Sleepy Dormouse

You reached the perimeter of the clearing and pushed forward still, thick brambles of the wood curving outward, welcoming you in and clearing a path of stardust, iridescent in the moonlight. Deeper into the forest you went, the pad of your footfalls against the soil growing louder and then louder still, like the rhythmic strike of palms against a goblet drum. By the time you reached the source of the sound you felt the beat under your skin, thundering through the networks of sinew and nerves that kept you upright and pushing forward. The path opened into another glade, this one smaller and hugged tight by a ring of willow trees.

There was no drum to be found, though—in fact, the only other apparition in the meadow was that of a wolf before you.

Five years old and only knowing a life of brackish water pounding against steep cliffs and secret, sandy coves, you'd no reason to be able to identify the beast before you, and yet you were certain. Coat of lustrous gold by the light of the moon, it merely blinked its bleary, crimson eyes as you approached, none too cautious as you should have been. All the sound around you—the drumming, the crickets, the tree frogs, the whispers of the wind—quieted with the presence of the wolf. All that remained was the gentle sigh of breath from your new companion, who you knew, somehow, was just that.

But as you finally were close enough to feel the puff of heat with each breath from the wolf’s snout, you found it to be no wolf at all; you sunk your fingers into the thick, silky fur only to watch as feathered, inky wings unfurled to a great height from either side of the creature’s spine. The darkness cradled you then—downy feathers curling into a shield above your head as you settled between the maw and the chest of the wild thing, tame as a house cat in your presence.

You felt the beat of a heart and a rumbling against your back as you curled into its warmth. Your eyes grew heavy again, lulled by the chuff of the wolf that deepened with every stroke of your fingers through its coat. You whimpered, fighting against the pull of the inevitable day and wanting to stay here, if only a little longer.

“Not yet,” you heard, unsure even now if the beast had spoken the words or imparted them onto you, raspy and deep, “but soon.”

.

..

…

The absence of light in the sky and the knowledge that it was a Saturday meant little to you as you dragged yourself from the warmth of your sheets. Truthfully, you rarely needed an alarm clock these days—not when the smell of baking sourdough dutifully wafted up through your apartment each morning.

You slid your feet into your slippers, jamming them a little further inside on each trudging step to the bathroom. Toes curling into the fleece lining, you surveyed the damage you'd done in your sleep—hair in varying states of matted disarray around your head, and deep, darkened indents on one side of your face. You'd slept like the dead—dreams muted and indistinct, as they always had been. All except for that one.

No amount of taming could fix the rat's nest atop your head, but you tried anyway—ignoring the snag of knots as you forced every strand you could into some semblance of order, tight and secure on the crown of your head. You brushed your teeth and washed your face on autopilot, your mind already downstairs and 12 steps ahead.

Still in your slippers, each wooden step creaked its loving good morning to you until you reached the landing, shoving at the heavy wooden door with both hands, instantly warming at the sight revealed to you behind it.

Aiya stood at the great brick oven, more inside of it than not as she poked and prodded at the smoldering logs toward its opposite end. The smell of yeast and heat hit you like a wave as it permeated its way into every fiber of your being. It didn't matter that it was 5:30 in the morning—no one was as lucky as you in this moment.

"You'll get stuck one of these days."

Aiya swore, backing carefully out of the mouth of the oven to face you fully, her dark eyes already narrowed into a glare.

"You scared the hell out of me. Walk heavier."

You grinned, nudging her with your shoulder as you moved past her, deeper into the kitchen. Butcher's block already floured, thanks to your counterpart.

"We don't have any delivery orders today, yeah?"

"Nope," Aiya called, still fighting with the flames inside its brick container, "just a regular ol' baking day."

You hummed, scanning over the recipe cards pinned to the drywall in front of you—all recipes you'd sourced from years of harassing the community grandmothers and scouring local thrift stores. You settled on one of your favorites: a simple rye loaf, earthy and malty and beautifully sour. It was a best seller for a reason.

"I didn't hear you get up this morning," you murmured, grabbing the light rye flour off the wooden shelf above your head.

Aiya snorted, resting the metal poker against the brick of the oven and making her way toward you. "I don't know how you could've. I could've jumped on you from the top rope and you'd have slept through it."

She bumped her hip into yours, a silent request to shift so she could open the cooler below you, under the counter top. You did this dance every morning—the small size of the kitchen inconsequential to the knowledge of being so in synch with each other.

Despite feeling as if you'd known her in another life, Aiya had only entered this one in its second half, with you serendipitously knocking her clean off her feet at an early morning farmers' market, not quite awake and distracted by the merchant grinding flour in a portable mill. She'd been focused on the same thing, and your shared love of baking started a friendship that quickly became inseparable.

The decision to open a bakery came from an evening of drunken idealism—giggling and plotting the rest of your lives together, sighing over a possibility that felt too far fetched, even with the wine.

"I mean," you'd started, sitting back into the threadbare cushions of the couch you'd hauled in off the sidewalk a few years before, back when you'd moved her into your spare bedroom, deciding you needed it filled with her light. "We could just. Do it?"

Aiya snorted into her glass, whining when red splashed back in her face. "Damn. Right in the eye."

"I mean, why not?" you pressed, feeling emboldened, "the space downstairs is open. And our credit is...good enough? For a loan?"

Aiya ran a sleeve covered hand over her face, blinking bleary eyes at you in the dim of your living room. "I'm with you. I probably shouldn't be? But I am."

The rest were pages in your history—some less fondly remembered than others, but ultimately, you opened your bakery, right below your shared apartment overlooking the sea. It was dreamy, a thing you never could've imagined would turn into your reality. But here you were.

So you spent your mornings like this—waking up to the smell of rising bread, covered in flour and sweat before the sun came up. Over the years you'd become something of a staple in the community, and you were grateful for the assurance that your regulars would show up dutifully every time you flipped the little sign to 'open'.

Three hours later, you had a tray full of warm, oval shaped loaves to put on their wooden display shelves—all lined up like books in a library behind the serving counter. You placed them on their racks just as the morning sun streamed in through the front windows—your favorite part of the morning.

"Hana coming in this morning?" you called over your shoulder, making your way toward the front door to flip the sign and open for the day.

"Think so," Aiya made her way out to the front to join you, untying her apron and hanging it on the hook next to yours. The saloon style doors clanged shut behind her—a sound you never got tired of hearing. It reminded you of your great grandmother's kitchen.

Hana was Aiya's kid sister—she'd gotten into some trouble in the last few months, and you'd offered her a part-time job manning the counter to keep her on the straight and narrow. To your surprise, she was really good at it. Her grades came up shortly after she'd started, and although you'd given her the option, she kept coming back.

You returned behind the counter, adjusting and readjusting the wall of breads while Aiya filled the pastry cooler. The bell of the door rang out, signaling the start of the day.

"Good morning!" you called over your shoulder, pulling the metal cooking racks out from under your now-cooled rye loaves. "How are y—"

Turning around to face your first customer, your grip went slack—your racks clattering to the floor. You'd barely registered the pain of one bouncing off your slipper-clad toes, because in your doorway was your wolf—looking just as astounded to see you.

"What the—you good?"

Aiya bent down to pick up the racks, returning them to your still outstretched hands. She looked from you, to your visitor, who was a—man. A man, standing there before you, his definitely human hands shoved inside jean pockets that human people with human limbs wore. But—you knew.

It was his eyes, first—such an unusual shade of carmine that somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world to you. But then you noticed the hair—shooting out in all directions in the most familiar shade of gold—the exact shade of your wolf. It was him—it had to be—

You shook your head—this was insane.

"Sorry about that," you chuckled, fighting to shake off the momentary lapse in reality that you had to have just experienced, "I, um—yeah. What can I get you?"

The man in front of you blinked—wide, achingly familiar eyes still displaying the shell-shock that you felt.

"Just a—uh. Rye."

You fought through the second blow to your nerves, fingers stabbing at the register screen too hard, because—his voice. It was the voice, the one you'd carried inside your heart for the last 23 years.

You rang him up on autopilot, wrapping the loaf in its crinkly brown paper, your mind screaming at you not to drop it as you handed it over the counter. You sucked in a breath through your teeth as his fingertips brushed yours—it was all you could do not to wrench your hand back like you'd been burned. You forced a smile, though you didn't have to see your face to know it wasn't convincing.

"Thank you," you compelled yourself to say, "have a good one."

He nodded, turning swiftly on his heels. The bell chimed as the door swung shut behind him—giving you permission to slump against the counter, forehead to the wood as you fought for control over your own heart rate.

"What," Aiya drawled, peeking out from behind the kitchen doors, "was that all about?"

.

..

...

You sighed, flipping the door sign to 'closed'. You felt no satisfaction in hearing the lock click—not after this morning.

You'd never told Aiya about the dream—because why would you have? Kids had weird dreams—that was like, the cornerstone of being a kid, probably. It was weird that you had fixated on it, all these years. You were pretty sure you shouldn't have been able to remember it at all, with what stage of development your brain had been in, much less with such aching clarity.

Trudging back up the stairs to your apartment, you only half-heard the gist of Aiya's chittering—undeterred by your refusal to tell her what had affected you so suddenly this morning, and unconvinced by your half-true excuse of "I thought I knew him from somewhere". Only when you'd gone nonverbal did she drop it, but you had a hunch that her silence was strategic—it would come up again, undoubtedly.

You crawled into bed far earlier than appropriate, but you were wiped—you'd wracked your brain longer today than you ever had, trying to identify the meaning in all of this. The back and forth of okay but that was totally the wolf—bird—thing that visited me in my sleep when I was five, to at what point should I start considering psychiatric help was exhausting and giving you a bit of whiplash. Maybe there was no meaning—maybe your budding subconscious had leant into its creativity when you were small, and now the universe had just randomly dropped the human embodiment of the thing that had stuck with you for the last two decades at your doorstep.

You didn't believe that, though—not if you were really honest with yourself. You had—for better or worse—not been hardened by the state of being a human trying to forge a life in an unforgiving world, and you still believed that things happened for a reason. Which did not actually feel like a good quality to possess in this moment, because normal, jaded people would probably not sit up in bed and fixate on if their customer was actually a mystical creature. But here you were.

You reached for your nightstand—relying on muscle memory more than sight to seek out the thing that had always served to calm your racing mind. Tattered from over the years and embarrassingly obvious now, your hand curls around the belly of your stuffed dog—it's matted fur dulled to a dusty beige. It had been your first stuffed animal when you were born, and posed a striking resemblance to your wolf, though you supposed you could see him in anything if you tried hard enough, with your serendipity-loving mush brain.

Window open, the ocean breeze brought in a salty draft that flirted with your curtains and tickled your face. Tugging on a pointed ear, your eyes drifted closed as you drew in breath after deep breath, settling deeper into your bed. Crushed velvet under the pad of your thumb, you thought of the sound of the forest again—and what it would feel like to step onto that mossy ground now.

.

..

...

You were no more desensitized to his presence when he came back.

In the kitchen, you heard the bell clink off the door as it swung open.

You stiffened, like instead of the outside breeze something like knowing curled at your skin and raised goosebumps.

"Well hi there, stranger." You could hear the shit-eating grin on Aiya's face even behind the wall. "What'll it be today?"

Despite all of your brain's attempts to keep your feet firmly planted where they were, they carried you out to the register anyway, feeling nothing but especially foolish at the way you had no real reason to be out there.

"Good morning," you told him, voice quiet and smile still a little wobbly, but mostly recovered this time.

He nodded at you, a clipped thing that should've felt rude but only served to flip your stomach.

Aiya made no attempt to disguised the way she openly gawked at you both, curiosity morphing into something plotting as she plopped another rye loaf into a bag, dropped it on the counter, and walked back into the kitchen without a word. Leaving you and your stranger in silence.

It was only a minute before it felt oppressive. "I haven't seen you in before this week," a carefully worded half-truth, "you new to the area?"

He let out a grunt that you took as an affirmative. "New to the coast."

You hummed, trying to feign nonchalance, typing nonsense numbers into the screen in front of you just to have a reason not to look at him.

"Well," you smiled with what you were certain was too much teeth, sliding the bag toward him, "welcome to town."

"This your place?" he asked, careful to wait until your hands were off of it to reach for it this time.

Your smile was genuine this time. "Yeah. Mine and Aiya's, for a few years now." You told him your name, and only the important points of the shop's back story. "It's my baby. I'm always grateful when new folks find it."

You weren't sure if the drop in his shoulders was a trick of the light. "S'good," he muttered, nodding to the bag in front of him. The small praise curled around your heart.

"I appreciate that. What's your name?"

Florid eyes met your own, then, and their hardness should've been off-putting. Should've been.

"Katsuki," he said softly, breaking your gaze to reach into his pocket and drop a few bills into your tip jar.

"Well thanks, Katsuki," you suddenly felt a little bashful about having the jar at all, "I'll see you soon?"

He was nearly turned around by the time you saw him nod, here and then gone like he'd been the time before.

The saloon door creaked behind you - and you knew your best friend had been pressed against it for the entirety of that conversation.

"Okay," she started, huddling next to you, head titled toward yours conspiratorially, "you have got to tell me what's going on with him."

You sighed, looking around the shop. Empty for now, but there was no way to tell her any of what you were feeling without sounding insane, so there was no such thing as too little privacy.

"C'mon," you muttered, towing her by the elbow into the kitchen, all the way to the back wall.

"Out with it," she grinned, leaning against the counter and not worried at all about the flour now coating the underside of her sleeve.

So you told her. All of the details about the original dream from so long ago — the wolf, it's brilliant coat and inky feathers. The voice you heard, the eyes you now saw peering back at you each time Katsuki made an appearance. There was no stopping the heat that crawled up your neck as you explained your suspicions.

"I feel nuts," you groaned, leaning back against the counter, face in your hands. "This is nuts, right?"

Aiya was oddly silent as she considered it. A minute passed — and another before you started to squirm.

"I mean..." she mumbled, clearly still sliding pieces together in her mind. Her eyes snapped back to yours, bright. "It is. Definitely. But I'm inclined to believe you."

"I am not at all surprised by that."

"Hey," she chided, reaching over to shove at you, "I'm just saying. Stranger things have happened. Not to me. Or anyone I know. But I'm sure they have."

Her rambling made you laugh. She had such a way of telling you you were insane and affirming your insanity all at once.

"He's handsome, though," she grinned at you, far too knowing, "eh?"

"Don't you have something to do?" Groaning, you turned away from her, cheeks burning and unnecessarily grabbing stray pieces of parchment paper off the counter. She snorted, reaching out to squeeze your hip before walking back out to the register.

You let out a breath, sagging against the butcher block. Handsome, yes — unnervingly so.

"Dude!" Aiya screeched, startling you out of your commiserating, "He left like—" a pause, "thirty dollars in here!"

.

..

...

Katsuki returned with some regularity, after that. It was a good two months before you stopped sweating just watching him walk through the door. Longer still to stop the incessant hammer of your heart when you spoke to him.

Even through your nerves, you learned about him. He'd grown up around the deciduous forests inland (a tidbit of information that hit your stomach like a bomb), playing in streams and catching tree frogs. He'd grown up and been trained as a firefighter—eight months ago, he'd come to the coast to complete an emergency medicine certificate, and had decided to stick around.

"So like," you sipped at your tea, letting the warmth settle the lingering shakiness you'd felt since you (very bravely) joined him at his table during a lull between customers, "ambulance rides, IVs, all that?"

He'd taken to ordering something other than rye bread over the last few weeks. It could've had something to do with the way Aiya had started not-so-politely pestering him to order from the brunch menu on Saturday mornings. Until a couple months ago, you did not have a brunch menu.

He shook his head, leaning back in his seat. You felt your gaze slipping to the strain of his black t-shirt against his chest, but the mortification at getting caught kept it trained on his face. Not a bad alternative.

"S'what happens before the ambulance gets there. The idea is to station us at checkpoints in national parks, protected forest areas — places where help ain't as fast to get there. Some asshole ashes a cigarette and starts a forest fire — we go haul his ass outta there and treat the life-threatening stuff so that he's stabilized enough to be transported."

It was the most you'd ever heard him speak in one go, and the most animated you'd seen him to boot. To imagine him out there saving lives sent a wicked little thrill up your spine that you fought hard to ignore.

You brushed the pad of your finger over the rim of your mug, considering it. "So why fire?"

He shrugged, turning his gaze from you to something out the window, squinting toward the coast in the distance. The silence stretched on long enough that you started to fear you'd struck a nerve.

"My old man," he said finally, quieter than before. You watched as he pushed his hands into his pockets, shoulders raised slightly, like he meant to protect himself from a threat that hadn't materialized yet. "Our house caught fire when I was a kid. Electrical. By the time the smoke detector went off, the whole place was burning. Got me and mom out, but," he drew in a breath, held it. You found yourself mirroring him. "Yeah. No good."

You let out the breath and with it went all of the air in the room. You followed his gaze out, down to the ocean, pressing your palm to the ache in your chest.

"You must be proud," you told him, because it felt marginally better than something so meaningless as an apology for such a painful burden to carry.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him puff up a little at that. He hummed, a low, clipped thing. Cleared his throat.

"It's cool that you have a path that's so meaningful to you," you offered, trying to take away some of the strain of the last few minutes. "I always thought I'd be a librarian."

You watched him deflate, watched the wall come down just a hair, as he turned back to you. "What happened?"

You shrugged, taking another sip from your mug. "I hated the research part. Which turns out, is like...the whole part."

That earned you a rare and incredibly disarming hint of a smirk. It felt like Christmas.

"I just like to read. I like storytelling." You tilted your head toward the direction of the street outside. "There was a bookstore I worked in before we bought this place. This little old lady owned it, and when she died, I asked her husband if I could continue to run it." You smiled, drawn into the memory. "She'd told him under no circumstances was he to let me run the store."

Katsuki's eyebrows knitted together, and it was almost boyish enough to feel like a sucker punch to the gut. "Why?"

"She'd heard me talk about baking. She knew that was where my heart was." You rubbed a watermark off the side of your mug with your thumb — your turn to feel a little too vulnerable. "I would've been content there, but she wanted me to have more. No sense in settling for contentment when all I really needed was a kick in the ass to have what I actually wanted."

"I miss her," you said, nearly a whisper, "She taught me a lot. I didn't have someone like that until I met her."

Katsuki was quiet again, his default setting, watching you fiddle with your tea and considering what you'd said.

"Husband still around?"

"Yeah, actually," you grinned at him, relieved to be back in less unguarded territory, "he lives down the street. Hana takes him dinner rolls every Monday." You nodded toward the girl stationed at the counter, who was very obviously trying to eavesdrop unnoticed.

"He calls me every few days. He says he's lonely," you chuckled, shaking your head, "he's not. He's a busybody and he wants to gossip about the neighbors' yappy dog that pees in his yard."

Katsuki let out a surprised little laugh at that — a soft, raspy thing that hit your ears with such devastating sweetness that you weren't sure you could look at him. Blessedly, he looked down at his phone and cursed.

"Thanks for chatting with me," you told him, watching him wrap up the remaining half of whatever egg sandwich Aiya had forced on him this morning and stand from his seat.

He nodded, turning to leave, but paused halfway to the first step. Turning back to you, he said, "Nonfiction or fiction."

Smiling, you tilted your head to the side, confused and amused and assuming his statement to be a question. "Fiction. Not even close."

Nodding again, as serious as if you'd told him an answer far more grave than you had. Without a word, he left — the clang of the door behind him landing a little more melancholy on your heart than you thought it should. You watched him walk across the street — all roping muscle and broad, sure strides — until he was out of sight.

You shook your head in a feeble attempt to dislodge that last part, tipping back to drain the last of your tea before getting up to check on today's sandwich bread — a loaf that was notoriously difficult to bake to the correct rise and texture.

"I would say you're down bad," Hana drawled, leaning over the counter with her chin in her hand, "but that would pale in comparison to what I just watched."

"Shut it," you tried to be stern, but to suppress the flush was impossible. "Go get a bag ready for your deliveries."

She rolled her eyes, clearly not taking you seriously. You shook your head, unable to stop the smile pulling at the corners of your mouth as you walked back into the kitchen.

"Down atrocious, maybe," you heard her mutter behind you, "Dreadful? No. Down abominable."

"Oh my god, goodbye Hana," you groaned, grinning still at the sound of her answering cackle.

Down abominable, indeed.

.

..

...

A week later, you’d trudged down the steps in your slippers to pull the mail from the box, starting when your fingertips met something harder than you were expecting. Inside a careful wrapping of brown paper was a hard copy of a book you hadn’t read, but been eyeing in the shop down the road. A story about a baker and the mystical creature she befriends, that leads her on the journey of a lifetime. You shook your head, tucking the book under your arm and trudging back up the steps, a feeling blooming in your chest, expanding with every step.

.

..

…

You warmed at the sight of the caller ID on the phone, too near to closing to answer had it been anyone else.

"Well hello, little bear. How are you?"

You smiled at the nickname — you'd no idea how the couple had landed on it, but it'd stuck.

"I'm good, Jiji. How are you? You still having trouble with that little guy across the street?"

"Oh, he's just a nightmare. But that's not why I'm calling you."

You grinned, already anticipating this week's gossip. "Oh?"

"Now why did that little girl come down here and tell me you had a boyfriend before you did?"

Hana. That nosy little witch.

"I don't know why she would've done that, Ji," landline caught between your cheek and your shoulder, you were already drafting a sternly-worded text to Hana, "because I don't have a boyfriend."

"You might as well have a husband with how much he seems to be up in that shop with you."

You sighed, abandoning your ranting message for the moment only to pinch at the bridge of your nose. "You sure seem to know a lot about him."

His gravelly chuckle made you smile. "You like him, honey?"

"I do, Jiji," you said earnestly, warmed by the old man's concern. "He's good people."

"Well you'd better not settle for anything less than the best, you hear me?"

You swallowed, made difficult by the sudden onslaught of emotion. "Yes, sir."

"You know, when Kimina and I were dating, I got her one hundred roses and took her out on a canoe ride during sunset. That's where we fell in love."

"Is that so?" You choked back a snicker, remembering a very different version of events told by Kimina that ended in several bee stings and a capsized canoe.

"Oh yes, I was quite the Casanova. Anyway, did I tell you about the squirrel that keeps breaking into my bird feeder?"

You let Jiji drone on about his squirrel, thinking only about this feeling in your chest that seemed to grow with each passing day. The weight of it was astonishing and yet you knew you could — wanted to — carry it.

Was it such a bad thing? You couldn’t believe it was. You’d never shied away from a challenge, but this didn’t feel like that. It felt inevitable, like all you had to do was stand still and let it happen.

Like the sea, you'd let it swell up, spill over. There was no fear now — only the inevitable push and pull between you and this man that had both walked right into your life and been there the whole time.

.

..

...

The ring of the front door bell caught your attention — surprised that it was unlocked, and not at all surprised at who was standing underneath of it.

"Good morning, Katsuki."

He grunted his own greeting, setting down a to-go cup on the counter in front of you, only marked with your first initial, like it'd been too much for him to tell the barista your full name. This man.

You murmured your thanks and watched him linger, absolutely thrilled by the space he took up in your little bakery. "I'm actually going to close today," you told him between sips, "Aiya has to take Hana to get a physical, so it'll just be me, and I figured I'd take advantage of an off day."

He blinked, processing, and then his eyebrows pinched together something terrible. "You just leave your shit unlocked?" You watched him bristle, clearly embarrassed that he'd strolled in without knowing you were closed.

"You'd have to talk to Aiya about that," you told him, amused and not at all rising to the bait.

You let him flounder for a little bit — clearly fighting the urge to bolt. It was fascinating to watch him be ruffled by you, of all people.

"Actually," you offered, finally taking pity on him, "I thought I might go down to the beach today. Nice as it is out. Would you like to join me?"

His begrudging acceptance was not nearly as biting as it would've been had his face not mirrored the color of his irises.

You leave the bakery behind you (after locking up, at the not-so-polite request of Katsuki) and start the trek down the roadway to the beach, loose stones crunching and rolling under your feet. Late spring brought with it a cool breeze to dim the heat of the sun — your favorite time of year to throw on a big knit and sneak down to poke around in tide pools during slower days. You'd brought a blanket and some sandwiches for lunch — both of which Katsuki promptly snatched away from you and insisted on carrying, even though it was only a ten minute walk to the shore.

Which was convenient, because the second you stepped onto the softer silt that gave way to the ocean, you were off like a shot — cackling like a lunatic at the 'what in the fuck—" behind you under you couldn't hear it anymore, sweater torn off and discarded somewhere behind you. You ran toward the water until it caught you — wrapping around your shins, your thighs, and finally swallowing you whole as you dove in.

The sea was cold enough to steal the breath from your lungs and lock up your muscles, but you were used to it. Each swell picked you up and set you back down gently, almost enough to be lulled into some catatonic state of security had you not lived here all of your life and known acutely of the violence the ocean was capable of. But there were no grudges to be held. The ocean could never be expected to be anything but herself.

"Don't ever be foolish enough to settle for someone who believes you can be tamed," Kimina had told you, arm in arm as you walked down the beach all of those years ago.

"Jiji hasn't tamed you?" you'd asked, not quite knowing if she was being serious.

"God, no. That man couldn't tame a chihuahua, much less a woman. Listen to me," she'd pulled you to a stop then — surprisingly strong for how brittle she was — and looked you straight in the face, "There is something wild inside of you. You don't give that to anyone — it is yours. When a man tries to take from that wild — and he will — you let it out. It will keep you safe until the right someone comes along and can live in harmony with it."

You'd blinked — not wholly surprised by the impromptu lecture, because Kiminia was prone to those, but they weren't usually as...on the nose. Her usual disquisitions were a little harder to interpret — this one was not.

She'd looked at you expectantly. "Okay," you'd said, still a little bewildered, "I understand."

Satisfied, she'd gone on like she hadn't said a word, chattering instead about that year's prediction of the best vegetables to plant in raised gardens. You'd half-listened, mostly focused on the push and pull of the water along the shore. Heeding Kimina's warning — learning more than you thought you would when you'd agreed to walk with her that day.

You let the ocean hold you in it's embrace until the cold reached your bones and became less than tolerable. You paddled back, wringing your shorts and tank top out as best you could once you could stand and walk back in.

Katsuki stood at the water's edge, expression entirely unreadable but waiting for you nonetheless. You walked until your chest was only a few inches from his. He squinted at you, mouth twisted in some sort of scowl. Your smile was slow to spread, but once it started, you couldn't stop it.

He clicked his tongue, clearly trying to decide what in the world was wrong with you. "You gotta death wish?"

"Mhm-mhm," your cheeks ached with the grin that wouldn't go away for anything.

"You gonna walk around like a wet cat for the rest of the day?"

"There's a towel rolled up in the blanket."

"Course there is."

You followed him back to where he'd dropped your stuff — surprisingly orderly for having just watched you dive into the freezing ocean on a whim. You filed that one away for later.

While Katsuki stooped down to rummage through your bag, you worked on wringing your hair out — curls coated in brine and sand, a problem for later tonight. You twisted it tight enough to squeeze the water out let it fall back down over your shoulders.

Then it was dark — your towel thrown over your head. You squawked, caught of guard, and tried to bat it away; but your protests died out the second you felt a new pressure.

Separated by the towel, you felt his hands ghost over your shoulders, down the length of your arms, in between your fingers. You'd never been so aware of your body before that moment — and only what he'd touched. A floating torso in the middle of the beach.

You let him preen you, careful not to breathe for fear that you'd scare him off. Only when he stopped and stepped back did you snap out of it enough to pop your head out from under the towel.

He was quiet for a moment, studying you, and then —

"You look crazy."

You whipped the towel at him then, screeching something absurd at him if only to get him to laugh. But you were warm. Despite the bone-chilling water and the breeze, everything was warm.

Pulling your sweater back over your head, you settled in next to him on a flat rock, heated by the setting sun. You pulled your knees to your chest, resting your chin on the flat of them while you watched the tide come in.

The silence was an amicable one, punctuated only by the static current you felt between your bodies, and the way you fought the urge to scoot closer to him.

Until the right someone comes along and can live in harmony with it.

And there it was again — that searing, unignorable feeling that you'd been here before. Not the beach, but the closeness. The silent safety.

"Can I share something with you?" You asked as the sun began to dip below the horizon, bathing everything in a deep coral.

He hummed — your long-learned interpretation of his permission. He didn't look at you, but you knew he was listening.

You took a deep breath. "When I was a kid, I had this dream. It was the strangest thing — I was walking through this forest, and I'd never seen it before, but it was like I knew where I was going. I walked on for a while until I walked into this sort of clearing. And there was this giant wolf. It was the most striking thing with these really intense eyes."

You could've sworn you felt Katsuki tense beside you. "And again, strange, because I just walked right up to the thing. And like, plopped down in its...whatever the equivalent to a lap is on a wolf."

"And I didn't want to leave," you murmured, "it was so devastating. I felt myself start to wake up and just. Fought the hell out of it. But wolf tried to calm me down. It said, 'not yet, but soon.' And that was the end of it. I never had that dream again, but I never forgot about it."

"This is the part that's really, really weird," you warned him, forcing out a little laugh to dispel your nerves. "You walked into the shop for the first time, and it was the most jarring thing because you looked exactly like the wolf. Same eyes, same hair color. Freaky, but like, coincidences are a thing."

"But then you spoke. And it was the same voice I'd heard in the dream. And I just...haven't been able to figure that one out."

Immediately the silence was crushing, the regret of mentioning it at all pressing, pressing, pressing, until you had to say something to get it to dissipate.

"It was just a weird thing, I think—"

"You were a rabbit."

You balked, not quite believing your ears. "What did you say?"

"In my dream," if you hadn't been as focused as you were on every word out of his mouth, you might not have even heard him, "you were a rabbit."

There was not a thought you could possibly voice as a follow up to that.

"...huh," is what you settled on, wholly unable to get your brain to catch up.

"It was a beach. Never’d even seen a beach, and there I was," he was incredibly matter-of-fact about it, like it wasn't shredding your insides to know that you'd both carried this thing the entire time.

"The first time I heard ya talk I thought someone was playing some sick joke on me," he murmured. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him turn his head to look down at you. "I cancelled my train ticket back home that day."

You nearly snapped your neck with the force you whipped around to look at him with. "You did what?"

"I know," he said, with a smile that gored you straight through the heart. "I called mom 'cause I thought I was losing it. But she knew about the dream. She just said 'dad sent you there."

Hand over your heart to keep it where it was, the other reaching out to tether you to something, the tears came hard and fast — blurring the image of the man beside you. Your tether was him — the strength rippling through his forearm under your fingertips, but the only thing you could feel was the warmth. His skin, the calloused palm he settled over your own.

"I watched you run into that freezing fuckin' ocean like a psychopath and that was it. I knew exactly who y'were to me," you felt him shrug with a nonchalance you weren't sure you'd ever feel again. "There was nothing I could do."

"Oh," you choked, snotty and gross and suddenly indignant, "you pick right now to say the most romantic thing I've ever heard anyone say in my life?"

His head fell back with a laugh that burned through you. He didn't give you any room to think too hard about it — he just pulled you under his arm, into his chest. Your temple rested over his heartbeat like you'd been here lifetimes before.

"This is crazy," you whispered, quiet in the dark, held by the ache in your heart suddenly soothed by him.

"Yeah."

You fell back into the silence easily — thoughts fragmented and dull, except for one. You sat up, seeking his outline in the fleeting light.

"Where have you been staying?"

He looked away from you, choosing now to suddenly get sheepish. "Hotel."

"Wha — you've been living in a hotel for this long?"

His silence was more than telling.

"Jesus Christ, Katsuki," shaking your head, you gathered your things, balled up bigger than you in your arms and glaring at him. "C'mon then."

He followed you without a word, his amusement a tangible thing. You muttered to yourself the entire way home, absolutely incredulous.

You shoved your key into the lock, pausing to turn over your shoulder, pushing the door open.

"And what would you have done if I hadn't just spilled my guts to you like that? Live in that room permanently? That is so —"

"Ahem."

You froze, turning slowly to meet Aiya's gaze at the top of the steps. Her and her unbearable grin.

"Were you right?"

You looked at her, over your shoulder to Katsuki, and back again. "I was."

She hummed, her smile growing as she started down the steps. You moved to let her pass, but she stopped on the last step, opening her mouth and—

"Say goodbye to your balls, Katsuki."

Your jaw dropped, all indignancy stolen quickly by the sound of Katsuki's howl behind you. The sight of him nearly doubled over doused your fire immediately.

"Yeah, yeah," you rolled your eyes, shoving into Aiya with half-hearted strength, sending her into the wall with your shoulder. "Bye, whatever, love you, bye."

The door clicking behind her cut off her giggling and draped you in quiet. From your spot on the step, you stood eye to eye with him, and the nerves came back like a freight train.

"Alright, let's—"

He caught you before you could turn away — his fingers warm as they circled your elbow. It happened in slow motion — the drag of his fingertips up to your shoulder, his approach, the slide of his palm up the side of your neck, grip tangled and gentle in your curls, the breath you fought to drag into your lungs, the brush of his nose against your own —

"Please," he murmured, lips nearly brushing yours. It was all you could do not to unhinge your jaw and swallow him whole.

You settled for this — both hands fisted in his t-shirt, dragging him the extra centimeter to you, swallowing such achingly beautiful sounds he made. The glide of his lips over yours felt holy, felt like a firecracker detonating under your skin, felt more necessary than air —

He held you to him by the back of your neck and something about it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

This is what we are, you thought, tugging his bottom lip between your teeth just to hear the rumbling groan he'd give you in return, this is what we were always going to be.

It was soft until it wasn't, and then it was something entirely animal. His kiss was bruising, and you could only take — more of his affection, more of this feeling, more of him —

"Upstairs," you whispered against his mouth, breathy and pleading —

In another reality with far less urgency he probably would've let you at least walk up the steps yourself, but you couldn't find it in your heart to mind too much when he hauled you into his arms and up them himself, choosing to occupy yourself instead by using the new angle to your advantage — fingers hooked under his jaw, dragging his mouth back up to you, him going willingly.

Somehow he found his footing on the landing and promptly sought out the nearest soft-ish surface. When he found the couch, you braced yourself to be deposited on the cushions — to have him over you, to be contorted to his whims, already the panic singed up your spine —

It didn’t happen.

His back hit the couch and his hands never left you, looking up at you all flushed and breathing heavy and adoring, like you’d never done a wrong thing in your life —

Oh. Oh.

The realization took the wind from your sails and replaced it with a sort of molten pleasure, like a marionette pushing and pulling you toward him, chest to chest, fingertips prying and searching, needing to be so much closer than you physically could’ve been.

His hands were gentle dragging up your back, under your shirt. His lips ghosted across your jaw and down your throat, kisses syrupy and disarmingly affectionate.

But there was something wild in you, after all. And it called to him louder than you’d ever heard of it.

“I want to touch you,” you told him, slurred against the onslaught of his mouth, “I don’t want to be gentle.”

The thrill you felt at the shiver that pulled from him was unimaginable. More still at the whimpered “please” against your lips. Like a crackling whip, it set something free in you — and it was all the permission you needed to tear into him like you needed to.

His hair tickled your palm as the dulled ends brushed against it. You curled your fingers into it, grabbing a fistful and pulling back hard until he could only stare up at you, eyes hooded in unbridled want. Your unoccupied fingers set to explore, trailing up from his throat, to his jaw, to his bottom lip.

Like you’d asked him to, his lips parted. Heat lit up the space between your hips as you slipped two fingers inside, groaning at the feeling and at the shameless work of his tongue around you. Still held in place by your grip, he had to wait for you to move — and once you did, you understood the appeal.

His eyelids fluttered with every push forward and back drag of your fingers on his tongue. Swollen lips wrapped around you, only reluctant to let you go. The soft scrape of his teeth against your knuckles, the deep breaths through his nose, his low, little whines — the curl of his hips underneath you, all of that hardness seeking out any sort of soft relief. All of it was more captivating than you could’ve thought possible.

You let him go eventually, painting his skin with wetness and replacing your fingertips with your tongue. The poor thing — panting and so eager to wrap his lips around whatever you put between them.

Your fingers fell to the curve of his throat, thumb and pointer finger finding both sides of the delicate skin below the cut of his jaw and pressing down. That ripped something loud and broken from him — you let go of your grip on his hair just to watch him writhe underneath you, his powerful, assured posture given way to this blind, desperate search for friction, for more.

It felt like a god — to do so little and have this wall of a man shattered beneath you. You’d have done it forever, had you not been soaking through your panties and reaching a boiling point yourself.

You pushed back and off of him, no limit to the swelling in your chest at his whining protests.

“Take your clothes off, Katsuki.”

You blinked and it was done, and he was so wickedly beautiful you’d have looked away if you’d had any ability to do so. Flushed down his chest, head tilted back over the back of the couch, eyes nearly closed in his overwhelm but still glued to you. You took the liberty of a thorough inspection, eyes drifting down the length of his body, unable to part with the sight of the seemingly involuntary thrust of his hips, his cock angry and heavy and leaking against his stomach.

You pulled your sweater over your head, and then parted with your tank top and shorts, still damp and the only coolant for your fevered skin. Every layer removed pulled an almost inaudible whine from the back of Katsuki’s throat, like every second under this fog of sensation pulled him closer to animal and further away from man.

You stood just out of his reach, reveling a little in this picture of him and also considering something.

After a moment of thought, it came to you with such a wave of arousal that you nearly buckled under the feeling.

You took a step to him and leaned in, hands coming to rest on his thighs, pressing down to hold yourself up. His head followed your own, mouth seeking yours like a moth to a flame, like the most inevitable thing in the world.

“Mm,” you left yourself lay it on thick, the moan low in your throat and genuine, just to feel him shudder into your kiss, “you want to eat my pussy baby?”

He pulled away with a whimper, eyebrows knit together and those beautiful red eyes hopelessly unfocused but wanting, nodding fiercely, needing you to know that there was not a thing he wanted more than that.

“Get on the floor.”

He was there in an instant, body seemingly turned liquid to slip underneath you and settle there, head tilted back over the cushion, mouth already gaping, panting and searching —

You settled on either side of his face, knees pressing into the cushion, feet draped over his chest. Both of his hands wrapped around your heels, whether to keep you there or to attempt to tether himself to something, you didn’t know.

His tachycardic inhales were more gasping than anything else, like he could get a taste of you just by sucking in hard enough. You let him want it for a little while, hovering over his face just out of his reach, swollen and aching and nearly dripping —

He was patient until he wasn’t, and then he was on you — hands coming up to paw at your hips, to slot you firmly over his face, mouth open and tongue lolled out to catch you.

You pitched forward, body collapsing into the back of the couch with a strangled sort of cry, immediately overwhelmed. You pressed your forehead to the padding in front of you until you hit the resistance of wood, all of your limbs suddenly deadweight and numb, only feeling the drag of his tongue.

He worshipped you, taking the liberty to pull you forward and down and pushing you back, your swollen clit catching on the wet meat of his tongue, his mouth like a vacuum seal over the entire thing, swollen and open and made to please you —

You took to moving your hips yourself, the vibration of his groan rattling up your spine as you fucked his face, taking, taking, taking — using the entirety of it to your satisfaction, the cut of his jaw and the curve of his nose sending delicious little pangs of pleasure up your spine with every quick catch of your clit on them.

“Fuck me,” Katsuki rasped, gasping and needing, “fuck me, fuck me—”

His grip on your ass was bruising, pulling you down and spreading you open. The feeling of his tongue spearing into you, soft and dexterous and searching along your walls, pulled something like a wail from you, your body taking over, pushing you up and dropping you back own on it, needing more of the gentle stretch, his wet exploration —

“Oh, I’m gonna cum—” your voice sounded pitiful, pitched up and muffled in the crook of your elbow in a feeble attempt just to hold on. You reached to find your clit and pressed tight, quick circles into it, hard and hot and achingly sensitive under your fingertips — “Fuck, you’re gonna make me cum—”

And you did — hard and fast and nearly painful, your pussy squeezing tight around his tongue, every other muscle seemingly contracting in solidarity. Eyes shut tight against the onslaught of feeling, your body curled into itself, bucking into his mouth, trying to get more of it, trying to get away from it — static filled your ears and drown out the sound of your broken cries —

And then it was over — the pleasure turning molten and pooling outward, down into your limbs, and dissipating. You trembled in its wake, still for a minute until you remembered you were probably suffocating the man underneath you. You popped up quick — a little too quick, apparently. Your vision swam and you grabbed for the couch back — the feeling of hands at your thighs to steady you and the murmured “easy” hitting your senses like you were underwater.

Your movements were slow, nearly liquid as you made your way down to him, thighs split over his own to settle there, immediately noticing —

“You came,” you murmured, earning a soft snort from Katsuki, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. You pressed forward into him, trapping his soft cock and the mess he’d made between your stomachs, leaning into his chest and feeling his arms cage you in like you’d done this all your life.

The press of your cheek against the dusting of blond hair was a soothing thing, rubbing against him like a satisfied cat. His head tipped down to hold you there, his jaw still slick with you as it came into your view, silently beckoning for you to meet him halfway —

His kiss was a balm to your frayed nerves — warm and wet and solid against your mouth, for no other reason but to kiss you. It cut the rest of your strings — you felt the clench of your stomach release and sagged boneless into his hold. This time, there was nothing particularly erotic about it — no residual arousal pooling in your gut, no tingle up your spine. It just felt good, like warm water over cooled skin.

Satisfied, he pulled away from you with a sigh, dropping his head back to the cushions. You pressed a kiss to his jaw and settled underneath it, fighting the urge to let your eyes close.

“We need to shower,” you croaked, lips brushing his skin and making him shiver, “we’re gross.”

Katsuki hummed, his palm smoothing up the path of your spine. Making no attempt to move. You switched tactics.

“You know, Aiya usually brings a guy home with her after she goes out —”

“Yep, got it,” he said, suddenly full of life as he dragged you both off the floor, heeding your directions down the hall and to the bathroom through your giggling.

He took his time with you in there — washing the sand and salt from your hair, your hands pressed to the tile as he covered every inch of your back, with his hands and then his mouth, moving down, moving slow, under the curve of your ass to where you were burning again. You pulled back to turn, your back meeting the slick wall, to watch him swallow you whole — more captivated by the stroke of his fist along the satiny skin of his cock, tugging hard in time with flicks of his tongue against your clit —

You stood there, shaking and collapsed against each other under the steady stream of the shower. Trading sweet presses of his lips to your temple for murmured, affectionate nonsense until you were pruny and exhausted. You let him dry you off — something he appeared to gleam real satisfaction from, and who were you to stand in the way of that, really — and towed him down to your room, the warm embrace of your mattress nearly enough to bring you to tears.

He slotted in behind you like the most perfect puzzle piece, every inch of him molded to your backside like it was the way you’d been shaped from the start. Pillowed by the crook of his elbow, you sighed at the decadence of it all — settling in to him, nearly purring at the brush of hair away from your neck, replaced by the airbrush press of his mouth.

“We’ll talk tomorrow?” your voice was quiet in the dark.

He hummed, and the rumbling against your back was like a sedative — pulling you with gentle grasp into sleep. You had a fleeting thought that you might just see your wolf again after all, now that you had the real thing wrapped around you like this.

Tomorrow, then.