The glovebox offered a soft<span style="font-style: italic">click</span>as Darren pushed it shut for the fourth time since he’d arrived in the parking lot, three minutes ago. The gun was there, he’d made sure of it. He’d put it in there before he’d taken off from Ethan’s house, and even now he could still see it sitting in the back of the storage. It was obviously, tangibly there, safe within the confines of a Camry that no self-respecting carjacker would bother with, but the thought of leaving the gun behind irked him. It always did after these sorts of events. Ethan was by no means going to get his boys and come after him, but there was always the chance that he could. He never liked to keep himself unarmed so soon after recooping his losses or collecting collateral.<br/><br/>They say that for every rule, there is a reason. There was a reason for this, too.<br/><br/>After mounting himself up to the idea that he would be fine leaving it in the car for lunch, he completed his routine of locking the car, locking it again just to make sure, and heading inside. The door of the diner was heavy and knocked against a bell to let everyone and their mother that they had another live one. A young man - almost Darren’s age but his eyes were so much younger - approached him, but Darren shrugged him off and made a beeline for the corner window booth where Alan sat with his hands politely folded on the tabletop in that patiently impatient way of his. He wished he could blame the fact that Alan was a stickler for punctuality, but honestly Darren was the one that was twenty or so minutes or hours or years late.<br/><br/>“Hey hey,” he greeted as he slid into the opposite bench. He sank back into the weird red pleather-looking cushions uncomfortably, rocking his shoulders from side to side to try knead the cushion into submission. After a few solid seconds of fidgeting in his seat, Darren mimicked the position of Alan’s hands. Long, spindly, tattooed fingers curled around each other and coiled together neatly on the table. “Sorry about the wait, got held up for a minute,” he explained before Alan could ask.