hurl, go hurl,” he muttered.
The woman winced and barked, “Not in the truck.” Because obviously a few bags of dirt and a dead bird would be worse off for a little vomit. But then Near was more inured to a little vomit than most. Hell, on the grand scale of things he was practically a vomit connoisseur; late nights in cheap bars offer an expansive education and tend to knock the squeamish out of you fast. What he was not was a dead owl connoisseur. Maybe it would ruin the feathers.
“Need help?” Near presented the question in the form of a threat. They were in the middle of the woods with a woman who picked up bleeding hitchhikers; they didn’t need to push their questionable luck with Jude’s patented infuriation techniques.
Near hopped. (No “how high,” but maybe that only went with jump ...) Or: he maneuvered himself out of the truck with as much springy grace as he could muster, which at this point was somewhere between zilch and zero. It made for, he suspected, a more ludicrous show than if he hadn’t put the effort in and just rolled out and fell on his half-numb ass, but it wasn’t like there was anyone whose opinion he cared about in the general area. He brushed himself off from his skewed landing on a patch of spongy dirt and shook his head.
Jude, honest to god.
“If you need to hurl, go hurl,” he muttered.
The woman winced and barked, “Not in the truck.” Because obviously a few bags of dirt and a dead bird would be worse off for a little vomit. But then Near was more inured to a little vomit than most. Hell, on the grand scale of things he was practically a vomit connoisseur; late nights in cheap bars offer an expansive education and tend to knock the squeamish out of you fast. What he was not was a dead owl connoisseur. Maybe it would ruin the feathers.
“Need help?” Near presented the question in the form of a threat. They were in the middle of the woods with a woman who picked up bleeding hitchhikers; they didn’t need to push their questionable luck with Jude’s patented infuriation techniques.