Work Text:
Kyle said very casually, while rummaging through the fridge for the chicken, "Zack said Zee fixed your car?"
Warren kept peeling potatoes as he debated the merits of strangling Zack with his bare hands. On the one hand, he liked Zack. He was good for their pack, and a thoroughly decent housemate. On the other hand, there had been no reason to toss Warren to the wolves like this.
Hm. That turn of phrase didn't really work for this, did it? Wolves, Warren could handle. Kyle when he sounded like something that obviously mattered to him quite a bit didn't matter at all was an entirely different story.
He had debated for too long, because Kyle peered out from around the door and prompted, "Warren?"
"Hmm?" he asked, casual. So, so casual. If he was going to have to tell Kyle about this, he would have to tread very carefully to avoid freaking him the hell out. "Oh, yeah. He did."
"I didn't know there was a problem with the car."
"It wasn't a huge deal," Warren fibbed.
"Did it have something to do with why it was going through so much windshield washer fluid?"
"Yeah. It did."
"Did you try the dealership?"
"Yeah," Warren said again. "I did."
"I'm sorry, that was a dumb question. Of course you did. But they couldn't fix it?"
"Nope." That was one 'not enough answer' too many, it seemed. Kyle closed the refrigerator door, chickenless, and just looked at him, his expression neutrally expectant. Alarm sirens went off in Warren's head, complete with flashing lights. He volunteered before Kyle could continue the cross-examination, "They couldn't find anything wrong with it."
"You told them how much windshield washer fluid it was going through, right?"
"Their diagnostics did that. And they agreed it was weird. But they couldn't find a reason it was happening. So they reinstalled some software, I guess? And then it kept happening." Kyle could think it was just the windshield washer fluid, he decided. That was fine. The windshield washer fluid situation, on its own, would have been pretty annoying. "So I took it to Mercy, and Zee lectured the car or whatever for ten minutes, and now it's fine! It's fixed. It's fine." Shit. That had been too much.
Kyle just looked at him for a long moment before he finally said, "So you don't hate the car."
"No!" he protested, possibly a little too quickly. "No, why would you think that?"
"Because I bought the car, and then, how can I put this, you turned into a nervous fucking wreck." Well. He supposed it was a bit much to have hoped Kyle hadn't noticed.
"The windshield washer thing was fairly annoying," he offered.
"I got texts from people who were afraid you were gonna throw down with Darryl, which, considering you never murdered Paul, even when he handed you a lovingly hand-engraved invitation to do so, is a lot, for overactive windshield washer...jets or whatever they are." Okay. That people had been texting Kyle about him would have been useful information to have. "Why didn't you say something?"
"Because you went to a lot of effort picking out the car," Warren explained, "and it was sweet, and I didn't want you to feel bad that the car was doing a weird thing. And also because I thought you would see when you got in the car and go, 'Oh, my God, that's really annoying,' but then whenever you got in the car it didn't do it and I felt like I was going crazy." That had been more than he had meant to say, but letting it spill out of his mouth felt--amazing. Honesty really was the best policy.
Kyle blinked. "Okay," he said. "That's weird."
Shit. "I know."
"And the dealership couldn't find anything wrong with it?"
"No."
"But Zee fixed it."
"But Zee fixed it," Warren reaffirmed, hoping against hope that they could leave it there.
But of course they could not leave it there. Kyle had walked, step by step, right up to almost but not quite the right conclusion: "Warren," he said slowly, "did I buy you a cursed car?"
"No," Warren said quickly, and he was a little afraid Kyle could hear the difference in his voice now that he was on firm ground for the first time in this godforsaken conversation. "The car was not cursed. That thing came practically straight off the assembly line, baby, when would it have gotten a chance to get cursed?"
"But it--"
"Cars do weird things sometimes," Warren cut in. "I could tell you so many stories about farm trucks." The one that wouldn't start if it was raining occupied a particular place in his memory. Sometimes he still thought switching from horses had been a mistake. All of their quirks at least made sense, somewhere in their squirrely little brains. "New cars need the kinks shaken out." He had never owned an actual new car before to be sure of that, but it sounded reasonable enough, he thought.
"But it didn't do it when I was in the car." Warren shrugged and picked the potato peeler back up, hoping they could lay this to rest. Except of course they couldn't lay this to rest, because Kyle said slowly, "But it did it when Zack was in the car."
Shit.
"Because Zack stopped riding with you to pack stuff not long after you got the Subaru," Kyle continued, "which I thought was odd. Considering the price of gas and that beater of Zack's. But it was just overactive windshield washing?" He sounded extremely dubious, which was fair. Zack could probably have tolerated that.
"It wasn't just the windshield washer thing," he admitted.
"No?" Kyle asked, perplexed.
"No," Warren said, and he told him. All of it. Every annoying thing the car had been doing. When he was done, Kyle just stared at him, and he thought that he had finally done it. Four years together and all of the supernatural bullshit they had brought, and he had finally rendered Kyle Brooks speechless.
When Kyle finally found his voice, it was to ask, "What the fuck?"
"Yeah," Warren agreed.
"And the dealership couldn't--"
"Nope."
"And it didn't--when I was in the car, it didn't—"
"Nope."
"What the fuck." That about summed it up. "Are you absolutely sure the car wasn't cursed?"
"Zee said it wasn't a curse." He realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, as Kyle's expression sharpened and that hunting light went on in his eyes. He was so fucking hot like that, when it wasn't directed at Warren.
"Did Zee say what it was?"
Well. Here they went. Warren considered telling Kyle not to freak out, but all that ever did in his experience was warn someone there was something worth freaking out about in their near future. Deep breath. Cards on the table. "He said it was an accident."
"An accident," Kyle repeated, dubious. "A...magic...accident?" Warren nodded. "But--you said yourself, it was practically straight off the assembly line, I don't--"
He sighed and ripped the bandage off. "He said sometimes, when a normal human is around a whole lot of magic all the time, like, say, a werewolf's mate who spends a lot of time around a pack that includes Mercy and Sherwood and Joel and Aiden...and Zee..."
"I get it," Kyle said tightly.
"And I'm sure I'm missing someone--"
"Mercy said something about Kelly's wife being a little bit fae."
"Sure. Add her to the list." Did that explain all those kids they had? Whatever. "Sometimes if--someone like that--wants something hard enough, a little bit of uncontrolled magic happens. Just a little bit."
"Okay, I definitely did not want to fuck up your new car."
"No," Warren agreed. "You want me to be safe." Kyle blinked, a little bit poleaxed. That was a conversation they were going to have to have another time, because in Warren's experience there was very little 'safe' to be had in the world that you didn't make for yourself, but right now they were talking about the car. "That's where the 'uncontrolled' comes in."
Kyle got it and groaned, slumping to lean against the fridge. "Every safety feature in the car was in hyperdrive."
"Yeah."
"Can I...control it?"
Warren shrugged. "Zee said it was likely a one-off."
"But if it wasn't--"
"If it wasn't, then whenever some other weird thing happens we deal with it. Same as we've dealt with all the other weird things." Kyle looked very skeptical. "It's actually very sweet, if you think about it."
"I fucked up your car!"
"It's fixed now. Zee talked to it and it's normal now. Normal levels of safety features." Most of which he had immediately turned off, not that Kyle needed to know that part.
"And you took forever to get it fixed!" Kyle countered. "Because you didn't want me to know I fucked up your car!"
Warren winced. "Well. Yes."
"Warren! This is like that O Henry story only dumber!"
Warren laughed. He couldn't help it. "I didn't get you anything, baby," he protested. Kyle glared at him, only it wasn't mildly terrifying any more. Instead it was downright adorable. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings," he admitted. "You put a lot of thought into picking that car out, and it honestly did not occur to me that the problem might be magical until Zee said it was. I was afraid the only way to get rid of the dinging was to get rid of the car, and I didn't want to do that."
"But you knew it didn't do it when I was in the car," Kyle protested.
Warren shrugged. "Technology is weird, and like I said, sometimes cars just do weird things. I didn't know why it only did it when I was in the car and you weren't, but I had it filed squarely under 'some tech thing I don't understand.'"
Kyle scrubbed his hands over his face. "Okay," he said. "I need you to believe me when I tell you that if you had come to me and said, 'Hey, there's something seriously wrong with the car, and I can't show you because for some weird-ass reason it never does it when you're in it,' I would have believed you. I wouldn't have just thought you didn't like the car. Because A: you're not weird and petty like that to make something like that up, and B: I could watch you turning into a nervous wreck with my own two eyeballs. And Zack! Zack knew! You even had a witness!"
Warren paused, then admitted, "I was not thinking straight, because I was going crazy, because my car was doing this thing."
Kyle looked at him for a moment, then allowed, "That is very fair. You're ridiculous and I love you. I feel like I should apologize."
"Don't," Warren protested. "You definitely didn't do it on purpose, and it really is kind of sweet." He took the couple of steps across the kitchen necessary to bracket Kyle in against the refrigerator door. "Did you really think I hated the car?"
"Werewolves are control freaks," Kyle muttered, not quite looking at him. "I know this. You had zero input in picking out the car."
"I wanted you to give me what you wanted me to have," Warren reminded him. He put one hand on Kyle's hip, and the other on his jaw, stroking his thumb down his cheek, thinking, You're ridiculous and I love you.
"So you don't hate the car?"
Warren wasn't going to lie to him about this. "The car and I are getting to know each other all over again. But it seems to be a very nice car now that it's not trying to drive me insane."
"Hmm," Kyle said. "How do you feel about car sex?"
Warren could follow his thought process there: positive reinforcement, etc. It wasn't a bad idea, except, "I am way too tall for it." Pickups definitely had the advantage over sedans in that regard.
"Not too tall to bend me over the hood and--" Warren had to kiss him then. It was impossible to do anything else.
They were interrupted several minutes later by Zack coming in. He took in the general state of the room, and the general state of them, and said, "So...DoorDash?"
Warren decided to let him live. "Half the potatoes are already peeled," he protested.
"But I can't find the chicken I had thawing," Kyle added.
Zack blinked. "Oh, shit," he said. "That was for dinner?"
Warren sighed and gave in to the inevitable as Kyle muttered something about having two werewolves in the house. "So," he said. "DoorDash."