RP Where The Wild Things Are



He laughs! Aspen’s grin is wide, pleased with herself for being the cause of his joy. There’s a brief moment of confusion when he stops, and she tilts her head to the side and opens her mouth to ask, but he is already turning back to the deer and away from the Aspen.

She doesn’t linger on the oddness, because there is snow to be rolled in! She finds a fresh patch that doesn’t have too much mud or dirt and flops down, scrunching up her nose and rubbing her face in the snow to clear off the blood. Her clothes are never very clean, but she rolls around a little so that they’re less dirty.

Lyle finishes up with the deer around the time she finishes her tidying. She lifts herself from the snow, feeling the cold on all of her skin and fur now. It’s not just that she was rolling in the snow - the sun is behind the trees, which is usually a sign to head back to her den. Nights are cold, in the forest. So, as much as she’s enjoying the unexpected company, she will have to go inside and hope to see him again come morning.

“No,” she answers, with a hint of petulance. Still…

A sigh escapes her as a warm cloud of steam. She lowers her head slightly, looking for the sun again and finding only long shadows. When the sun goes to bed, so should you. “Will go in den for nighttime,” she relents.

Her tail hangs low, her ears drooping slightly into her tangled hair. She doesn’t want to say goodbye.

 
Lyle’s face melts into a smile at the childish petulance, the gentle refusal to go to sleep. Without thinking, he reaches out and rubs her wet hair, almost like one would a dog or a particularly affectionate cat. Halfway through the motion, he almost hesitates – but follows through. “I’ll finish up here, and I’ll see you in the morning, kiddo. Sleep tight.”

The hesitation is a sign that he might need to rethink his plan here. The sooner she goes to bed, the sooner he has the space to do just that. That, and start setting traps. If he’s really lucky he’ll catch something by morning, but he doubts that. It takes time and patience to wait for people to fall for something like a pit trap, and it’s pretty clear that Aspen hasn’t seen many people around here lately at all.

No, the traps are probably going to take a few days. He’ll take that time to at least settle around here, see if he can’t find an empty cabin. It’s going to be important to stay close to Aspen if he really wants to go through with his plan – he’s a much better hunter than she is. Bigger, stronger, more efficient. More experienced. She’ll need him around to gain any weight. And besides, he can keep anything more dangerous than himself away, too. It’ll work out in the end, he’s sure. It always does.
 


It has been a very long time since Aspen has been touched by another human. She doesn’t know what to do with it; something in her delights at the brush of fingers against her hair, and something else snarls and aches, fierce and so sharp that she nearly gasps.

She’s sure her face must look very peculiar, as confused as she feels, and she feels both relieved and terribly sad when Lyle lifts his hand away. Shaking herself, she bounces between her paws to get some of her momentum back and then scurries over to the entrance to her den.

“Night!” she squeaks, squeezing through the crack in the rock very ungracefully in her current form. Midway through, her fur shifts to something equally short-haired but gray, her tail shedding in reverse and becoming hairless, and then she’s through and into her sanctuary.

Rather than evaluate her feelings, Aspen opts to collapse into her nest. As usual, it seems, the day has left her exhausted, and she burrows into the furs and fabrics with a great big sigh.

But most unusually, she has something to look forward to come morning. Someone to talk to! Meat she doesn’t have to hunt for! How exciting.

As her eyelids droop ever closer to closing for the night, Aspen digs two carefully preserved scraps of fabric from her pile and presses them to her face in turn, breathing in the faint not-her-scents that cling to them.

She wonders what her momma and poppa would think of Lyle. She isn’t sure what she thinks of him quite yet, but she wonders. If things were different, maybe they could have met him, and he could’ve sat with them for dinner. They would eat something warm, she decides, something like warmed deer meat. And they would talk, with words and sentences that line up the right way the first time.

Her chest aches, that same fierce hurt that overtook her earlier, and she curls around herself, pressing the fabric scraps to her chest as though, this time, she can protect them. She doesn’t know when she falls asleep, only that the warmth of a full stomach is a sweeter lullaby than any she’s sung to herself.

 
LJ watches her slip into her little hole, barely containing a wistful sigh. It’s pretty clear she’s not scared of him at all anymore, which is what he wanted. But she’s also out of reach again, through a space he can’t even dig into. If, in the morning, she realizes what’s happening –

No, no. He can’t think about that right now. The night sky is clear, the air is heavy with animal blood, and LJ can still feel the slight burn of hunger under his skin. He glances up at the stars, and lets the sigh out in a small curl of warm breath, still warmer than the air around him, somehow. He knows that he shouldn’t waste any time, in case that’s an issue, but he starts by jogging off into the forest to collect some things.

In an hour, he has a loose lean-to structure set up between her entrance and the treeline. There’s still no sign of people, and the nearest trail, he knows, is still a mile or two away. That’ll be the best place to put his traps, if the earth is warm enough and he can find a shovel or some ropes and a sturdy tree. The nearest town is even farther out, and his antlers will make him stick out like a sore thumb if he doesn’t change shape. Which would burn up energy that he needs to hunt, both for himself and the little furball.

He decides for sure he wouldn’t feed her his food. He has no idea how that might even work, but he needs every scrap he can get his teeth around. Besides, feeding people to somebody without them knowing is crossing a line.

He catches himself in that train of thought. Humans, not people. He has to keep drawing that line, or else some bad feelings will come back. He’s not human. He doesn’t even know if Aspen is human, but she is registering as edible, at least. He just needs to put some more meat on her. A few weeks, maybe the last month or two before winter ends – heck, if he really wants, he can probably keep up the ruse through the summer so he has something ready if next winter finds him as unprepared as he is now. Not thinking ahead is how he ended up in this situation in the first place, with no tools and no extra food, picking on – not a kid, he can’t think about her as a kid, because she’s just gonna be food, eventually, and he can’t feel bad for eating when he needs to eat. Picking on something as small as Aspen, he decides, is still a sign of how rough the winter has been on him. But now he’s thinking ahead.

Next winter will be better. He settles in to the lean-to that barely keeps out the wind, eyes heavy and bones aching. He just has to make it through this winter, and work on Aspen. He’ll make it to next year, and he’ll be prepared.

He drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep, lulled by the soft sounds of the woods and the warmth of his hopes.
 


Aspen wakes with a start, her heart slamming itself against her ribcage. She scrambles out of her pile of pelts and fabrics, throwing them off of her and skittering away until her back hits the wall. Still shaky from the wave of panic brought by the too-familiar dream, she stares wide-eyed at the cave wall opposite, then turns whip-fast to check the entrance to her den. Just barely enough light filters through the crack to see by, and she can sense no danger on the other side.

Her breath is ragged in her ears, burning in her lungs, and she huddles in on herself with one eye to the world outside and both hands clutched tightly to her chest until she feels less breathless. The Shift is waiting for her as patiently as the sunrise, itching under her skin, and she lets it flow through her as soon as she has the presence of mind to accept its offering.

Something with claws, Aspen thinks, curling her fingers and silently berating herself for sleeping in a form as defenseless as a rat. Claws to hook and cut. Sharp teeth to bite and tear. Never anything less, before going outside.

Fur sprouts over her hands and down her tail, white and gray speckled with black, bringing with it a wave of warmth that relaxes her almost as much as the sight of sharp, deadly claws at the tips of her paws. She runs her tongue over her teeth, feeling for the points, and only once her power has settled back into her bones does she feel steady enough to move her mind from the present.

It drifts to the past, hastily skimming past the fading dregs of her nightmare, and she perks up with new excitement when she remembers the man she met. A person like her, in her forest! Her luck must be turning around. And he said her name was familiar, so maybe he can help her find her family!

She’s sure her momma and poppa would agree that expanding her search is smarter than staying put and hoping someone finds her, by this point. It’s been years, and there hasn’t been any sign of her uncle or grandma or grandpa. They must not be able to find her, so she’ll just have to find them. Won’t they be surprised at how clever she’s become, when she gets un-lost all on her own?

Buoyed by her thoughts, she climbs out of her den as quickly as she can. Lyle is sure to be around here somewhere, and the sooner she finds him the sooner they can start looking for her family!

 
Lyle’s mind stirs from the darkness as a sweet aroma fills the space behind his eyes. Something warm, he thinks. Maple sausage? No, there isn’t any of the spice. Dad likes experimenting, though. It could even be some kind of roast, the start of dinner. It’s enough to have him drooling in his sleep. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he rolls over, reaching for his blankets –

Cold sparks shoot up his fingers as he grabs a handful of snow. His eyes open, and he sits halfway up with a start, swallowing hard. He flinches a bit as his antlers knock against the roof of his shelter. The sun is high enough that it’s reflecting off the snow, flooding his vision with white. He grimaces a little and rubs his forehead with his other palm, swallowing hard as he orients himself. The smell is still there, something warm and sweet, a little earthy. He glances out at the clearing, and pauses when he sees movement.

It almost looks like a lynx. A really big lynx, gray and speckled with black in the blur. As his vision clears, though, he sees the way the limbs are arranged. The events of last night slowly bleed back in, the girl and the deer. The lingering hunger, the cold that hasn’t stopped chewing on his bones. Dad hasn’t made him breakfast in years.

It’s better that way.

But without him, Lyle needs to find something bigger to eat soon. Bigger than the girl – Aspen – to make her better to eat later. For right now, he has to keep up appearances. The girl doesn’t seem like she’s realized she’s in danger. He just has to keep it that way until he’s actually eaten and it gets easier. So he rubs his eyes, yawns, and sits the rest of the way up more carefully, crossing his legs in front of himself.

“Good morning, Aspen!” He adds a chipper note to the greeting, and relaxes a little. His smile shows no teeth. “Did you sleep well?”
 


There’s a new structure set against the trees near her den. Aspen can see feet poking out from it as she creeps closer, and a newly familiar scent catches her nose when the wind shifts. She grins, keeping her paws quiet against the snow. It seems like Lyle is still asleep. That just won’t do; she’ll have to wake him up so they can start the search!

She’s only a few paces away, preparing to pounce, when he suddenly moves, startling her. She hastily jumps away, shoulders shooting up around her ears and ears swiveling back. They stare at each other for a long moment, Aspen’s heart beating in her throat. Danger? something in her whispers, cautious and uncertain, too small to act on, and so she stays frozen.

Then it… fades. She has no other word for it, and no explanation for how the warning fire is doused so quickly. She shakes her head, hair whipping around her face, and blinks away the dregs of whatever had seized her. Her smile, when summoned, is almost a match to his, small and still faintly confused. “Yes, morning.”

She hasn’t decided if it’s good or not yet, but she won’t forget her plan. Ignoring the question, she strides closer to Lyle’s temporary den, stopping just out of arm’s reach, and sits in the snow. “Search for family now. Today,” she insists, before she can be drawn off course. “You know momma Aspen?”

He said he did when they spoke yesterday, didn’t he? That was a good place to start. She waits expectantly for the explanation that will surely follow, patient but eager.

 
It takes LJ a moment to scan through his memories of last night. Had he said he knew her Mom? His eyes zone out as he tries to remember, going back over their short conversations. It helped that she didn’t say much. Most of it stuck, but most of all –

Dead many years.

The ache starts to come back, and he shakes it off by nodding his head to the question.

“A long time ago. When I was Aspen-sized.” He’s going to have to keep track of his lies, but he can’t really worry about that right now. “But they’ve been dead for a while now. Like my Mama and Papa. I didn’t know there were other Aspens.”

His voice tightens, for just a second. He doesn’t meet her eyes when he mentions his parents, as the cold gnaws on him the way it’s begging him to gnaw on her. He can’t get sympathetic now. He has to commit to this. To survive. She’s sad, sure, and very small. But he can’t let that change his mind, not with his plans. He has to survive. Otherwise – he doesn’t know what. But staying alive has been all he’s known for so long, it’s all he can bring himself to focus on.

The plan. He remembers the plan, and looks back at her with a smile that banishes all the bitterness.

“We’ll search today though. But not right now! You haven’t had breakfast yet.” He scoots out of the lean-to, careful of his antlers. “You go ahead and get what you want to eat out of the carcass we buried last night, yeah? And I’ll build us a fire to warm it up.”

With that he stands and stretches, aware of his tallness, but trying to keep his movements open and slow so she can’t take them as a threat. Of course she isn’t scared of him. He’s just a person, after all, no claws or fangs like hers. He should’ve collected wood last night, but honestly the excuse to step away and get it together is perfect. Assuming she lets him leave, he’ll have just enough time to get rid of the achy feeling and focus on what was important, what had always been important – food.
 


He sure thinks about her question for a long while. Aspen tries to contain her impatience, but she still finds her claws raking at the snow until she finds dirt to tear up, gaze darting into the trees and back again.

The answer, when it comes, isn’t what she wants to hear. Her ears droop into her tangled hair, nearly disappearing in the speckled gray locks. Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. It has been years since her parents died (since she failed to save them, she thinks, but she shoves the thought away), and they were never very social with anyone who wasn’t family.

“Oh,” she says, voice small. Her eyes stay glued to her paws, and the snow, and the torn up dirt. She doesn’t know what to do with any of the information she was so eager to find, or with the unexpected revelation that Lyle’s parents are also dead. She doesn’t know at all.

She nods at his suggestions, head still bent down, then gives herself a shake and dredges up another smile, forcing it not to turn into a wince as she looks up and remembers how tall Lyle is. He met her parents when he was her-sized? That must have been ages ago, for him to have grown so much.

She pushes that thought aside, too, trying to find a less thorny trail to follow. Alright, so maybe finding answers won’t be as easy as finding other people like her and asking them. But she’s still going to search! And she won’t have to do it entirely alone, which is a definite improvement on how things were even a few days ago. She nods again, more firmly, and gets to her paws again. “Yes. Breakfast. I get breakfast. You get fire.”

It’ll be nice to have a meal she hasn’t had to hunt fresh. Bless the snow, and the kindness of strange strangers.

For a moment she considers Lyle with her blank white eyes, then she circles into his range to nudge her head into his knee briefly in thanks. It’s more of a light tap than anything, and she bounds away just as quickly, slippery as an eel in the strengthening light. She has a deer to dig up!

 



Eric should’ve listened to the guys at the lodge.

It’s too cold to find anything tonight, Kasey said.

You’re gonna get lost in the fog, Jay added.

But Eric is almost certain he’s still close to the trail. He just saw the last blaze, and really, he just wanted to check his fox snares. He’s leaving the area tomorrow; waiting until morning might fuck up the fur. He knows exactly where it is, too, twelve paces from the trail, and it was safe to walk into the clearing by the exact same path just this morning.

But it can’t be the same path, because this path gave out under his feet. He hit the cold earth hard and spent a few minutes fully dazed, staring up at the bare treebranches and clouds, before he found himself cursing the fucking amateur who’d put a human-sized pitfall trap on the edge of the clearing. He actually cursed himself raw, screaming into the dark where nobody else could hear him – especially not whatever unpaid conservationist had put it here.

But, when he finally rests his voice and actually looks at the walls of his cold prison, he notices a few things. They’re sheer, for one. Rugged and clearly hand-dug, maybe by shovel, but too sheer for a human to climb back up. He’s at least eight feet down, for two. This hole feels… really deep, for an animal trap. There’s a feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it’s not just the ache of waiting until after dinner to check his traps.

He traps animals for a living, after all. And he can’t shake the suspicion that this trap is out here for him.

But he’s already wasted his voice, and while he’s out of the cutting wind, the cold is sinking to the lowest elevation – the bottom of his hole. His body is starting to ache despite his heavy coat. His eyes and neck hurt from looking up, and before long he’s curled at the bottom of the hole, trying to conserve whatever heat he can until morning.

Or– wait, what was that? His ears might be playing tricks on him, but that almost sounds like the crunch of snow underfoot. Is someone coming, or has it just been too quiet for too long?

He can’t risk losing the chance. He finds a little bit of his voice from behind chattering teeth, praying that whoever it is can hear him.

“H-h-he…hello? Is- is - is ssssomeone th-there? Help, p-pleasse… help…”
 


The trail Barclay was following was so cold it may well have turned to ice, but he was stubbornly set on following it anyway. He had to find his niece. He just had to.

He tried not to dwell on what he'd found, when he finally realized that his sister wasn’t picking up her phone - hadn’t been for months, why hadn’t he noticed? - and made his way back to her little cabin in Oregon. He tried not to blame himself, for being too wrapped up in his ‘journey of self discovery’ and too late to do anything except bury the bodies of his little sister and her stupid, brave, kind husband. He does anyway. He’s certainly not going to blame his niece, wherever she is - and she must be somewhere, she must be alive, because there were only two bodies, and neither of them were Adelyn.

But she wasn’t in the woods around their cabin, wasn’t in the town, wasn’t anywhere he could find her in two years of searching. Two years, and she was just a little girl, last he saw her. Could she even run this far? He wondered, day after day, stone after overturned stone, sacrificing more of himself to the Beast every week so that he might have sharper ears, a more sensitive nose, less time wasted on cooking his food.

There were so many cracks that one little girl could fall down and get lost in, in the unforgiving wilderness. Adelyn was so young… but she had her own Beast, he knew, that power that ran through the heart of their family tree, that kept them safe when the world turned against them. She was strong, even though she shouldn’t ever have been forced to be. She would survive, until he could find her. He just had to find her. He owed at least that much to his sister, though in truth he owed so much more than that, more than he could ever repay.

Those were the thoughts consuming his mind as Barclay roamed the woods, his nose turned to the air to scent for any sign of his wayward kin. His ears were pricked, now that he’d gotten far enough away from the lodge to stop picking up on the chatter from the residents there.

That was how a voice caught his attention, faint and raspy though it was. His heart didn’t have the chance to leap, his hopes staying right where they were; it wasn’t a girl’s voice, wasn’t the sweet patter that he remembered hearing in the background of so many phone calls, so long ago. He still moved towards the sound, wrapping his scarf around his face and pulling a hat from his pocket to shove down over his ears. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but hopefully it’d be enough to fool whatever lost hiker had gotten his foot stuck under a rock this time.

“Don’t worry, I hear ya,” he rumbled, voice low and a little hoarse but as kind as he could make it as he looked around for the man. He didn’t see him right away, looking at his eye level, but his eye caught the yawning hole off the side of the path and he made his way over. “Ah, how’d you wind up down there?”

He knelt, and extended his hand. His arms were long. He should be able to reach the man, if he stood up and put his arms above his head. Then he could haul him up, and get him out of this… weirdly sized pit trap.

 
There’s a shadow at the top of the hole, and a hoarse, gruff voice and a long arm reaching down to where, if he stands up completely, Eric can reach it. It’s a deep hole for one man to get out of, but the extended hand would be able to pull him completely free.

So why doesn’t he take it?

Because there’s something wrong here. It’s a godsent – or it’s just a little too convenient.

“Did… d-did you dig… Is th-thisss….”

The violent shivering keeps him from finishing his question, but he looks wide-eyed at the offered hand. It’s too dark to see it clearly, but he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. With the hand, with the voice, with the hole. He presses himself back a little, breathing shallow breaths of burning air. The realization that this is a hole made for him – made for a person, at least – has made him wary of the helpful stranger. Is this part of the ruse, he wants to ask. Is this a joke, or am I going to die here?

Or perhaps the stranger is really friendly. Perhaps the stranger does mean well. But he can’t shake the stupid feeling. He’s got to be sure. He’s got to be sure because whatever someone digging holes for people is doing, it can’t be good for the people inside. Any more than his snares are good for foxes.
 


“What?” Barclay couldn’t have heard that right. Maybe the hat was muffling his hearing more than he thought. Or maybe he was flashing some fur without realizing it?

He pulled his hand back a little, looking at it with squinted eyes. Nah, he hadn’t shifted it without noticing. He wasn’t that far gone. He looked back down at the man, still squinting (it worked well enough to hide his strange eyes, at this distance), and dropped his hand back down, wiggling it a little. “C’mon, man, you think I got the time to dig a well in winter? Who would?”

It isn’t a well, some part of his brain insisted, but he shushed it. Yeah, he knew, he’d seen enough animal traps to recognize one, and no one in their right mind covered a well with leaf litter and snow unless they really wanted to trip into it later. But that wasn’t going to help the guy not freeze to death in there.

“I mean, if you really wanna stay down there I guess I can’t stop ya, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” he added, shifting his knee uncertainly against the ground. There was a twig caught in the laces of his boot. He flicked it away, watching it spin off into the trees, and then turned his attention back to the stranger. “Whadda ya say? Ready to get out now?”

He didn’t really want to just leave the guy down there. But he was also painfully aware of the seconds ticking by, seconds he could be spending furthering his search and was instead wasting trying to convince this stranger to let him haul him out of a pit.

He didn’t know why he was bothering with this. The guy would probably run screaming if he saw Barclay’s uncovered face.

Maybe it was just because it was what his sister would want him to do. She’d always had more room in her heart than he did, more kindness to spare for the downtrodden. He tried to keep her legacy in mind, sometimes. Tried to imagine what she’d be doing, in his shoes. Sometimes it even worked; made the road a little less lonely, the world a shade kinder. Made him think maybe he was still doing the right thing.

 
“A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go–”

Lyle sang quietly as he trudged through the snow, hatchet over one shoulder. He was in high spirits. He’d only have to stay in this part of the woods with Aspen for a few more days if he’d been right about where to put his trap. His near-silent footfalls were in time with the song that was much too soft for human ears to pick up from very far away. The closer he got to his hole, the more excited he let himself get. Excitement went hand in hand with the cold ache in his bones that had nothing to do with his bare feet and light jacket, or the powder dusting of snow in his hair.

“We’ll catch a bear and trim his hair, and then we’ll let him go…”

“Whadda ya say? Ready to get out now?”

The soft footfalls stopped. That voice wasn’t in his hole, though it was far enough away that most people wouldn’t’ve noticed him in this thick fog. It gave him a second to think –

Eric took another second to think, to stare blearily at the hand reaching for him. He supposed that no, the man didn’t have any reason to dig this hole. He didn’t even seem to recognize it for what it was, so he wasn’t another trapper. A park ranger, maybe? But he would’ve announced himself. Maybe some hiker who had only wandered this way because he happened to hear Eric’s voice?

“I guess not…”

He would’ve cringed at the scratchy softness in his own voice if he was able. Instead, he reached up and with stiff fingers tried to get a grip on the stranger’s hand. Even if he did have bad intentions, it was better than dying of hypothermia at the bottom of a pit. At least Eric could fight a man with bad intentions.

Maybe. If he could shake off the stiffness, and the exhaustion.

LJ ducked to one side of his trail, posting his body behind a tree nearby. Between that and the fog, being noticed was almost impossible. It was hard to get a bead on the two humans near his hole; the air had shifted, and now he was upwind from them. He was glad they couldn’t scent him the way Aspen could, or even the deer he’d slowly been feeding her.

Just thinking about Aspen was getting his mouth watering, and he took a deep breath to calm himself. He had to catch something here, and he really tried to tell himself that two was better than one. He swallowed, and then focused on shifting his face and antlers away to hide the more inhuman features he’d taken on since he’d changed. He looked young, if a little rugged, and a little odd to anyone looking too hard, but he quietly set his axe against the tree with the lightest tap before calling out into the darkness, “Hello? Someone there?”
 


Finally. Barclay clasped the man’s hand firmly, his other hand coming down to anchor at his wrist, and pulled the man out. Just as simple as that. It was a tug, and a hoist, and then he got to his feet, and backed up, and helped the guy get his own feet under him before letting him go.

“Good man,” he said, patting him once on the shoulder before turning half-away from him. He adjusted his scarf, pulled his hat a little lower over his brow, patted at his pockets to check if he’d really left his sunglasses in the truck. He had. Ugh. Well, it was pretty dark. Maybe he wouldn’t notice, if he stayed turned away.

“You good to find your way back?” he asked, almost idly, really hoping the answer was yes but fearing it might be no. His attention was split, though. There was something in the trees, something that he couldn’t quite identify with his hearing muffled and his snout covered. He narrowed his eyes in the direction of the presence, scanning the treeline with suspicion.

Just as he was starting to think it might be some kind of lost animal, a slight figure stepped out from between the trees. It looked like a kid. A dirty, underdressed kid, but a child nonetheless. Barclay’s eyes blew wide, and he took a step closer, but the voice that called out was that of a little boy, not a little girl. He stopped, jammed his hands in his pockets, went back to squinting. “Over here. You alright? You lost?”

What was a kid doing out here? And why wasn’t he wearing any shoes? Barclay could feel his concern rising again, even though his heart stayed dropped. Part of him was already wondering who he might be able to turn this kid over to, if he turned out to be a runaway. Heavens knew it wasn’t the first one he’d found, in all his searchings, but he hadn’t been in this area long enough to know the local resources.

 
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He got their attention, and repressed the smile from his success. Two men. That was actually enough to distract him from thoughts of tiny little Aspen, who’d be just a snack for a while yet. But the shapes he made out in the dark were both tall and broad, though that might just be their coats. Still, even if they weren’t wide, they’d tide him over for a month at least unless he found something else in the meantime. He felt excitement chew through the aching cold. This could be good.

“I-I’m not sure – which way…” Lyle watched the second man – the one he’d originally caught, he had to assume, based on the stiffness and trembling in his voice, barely audible even to him, even this close. “C-can’t see… or move… too good.”

Not much fun to play with, then. He’d taken too long getting to the hole. Which made the second guy a stroke of good luck, a chance to get all the running out of his system and have a decent hunt. Meat was meat, though, and even if there was more of a fight than a chase, he had no doubt in his ability to take either of them down.

Well… he had some doubt. Just a moment, for just a moment, he sensed that something was wrong in the air between him and the man who could still talk. Some part of his instincts was bucking at the idea of approaching him, even as Lyle took a few soft steps forward, aware neither of them could probably see how light he was on the snow. He didn’t sink as far as his weight might suggest; moving on his toes and shifting his balance kept him light and fast, just in case either of them decided to bolt.

“No, not lost.” The youth in his voice tended to keep his prey offguard, so he didn’t change that. He just had to get close enough to get a good bead on how much of a fight they’d put up – and honestly, maybe to shove the half-frozen one back in the hole so he could come back for it later.

But first things first, he turned his clear blue gaze on the other man, the one all bundled up, the one that made him uneasy. “Sorry. I just thought I heard something. Is everyone okay? Anyone hurt?”
 


Danger, the Beast growled, stirring itself through his blood in flashes of candle-flame warmth. Barclay could feel his fur prickle beneath his coat, his hackles raising of their own accord. A growl was building in his throat, and he swallowed it down with some effort, but he couldn’t tamp down on the instinct that had him stepping between the man he’d dragged out of the hole and the kid stalking forward from the edge of the clearing.

There was something wrong with that kid. Seriously wrong, if he’d put the Beast on high alert just by approaching them. He couldn’t quite sniff out what, though. The Beast didn’t do specifics, not with this, and he couldn’t risk uncovering his snout without making new problems for himself. He couldn’t risk having to fight on two fronts.

“Tch.” The sound was sharp, landing just this side of annoyed. When he spoke, there was a new rumble underlying his voice, as though he had a bit of phlegm stuck in his throat. “Yeah, we’re alright over here. Why don’t you run along?”

While he spoke, his hands dipped into the pockets of his coat, pulling out the bits and bobs that he kept there and transferring them to his jean pockets. He had a flannel on over his shirt. He’d be fine without it. Better to get this stranger out of whatever mess this was going to turn into than get sentimental over a piece of fabric.

While the kid was still at a distance, he shrugged quickly out of his coat - the Beast growled a warning, and he knew it didn’t want him turning away, didn’t want his hands occupied, but he had to do it - and thrust the bundle at the stranger behind him, only barely turning his head to say, “Here. Put this on, it’ll warm you up.”

His fur kept him pretty well-insulated. The coat was just another layer against prying eyes, and a nod to the still-human parts of his torso and arms. He didn’t want to part with it, but he didn’t want to turn around to a half-frozen corpse even more. It was fine. It was dark. There was little chance of either of them seeing the fur peeking out between his collar and the rough knot of his scarf.

 
“Th-thanks…” There was a rustle of cloth as Eric started to pull the coat on, aware of the warmth and the faint doggy smell. He didn’t think much of it at first – why would he? Lots of people had dogs. Of course there’d be a dog smell if he had a dog. He didn’t look up as the other man stepped in between him and the kid, though his head was reeling. He couldn’t quite make out what was being said, just that it seemed a little aggressive. He reached up to put a hand on his savior’s shoulder, all suspicion about his intentions gone with the added warmth.

“H-hey, let off a l-l-little…”


Lyle needed this meal. He felt every instinct buckle as he took another step forward, despite the warning from the other man. The smell, the sound – both so off, and so familiar. Why was it so familiar? Did it matter? He could still tell that the man was edible, despite the growing canine scent. His stomach ached, his whole body ached, with more than just the weather.

“He sounds cold.” How far could a person see, again? Not that it mattered; just wasn’t as far as Lyle could, and anyone could hear the faint shiver in his voice. It’d given him an idea, and he unzipped his own coat and shed it. A sweater and a pair of blue jeans were all that were protecting him from the cold, though in the dark almost nobody could tell. He took another step forward, holding it out ahead of him. “Here – take mine, too. An extra layer might help.”

Another half step forward, despite the changes. His eyes stayed on the weaker one, the one that couldn’t run. Between his instincts and the hunger, even hunting seemed less appealing than just eating right now. Playing slightly gentler, to try to get close enough to go for the throat on either man, was going to be the only way to secure at least one, if not both, meals. He just had to be painstakingly patient about it.
 


“Rrr-” No. Bad dog. Barclay didn’t know why the Beast was freaking out, but it clearly needed to calm it down a notch, because that was just a kid. A scrawny little kid, at that. He could see him more clearly, now that he’d gotten a little closer, and it was casting a lot of doubt on what the Beast might be picking up on. Sure, he was… weird, and underdressed for the weather, and had just walked out of the dark between the trees like it was a garden stroll, but weren’t those things true for Barclay, too?

Ugh. He didn’t like this. But he didn’t want to make a scene.

Clearing his throat in one last attempt to keep the Beast from getting into his vocal chords, Barclay nodded, and held out his hand, still watching the kid warily. “Alright. Hand it over.”

The sleeves of his flannel were just a little too short, a consequence of how the fabric was drawn tight around his shoulders; when he held his arm out, there was a little ring of fur visible around his wrist, dark and gray and white contrasting against his tanned skin. He noticed, and made to un-cuff the end of it, distracted for a moment.

 
There was a growl. Eric jumped when he felt it, or heard it– it was so hard to tell the difference in the cold. He took his hand off the stranger’s arm, looking with wide eyes up at him. Then at the kid. Was it the kid? The boy – teen? – took a step closer, shedding his own coat. Was it Eric who was shivering, or the boy? Did it matter?

It mattered to LJ, at least. His sharp ears heard the canine noise in the dark. That was definitely a growl. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, and goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold crawled across his skin in a wave. He froze for a second, like a rabbit, at the sound. His blue eyes flashed up to the stranger, to try to meet his eyes as well, to try to see what that was. He stopped just as the man weakened by the cold, by his time in the hole, took a long shaky breath.

Took a step back.

Lyle tensed as he felt that moment. The exact moment when the other man changed from person to prey. When he seemed to realize the danger. Except he wasn’t looking at Lyle when the boy glanced at him. His eyes were wide, and focused on the man who’d saved him.

Two things happened. After the fact, Lyle wouldn’t be able to say which happened first, the two bodies moving so close together after that instant of man-to-prey, boy-to-predator. The moment when fear flooded both freezing bodies with adrenaline. A moment of condemnation, in any other circumstance.

The man broke with a wheezing squeak, and turned, and ran –

– and the boy released his coat, leaving it in the canine stranger’s hands, with every intention of chasing.
 
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