Closed RP Give and Take

This RP is currently closed.
Ethan’s smile became even more strained as Todd spoke, growing from a fake, pleasant smile to one with energy, growing to a sharp grin, a feral grin. The anger came roaring back, and this time, his head stayed clear. The rage fueled him, pushing him through the fog.

That was bad.

That was bad because the next thing that came from Ethan’s mouth, in a pleasant and sweet voice, was, “Mm. Todd. When were you going to tell me?”

He took a step toward the younger man, his movements precise and controlled. It was nearly the same as the first time they had met, that tense and controlled and gentle movement, that unnerving calm despite the rage. It was all he could feel. Anger, burning, hot, boiling his blood and heating his bones. Rage, deep and piercing, lanced through by betrayal and grief. Todd had been lying to him. Todd had been–

“That you know her. That you knew she was alive. We look exactly the same, you must have known. I imagine she must have told you.”

His hands twitched, and the hunger rose up in him. But he managed to contain it, clenching his fist. He tried to breathe, but the breaths came in shuddering waves as he closed his eyes. He tilted back his head and laughed, a harsh and brittle sound. Then he looked back at Todd, his eyes burning with that fire that existed in his core now.

“Tell me, Todd, how long have you been fucking my sister? Before you met me? After you met me? When you knew we had the same last name and the same hair and the same eyes?”

He stopped moving, just a few feet from Todd. He looked straight into the man’s eyes, the manic smile fading to something deathly serious. He looked every bit as dangerous as people thought him to be, like a viper ready to strike. Like a wolf ready to clamp its teeth around the thought of a deer.

“When were you going to tell me that Samantha was alive? Were you ever? I broke down and told you everything. Why didn’t you fucking say anything?”​
 
At the first word, Todd froze. The tone caught on something in his brain seconds before he even processed the words. And then, with those first few words, his conscious mind was a whirl of questions, trying to figure out what exactly Ethan was talking about, sifting through the net of different lies to make sure he was only hiding –

Ethan moved, and the ice in Todd’s veins turned liquid. His head followed the other predator of its own accord, his eyes shifting, his body language turning inward, defensive. The air was suddenly full of rage, just like the first time they met. Just like the first time they met, the cold inside of Todd leapt up to meet the other predator’s challenge, his approach. He let go of the trunk, turning to follow Obsidian as he came around the car, eyes now set on him-overall instead of his face, tracking every motion with the precision of a predator.

As a result, the words took a long second to register. Sam. He was talking about Sam. About – the scars. It had to be the scars. Todd pushed a hand up over his forehead, through his hair, slowly. His breath started to come in more shallow, and the teeth tried so hard to extend to his mouth, to push him to defend his territory, what was his. Obsidian couldn’t have her. She was his, and someday –

Someday, he reminded himself, as he let his hair fall back in tousled curls over the burn, she was going to consume him.

He used that thought as an anchor. He reeled in the predator before it could unfurl, before he could snap at Ethan to take a fucking step back. His body was a tight line, straighter and taller even than the other monster had ever seen him. His eyes were crisp, clear blue, full of an unspoken fury that was only being tamped down by force of will. His jaw was so tight that had he been human, his teeth would have cracked. He had to wait a few seconds, a few shallow breaths, before he could trust himself not to growl out an answer.

“Do you really think,” he said, quietly, smoothly; choosing the least painful point to start with, “I could ever really have her like that, Ethan? We don’t get Katherines, remember? We don’t get happiness. We take what we can from people, and we live with it as long as we can, and eventually we have to move the fuck on. Or die. We could die, and that’s it. Sam– yes. She’s the happiness I’ve been able to take, that she’s thrust into my hands and left me to figure out what to do with it before she realizes I’m just like the man who killed her best friend.”

That was mean– that was low. The words wouldn’t stop coming, though, and his voice hardened again, growing colder and colder with every word. Where the Walshes became heated in their fury, Todd Fowler grew into a winter storm.

“I didn’t know. At least I didn’t know the details. Sure, I recognized you, but at first my reaction was that you were just family, and even her family business wasn’t my fucking problem. I’m willing to separate the two of you when it comes to my life and move the fuck on. And then she tells me about the forty people she’s killed looking for Obsidian, and that she’s willing to go through your family to fucking do it.”

Todd took half a step forward. It was a calm step, nonaggressive. His hands even slipped into his pockets, where his fingers brushed cool metal. His eye contact with Ethan told a different story, though.

“So, obviously. Obviously I should’ve told her on the spot that oh, Obsidian? I know that guy, sure he can be a goddamn dick but I think there’s potential in him, you should abandon your stupid vendetta and give him a chance.” He scoffed. “Fucking hell, Ethan. She doesn’t even know about me yet. And as for you–”

He pulled one hand out, all his fingers kept tight together, and he gestured to Ethan. All of Ethan.

“I’m so fucking sorry. This is an obvious indicator that my decision to wait until at east after you’d eaten to tell you ‘oh yes, I know your sister, she’s going to tear your whole goddamn pack apart to rip out your still-beating heart if she knows you exist!’ was a horrible judgment call on my part.”

His hand slid back into his pocket. His voice had not risen, but it had deepened, and the emotion was almost gone. Dark and cold and clear as the winter night around them. Against his will, the predator had unfurled anyway; there was an air around him, a challenge, hackles up, eyes sharp. He put no extra effort into controlling the set of his jaw or how much teeth he showed as he growled without growling into the face of a man who he already knew wasn’t going to fucking listen anyway. He was braced, in case the tension he saw in the other predator became something more tangible.

“Forgive me for making the decision to not let you get anyone I give a shit about get killed because you’re as much of a stupid, self-absorbed asshole as I ever was.”
 
Ethan’s face stayed serious the entire time that Todd spoke. Rage caused his lips to twitch, but eventually, as Todd continued to grow darker, it stopped. There was an eerie stillness about him, like a statue, as he seemed to meld into the growing darkness around them until he was shadowy. Then, he closed his eyes, and the shadows faded away, and the moonlight touched him again. He opened his eyes back up, and there was something, something changed in his eyes.

“You know what? You’re right. Every word you’ve said is right. And I’m also selfish, and I want everything I can’t have.”

His eyes flickered down to the hands Todd had tucked into his pockets. The hands that now had bagh nakh slipped over them, whose blades he saw glinting when Todd had gestured to him. The idea that Todd thought Ethan would ever attack him again– but no, his hunger and anger had almost gotten the best of him just now, hadn’t it? He held Todd’s eyes, not quite rising to the challenge that Todd’s eyes threatened him with, but holding them nonetheless.

“You’re right that I– you’re just right. But I hope’d you know that I wouldn’t let any of my family be hurt. That I wouldn’t let them anywhere near her. Not until she could– until she could forgive me. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her.”

He paused and then, his lips curled into a small smile. He took another step forward, eliminating the distance between them, so they were a hair’s breadth apart.

“But you do. You deserve a Katherine. More than anyone I’ve ever met, you deserve a Katherine, a Sam. You could have her any way you want, and you know that. If she’s anything like me, if she shares the traits I have, then she’s just waiting for you to take it. You have the most self control out of anyone I’ve ever fucking met. Stop being so afraid of yourself, you moron.”

He sighed, which turned into a slight chuckle, and he dropped his eyes finally. Not in submission, but in resignation. His smile fell away, and he looked back up, his head still tilted forward so he could see him above his square glasses. He suddenly looked tired again. More than just physically, but spiritually and emotionally, like all the fight had been sucked out of him. Like Todd had broken something deep inside him.

His rage was long gone. Now he was just cold. Cold, tired, and so utterly alone, even as Todd stood before him. Ethan had never been read quiet so harshly before. It wasn’t humbling, necessarily, but it put him in a position he’d never had to be in before. Already Todd taking everything in stride and as unsurprising had hurt him, and he hadn’t been sure why. But this, this compound on it, and he knew.

He wanted to be better. He wanted to be the kind of person that the information about what he was would have been surprising, not met with a chuckle and a reassurance that it was expected. He wanted to be seen by Todd and be considered good enough by the man’s standards. He wanted to be good enough that Sam wouldn’t hate him. God, he wanted to be good enough. But why? Why did he care? He, who didn’t have a soul. He, who didn’t have humanity. He, who was far more broken than Todd.

Why did he care?

That was a question for another time. A question for another him. A question he couldn’t ponder then. Instead, his eyes refocused on Todd, and he gave a soft smile. “Are you going to hurt me Todd? Kill me? Do you really think you need to use those against me?”

He nodded his head toward Todd’s pocketed hands. The smile fell away with a sigh as he turned his head away, his hand lifting to ruffle the hair at the back of his head. “I guess I haven’t given you a reason not to think that, have I? We should go. We need to go in before the security switches over if we want to hunt.”

He turned and slowly started walking away, his hands going to the pockets of his large coat. His walk spoke to how tired he was, the slump of his shoulders speaking to the– to the– god he didn’t even know what horrible mixture of feelings he was feeling. He just knew that it was weighing on his shoulders now, heavily.​
 
Slowly, all the fight drained from Todd’s body. It started in his eyes, a softening from the sharpened edges as soon as Ethan admitted to – to being everything Todd thought he was, assumed he was. He should’ve felt good from the confirmation, right? He should’ve had some satisfaction from being right.

So why did his eyes feel warm, when the rest of him was so cold? The deep thaw led to the roll in his shoulders, the slow slouch, the violence leaving the edges in his face. This was a victory. So why did he feel like he’d lost, somehow? Was it because – because if someone had just pushed him like that, he’d do his best to shove them away?

God, was he projecting? Or was he actually afraid Ethan was going to cut ties with him over this?

He watched Ethan start toward the house, staying where he was, all his tension reduced now to gentle slopes and curves. The trembling was back, hardly visible with all the layers, but in his pockets his fingers curled around his claws. Ethan was right. He’d been ready to fight back – to survive first. He wouldn’t need to kill Ethan; but if he’d snapped – if he slipped –

Stop being so afraid of yourself, you moron.

That was easy for Ethan to say. He hadn’t seen what Todd became in the hunt. And if Todd could help it, he never would. He’d slipped. He could not, could not, slip again tonight. A quick kill. He glanced at the butcher’s kit, and then reached into the trunk to pick up the mask he’d dropped at the first sign of danger from Obsidian. Some fucking predator he was, flinching at the first flash of teeth. Some self-control he’d just displayed. Maybe Ethan should start spending time around other people, if Todd was his ideal of restraint. Connor, maybe, if he and Lapis kept –

Hm. Maybe they weren’t a great example. He’d think of someone, though, before the night was out.

For now, he picked up the mask and slammed the trunk shut. The kit stayed in there. He wouldn’t grab it – if he needed it, he could come back for it. He slipped the mask on, hiding his tired, pale face. His eyes closed, and he took another second to adjust his face. Even a simple shift like that took a second longer than it should’ve. If anything went wrong in there, he’d lose focus. He had to stay calm. He had to live up to Ethan’s standard – for his own sake.

He breathed deeply. He’d be fine. He’d be fine. There wasn’t anything else about it. Follow Ethan’s lead, be patient, quick kill. He could do that. Simple. He had Ethan here to keep himself responsible. That was… not reassuring. But it was what he had to work with.

He took off after Ethan at a jog, boots far from quiet, but not so noisy anyone up near the house would hear. He slowed as he came to the other man’s side, hands still in his pockets. His claws were still on, but no tension ran from his shoulders to his wrists in preparation for a strike.

“Ethan, I’m– sorry. I don’t think you’re – I don’t think that about you. I made assumptions. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Sam. And I’m not going to hurt you. I shouldn’t have– I should’ve thought. I’m sorry.” He kicked some dirt. A small, childish movement. Hopefully a distraction from the weight of the topic. “I’m the one being a selfish asshole. I just– I feel like I’m going to lose her. I can’t risk losing you, too. You two are so much alike it’s– it’s scary. You both have strong reactions to things. But I should’ve let that decision fall to you.”
 
Ethan smiled weakly. He looked down at the ground and chuckled as Todd finished speaking. Stopping in his tracks, he let Todd catch up to him. Then, when the younger man was exactly even with him on the long drive, Ethan stepped in, wrapped his arms around Todd’s shoulder, and pulled him in close. He sighed softly, holding him for as long as he could tolerate before letting go. Todd never tensed or pulled away, which Ethan took as a good sign.

“You don’t need to apologize. I haven’t exactly given you reasons to be trusting of me, Todd. I can’t blame you for expecting me to do… something.” He let his arms fall away from Todd’s shoulders, but he didn’t start walking again. He stood where he was and he looked Todd in the eye.

“Todd, are you worried you’re going to eat my sister? Are you worried she’s going to walk away from you? Tell me why you think you’re going to lose her, before we go any further. I want to know what’s happening that is freaking you out.”

He looked at Todd with concern and some kind of light behind his eyes. Part of him saw this as an opportunity. He could help Todd and help the sister who would never forgive him. Maybe if he could start making things better, if he could do just little things to help them, to help her--

No. He couldn’t let himself hope or think about that. She would never forgive him. As Todd had already said, he had killed her best friend. He had killed someone she loved deeply and he could never repay her for that loss. Not really. And because he couldn’t, there was no way that he could ever hope to find forgiveness in her.​
 
He let Ethan hug him. If he hadn’t had the claws on already, he would’ve hugged him back – but there was something to that, wasn’t there? Teeth bared just in case, keeping anyone from getting too close. Sam didn’t see the teeth. She couldn’t see the teeth. He closed his eyes, and sighed deeply, then let Ethan let him go.

He laughed as Ethan asked his questions. “Oh, no. I finally got over that first part last week.”

It was only after he said it out loud that he realized it was true. The laugh was real, though tired and hollow, and he met Ethan’s eyes with the black eyes that weren’t his own. He let the contact glance off, and looked down at his feet. The smile faded under the mask’s grin. He shook his head a little.

“No, it’s – she’s so strong. Stronger than I can ever hope to be. Stronger than I ever want to be. As long as she’s that strong, she’s safe.” He shook his head a little, not meeting Ethan’s eyes, because a different worry started to take hold in his heart. Ethan considered Todd like him. Part of the family.

He wouldn’t let Sam hurt his family, even if they were blood related. Todd understood, but that created a new bundle of worries. He held onto that worry for a little while, and then he took a deep breath and looked up at Ethan’s face again. His smile would be clear through the mask’s eyeholes, even if the borrowed eyes were sad and resigned.

“Your sister’s a good person, Ethan. And she hunts predators. I’m not safe for people, no matter how controlled I am. You can tame a fox, but it takes a lot longer to domesticate them. I’m still teeth and hunt. I’m still dangerous. She’s going to see that.”
 
A few things suddenly made far more sense to Ethan. The first being that Todd seemed to think he was a far smaller monster than he was. Ethan stayed on that for a moment, mulling it over. Todd compared himself to a fox. Ethan would have called a puma. A big cat, not a small fox. Not a small animal that was as much prey to some as it was a predator to others. That just didn’t make sense. Did Todd not know how scary he was? How much of a nightmare he actually was for some people? That seemed unlikely, but a fox.

The second thing that stuck with Ethan was that Todd assumed Sam was going to kill him. He himself had felt her burn, her fire, and knew that she was only too happy to kill predators. But was Todd really that stupid? He had known both himself and Samantha– who he said was so much like him– for at least a month now. Her, likely longer. And yet, he thought she would kill him? He swallowed around that fact, shaking his head.

Because the final thing that set in was that Todd was okay with dying at Samantha’s hands. He almost seemed like he wanted it to happen. Like he wanted to die at her hands if he had to die. God, he really didn’t know, did he?

“You say that Sam and I are a lot alike. If that’s true, what you are isn’t going to matter to her. You could be a vampire, a serial killer, a real monster, with sharp teeth and fur all over your body. You could be any of those things. You can be a cannibal, and she is still going to love you. You aren’t like me, Todd. everyone who loves you isn’t going to turn around and kill you. “

He paused to take a breath, and his smile was sad. But it was a smile, again, and he turned it onto Todd then, his eyes refocusing before he could fall into the rabbit hole in his own mind. He would never climb back out if he fell back in after earlier. He gave Todd a look, his right eyebrow raised, a wry smile on his face.

“And if she’s as much like me as you say she is– you’re all she thinks about and all she wants. You might as well just tell her. I’m going to bet she isn’t stupid. She’s either going to figure it out soon, or maybe already has.”​
 
Todd blinked at Ethan, a little confused by the response. Ethan didn’t seem worried at all that Sam would kill Todd, based on how alike they were. But hadn’t Ethan killed his first love, his first real love, to protect himself? That was – there was a time when Todd might’ve thought of that as being like him. Instead he knew in his heart that Sam was much more like Ethan than she knew.

He’d rather she kill him than the other way around. He couldn’t explain it, but something in him was sure that this was the only way it could end. That was the way the scales fell. Maybe Ethan was right, but he couldn’t bear the heartbreak if it was wrong. It might kill him more effectively than Sam.

And– he was getting weird and poetic again. He was tired. He rolled his shoulders a little, aware again of the gently throbbing cold. The idea that Ethan suggested – everyone who loves you isn’t going to turn around and kill you – tried to take root, but the soil of his heart was too hard-packed from tough winters and tougher losses. Arlo had. He didn’t know about Summer. But Nat would – could, maybe – try to kill him just for knowing who he was. Connor would kill him in a second if he thought it would save Sam. And Sam wouldn’t need saving.

“Yeah. Connor said the same thing.” He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes unfocusing a little bit. “For other reasons… anyway. Yeah, I know, I know. I know. I don’t – want to know that. But I’ve already promised to tell her. I just have to work out when.”

He pulled his senses back in, ironed his mind back out. The emotions felt good the way gently pressing a bruise felt good, knowing that the pain was still there, that it was going to be there for a while. But injuries slowed a hunt down. And while he’d managed to play off the limp before, he already knew from the way he’d shifted his weight that it was going to linger now.

A thought crossed his mind, and his smile slipped back in as he gently punched Ethan’s shoulder. “And, hey. The people who love you aren’t going to kill you either, so cut that out. That’s one of the places you’ve got it better than me.”

Because even Slate would kill Todd when they learned what he was, fully, really, truly. Even Connor might. Sam wasn’t different. She might love him, but as long as he couldn’t love any of them back – but he wouldn’t say that to Ethan. He didn’t want any more reassurances right now, not knowing what they were about to do.
 
Ethan could sense that Todd wasn’t quite taking in what he was saying. There was something in his tone, in the way he spoke, that said he didn’t believe what Ethan was telling him. But right then, there wasn’t much that could be done about that. Not when they were close enough to the villa that Ethan could start to see the gate that led to the guardhouse.

The gate, he knew, only went a little ways past the treeline, and as she moved, pulling Todd by the arm into the trees, something happened. Ethan seemed to meld into the night itself as they moved, fading out of reality like some kind of specter. He could feel the weak currents that flooded through Todd, thick like honey and just as sweat, but now he could feel a different energy nearby, buzzing and thin and effervescent like a fizzy pop or an energy drink.

He turned to look at Todd, only his eyes still visible, bright and golden in the darkness. “We’re going to circle back to this later. I’m not done talking about this with you, but there are more important things we need to do right now. I’ll go first, and then we’ll get you set up.”

With that, and a flash of gold in pitch blackness, Ethan disappeared. It was as though the very night itself ate him, removing him from the world around them. He chuckled, low in his throat, the sound echoing between the trees as he slid away from the treeline and out into the shadows that stretched from the guardhouse to the fence. He kept tight to their darkness, his movements silent and unnaturally precise as he crept in. He looked back toward Todd, letting his eyes flash like a cat’s, then concealed them again, turning his attention to the guardhouse.

Sitting inside the little, barely heated box was a man in his mid to late thirties, with dark hair styled in a low ponytail at the back of his tattooed neck. Being this close, as Ethan ran his fingers along the wall, Ethan could sense just how jittery the man’s energy was. He was probably caffeinated to an unhealthy degree based on the buzzing. He chuckled, another low and feral sound that caught the attention of the guard. He watched as the man started to stir inside the box, checking the cameras, and then leaning to look out into the wintry night.

Ethan looked back one more time at Todd. He didn’t know why he kept looking to the younger man. Maybe he was looking for permission to be the monster he knew he was about to be. Maybe he was looking for approval for his method. Maybe, he thought, he just wanted Todd to have some kind of positive reaction to what was about to happen. Just enough that Ethan wouldn’t have to feel like a monster. Just enough that Ethan could feel safe letting loose like he needed to that night.

With a soft sigh, he turned his attention back to the guardhouse. Just like always, the moment he decided that he was hunting, something in his brain changed. Gone was all of the concern of Todd’s thoughts and approval. Gone was the desire to make it as quick as possible, to make it fast. In settled the desire to make him run, to corner him and then set him free again, to chase and chase and chase until there was no more run in him.

And then, when he had nothing left to give, Obsidian would take everything he had left.​
 
Ethan faded out of sight as they walked, slowly, at first, then almost all at once. It would’ve been startling if Todd hadn’t had his other ways of keeping track of the man – scent, tracing the black pepper and ever-fading rage, and sound, though in the sound of Ethan’s feet and voice he could feel the predator setting in. He let the shift bleed into his own body language, too. His heavy bootsteps didn’t so much as snap a twig or bend a leaf. He balanced his weight to improve mobility. He slipped his hands out of his pockets, and while the roll returned to his shoulders, it was far from the submissive slouch he used to hide his edges. More a hunch, the lowering of his head as his senses unraveled to take in the forest around them and the prey ahead.

Like the coyotes he’d loved so much as a teenager, Todd’s natural environment wasn’t the city. His predator was at home in the woods, under the bright moon, where his natural prey was at a disadvantage by their own design. There was a reason why his worst self dragged his prey out into the open forest for sport, rather than using the twisting alleys and winding backroads of civilized settlements. He was a forest predator, and his hobbies of hiking and nature photography had kept him in practice long after he’d buried the monster that liked to leave trails of blood between the trees.

As Ethan gave his parting words, Cryptid glanced around for a younger hemlock tree to hide behind. The thick branches would give him cover from anyone watching. Even Ethan, to an extent, depending on how well the other predator could see in the dark. There was one not far from the guardhouse, and he stepped behind it and dropped to a crouch, feeling the tightness in his chest and muscles. A hunt was about to begin, not his hunt, but a hunt all the same. The world buzzed with it.

He couldn’t see Ethan from here. Really, though, he wouldn’t need to. He heard the soft chuckles that made even his hair rise. The dark laughter brushed up against his predator, but for once, Todd wasn’t inclined to run. No, in the cold, drained state he found himself in, his body whispered for him to act. To either join the hunt or fight the monster.

He’d be doing neither.

Even with the tree and the distance, he caught Ethan’s golden eye as it appeared in the dark near the prey. His gaze was relaxed, unchallenging and unchallenged. Neither approval nor disgust. Patient was close, but it was a special breed of patience, the patience of one ambush predator watching the other at work. Who was he to judge, after all? They were the same, in this moment. Both hunters looking for food, and with it, some instinctive high that would carry them like music through the hunt. Todd had only learned how to tune that sound out from habit. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, fault Ethan for dancing to it. So rather than lecture with that moment’s gaze, he reflected the hunger and the patience back, and waited, watching.
 
Obsidian raised his hand to the glass of the guardhouse and tapped on it. The guard inside spun to look out the window, but when he looked around, he saw only darkness. Darkness that Obsidian was hidden within. He dragged his nails across the outside of the house, making a sound of plastic rending that was just loud enough that the man stood, grabbing a flashlight and touching a hand to the gun holstered at his waist.

The man walked out of the guardhouse, his face neutral as he looked around, but Obsidian could feel it. His energy was fizzling, bubbling, surging around him in a way that only started when someone was nervous. He smiled and moved in a wide circle around them, coming to stand behind the man. He was taller than the man by a bit, so when he leaned over so that his lips were next to the man’s ear, the man shivered as Ethan’s cold breath hit his ear.

“Are you scared?”

The man jumped and turned around, clicking his flashlight on. It caught the tail end of his shadow as he moved again, rushing his way to stand behind him again, chuckling as he did so. The man swung the flashlight around and looked in every direction except behind him.

“Who’s there? Where the fuck are you?” His hand started to shake and Obsidian smiled as he noticed it. He leaned in and breathed cold air across the back of the man’s neck. He went to spin around and Ethan kept behind him, a wide smile set on his face.

“Right behind you.”

The man spun around and Obsidian let his eyes flash gold, gold like a cat’s or a snake’s, and when he did, the man stared, breathless, until Obsidian laughed, dark and loud. Then, he dropped his flashlight and ran. He took off after him, loping at a slower pace than he knew he could achieve if he wanted to. He clouded over his eyes again and let the man run for a minute, toward the house and into the garden, before he sped up and cut his off.

Obsidian, in the more generous amount of light, was a fuzzy cloud of darkness, shaped roughly like a human being. The shadows curled off him like tendrils, and he stepped toward the man, who fell back away from him. Obsidian could feel how high the man’s energy had spiked, and he closed in in a few smooth steps. He slammed his hand into the man’s chest, grabbing him to keep him upright. He smiled, allowing it to break through the cloud. His eyes flashed once more as he whispered again.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make this quick.”

He drew from the man, his fingers and hand suddenly buzzing with thin energy as it swirled through him. It was like a waterfall rushing into him all at once, and he could feel his body warming up already, could feel clarity coming back to him. He shuddered as the warmth floated through him and gripped the man tighter, his fingers digging into the man’s skin. The sheer relief in his body, the strength returning to him, was enough to loosen his body up and bring him back to life.

Then, when he could tell the man was on his last leg, he withdrew his hand. The man gasped and fell backward. He stared for a moment until Obsidian leaned in and spoke, his voice just as low, but now filled with a giddiness.

“Run.”​
 
The wolf played with his food. Every breath, every tap, every scrape echoed in the watching coyote’s ears. Being downwind from them, he easily caught the smell of fear, raw and enticing as fresh meat. It was secondhand fear; some other predator’s meal. But he still closed his eyes, and let himself accept it, breathed in the scent that carried from the prey’s sweat and breathing. His mouth watered, and a shudder ran across his battered body.

The coyote listened to their footsteps, wolf and guard-dog. He heard the wolf’s soft taunts, and finally opened his eyes to watch the shadows in the garden, the silhouette of a monster in the moonlight, the unnatural shadows holding the struggling prey. Slowly, the coyote calmed his breathing. He didn’t scavenge. The hunt was almost over, as fast as it began.

Except… it wasn’t.

Run, the wolf whispered, and the prey did.

Todd tensed. Immediately, the animal shattered, leaving behind a shivering reflection of a human person trying desperately to tame himself. He stayed still, pausing even his breath as the man sprinted for the treeline – for the hemlock tree. Was it a prey instinct that drove him there? Recognition of the spot in the whole treeline with the best cover? Or was he just running – picking a direction, and running?

He held his breath, dead silent, dead still. Not as dead as the dog-turned-rabbit pulled from his hole to be chased by a wolf, but dead as the silence in a winter night, perfect as the stillness of the moonlight itself. The feet crashed closer, and he kept himself in check.

Because he knew – and he was right – that his first instinct as the rabbit reeking of terror ran past his hiding place would be to pounce, and he bit it back by sheer force of will and inner focus. He closed his eyes, and felt the cold through his coat, both from his bones and from the winter around him. He smelled the fear, but he also smelled the trees, the animals, the rotting leaves. And, he realized, he could not smell blood.

And he was happy for the kind of predator he’d followed out here, because although the wolf had teeth, he’d shed no blood in his hunt. Todd opened his eyes, but he did not twitch, wouldn’t twitch, until after Ethan had passed. He couldn’t let Ethan see how hard it was for him to suppress the huntsong, or to realize that if it wasn’t for that lack of blood scent, he wouldn’t have been able to resist at all.

When it was his turn, he promised himself, it would be quick and quiet. No torment, no fear, no hunt. It would be hard, and it would leave him feeling odd, but it was better, infinitely better, than letting Ethan see him like that.
 

As the man rose to his feet and ran, Obsidian watched, his head tilting to the side as he laughed. Already, he felt better, felt the energy flowing through him and sparking his body back to life. The man ran and ran and ran-- right past where he knew Todd was hiding. He gave the man a head start as he casually walked out of the garden and toward the treeline. His eyes and his hearing might not be enhanced, but they were well trained for the sound of footsteps rushing through the trees.

As the man disappeared into the trees, he finally reached the treeline, his eyes flashing through the darkness toward where he could sense Todd’s thick-as-honey energy. That slow-moving and rich energy, that he had taken just enough of to arrive here. He wanted more of it, but even in his hunt haze, he didn’t go for Todd. He simply chuckled and said in a voice so like a hiss, “Don’t you love it when they run from you?”

Then, as the sounds of the man running began to fade into the darkness, Obsidian threw his head back and let out a screaming laugh. He charged off into the trees, using his speed to catch up to the man in no time. He swooped in smoothly around the front of him and grabbed the man by the front of his jacket.

“Boo!”

The man screamed and fell backward against the earth, trying to crawl his way away. Obsidian took a few precise steps forward, his weight barely crinkling the leaves beneath his feet, snapping no twigs nor branches, even the ones beneath the thick layer of dead foliage. He stepped forward and pinned one of the man’s hands beneath his heel. He chuckled and crouched down over him, letting his still-visible eyes turn up at the corners in amusement.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you a big, scary man? Aren’t you going to fight me? Don’t you want to
live?
”

The man tried to scoot further away from Obsidian as his voice bounced off the trees. But He didn’t let his prey get away from him. He wouldn’t let him move as Obsidian crushed his hand beneath his weight. Then, he slammed his hand into the man’s chest again. He drew from him, chuckling as the flow of energy began again, as it flooded through him. Already, he was reaching enough. Enough to get him through the week, maybe even a little further. The man’s fear and adrenaline were stronger than some.

He closed his eyes in bliss as it flowed through him and filled him with strength and life and buzzed through him like he imagined caffeine must buzz through people susceptible to that kind of stimulant. He opened his eyes back up to half mass and licked his lips. This was it. Now would be the time to take the man’s sparks. He kept pulling and pulling and pulling, long after the man fell unconscious. He pulled until he felt it. Sparks, brushing against his fingers. Sparks, brushing against his own, roiling and overflowing with life and energy and begging for Obsidian to take them into himself and–

He pulled away, violently jerking himself back. He cried out in frustration and laid down in the leaves, holding his hand to his chest like he’d been burned. He was shaking, shaking all over. Why had he stopped? Ethan had no idea. He had no idea why he had stopped, but now the hunt was gone from his mind, and he was left with a horrible feeling, like his stomach was sinking at the same time that his head was exploding at the same time that needles pressed into every inch of his skin. He curled in on himself and cried out again, slamming his hand into the earth.​
 
The coyote sat still in the cover of the hemlock tree, trying to ignore the feet rushing away. His eyes closed. The wolf’s steps were slower, a full prowl, coming closer. And for a moment, his instincts warned him to open his eyes, and he did just that.

He met the wolf’s eyes, cold black and bright yellow. He couldn’t withdraw, he couldn’t sit still, he couldn’t run. He had to stand his ground without being as small as he felt. He had to –

The wolf smiled, all teeth. Not a real smile, not real teeth, but he felt it in his instincts, the camaraderie. The alpha was trying to claim him as pack. We are the same, the teeth said, and the coyote couldn’t bring himself to argue as the wolf howled to the prey and dashed off in pursuit.

Because the coyote wasn’t a coyote. He was a monster, a man. He wasn’t instincts. He wasn’t just an animal. His choices were human choices. He did love the chase. He’d lived for the chase. Todd closed his eyes again, and knew that the soft taunts that echoed between the trees and shivered up his spine could have been coming from his own lips. He was a monster. And he was more of a monster than the shadow in the forest, chasing after the guard.

He breathed slowly, listening to the sounds of pain and chase. And then the silence, the waiting. The kill was–

Obsidian screamed again. The coyote jumped to his feet, ears tuned. That was – what the hell was that? Todd’s breath came in shallow, but he moved before he knew what he was doing. His steps weren’t silent, but they were soft, and speed would outweigh any prey perception if this really was danger. But – that wasn’t a scream of pain. He wasn’t in pain. He was angry. Why was he angry?

Todd’s steps slowed as he came across the pair of prone figures. The prey hadn’t gotten away. In fact, he could still see the man’s chest rise and fall, very faintly. He was alive. And Ethan was on the ground several feet away, stewing in the scent of his own rage. Todd only took the scene in for a second, then dropped down to squat a short way from Ethan, out of arm’s reach just in case.

He waited to see if Ethan noticed him. He’d either wait to make eye contact, or wait a full minute, before softly asking, “What happened?”
 

Ethan groaned as Todd knelt next to him. He let his eyes flash up to the other man and an angry snarl was ripped from his lips. “I don’t fucking know what happened. One minute everything was fine. I was finishing the hunt and I just… stopped. I just fucking stopped! I don’t know why!”

He sat up, his knees drawn toward him so his feet lay flat on the ground. He leaned into his knees, hands weaving through his loose curls. Why had he stopped? What had led to this reaction, to this sudden and sharp revulsion?

Revulsion?

Was that the word for the sickening feeling that currently resided in his stomach? Was he revolted by the idea of taking the man’s life.? What did that even mean? Ethan had no clue. Ethan didn’t know what any of this meant. All he knew was two things. The first, he didn’t want to kill the man. He couldn’t kill the man. The second, his whole body hurt. He was filled with needles and a deep ache and the feeling of nausea and his body felt too hot. What was happening?

“I… didn’t want to kill him. I don’t know why. But now I feel like shit, okay? I’ve never had this happen before. I don’t know what’s going on. I feel like I’m going to throw up, I think? I think that’s what this feeling is. I’ve never been sick before. I don’t think I can be. Todd, what the fuck is happening to me?”​
 
He didn’t even flinch in the face of Ethan’s rage as he watched him pull himself up and curl into a ball. He just listened, and then he groaned very softly as Ethan described what had happened. As he described his symptoms. It didn’t even take Todd a second to diagnose what had happened.

“Oh, no.” He drew the second word out in a whisper that was also a sigh. If he was right, this was… if Ethan hadn’t experienced this before, then the man might not be completely safe quite yet.

He rummaged around in his memory for something useful, something he remembered, and he started to take himself through the steps of what he did when he didn’t finish a hunt, or let the huntsong pull him in in the first place.

“Okay. The good news is, you can’t throw up if your body doesn’t actually have a place for bile. You’re just nauseous. It’ll pass. A good way is to lay flat on your back and breathe slowly for a few seconds until your heartbeat goes down. If you’re feeling any pain it’ll pass in a bit. Just stay still until it fades, and then you’ll have to walk it off. If this is what I think it is, you’re reacting to getting into the hunt and then stopping. So– that’s the… humane way to make it stop, and the way you’re going to be better if this happens again.”

Had Obsidian never left a hunt unfinished before? That… made sense. What didn’t make sense to Todd, any more than it made sense to Ethan himself, was why it happened now. He’d been so deep in it, so involved in it, that if it had been Todd only a massive amount of physical damage would’ve pulled him out. But Ethan looked fine. Jittery, clammy, and furious, but the life was back in his features. So physically, he was fine.

The panic in his eyes indicated that mentally he was a lot less fine. Todd settled down, sat on the leaves and crossed his legs. Under his mask, he let the second mask fall away, so if Ethan looked at him he’d see Todd’s natural blue staring back. Placid, not unbothered by what he saw, but calm in the face of it. This wasn’t death, the calm said. This wasn’t even a problem.

“There’s a faster way, but I recommend lying down first and seeing if that helps. It’ll be easier if you’re experiencing some kind of mental block.”
 

Ethan followed Todd’s instructions to a T. He laid out on his back and folded his hands over his chest. He swallowed hard against the nausea and tried not to let his body dry heave. He wasn’t sure if there was a place for acid in his stomach, or if he even really had a stomach. He had never been to a real doctor, and never saw any of his medical notes from Brightheart. For all he knew, he had three stomachs.

He looked up at Todd, catching his pale blue eyes. He took in that calm look and let it wash through him. He breathed, deep and even, closing his eyes. If Todd said this would work, then Ethan would believe him. As he lay there, his body burning and stabbing, his maybe nonexistent stomach churning, he thought about the actual words Todd was saying. This was the humane way to deal with this. Ethan didn’t have to be a genius to figure out the other method.

His eyes shifted and opened, looking over at the unconscious man by the tree, watching his chest slowly rise and fall. Never in his life had he failed to complete a kill when he decided he would make one. He had fed off people before without hunting. Some he fed off until they fell unconscious, just like this, but this, this wasn’t supposed to be like that. This was supposed to be a kill.

But looking at the man with his long dark hair and his black guard uniform and thinking of ending his life made Ethan's stomach start to roil all over. He groaned and looked straight up, between the branches of the sleeping trees, bare now of their leaves. He looked up between the winding branches and into the stars, which had come out in full force sometime between them parking the car and now. He watched the way they seemed to swim through the sky, twinkling and glittering just like his bar’s namesake.

He could feel the shaking calming down. He could feel his body without pain. He still felt sick and angry and shaken, but that was all emotional. And as the nausea passed, Ethan found himself physically fine. And so, in a soft voice, he asked, “I’m going to guess the quick way is to finish the hunt. What do you mean by a mental block?”​
 
“Um… hmm.” He needed a second to phrase this. “I’m not completely sure how it works, but it can happen. To me, at least. I think it’s something to do with having a human brain still. With being human, which isn’t something I considered… er, in the past.”

He took a deep breath, then lay down on the ground next to Ethan, mirroring his posture, hands folded over his chest, staring up into the winter sky where only the unseeing stars could look back at them. He felt some of the cold in his bones settle with the position, the last temptation to hunt fading out.

“There’s something up with our brains. My brain, at least. There’s base instinct, which says ‘hunt’ or ‘danger’ or ‘tired’. And there’s conscious thought, which I lose when I’m hunting. But it doesn’t seem like I lose my subconscious thought. Sometimes, either my instincts pick up on some danger or problem that needs my attention, or there’s something in my subconscious that… distracts me. Morality, that can cause it, but… I don’t know. Most of the details are fuzzy for me.”

Most of the hunt was fuzzy, actually. Moments came through with clarity, but never with any of his thoughts at the time. Memories of actions, but never why he took them. Or didn’t take them. The instinctive pauses always stuck, but the subconscious ones – those were miserable, because he never had a frame of reference, never had an actual explanation.

“When I first got to Billings, for example. My first hunt there was actually I’d already met Arlo, and – god, I was so deep in the huntsong that I was just chasing the high. I– well, I won’t say I wasn’t hungry, because I’m always hungry, but I wasn’t looking for food. I was looking for chase. It was… a bad time, for me. But my first hunt there I stopped before I finished. The person I was chasing – I can’t even remember anything about them – but they got away and I’d… stopped. By the time I was thinking clearly enough to realize I’d smelled Arlo, I realized that I’d snapped out of the hunt and my whole everything fucking hurt.”

And he’d played it off to Arlo as a – what? He barely remembered. It felt like forever ago. It had only been seven years. Part of his powers, maybe. Left him drained. It wasn’t a lie; he’d always dealt best in half-truths. He sighed again, soft as the rustling branches overhead.

“Anyway, the point is, it can really be anything. Maybe you thought of Sam, or maybe you heard a car drive by. None of it really makes sense to me. Begs investigating, but I’d uh– rather not.” And he chuckled in a way that didn’t betray so much as a whisper of his nerves on the subject. He didn’t need Ethan to realize just how embarrassed he was that he’d even brought it up.
 

For a while, Ethan didn’t say anything, or move at all. He waited for the needles to leave his body, for his muscles to unclench, for the nausea to die down. He waited for his anger to recede before he said anything to Todd. And then, when he felt calmness settle into him, he spoke up.

“I think… it was you. I thought about you, and how I didn’t want you to see me do this. I didn’t want you to witness this. I wasn’t happy that you were. I don’t know. That sounds so ridiculous. I’ve never had this problem with anyone else watching me. The pack, they participated sometimes. Like with Leo, when we hunted him down. They were there. I’ve never had this problem with anyone before, Todd.”

His voice was soft, low, and full of confusion. There was just a touch of something that even Ethan had a hard time trying to identify, but when he did, it hit him like a freight train. Shame. He felt shame that Todd had seen that. That he had heard those laughs, that he had seen him give chase. He was ashamed of himself, and how completely he gave himself over to, what had Todd just called it, base instincts? The call of the hunt, or whatever it was that Ethan experienced, was something he was now feeling shame for.

What a fucking night.

He turned his head to the side to look toward Todd. He looked at his face, traced the lines of it, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with him. He wasn’t in love with the kid, which was good given he was apparently in love with Ethan’s sister. And yet, he loved Todd just as much as he loved Sulphur or Lapis. He wasn’t worried about anyone else’s approval. And yet, Todd’s approval and opinion mattered to him. Why? Why did he care so much about what this kid, this young man thought of him?

Because he saw Todd as more than just a predator. He saw Todd as a friend, as a future brother, as someone he wanted in his life more than he could remember wanting anything. There was so much to unpack in all of this, so much that Ethan just didn’t have the time for. After they were both fed and safe and no longer dying, then he would address it. But not then. No, not then.​
 
Todd listened to Ethan’s explanation. It didn’t track, not really. Ethan’s soft, steady voice wasn’t someone talking to another predator, to someone who understood, who’d been there, who’d been worse. Maybe Ethan assumed Todd had never done that. Todd tried not to, after all, but even outside the hunt the chase called to him, and he couldn’t always refuse. He hadn’t lost himself. Not yet.

But lying on these leaves, he had a bad feeling. His body was weak. He was tired to the point of clarity, and his heart ached more than his scars did. He heard what Ethan had called Slate. His family. The pack. Ethan thought of them as wolves, too, then. Todd wondered if he thought of him as a wolf, too, or if he saw that he was so much smaller than any of them. Even without seeing their powers, his experience with Mal had left no doubt of that in his mind.

But even a fox could be a monster, if you were the rabbit.

“You’re going to see me do worse.” Todd kept his voice neutral as he looked at the sky, and not at the other predator. “If… If I snap. I– I shouldn’t. It should be fine. I’ll be fine, wherever we’re going next, as long as – no. I’ll be fine.”

He knew, he knew, that it was for different reasons, and he was ashamed that even with all this, he still thought that of Ethan. But people didn’t change in a day, in a single hunt. That wasn’t pessimism. He hadn’t changed that fast. He hadn’t changed the second he saw Arlo. He’d fallen, and made himself get back up, and he hadn’t had a soul to ask to hold him accountable.

It wouldn’t be fair to ask more of Ethan. Hell, it wouldn’t be fair to ask that much of Ethan. It’d been hell. Todd was grateful that Ethan felt that way about him – sure, he was glad for the change. But he couldn’t help but feel guilty that it wasn’t justified. That they were so much the same, that he’d had to accept that they were so close to the same sometimes. At Todd’s worst. At Ethan’s best.

He wanted to apologize for being the standard Ethan held himself too.

Instead he said, “If you need to finish, Ethan, you can. I won’t hold it against you. I won’t judge you. We’re predators. If anyone gets it, I do.”

And he meant that, meant every word of it, and he turned his head to Ethan so if he needed to, he’d see it in Todd’s eyes.
 
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