adriana

you eat, too. he finds this out on the second day when you stir from stasis and croak "food" before dropping back under. so he brings you things, stolen from wanderer caches, gathered from levels where the Backrooms produce edible matter.

you eat in half-conscious handfuls, chewing with your eyes closed, and he watches your jaw work like he's witnessing a small miracle. entities don't eat. he doesn't eat. but you do. not much, not often, but the act of it fascinates him.

and you sleep. not the stasis entities use for healing (the functional shutdown, the frequency dimming to conserve power) but something deeper. with a pattern to it. your breathing slowing to a steady rhythm. your eyes moving behind closed lids. your body twitching, small involuntary movements, your hands curling and uncurling in the blankets.

your frequency doesn't go dark the way it should in stasis. it shifts. dims and brightens in waves, cycling through patterns that look, to his ancient senses, less like an entity powering down and more like a mind dreaming.

entities don't dream. entities don't have subconscious processing. entities don't curl into a ball and make small, soft sounds in their sleep and pull the blankets tighter and nuzzle into the nearest source of warmth.

you do all of these things. and on the second night, with your face pressed into his borrowed chest and your borrowed hands gripping his shirt and your frequency cycling through those strange dreaming patterns, he lies awake and wonders.

what are you?

you're entity. truly. the power in your core is real and growing and undeniable. your frequency is genuine entity frequency, born from these walls, resonating with the deep power of the Backrooms. the howlers that tore into you bled the same black. you heal through stasis. you can cross between levels. you're real.

but there's something else, too.

an undercurrent in your frequency that he's never encountered in any entity, in three thousand years of encountering them. a warmth that shouldn't exist. a moral compass that has no evolutionary purpose. an instinct to protect fragile things instead of consuming them. a human shape built with a detail and a love that goes beyond mimicry into something closer to memory. and the sleeping. the eating. the warmth. the dreaming.

you're entity, but you're something else too. and he doesn't know what the something else is and the not-knowing keeps him wondering while you sleep against his chest and chirp in frequencies he can't quite translate.

on the third morning you finally sit up. stretch. your human shape holds clean and strong. the wound is a thin line along your ribs.

you blink, looking around the nest, then look at him. at the blankets. the warm lit walls. your clicking goes rapid as the situation assembles itself in your waking mind: you're in entity 0's nest. in his blankets. wearing his scent. again.

"I need to go."

he's on his back, hands behind his head, watching you from the blankets with that half-lidded, lazy expression that makes your clicking unsteady. completely at ease. his borrowed body stretched out long and loose, one knee bent, the amber light tracing the line of his jaw and the ridge of his collarbones.

cocky even horizontal. maybe especially horizontal.

"no you don't."

you stand. start pacing the perimeter of the nest, testing the walls, checking the exits. open, all of them, you can feel the corridors beyond bending away from level 0 into the upper levels. your bare feet pad across the warm carpet anyway, your body moving with the restless, stalking energy of a caged creature.

he watches you from the blankets, his eyes tracking your movement with lazy interest, his blue gaze following you from wall to wall. never lifting his head from his hands. never moving.

"I'm healed," you begin. "I can—"

"you're at sixty percent. maybe." his eyes tracking the line on your ribs as you pace past. "your frequency is still thin at the edges. if you leave now and run into anything above a faceling, you're in trouble."

you turn at the far wall, stalk back, your jaw tight, your clicking sharp with displeasure.

"I've fought worse at lower power."

"and that's exactly how you ended up unconscious on the floor with a hole in your side." his lazy drawl goes flat. "stay. heal properly. level 0 is the safest place in the backrooms. nothing touches you here."

you bristle, stop pacing, turning to face him. he's still on his back, hands behind his head, watching you with those blue eyes. not a single muscle tensed. the picture of relaxation, and somehow the relaxation is more intimidating than any display of force would be.

"I'm not your pet," you hiss. "you can't keep me—"

"the exits are open. every single one." the grin again, his head tilting at a teasing angle. even lying down, he somehow manages the head tilt. "or we can do the other option."

you know what the other option is. he outlined it in graphic detail two days ago while pinning you to the nest on your stomach.

the hiss that leaves your throat could peel wallpaper.

"option one. under protest."

"noted," he hums playfully. "welcome home."

you throw the nearest pillow at his face. he catches it without looking, without even moving his other hand from behind his head, and you scowl.

you resume pacing and he resumes watching, visibly amused, his eyes following you back and forth across the nest with open, unhurried appreciation.

the way you move, the coiled energy in your limbs, your bare feet on his carpet. your hair still messy from three days of stasis. he could watch you pace for centuries. the frequency equivalent of a cat tracking a bird through a window.

"the wanderers," you say suddenly, stopping mid-pace. "if anything happens to them while I'm here—"

"I rearranged the corridors."

you turn toward him, staring.

"while you were healing. restructured the level 0 exit routes that feed into the upper levels. the junctions on this level that connect to 2 through 5. I can't control what happens up there but I can control how wanderers get to and from the safe zones through my territory." he examines his borrowed fingernails. still on his back. still maddeningly casual. "shortened the paths between safe rooms. sealed two howler dens that border my exits. rerouted the main junction on level 0 that feeds into corridor 3 so it bypasses the dead zone entirely." a pause. "your little humans should be able to navigate my level without getting eaten for a while."

you stare at him, searching for the trap. he stares back. his borrowed blue eyes warm and daring you to find a trick.

"why?" you whisper lastly.

the cockiness softens for a fraction of a second. "because you clearly care about them, and I care about—" he catches himself, clears his throat despite not needing to, because it's a human habit. "the corridors were inefficient anyway."

you know he's lying.

you move slowly across the nest, stalking closer, eyes fixed on his.

his breathing doesn't change and his body doesn't tense at your approach. his hands stay locked behind his head, eyes half-lidded. but his frequency shifts underneath the casual pose. going warm, going alert.

very still in the way a predator goes still when something interesting approaches.

you climb onto him, straddle his hips, still squinting at him. his hands stay behind his head but his eyes close. the picture of disinterest. a three-thousand-year-old apex predator pretending a newborn entity straddling his hips is so unremarkable it doesn't warrant opening his eyes.

you chirp. a small, curious, rising note. a question pressed directly against his frequency.

nothing. his face smooth. eyes closed. the ghost of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.

you chirp again. louder. prodding his frequency with yours. the entity equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder. when that gets no response, you lean down and press your borrowed nose against his jawline and sniff. loudly. obnoxiously. sucking in his scent with exaggerated thoroughness.

one eye cracks open. the blue of it bright and amused. a growl rolls through his chest, low and playful, vibrating up through your thighs where they bracket his ribs. the frequency of it says: careful, little one.

you reel back, your clicking spiking with surprise, and then the grin spreads across your face, warm and delighted, because you poked the ancient thing and the ancient thing growled back playfully.

"you really did that," you say after a beat, softer, settling your weight on his hips. your head tilts, studying him. "rearranged your own territory. for them."

"for you." his eye still open. the other still closed.

you huff. "for them."

both eyes open now, his hands coming out from behind his head to rest on your thighs. his thumbs trace idle circles there. "...fine. for them. a little."

another chirp. warmer. endlessly pleased, and your body relaxes against his. you rub your cheek along his jaw shyly. scent-marking. your purr starts tentative and testing, and his hands tighten on your thighs in response, his purr answering yours. low and rolling and satisfied.

and you don't leave.

you stay for a week. then two. then the counting stops mattering. your scent woven into every blanket, your temperature shaping the air, your stolen shoes kicked off beside the entrance where he trips over them every time. you don't need them, but wanderers wear them, and so you've taken to wearing them.

the first morning you're at full strength, you eat an apple you stole from a wanderer's pack. sitting cross-legged in the nest, your teeth crunching through the skin, juice on your chin. he's propped on his elbows across the nest, watching you with curious intensity.

"does it taste like something?" he asks.

you lick the juices, humming. "it tastes like an apple."

"what does an apple taste like?"

you hold it out, your head tilting. he takes it. bites. chews. his face flips through a complicated series of expressions.

"...wet," he concludes with vague hint of disgust.

you beam. "that's one word for it."

he hands it back, watches you eat the rest with his head tilted and his purr low. juice run down your chin and you wipe it with the back of your hand, licking your wrist and his eyes track the movement of your tongue, his purr dropping an octave.

you're eating in his nest. being nourished in his space. the provider instinct hitting a chord he didn't know he had.

you start rearranging things after that. at first it's subtle. a blanket folded differently. a pillow moved three inches to the left. but it escalates into a full-scale redecoration of his nest and he watches from the corner of the room with a growing, helpless purr because you are nesting.

you're making his space yours. pulling blankets off the walls he hung them on and layering them on the floor in an order that makes sense only to you. building a raised section in the corner (your corner, claimed within days, marked with your scent) with a calculated combination of softness and warmth that makes him want to roll in it.

"that's my blanket," he drawls, watching you drag a large blue one across the nest.

"it's in the wrong place."

"it's been in that place for six hundred years."

he's lying through his teeth, but you don't need to know that.

you scoff. "and it's been wrong the whole time."

he watches you tuck it into the corner with a proprietary pat, your borrowed hands smoothing the fabric. your clicking going soft and satisfied. domestic. content. and his chest fills with a feeling he can't name. a cracking, expanding, warm feeling.

"come here," he says, propping on his elbows, watching you pad around rearranging pillows for the third time.

his body rests long and loose in the blankets, one knee bent, the warm light gilding the line of his throat, his voice gone low and drawling.

you don't go, huffing quietly under your breath. you tilt your chin, walk the other direction with your shoulders back and spine straight, strutting past his line of sight with a deliberate sway. your hips moving in a way that makes his frequency coil with want.

you don't even look at him as you pass.

his purr stutters, eyebrows climbing upwards. his eyes track your hips with an intensity that borders on physical contact.

"come here."

another huff. you perch on the far side of the nest, your back to him, and begin grooming your borrowed hair with exaggerated disinterest. tilting your head to expose the line of your throat (you know exactly what you're doing, the exposed throat is entity language for available, and showing it to him while simultaneously ignoring him is the cruellest thing you've done since you bit his ear).

a frequency rolls off you: no. busy. not interested.

his jaw tightens, his hands curling in the blankets. because you're right there. ten feet away in his nest, smelling like warmth and lightning, baring your throat at him while also pretending he doesn't exist. the combination of invitation and rejection is making his frequency pulse, hot and tight and grinding.

"you're being mean," he accuses, his voice rough.

you examine your borrowed fingernails. hum. the frequency equivalent of am I? hadn't noticed.

he laughs, fond and disbelieving.

and then he does it. the low frequency, rumbling and tonal, vibrating through the floor and up the blankets and into the base of your spine. a mating call. the real one. designed by three thousand years of predatory evolution to trigger a response in a compatible frequency.

your back goes rigid. your thighs press together, your clicking skipping. you absolutely do not turn around. you pick up a blanket and fold it with shaking hands and fold it again, and he can see you trembling, visibly, even as you try to force it back.

you grab a pillow, march to the opposite corner, and burrow under the blankets. deep. hiding from the frequency still rolling through the floor.

his laughter follows you. "playing hard to get in my own nest. you wound me."

a muffled hiss from the pile.

he sends another pulse. headier. lower. you squirm under the blankets. he finally takes pity and lets the frequency fade, but his satisfied, crooked grin doesn't.

he starts peacocking properly after that. leaning against doorframes with his borrowed body positioned at angles he's carefully studied from wanderers (the ones who attract mates: weight on one hip, arms crossed, chin tilted).

he adjusts the suit, too. sharpens the jaw by a fraction, makes the shoulders slightly broader. ruffles the sandy hair until it falls across his forehead in a way he's calculated to make your frequency spike.

"new look?" you ask dryly, walking past, deliberately unimpressed.

"just making adjustments." he turns so the light catches the adjusted jawline. "thoughts?"

you peer at him from the corner of your eye and scrunch your nose. "you look like you're trying too hard."

"is it working?" he wonders.

your eyes narrow and you say nothing, glaring.

it's working. your frequency told him that three seconds ago. your pupils told him before that. he grins and you hiss loudly in response, brushing past him while he laughs.

he finds excuses to be in your line of sight more and more as days go by.

stretched across doorframes, leaning on walls, occupying whatever surface puts him between you and wherever you're going. always casual. always with that half-lidded, lazy, I-have-all-the-time-in-the-universe expression that makes your clicking go unsteady.

he knows exactly what he's doing, and the knowing makes you want to bite him. repeatedly.

one afternoon he's sitting in the nest, reading, his borrowed back against the wall and his long legs stretched out in front of him when you find him.

the golden light catches the line of his jaw (the adjusted one, the slightly sharper one), his sandy hair falling across his forehead. his mouth parts slightly as he reads, his forearms bare where he's pushed his sleeves up and the tendons shifting when he turns a page.

you watch him from the corridor entrance for a full minute. the borrowed throat. the collarbones visible above his neckline. the scar you left, healed into a ridge of tissue he wears openly. the way his frequency hums low and content, filling the nest with his deep mineral scent.

and then you pounce.

from behind, your body hitting his back, arms locking around his neck, legs wrapping around his waist.

he drops the book and your teeth find his ear, biting down (not hard, just enough to feel the cartilage flex) and a sound leaves him that's half surprise and half something much warmer.

"you—" he starts, but you're already clinging. your face buried in the crook of his neck, your arms tight around his narrow shoulders, your legs hooked through his.

latched on like a creature that's caught its prey and intends to eat it.

he laughs, low and delighted. his hands coming up to grip your forearms where they're locked across his chest. "well. hello."

you bite his ear again. he rolls. a smooth, easy motion, twisting his borrowed body so you tumble off his back and onto the blankets. he follows you down, pinning you flat, his weight settling over you smoothly. his hands catch your wrists beside your head and his grin is wide and crooked, far too close.

you hiss, teeth bared, clicking rapidly. but the hiss is bright with play, not threat, and he can hear the difference by now. your body squirms under his, your frequency buzzing with happy energy at being caught.

you flip him. plant your foot against his hip and twist, using the momentum to reverse the pin.

your hands on his shoulders, your weight on his chest. he lets you. you can feel him letting you (the give in his muscles, the looseness in his grip, the way his body yields instead of resisting) and the letting is its own kind of intimacy.

the oldest predator alive, going soft under a newborn's hands.

you look at him, then. your face close to his, your eyes tracing his features with so much intensity, it makes his frequency flutter.

you take his chin between your thumb and forefinger. pinch. tilt his face to the left. then right. studying the human mask the way you'd study a new corridor or a new problem.

your thumb traces his brow. the ridge of bone above his eye. the crease between his eyebrows that forms when he's concentrating. the corner of his eye where he added faint lines because the wanderers he studied had them when they smiled.

"you're staring," he says, his voice pitched to tease, but softer than usual, more breath in it. "I know the suit is impressive but I didn't realise my true form was so ugly you'd be obsessed with the borrowed one."

you don't laugh like he expected you to. your thumb traces down the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw. your expression isn't playful anymore. it's focused and open, stripped of the usual guards in place.

"your true form is beautiful," you say with quiet sincerity. "I've seen seen it, and it's—" your clicking goes soft. a warm, awed frequency. "it's the most vast thing I've ever perceived."

he goes still beneath you, the teasing draining from his face. his eyes go wide. because he's been seen by hundreds and every single one of them screamed or broke or died but you just called him beautiful with your thumb on his cheekbone and your weight on his chest.

"but this face." your fingers trace his lower lip, his upper, the cupid's bow. all done with deep concentration, like you're trying to figure something out yet it remains out of reach. "there's something about this one. the details of it. the way you built it." your thumb brushes across his brow again, smoothing the crease. "I like it."

"yeah?" barely a rumble. his voice has lost every trace of cockiness. just a raw, quiet question. his frequency open and unguarded beneath yours.

"yeah."

his eyes flutter when your fingertips trace his temple. his jaw. the soft skin behind his ear. his purr starts, low and rolling, deeply pleased, vibrating through your thighs where they bracket his ribs. his lashes brush his cheekbones as his eyes drift shut, his face tipping into your touch the way a plant tips toward light.

you lean close slowly, your mouth hovering over his. close enough to feel the cool of his breath against your lips. close enough that your noses brush. his eyes stay closed, his purr deepening, lips parting in anticipation. waiting.

you hold there. one inch. his frequency reaches for yours, warm and eager, trusting.

and you pull back.

off him, and across the nest in an instant. everything about you going brittle in a blink. you burrow into the blanket pile on the far side, pulling pillows over your head, cocooning yourself in fabric. your frequency going small and shy and rapid.

silence. a long one. his purr dying into confused, bereft silence.

and then a growl. low and playful and hungry. the sound of a predator who just had something sweet in his mouth and lost it. the blankets around you vibrate with the frequency of it. he's not upset, you realise. just very, very eager for a second attempt.

"pretty, unruly thing," he says, his voice rough. "you have no idea how dangerous you are."

muffled clicking from the blanket pile. the entity equivalent of a nervous giggle.

he doesn't chase you into the blankets. not yet. but he moves to the edge of the pile and lies on his side, putting his hand flat against the fabric where he can feel the warmth of you radiating through. his clicking goes low and patient with wanting. come out. come back. let me taste that almost-kiss.

you don't come out, but your hand finds his through the blanket, your fingers lacing through his through layers of fabric. holding on.

he holds back, his thumb tracing circles on your knuckle through the cotton. his purr restarts again slower, patient.

he can wait. he has three thousand years of patience.

but he's going to get that kiss, and both of you know it.

the flirting after that is relentless. weaponised. a slow, escalating campaign of provocation from both sides that makes the ambient temperature of level 0 climb by two degrees.

he gets strategic about proximity first.

sitting beside you in the nest so his borrowed thigh presses against yours, warm through the fabric. walking behind you through corridors close enough that you can feel his breath on the back of your neck. reaching past you for things he doesn't need, his chest brushing your shoulder, his scent flooding your senses at close range.

every contact plausibly accidental. every contact calculated to the millimetre.

you retaliate.

you begin stretching in the nest. a long, slow, spine-arching stretch that makes your borrowed shirt ride up over your stomach and his clicking stutter. you pretend not to notice. you eat a peach he brought you from level 11, the juice running down your chin and your wrist, and you lick it clean with your eyes closed, a satisfied hum vibrating in your chest. he grips the blanket beneath him so hard the fabric tears.

"you slept on my side of the nest last night."

he declares this leaning against the doorframe the following morning. that lazy drawl rich with amusement, his body angled against the frame with one shoulder, arms crossed, hair feathered messily over his forehead. the whole posture engineered to make you look.

"I don't have a side," you answer primly.

"you do now. it's my side. you were on it. I had to sleep around you."

you click your tongue, picture of disinterest. "that's your problem."

"it was the best problem I've ever had." his eyes do that slow drag down your body and back up, then, not hiding it even slightly. "you talk in your sleep, by the way."

your clicking goes rapid. "I do not."

"you do. in frequency." the grin sharpens, going dark at the edges, a little mean. "very interesting frequency. I learned a lot."

you throw a bundled up blanket at his head and stomp past him into the corridor. his laughter follows you, warm and delighted but most of all, insufferably smug.

so, you brush past him in the corridor next morning, your body pressing against his a beat longer than the hallway requires. your hand trails across his hip as you pass, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth while you keep walking, your mouth curved.

he reads to you in the nest from a stolen book that evening.

you sit in his lap with your back against his chest, your fingers tracing patterns on his forearm while his voice rumbles through your spine. his arm curled around your waist, his chin resting on your shoulder, the deep mineral scent of him surrounding you.

you turn to look at him at close range, and watch his pupils blow wide when you smile. the blue thins to a ring while his reading voice trails off mid-sentence.

"you're doing that on purpose," he accuses, strained.

you smile innocently. "doing what?"

"existing."

"I'll stop if it bothers you so much," you say, mock-wounded.

he grows, arm tightening around you. "don't you dare."

you hum, satisfied, and turn back to the book, shifting in his lap so your weight settles differently and his hips press against your ass instead. his jaw clenches, his arm tightening even further around your waist. you feel the hard line of him against your lower back and neither of you acknowledges it.

you stay in his lap for another hour while his body stays perfectly still. three thousand years of patience tested by the warmth of your borrowed body in his lap.

"you're evil," he murmurs into your hair after you finally slide off him and pad across the nest, humming.

you glance over your shoulder. "I don't know what you mean."

"you sat in my lap for an hour."

"you offered."

"I offered to read to you."

"and you did. it was very lovely. thank you." you stretch again, hands over your head, the spine-arch appearing. his clicking goes haywire behind you. "goodnight."

you curl up in your corner of the nest with your back to him and your purr low and smug.

he lies on his side of the nest staring at the ceiling with his jaw clenched and his body making its frustration extremely visible through his pants and he thinks: she is going to be the death of me. three thousand years of nothing and this is how I go. defeated by a newborn in my own nest.

you drape yourself across him the next day. your whole body on top of his, chin on his chest, bare feet kicking behind you. your warmth bleeding into his coolness. your scent pressing into his shirt.

he looks up at you, eyes wide and soft and completely unguarded.

"this is unfairly attractive," he says, his hands settling on your lower back, his thumbs tracing circles on your spine through the fabric. "you can't just lie on a person like this."

"you're not a person."

"there should be regulations for entities too."

you bite his chin in response. he groans. a low, vibrating sound that you feel through your entire chest where it's pressed against his. you bite it again. harder. his hands tighten on your lower back and his hips shift beneath yours and you feel the response, grinning against his chin and his eyes go dark.

and then you're off him. sprinting for the corridor while your laughter trails bright as bells behind you.

he's after you before his mind catches up. through corridors, around corners. you glance over your shoulder with a broad grin and slow when he falls behind. speed up when he gets close again.

these chases are different from the ones before.

before, you ran from him. now you run with him. the corridors of level 0 a playground you share, the walls bending for both of you now (that's new, that shouldn't happen, the walls only bend for him, but they're bending for you too, and he files this under terrifying and magnificent). you vault over obstacles he didn't place. you slide through gaps that should be too narrow. your newborn creativity making the chase unpredictable in a way that keeps his ancient instincts firing at full capacity.

he catches you at a junction eventually, arms around your waist from behind, spinning you. you're both laughing. tangled together, his face in your hair, clicking chirps loud from both of you.

yours high and rapid. his low and rolling.

you twist in his arms, facing him. your legs wrap around his waist, and you bite his jaw, playful, sharp. he bites back. and you gasp in outrage, delighted.

and then your mouths find each other. the kiss breathless and giddy.

"caught you," he rasps against your lips.

you scoff. "I let you."

a slight, unfairly attractive grin pulls at one corner of his mouth. "keep telling yourself that."

and then he kisses you again, deeper, making you gasp.

you chase every day after that. sometimes twice a day. burning off the excess energy of two apex predators living in close quarters.

the chases get longer as your power grows, spanning more of level 0, your stamina slowly growing to match his. your frequency keeps getting louder every week, and he has to actually work for the catches now. has to use the corridors, seal exits, herd you into dead ends that close behind you. and even then you find ways out he didn't expect. new tricks. stolen moves. your adaptability outpacing his millennia of experience.

but the chases always end the same way: wrapped together, clicking and purring, grinding against the nearest wall, dissolving from human language into one deeper, all frequency and sound.

no longer alone.

one morning you sit cross-legged in the nest, still buzzing from yesterday's chase when you declare, loudly, "teach me."

he peers at you over his shoulder. "teach you what?"

"to fight. properly. the way you fight."

the grin that spreads across his face is insufferable.

"oh." he stands slowly, rolling his narrow shoulders, cracking his neck with a sound the human body shouldn't make. "oh, you want lessons. from me."

"stop making it weird," you bite out, scowling.

"this is going to be extremely weird. and extremely fun. for me." he circles you. the suit moving with a fluid, predatory grace that makes your frequency prickle. "first things first. everything you've been doing in a fight? wrong."

you bristle. "excuse me?"

"wrong. all of it." he stops in front of you, tilts his head. "you're fast and you're powerful. your raw output is frankly terrifying for a creature your age. but you have absolutely zero technique to go along with it."

"I beat two howlers—"

"you barely beat one howler and got gutted by the second. and I killed both. the reason you got gutted is because you fight like a newborn. you throw yourself at things and hope the impact is enough." his hand snakes out and taps your shoulder. you didn't see it move. "lesson one: you telegraph your attacks three moves in advance. you lead with your frequency. I can feel you winding up from a corridor away."

you glare at him for a second before finally muttering, "so what do I do instead?"

"you mask your frequency before you strike. like this." his frequency drops to zero. vanishes. he's standing right in front of you and your senses register nothing. no presence, no power, no entity. empty air. and then he's behind you, his hand on the back of your neck and his mouth at your ear. "like that."

your clicking goes rapid. he's right there and you didn't feel him move. not even slightly. which makes you realise just how little of his true power you've ever seen.

"that's not fair," you say. "you've been doing this for three thousand years."

"which is exactly why you should be learning from me instead of improvising." he steps back, crossing his arms. "your potential is absurd. if you had even basic technique to go with the raw output you'd be—" he pauses, his expression shifting from cocky to genuinely pleased. "you'd be extraordinary."

you angle your chin away loftily. "I'm already extraordinary."

he chuckles, and taps your nose with his finger. you try to bite it, so he taps your nose again. "you're already a barely-trained wrecking ball." a pause. "that bites."

the training is daily after that. he shows you how to mask your frequency, how to feint, how to use a corridor's layouts against a larger opponent.

he's a good teacher. patient in a way that surprises you, the cockiness banking into focus when he demonstrates technique. but he's not gentle about the contact. he pins you when you leave an opening. sweeps your legs when your stance is wrong. puts you on the floor with a thud and leans over you: "again."

you snarl up at him from the floor, teeth bared, clicking vicious. "I hate you."

"I know." his eyes half-lidded, his grin crooked and warm. "you're gorgeous when you're angry. now do it again."

and the thing is, he means it. every time you hiss at him, every time you bare your teeth and your clicking goes vicious and your eyes blaze with frustration, his frequency goes hot.

your viciousness doesn't repel him. it attracts him. draws him closer. the way your borrowed lip curls when you snarl. the way your body coils before a strike, every muscle taut with contained violence. the way you look at him after he pins you, furious and breathing hard, like you want to kill him and climb him in equal measure.

"you like it when I'm mean to you," you say one afternoon, flat and accusatory, lying on the floor where he put you.

his knee digs into your back, his hand on your wrist.

"I like you," he says, his thumb tracing a circle on the inside of your wrist. "the mean is simply a bonus."

you twist free, catch his ankle, pulling. he goes down and you're on him, pinning, your hands on his shoulders and your face in his face, your clicking so rapid it sounds like static. "I could tear you apart."

"I believe you." his eyes are black at the edges, his body completely relaxed beneath yours. his voice a low, rough purr. "you're welcome to try."

and he's so infuriatingly good at this. his body moving through combat stances with thousands of years of muscle memory, every motion fluid and deadly, and the display of such easy competence is doing things to your frequency you refuse to acknowledge.

the way his forearms flex when he blocks your strike. the way his eyes go sharp and focused. the way he grins, dark and pleased, when you almost catch him. the way he pins you face-down and holds your wrists behind your back and murmurs "you're leaving your left side open, feel the gap?" and his mouth is right at your ear and you're supposed to be learning defensive positioning, and all you can think about is his weight on your back.

"you're distracted," he says, still pinning you, his voice amused.

you crack your neck trying to bite him. "I'm analysing."

"you're staring at my forearms."

"I'm analysing your forearms," you hiss. "since you use them on me. frequently."

he hums thoughtfully. "they're very effective forearms. now focus."

you execute a perfect frequency-mask on the fourth week. strike from total silence. catch his ribs with an elbow before he reads you. he staggers and the surprise on his face is genuine, as is his delight.

"you're going to be terrifying," he says fondly that evening. "you're already terrifying, and you're still growing. give it a year. give it ten."

you preen under praise, your chin on his chest. "I'll be the most powerful thing in the backrooms," you declare with utter confidence.

"second most powerful."

you elbow him in the ribs. he grunts, pulling you closer.

"... we'll see," he concedes, his nose brushing against your hair, and you feel his grin against your head.

you find them during a chase.

two corridors past the junction where he almost caught you (your shirt still warm where his fingers grazed it before you twisted free). you're running, laughing, rounding a blind corner at full speed, and you nearly collide with them.

four wanderers. huddled against the wall. a woman gripping two children. a man standing in front of them with a flashlight held like a weapon. their eyes enormous in the low light. their clothes torn. dehydrated, exhausted, the greyish pallor of humans who've been in the backrooms long enough to start losing hope.

you stop so fast your borrowed feet skid on the carpet.

and your whole body changes, the predatory coil unwinding, the playful clicking going silent.

your human shape smooths into warmth and softness and kindness, a shift so complete and so instant that he rounds the corner half a second later with a grin on his face and the grin dies because you're on your knees. talking to the children in a low, gentle voice. your borrowed hand on the woman's arm. your frequency broadcasting safe, safe, I won't hurt you in a register that humans can't hear but can undoubtedly feel.

he leans against the wall, crosses his arms with a scowl.

four. fragile. human. dripping and shaking and taking up space in his corridor. their fear-scent filling the hallway. one of the children is crying. the other is staring at him with round eyes and a trembling lip.

you check them for injuries first. the man has a gash on his forearm (something with claws, level 2 probably). the woman is dehydrated. the children are frightened but unhurt.

you produce a water bottle from somewhere (you've started stashing supplies in his corridors, another thing he pretends not to notice, another way you're colonising his territory) and hand it to the woman. help the man wrap his arm with a strip torn from your own borrowed shirt.

"there's a safe zone on level 2," you say softly. "I can get you to the junction. from there the corridor runs straight. follow the wall on your left. there's a room with a door that locks and supplies inside. stay there until another group finds you."

the woman nods, gripping your hand with a shaky nod.

you look over your shoulder at him. your eyes bright. warm. carrying a very clear message.

he scowls harder, his jaw working, his clicking low and irritable.

you look at him longer. your head tilting. the message intensifying.

"fine." he pushes off the wall, stalks over, his body radiating displeasure. the smallest child (the one with the trembling lip, maybe five, clutching a stuffed rabbit with no ears) looks up at him and the lip trembles harder.

he crouches, the scowl easing by a fraction. he looks at the child and the child stares at him. his borrowed jaw works again and then he picks her up. one arm. gentle despite the scowling, settling her on his hip with an ease that suggests he's seen wanderers handle their young before.

the girl stops trembling, her small hand gripping the collar of his borrowed shirt. she leans her head against his shoulder and her eyes close. she makes a small, exhausted, trusting sound.

his frequency does a quiet thing he's never felt before, burrowed deep.

you walk the group to the junction. him behind you, carrying the child. the other humans staying close to you, keeping as far from him as the corridor allows. they can no doubt feel what he is even through the borrowed shape, some deep mammalian instinct warning them predator, predator, predator.

you guide them to the exit that feeds into level 2. point them toward the safe room. the man thanks you. the woman hugs you. you crouch and say goodbye to the children and the girl in his arms lifts her head from his shoulder and peers up at him.

"thank you," she mumbles shyly, her small hand patting his borrowed cheek.

he grunts, sets her down gently and she toddles to her mother.

and then they're gone. shuffling into the corridor, the sound of their footsteps fading.

silence. the two of you stand in the junction. the ghost of the girl's hand is still on his cheek.

you turn to him, and your face is doing something he's never seen before. soft and bright and proud. proud of him. looking at him like he did something miraculous instead of carrying a child for ten minutes.

you cross the junction in three steps. grab his borrowed face in both hands and kiss him.

hard. thorough. your mouth on his jaw. his cheek. the bridge of his nose. his forehead. back to his mouth, lingering, your lips warm and firm, tasting of gratitude. his eyelids. the corner of his eye. his other cheek. his chin. his mouth again. a barrage of kisses pressed into every surface of his face with a warmth and an urgency that makes his frequency stutter.

"what—" he manages between kisses, his hands finding your waist on instinct.

"you helped them." kiss to his jaw. "you carried that little girl." kiss to his cheekbone. "she put her hand on your face and you let her." kiss to the corner of his mouth, slow, lingering. "you let a five-year-old human pat your cheek."

"she was—it wasn't—" his clicking goes rapid and flustered. "you were looking at me. I was just—"

"you were gentle." you kiss him full on the mouth, deep and wanting, your hands still on his face.

your body presses against his, and his hands tighten on your waist, his teeth aching. because you're being soft. open.

you, the creature that bites and hisses and snarls and runs from him, are being open with him, and the openness is so rare he has to lock every muscle in his body to keep from pinning you against the junction wall and doing things to you that would traumatise any wanderer within three level radius.

you pull back after few more moments, your thumbs tracing his cheekbones, your eyes warm.

he's vibrating. every frequency firing at once. because your mouth was on his face and your voice was fond, and you're touching him gently, your thumbs on his cheekbones. the urge to grab your wrists and spin you against the wall and hike your thigh around his hip and grind into you until you stop being soft and start being loud is so overwhelming his vision blurs.

he bites down on it. swallows the growl. keeps his hands on your waist. gentle. still.

"why?" he asks later, back in the nest. your head on his chest, his fingers in your hair. "why do you care about them so much? the humans."

your clicking goes quiet. your fingers, trace absent patterns on his stomach, still for a moment.

"I just do."

"that's not an answer."

silence. your fingers resuming their tracing. your frequency pulling inward.

"no one should die in a place like this." quiet. your voice carrying a weight that sinks through the words into something older and deeper. "no one should die cold and alone. scared in the dark. no one. not them. not anyone."

his arm tightens around you, his clicking going low and soothing. he doesn't ask. not yet. just holds you while your frequency settles and your fingers resume their tracing on his stomach.

it's during one of your chases that you stumble upon a cat.

three corridors deep in an unmapped section, laughing, listening for his footsteps. you round a corner and nearly trip over a small dark shape.

a cat. black and white, sitting neatly with its tail curled around its paws. amber eyes holding more intelligence than any animal's should.

you drop to your knees. chirp. a greeting-frequency. the cat blinks slowly and a voice enters your head. pure thought, a warm voice brushing like a cat's tail around the ankles.

you're the new one. the one he's been chasing.

your clicking goes rapid with surprise. you've heard about this entity. samantha. psychic.

he's different since you arrived. her tail flicks. quieter. less aggressive. the upper levels have noticed. they say one that is many has taken a mate.

you hiss softly. "I'm not his mate."

no? an unhurried, curious head tilt. interesting. your frequency says otherwise. the whole of level 0 smells like a mating nest. a pause. don't bristle. I think it's good for him. he was cold for a very long time.

your clicking softens. you scratch behind her ears and her purr is feline and warm. physical. you like her. her energy is easy. welcoming. familiar in a way that aches.

"you remind me of someone I used to know," you say quietly, frowning. "before."

before. samantha's eyes go distant. the psychic field shifts, touching your frequency, tasting the edges of your history. her pupils contract. her purr stops abruptly.

silence. a long, heavy one. her amber eyes filling with something you don't want to name.

oh, she murmurs sadly. oh, little one. you were... she stops herself. carefully. the psychic touch withdrawing from the worst of it, pulling back from the deepest rooms. but you can feel what she found there. the shape of it pressing against the space between you. old agony. old fear.

"don't." your clicking sharp. warning.

I won't. she presses against your knee, purring, her small body warm and grounding. I won't look any further. but little one... the things you're carrying. the weight of them. you don't have to carry them alone anymore.

"I'm fine."

you're strong. that's different from fine. her tail curls around your wrist. be gentle with yourself. and let him be gentle with you. he's clumsy about it. territorial and loud, and he'll probably threaten to kill anyone who's ever spoken to you. but he means well. the gentleness is real. trust that. even when your body tells you not to.

your throat tightens. your human shape flickering at the edges for a second before you pull it back together. you scratch behind samantha's ears one more time, pressing your forehead against the top of her small head, breathing in the simple, clean warmth of her.

"thank you," you whisper.

you stand, walking back toward the nest without looking behind you. your frequency pulls tight and quiet. your hands curled into fists at your sides.

his footsteps arrive half a minute later. he rounds the corner and finds the cat sitting alone in the corridor, tail wrapped around her paws. no sign of you.

"where did she go?" his frequency already reaching down the corridor after you.

samantha blinks up at him, her amber eyes steady and old.

home. to the nest. she's upset but she won't tell you why, and you shouldn't push.

a low rumbling growl builds in his chest. "what did you say to her?"

nothing she didn't already know. samantha's tail flicks. she stands. stretches. her small body arching with feline indifference. I looked at her, old one. the way I look at things. and what I found...

he stalks closer, and the suit coils, trying to contain him. "what. what did you find?"

samantha sits back down, tilts her head, and the psychic field presses against him. not showing him. just letting him feel the shape of it. the weight of what she saw in your frequency. heavy. scarred. older than your entity-hood. human-shaped wounds that the walls healed over but couldn't erase.

she was not always what she is now, samantha explains. and what she was before... was broken by someone who should have kept her safe. the details are hers to share. not mine. but I need you to understand what you're dealing with. this isn't a creature that fears you because you're a predator. she fears you because you're kind. because kindness is the shape the danger wore when it found her. do you understand what I'm saying?

his jaw clenches so tight the false teeth creak.

she flinches from tenderness because tenderness was the trap, samantha continues calmly. so when you reach for her and she pulls away, it's not rejection of you. it's reflex. a wound that hasn't finished closing. and if you push her, if you demand she explain before she's ready, you will lose her. permanently.

"I would never—"

I know. samantha's eyes soften. I can see what you feel for her. it's vast and genuine and slightly terrifying but I believe you mean every frequency of it. but she can't hear your sincerity yet. not fully. she hears the words and her body translates them into the language of the last being who said them and the translation is violence. a pause. be patient. be present. let her come to you. and when she tells you, do not react with rage. she doesn't need your vengeance. she needs your softness.

silence. his hands curl into fists at his sides. mirror image of yours, walking away minutes ago.

"how do you know she'll tell me?"

samantha blinks at him. those amber eyes going faintly amused by the question. old one. I know things. I have always known things. it's what I do. I look at a creature and I see the shape of what's coming. a thoughtful pause. the amusement fading into something gentler. and what I see when I look at her is this: she's in your nest. she's wearing your scent. she lets you hold her in the dark and she purrs. samantha pads toward the wall. she has never done that with anyone. the fact that she lets you close enough to hurt her is the biggest act of courage she's capable of. honour it.

she pauses at the wall, looking back at him.

she's a good one, old one. fierce and kind and carrying a wound that would have broken a lesser creature. cherish her.

and then she's gone with a flick of her tail.

he stands in the empty corridor, his chest tight and the shape of what samantha showed him pressing against his ribs. he didn't see the details. didn't need to. the weight was enough. the grief-shape. the fear-shape.

the human outline of a pain so vast it survived death and rebirth and reconstruction.

he finds you back in the nest, buried in the blankets, your frequency small, fragile. he lies down beside the pile. doesn't try to uncover you. just puts his hand on the blanket where he can feel the warmth of you through the fabric and clicks. that old, soothing frequency. safe. here. I'm here. nothing will touch you.

after a long, long time, your hand emerges, trembling, and finds his through the fabric, latching on.

you don't let go for a long time.

the quiet moments are where you lose yourselves. lying in the nest, the amber light low. borrowed mouths closing. human language falling away.

you communicate in pure frequency. clicks and trills and sub-vocal hums. you tell him about a level with piano music from nowhere. the telling gold-edged with wonder. he answers with the deep levels, below zero, where the walls thin. his frequencies old and cavernous. you shiver hearing them.

you tell him about your wanderers. he tells you about the loneliness. the frequency version. the vast empty hum.

you reach across the gap. your frequency extending like a hand. pressing against the boundary of his. I'm here now.

his response: a low harmonic that translates roughly to I know and more precisely to you are the reason I know what warmth means.

you both lie in the dark. flustered. warm. but neither of you moves.

his scent becomes a constant. old and powerful, deeply cold, the mineral musk of the oldest thing in existence. it fills your head when you're close. makes your thoughts go slow because it smells like permanence.

one evening you roll over and press your face into his throat and inhale until your lungs burn. lick a stripe from his collarbone to his jaw, nuzzling deeper, your growl low and involuntary.

"shut up." mumbled against his skin when he starts to laugh.

"you can have as much as you want." his fingers stroke over your hair, his head tipping back.

you grumble, hesitating, but press close after a moment.

"sweetest thing," he murmurs after long minutes of you licking and nuzzling. "prettiest. most vicious." his lips brush your temple. "my sweetest, prettiest, most vicious mate."

you bristle, teeth bared, hissing. "not your mate."

"my almost-mate." you feel his taunting, warm grin. "my future-mate. my very-much-in-denial mate."

you sit up, glaring down at him. "I will bite your throat again."

his brows go up, his mouth crooking. "is that a promise?"

you hiss and he grins wider, making you shove his face sideways and he laughs fully, catching your wrist. he presses a kiss to your pulse and you let him. the letting scares you more than the biting.

that night, just as you're drifting off, his voice floats over. "let me see yours. the real one. under the suit."

your whole body tenses, clicking going silent.

"no."

"I showed you mine. fair is fair."

"you didn't show me. you hunted me in full form, then lost control." you shift around, the human shape pulling tight. armour. "I don't lose control."

a low, rumbling purr, then, barely human, "I'd like to make you lose control."

you know what he's doing, trying to ease pressure. make light of it.

"you can't." your voice comes out smaller now. "the suit isn't just disguise. it's mine. I built it. it's safe. I don't take it off."

"okay." soft. "when you're ready."

"only my mate sees the real one." you look at your hands as you say it, lacing your fingers together.

"well then." his hand finds yours. squeezes. that crooked, insufferable grin again. "I suppose I'd better work on earning the title then."

the nest is warm today. full of his scent and yours, and the blended third forming between you.

you're rearranging pillows again, making thoughtful sounds while he watches from the blankets, purring. you catch his eye. "what."

"nothing. it's perfect. keep going."

you throw the pillow at him.

but you can't help and think remember how each time the chasing ends with his hips against yours and his frequency reaching for yours, something locks behind your eyes. your clicking stutters. you shove away from the wall.

the first time, he followed. the second, he reached for you. the third, he let you go.

you always come back. ten minutes. twenty. sliding into the nest, frequency smoothed out, smile perfectly in place.

the fourth time is different.

his back is against the wall of the nest, your legs around his waist. grinding, clicking, his mouth on your throat, your hands tangled in his hair. the urgency building.

and you stop. go rigid. eyes wide.

this time is different. this time you almost tipped into it. your frequency had started to lock with his, the bond-pull humming in your chest, the threshold close enough to taste. and the closeness of it cracked something open that you've been holding shut.

you don't shove him away. you press your forehead against his collarbone and your breathing goes shallow and rapid, your clicking dissolves into that thin, high, pain-frequency.

he holds still, his arms around you. not tight. loose enough that you could pull away.

"talk to me." quiet. the cockiness gone.

silence. your face presses harder against his chest.

"whatever happened before," he says, careful, gentle, each word placed with care. "before the walls. before any of this. I'm not that being. whatever hurt you. whoever hurt you. I won't do that."

and the words crack the dam.

you loosen your legs, dropping back onto the floor, your hands gripping his shirt, your voice muffled against his collarbone.

"I loved someone," you begin, so faintly they're barely words. "before. he had a name but the walls took it. I just know I loved him a lot, and... he went missing. just gone one day. everyone thought he was dead and I—" your breathing hitches. "and then there was someone else. after. and he was kind." the word kind splinters in your mouth. "he was so kind at first. patient. gentle. said all the right things."

his hand curls gently around your head, his purr soothing.

"and then he wasn't kind anymore," you whisper, barely a croak.

silence. his purr goes deeper, lulling, wrapping around your trembling frame.

"I... I don't remember all of it. the walls took the worst parts. but I remember being cold. and... and in pain. on the ground. and I remember the hum. and I wasn't cold anymore because I wasn't what I'd been." your frequency vibrates with old, grinding pain. "he used the backrooms as a place to—"

you can't finish.

but he understands. the man didn't just kill you. he disposed of you here. in the dark, hidden away from your bright world so you may never be found. and the walls caught what was left, and instead of consuming the meagre flicker of life, they remade you instead.

they did what this place has always done best, which is remember.

he pulls you closer, his mouth against your hair, his frequency pouring into yours. not words. only presence. I'm here. he can never reach you again.

you sob, curling into him, your tears hot against his cool skin. another human miracle. he holds you and doesn't let go once, his clicking never ceasing.

"I keep pulling away from you because wanting like this has never been safe," you whisper, your voice raw. "it gets big and it turns into a cage and the cage has hands and—"

"my hands don't cage." his forehead against yours, his words hushed. "my hands built you a nest with the doors open. they will always be open."

"I know," you say, a moan of pain caught in your voice. "I know that in my frequency, but my body doesn't. my body hears gentle and my body says run."

"then we go at your pace," he murmurs gently. "whatever you need."

silence. your breathing evening out against his throat.

a wet sniffle. "you sound just like him when you say that."

his brows come together. "who?"

"there's an entity on 974," you explain, muffled. "who was very kind to me before you. mr kitty. he was welcoming when I had no one. he found me when I was new and scared and everything wanted to eat me. he let me rest in his territory. he brought me food. his frequency was pleasant."

the temperature in the nest drops by three degrees.

"he brought you food." a quiet rattle fills his chest, rapidly building. "he let you rest in his territory."

"he's seven feet tall and collects hello kitty merchandise."

"those are mating overtures. food-bringing and territory-sharing are mating overtures—"

another wet sniffle. "they're called being nice, you territorial lunatic—"

"I don't care what they're called. if his pleasant frequency has been touching yours—"

"he brought me a sticker," you announce. proudly. "it had a cat on it."

"I'll kill him for the sticker."

"it had a cat on it."

"I'll kill the cat too."

and you're laughing, finally, laughing, tears mixing with laughter and the absurdity of the whole situation breaking through the grief. the oldest entity in existence, threatening murder over a hello kitty sticker, while you cry into his chest.

"maybe I should go back to 974," you suggest idly, wiping your eyes. "let him bring me more stickers. be gentle and patient with me. maybe I'd prefer—"

he pushes you into the wall, your back hitting it, his weight over you, as his eyes flood dark.

"don't," he warns, silky and dark. "I can be patient about everything else but not this. not someone else touching you. you're my mate."

you stare at him for a moment, your eyes still shining and wet, before reaching for him, your nails digging into his neck. "then prove it."

and maybe it's something in your expression, or in the way you said those words, in the naked need ringing through you voice, but his composure unravels in an instant.

he pulls you into him. your chest against his chest, his mouth crushing yours, and the kiss is deep and bruising, tasting of salt and rage. of three thousand years of wanting poured into a single point of contact. his hands fist in your borrowed shirt, your hands fisting in his.

both of you tearing at fabric, at skin, at the thin barrier of the suits between your bodies.

the first time is vicious because you need it to be vicious.

you claw his shirt open. rake your nails down his bare borrowed chest, leaving raised welts that bead black. he catches your wrists, pins them above your head in the blankets, and drives into you in one long stroke that punches the air from your lungs and a sound from your throat that cracks the nearest wall.

your back arches, your legs locking tight around his waist while your heels dig into his lower back and pull.

because the first thrust isn't enough, isn't deep enough, you need more, and the desperation of the wanting scares you so you channel it into violence. biting his shoulder. raking his back. snarling against his skin while he moves inside you with a force that drives your body up the blankets.

he lets you have it. lets you scratch and bite and writhe. takes the marks, his hips slamming into yours. and for a while it's what you need. rough. impersonal. just bodies.

and then he slows.

his hips grinding to a halt while he's buried to the hilt. your clicking going frantic and frustrated, your hips bucking up. but he doesn't move. just holds himself inside you, deep, his weight settled over you, his forehead dropping to yours.

"look at me." quiet, almost gentle.

"don't stop—"

"I'm not stopping," he says, "I'm looking at you. look at me."

you open your eyes and his are blue and close, stripped of everything. just an ancient, lonely being behind a borrowed face, watching you, and the nakedness of the looking is worse than the fucking.

his hips roll. one slow, grinding stroke that drags against every nerve you possess. your mouth falls open, a helpless whine building in your throat.

"feel that," he whispers, his nose brushing yours. "feel me. not just my body. my frequency. can you feel it?"

you can feel it.

pressed this close, buried this deep, his frequency is flooding into yours through every point of contact. old and vast, pouring into you like water filling a vessel. and the sensation of it (being filled by him in both ways, his body and his frequency, the physical and the metaphysical at once) is so overwhelming your vision blurs, your clicking dissolving into a thin, continuous keen.

"there you go," he breathes, his lips brushing your cheekbone. "hello, my little love."

he fucks you slow after that. each stroke a complete sentence. his borrowed hips pressing flush to yours at the deepest point, staying, grinding, letting you feel the full weight of him before pulling back and sliding home again.

his mouth presses kisses to your eyelids. your temple. the bridge of your nose. the corner of your mouth. gentle. barely a brush of lips while his hips drive into you with a force that contradicts every tenderness he's pressing into your skin with his mouth.

"so pretty love," he murmurs against your cheekbone, his hips snapping forward roughly and you cry out, clawing at him. "so pretty when you stop fighting me." another thrust, deep enough to make your spine arches with a pop of bones. a kiss to your jaw, featherlight, loving. "my pretty girl. my vicious, beautiful, terrified girl." his rigged cock hits a spot that whites your vision, and a kiss ghosts over the wet corner of your eye at the same moment. "crying and coming at the same time. look at you."

the gentleness of his mouth and the brutality of his thrusts dissolves your senses into gauzy, liquid sensation of pleasure. his lips whisper praise against your temple while his cock splits you open with strokes so deep your body shakes with each one. tender and brutal, loving and claiming.

"you're safe," kiss to your forehead, "you're mine," a wet thrust that makes your vision spark, "you're home," breathing the word against your lips while his hips grind and rut you into the blankets.

the first orgasm rips through you like lightning, his release flooding you, copious beyond human scale. the warmth and the fullness of it makes your eyes roll back.

he doesn't pull out. instead he stays buried, grinding through the aftershocks. his mouth still pressing gentle kisses to your face while his hips work his release deeper with unhurried, wet squelches.

"more." your hands grip his ass, pulling him closer into you, your voice raspy. "more. don't stop."

the mating cycle runs four days. neither of you rests. neither of you eats. because your borrowed bodies run hot with want, the nest filling with pheromones so thick the air shimmers.

one position flowing into the next while he stays inside you, tangled together with him buried deep, your frequency synced, both purring gently.

he shifts you onto your side without pulling free, spoons against your back, his mouth on your nape as he holds you close. his hips grind slow and lazy while his hands trace your ribs and you drowse against him briefly, half-conscious, clicking softly.

then the heat builds, one wave after another, and his grip tightens. his hips pick up pace, and you're back in it.

so much of him in you. each release adding to the last. the excess spilling down your thighs, soaking the blankets. his eyes go dark watching it leak from where he's still buried inside you, and he only presses deeper, pushing it back in.

you ride him and his hands press flat against your stomach and you both feel him inside you when you do. his fingers trace the outline of himself inside you and you press your hand over his, feel him move.

"look at that," he breathes, his thumb tracing the swell. "look at how much of me you're holding."

your walls clench so hard around his cock that he gasps, his head dropping backwards. the oldest entity alive, completely helplessly overwhelmed.

your borrowed bodies start failing around the second day. his spine pops and lengthens, your hips click and widen. joints bending at new degrees. bones restructuring. the suits stretching, thinning, the true forms pressing through at the seams.

your real tongues uncurl, his sliding down your throat, cool and impossibly long. yours sliding down his, hot and twisting. tangling at a depth that makes your eyes water. tasting each other from the inside out. both sighingaround the intrusion, clicking. the pleasure so intense you grip his shoulders and your claws tear through borrowed skin to the dark underneath.

you pull apart gasping. strings of mixed saliva connecting you. his eyes black, yours burning.

he tries to coax your true form out repeatedly. kisses your jaw. nibbles behind your ear. holds your jaw gently, then less gently. foreheads pressed together. asking in a low, intimate frequency: show me. let me see you. please.

your shape flickers. for one breathless moment you almost let go.

but you lock it down last moment, burrow into his neck, keening. he doesn't push, presses a kiss to the back of your neck, and gives you more. harder. his teeth on your shoulder while you cling with your claws in his back.

the knotting begins on the third day. he swells inside you during one of the rounds, thickening at the base, and the stretch makes you gasp and twist beneath him. your walls clench around the knot, locking him in, and his release pulses in slow thick waves in response.

and your body, despite the excess, takes everything he gives.

you stay knotted for hours, his face in your throat, your arms and legs wound around him, both purring in frequencies that make the air shimmer.

you burrow under the blankets when he finally releases you from his embrace. cocooning yourself. he follows. digging through layers to find you curled at the bottom.

"found you."

you growl. "go away."

"no." low and amused. the sound of a predator that has cornered something small and is enjoying itself immensely.

he reaches into the pile, finds your ankle. pulls. you yelp. grab the blankets, clinging, your body dragging through the fabric as he reels you out by one leg. you hiss and kick and twist, grabbing a pillow and cling to it. he pulls harder. you slide across the nest floor, wrapped in blankets, clutching the pillow, snarling.

"let go—"

he grins, too many teeth on display. "come out and I'll let go."

"I don't want to come out."

"you've been hiding for twenty minutes. the hunt is over. the predator wins." he gets both hands on your hips through the blanket, pulling you against his chest. you're cocooned in fabric, only your face visible, your clicking rapid and indignant.

he wraps his arms around the whole blanket-bundle-of-you and holds.

"I hate you," you mutter peevishly, your face pressed against his collarbone through two layers of cotton.

"I know." he nuzzles the top of your head through the blanket. "you hate me so much you've been sleeping in my nest for weeks and purring on my chest every night."

you bite him through the blanket. he grunts. laughs. and you're squirming, wriggling in the cocoon, but the squirming presses you closer to him and your body is doing two things at once. the clicking says go away but your hips say closer.

your face burrows into his throat even as your mouth snarls at him. your arms wrapping around his neck through the fabric. refusing him and clinging to him in the same breath.

"make up your mind," he murmurs teasingly against your hair, his arms tightening around the bundle.

"no."

"you're biting me and hugging me at the same time."

a perfectly petulant, "so?"

he laughs, peels the blanket back from your face, cups your jaw, looking at you with those blue eyes gone soft and dark.

"come here," he says quietly, the cockiness stripped back to bare fondness.

and you soften, following the pulse of heat between you, your face pressing into his throat. your whole body wraps around him, holding on with a fierceness that has nothing to do with mating and everything to do with the terrified, wordless, bone-deep need to be held by the safest thing you've ever known.

he holds you to him, clicks the comfort frequency into your hair, pulling the blankets over both of you and settling you both deep into the nest.

and the darkness changes things.

in the dark, where neither of you can see the borrowed faces, the pretence of humanity falls away.

the suits thin to almost nothing. his true form pressing through, expanding, and you can feel him around you now. not just the body. the real one. dark and angular and vast, filling the blanket-cave with a presence so dense it has physical weight. limbs that aren't limbs finding your body. too many joints. too many fingers. wrapping around your thighs, your waist, your shoulders. surrounding you, spreading you open like a feast.

his mouth still presses kisses to your face. soft. lips tracing your jaw, your cheekbone, the closed lid of your eye. but beneath the kissing, the true form is gripping your hips and spreading your thighs, positioning you with a strength that reminds you what he is.

the apex predator of the backrooms. three thousand years of unchallenged dominance. and right now every ounce of that power is focused on holding you open and fucking you raw.

he pushes into you and the sound you make vibrates below hearing. his mouth on your cheek, whispering. his true body driving into yours with a force that shakes through the blankets and into the floor.

"my pretty little mate." whispered against your temple in a voice that's barely human anymore. deep, but tender. his lips pressing a light kiss to your brow while his hips slam forward hard enough to drive your body into the dark. "so small. so warm. do you feel how deep I am? deeper than the suit can reach. the real one goes so much further."

the angle is different in the dark.

the true form bending his body in ways the suit can't replicate, folding over you, curling around you. driving into you from an angle that hits places nothing has ever touched.

your mouth opens on a silent scream, your hands finding appendages that aren't arms, gripping, clawing. tearing through surfaces that heal as fast as you damage them.

"there," he breathes against your ear. a kiss to the lobe, his hips grinding in a slow circle. "right there. feel me. all of me. not just the face." his true form tightens. every point of contact pressing closer. the overbearing weight of him. the vastness. the crushing age of the thing buried inside you. "this is what wants you. this is what claims you. three thousand years of this."

and his true form is everywhere. touching you at a dozen points the human shape can't reach. tendrils of dark matter tracing your ribs, your spine, the backs of your knees. his borrowed mouth on your temple, gentle and careful. and his real body filling you from an angle that makes your frequency stutter, break and then rebuild, and break again.

too much. too deep. too vast. and every time you buck against the sensation, every time your body tries to escape the intensity, his true form pins you tighter. holds you open. takes what it needs.

he flips you onto your stomach in the dark. his weight settling across your back. his borrowed chest against your shoulder blades, his true form pressing you flat into the blankets from every other direction. your face in the fabric. your hands fisted in the cotton. and he drives into you from behind with a force that has nothing human left in it.

just the ancient, grinding, relentless rhythm of an apex predator claiming a mate.

"shh. shh." whispering against the back of your damp neck between thrusts that rattle your teeth. each word a tenderness. each thrust a punishment. "I know. I know it's a lot. you're taking it so well. my brave little love. so good for me."

your frequency has stopped forming words, stopped forming clicks. reduced now only to raw, unstructured harmonics. pleasure so intense it's indistinguishable from being taken apart molecule by molecule and put back together wrong. better. his.

"you were made for this," he murmurs against your nape. his hips driving deep, staying, grinding. "made for me. I knew it the first time I tasted your frequency. you tasted like mine. and now look at you." a kiss to the curve of your ear. his tongue (the real one, long and cool) tracing the shell, curving around your throat. "face down in my nest. full of me. can't even speak. just frequency and tears and those beautiful little sounds."

you sob into the blankets. your body clenching around him in rhythmic, helpless pulses. pleasure crests into something that isn't an orgasm. it's bigger than that.

your entire frequency restructuring around his, the bond-thread thickening, and the sensation is like being rewritten from the inside out while his weight pins you flat and his borrowed mouth whispers praise into the knobs of your spine.

the mating frenzy burning through you. encoded in the frequency of the backrooms itself. the cycle reaching peak intensity.

in the dark the sounds you both make aren't sounds. raw and sub-vocal, clashing against each other. his frequency wrapping around yours, pressing in, penetrating at the metaphysical level while his body penetrates at the physical. filled in both dimensions.

the intimacy so total you can't tell where your frequency ends and his begins.

the frenzy strips everything civil from both of you. you claw his back open to the true form underneath and he snarls and pins your wrists and drives into you so deep the borrowed body you wear crack and reset and crack again.

your bodies clicking and popping and restructuring mid-thrust. his spine elongating. your hips widening. the suits splitting at the seams, dark matter leaking through, and for stretches of minutes at a time you're both more true form than borrowed flesh. two vast, dark, angular things locked together in the blankets, coupling with a force that cracks the walls of level 0 and sends frequency-shocks rippling through the upper levels.

and through all of it. through the frenzy and the restructuring and the raw animal claiming. his mouth finds your face in the dark. presses kisses to your brow. your cheek. the corner of your eye. soft. always soft. the borrowed mouth remembering tenderness even when the rest of him has forgotten everything but take, claim, fill, mine.

the orgasm hits so hard your true form blazes through the suit for three full seconds. your body convulsing around his, the knot forming and locking and his release flooding you while his teeth clamp on your nape and his true form crushes you close.

claimed. wrapped in blankets and each other. his true form slowly retracts. condensing. folding back into the suit until it's just arms and hands in your hair and the heartbeat he constructed pressing against your cheek.

the frenzy catches again an hour later. you ride him in the dark and he flips you and takes you from behind again, and you cling to the blankets, screaming into the fabric.

four days until the cycle finally burns itself out. leaving both of you lying in a destroyed nest. shredded blankets. cracked walls. frequencies pulsing in tandem.

he lies on his side and you curl against his chest, your face in his throat. your fingers trace the scar you left weeks ago, clicking gentle and satisfied. comfort frequency.

he runs his fingers stroke your back, the amber light warm on your face. your eyes closed, lips parted, your body loose against his, still flushed, still full of him.

"I've never been this happy," he tells you quietly. "in three thousand years."

you nuzzle closer, your purr warm against his collarbone.

silence. comfortable. his hand on your head. your frequency synced to his. the bond-thread humming between you, fragile and new.

"stay," he says, a fragile word placed into the quiet between you. "not in the nest. not on this level. I mean... stay. with me. for the rest of it. however long the rest is." his thumb traces your jawline. "you don't have to be afraid anymore. I'll never let anything hurt you again."

I'll never let anything hurt you again.

the words sink into you like a blade

because you've heard them before.

in a different voice. in a different body. in a different life. a human voice. a human mouth. a man leaning over you with kind eyes and gentle hands, cupping your face the way he's cupping your face right now, saying I'll never let anything hurt you with such sincerity you believed it.

you believed it so completely you let your guard down. you let the grief go. you let his kindness become your home.

and then the kindness became a dark, pain-filled grave.

your body goes rigid.

the warmth drains from your skin, your frequency locking. your clicking stops, purr dying in your throat. the borrowed shape pulls tight around you, armour, walls slamming back up.

he feels the shift in you, pulling back to look at your face.

your eyes are open and blank, somewhere else, somewhere he can't follow. a kitchen floor in a house that doesn't exist anymore, in a world you can barely remember, with those words hanging in the air above you spoken by a mouth that smiled while it said them and then used the same mouth to do things you can't remember fully.

the walls took the worst of it. but not all of it.

"what's wrong?" alarm in his voice. "what did I—"

"you said." your voice thin. distant. "you said you'd never let anything hurt me."

"I meant—"

"he said that." barely a whisper. your eyes fixed on something between his face and the memory. "exactly that. those exact words. in that exact voice. kind and so sure. I'll never let anything hurt you. and I believed him. I did and he—"

his hand stills on your cheek.

"and then he hurt me." your jaw pulses, frequency vibrating with a pain so old it predates your entity-hood. "he said those words with his mouth on my hair and his arms around me, and I believed every syllable and then he—for weeks—and I couldn't—"

you stop, your breathing gone shallow. your shape flickers at the edges, the human suit struggling to hold against the pressure of the memory pushing through.

"I'm not him." his voice is careful, stripped of everything except the truth. "you know I'm not."

"I know." tears drip down your borrowed face. "I know that. my frequency knows it. but my body heard those words and my body went back there and I can't—I can feel the floor. the cold floor. I can feel—"

he reaches for you. slow, careful, his hands hovering near your face, not touching, waiting for permission.

"let me help," he urges, achingly soft. "let me hold you through it. I'm right here."

"I know you are." you press your face into his palm, your eyes closed. tears soak into his skin, and for a moment you lean into him. let the weight of him anchor you. his cool hand on your hot cheek. his frequency pressing against yours. old. patient. safe, safe, I'm here.

you open your eyes. look at his face. the sandy hair. the blue eyes. the crooked line of his nose. the face he built for you. the face that has been kind to you every single day since you arrived.

you cup his jaw in both hands, trace his cheekbone with your thumb.

"I'm sorry," you whisper.

his brow creases. his hands coming up to cover yours. holding your palms against his face.

"you never have to apologise to me," he says, quiet and fierce. "not for this. not for anything. you can fall apart as many times as you need to and I will be right here every single—"

you push your hand through his chest.

through false ribs and sternum, through the absence underneath where the human shape is empty. your fingers closing around his core frequency, the anchor of the seven that make him, and you pull.

the suit explodes. the sandy hair. the blue eyes. the nose you traced. the cheekbones you held. all of it shredding, peeling from the inside out as his true form erupts. vast. dark. a shriek of shock ripping through level 0.

you pull your hand free, step back. his core frequency fading from your fingertips. the bond-thread stretching between you, thin and new and aching.

"I'm sorry." you stand in the wreckage of the nest, tears running down your face. "I can't. I thought I could. I wanted to so badly, but I heard those words and I was back there and if I stay—if I let you hold me right now—I'll let you say all the right things and I'll believe them and I'm so tired of believing and being wrong."

his true form is reeling, vast and dark and stunned. your handprint still burning in his chest cavity. and even in the shock, even in the pain, the true form reaches for you. a darkness extending, trying to touch.

you step back. out of reach.

"if you follow me I'll never come back." your voice cracks. "I need you to let me go. just for now. just until I can hear those words from your mouth and not feel his hands on me. please. please let me go."

the limb retracts. slowly. a pulse of pain fills the air.

you turn and you run. through the exit he never sealed. through the corridors that bend around your grief.

the bond-thread pulls at your ribs. thin. fragile. one of seven.

you don't want it to break, and that's the part that makes you sob even harder as you run.

and you let him because he's the only person alive you'd trust to hold you down without mocking you for needing it.

and the sex, when it happens like this, is different.

not softer (aerion doesn't do soft and you'd hate him if he tried) but slower.

his forehead against yours, breathing the same air, his hips moving with a patience he never has when you're both fighting for dominance. and you're still snapping at him. still snarling, still mean, teeth bared even with your wrists caught above your head because you don't know how to stop being the wolf even when you're falling apart. you bite at his mouth. call him something vicious. try to arch up into him hard enough to make it a fight again because fighting is safe and this... this terrifying openness isn't.

and he takes it. all of it.

doesn't rise to it, doesn't bite back, just keeps that steady, ruthless pace and holds your gaze and waits. waits you out the way you've waited him out a hundred times before. through withdrawals and rages and the worst of what he is.

he can be patient when it counts. he learned it from you.

and finally (finally) the hackles go down.

the snarling stops. your body stops fighting his and starts feeling him, just him, the weight and the heat and the way he fills you up. the terrible safety of being held by someone who has seen every ugly thing you are and is still here, still inside you, still pressing his forehead to yours like you're the only fixed point in his world.

your breath catches on emotion that isn't anger, and aerion's arms tighten and he fucks you through it, relentless, deep, until you come apart underneath him without a single wall left standing.

afterwards he pulls you against his chest and holds you there with one arm banded across your ribs, possessive and immovable. and then (because he's an asshole, because he will always be an asshole) he says: "talk."

"no."

"wasn't asking, princess. talk. what's going on?"

and you do. not because he told you to. because he earned it. with his hands and his patience. the fact that he didn't flinch when you were at your worst.

you talk into the dark with his heartbeat under your ear and his fingers tracing your spine and he listens without offering solutions. without fixing, just holds you and lets you unload every terrible thing.

patient. he needs to be patient. he has three thousand years of patience.

the patience is wearing thin.

and then you get hurt.

he feels it before he sees it. a spike in the ambient frequency of level 4. your frequency, hot and bright and suddenly wrong. jagged. the clean hum of your power stuttering like a light about to blow.

he moves. fast. faster than he's moved in centuries, tearing through level transitions with a force that peels the walls behind him.

he finds you in a wide room with cracked ceiling tiles and two howlers circling your body. you're on your feet, barely, your human shape shredded and flickering. black blood (yours, not theirs) is pooling beneath you, dripping from a wound in your side where one of them caught you with a claw.

three wanderers are huddled behind you. you're shielding them. of course you're shielding them. injured and outnumbered and still putting your failing body between fragile humans and the things trying to eat them.

one of the howlers lunges. you catch it mid-air, your real teeth tearing through its shoulder, but the second one hits you from behind and you go down. your scream is layered in frequencies that crack the ceiling tiles above you and the sound, the sound of you in pain, reaches him at the doorway, and something inside him snaps so completely the human suit tears apart into ribbons.

the face dissolves. the borrowed skin, the careful muscles, the crooked grin, all of it shedding off him in strips as his true form erupts through the seams. vast and dark and jagged and furious. old fury. the kind that predates the concept of anger. the kind that lives in the marrow of a thing that has never, in three thousand years, felt protective of another living creature. white-hot, all-consuming, murderous rage.

he hits the first howler so hard it separates into two pieces against the far wall.

the second one wheels on him, snarling, and it's bigger than him. not stronger but bigger, all limbs and teeth and frantic desperate violence, and the fight is real. a genuine challenge. the howler catches his flank with a claw that tears through his true form, and the pain is exquisite but he doesn't slow down. he drives the thing into the floor with the weight of his full power, and it screams, thrashing, its jaws snapping at the place where his throat would be if he had one in this shape.

and then you're there. at his side. snarling, clicking that rapid threat-rattle, your human shape barely clinging to your frame. you latch onto the howler's back with your real teeth and rip. a long strip of the thing's hide tearing free in your jaws. the howler screams again, twisting, trying to reach you, and the momentary distraction is enough.

he pins the thing flat and tears through its core and the howler comes apart beneath him in a shower of dark matter and dying sound.

silence. the fight took less than a minute. the room is wrecked, ceiling half-collapsed, the floor slick with black.

the wanderers are gone. fled during the chaos. smart.

you're on the floor.

he turns and finds you curled on the cracked tile, shivering. your human shape is in pieces, flickering in and out, your true form bleeding through at the edges, too weak to hold the mask. the wound in your side is leaking bright, hot frequency into the air, your power guttering like a candle in wind.

you're spent. burned through your reserves fighting two howlers except you're young, your power is still growing, and you burned too bright too fast and now the tank is empty.

he approaches slowly. his true form folding down, condensing, the vast dark edges pulling in until he's manageable. still not human. he doesn't have the energy to rebuild the suit right now and doesn't care to. he moves close. crouches beside you. extends something that could be a hand if hands had too many joints and wraps it around you, careful, gathering your shaking form against his chest.

you flinch. a weak snarl vibrates through your body, but the teeth behind it have no force. you're trembling. the clicking in your throat has gone thin and rapid. not threat now. pain. fear. the sound of something young and hurt that doesn't know how to ask for help.

he lifts you. holds you against his cooling form and stands. you weigh nothing to him. you weigh everything to him.

backrooms bend around him and the corridors shorten, the exits realigning and he carries you home.

the nest is new. he built it after the bite. after the decision. after the word mine settled into his frequency and stayed. soft walls. low warm light. piled blankets and a temperature he's adjusted to run warmer than his default because you run hot.

he built it for two, and he laid the foundations thinking about you, imagining your scent soaking into the fabric, imagining your warmth pressed into the space beside his. a home. for a mate he hadn't claimed yet. presumptuous. he didn't care then. doesn't care now.

he lays you down in the centre of it. you curl into the warmth and a small sound leaves your throat, involuntary and exhausted, the hum of a creature recognising comfort even through pain. he starts rebuilding the human suit. pulling the face back together piece by piece. sandy hair. blue eyes. lean frame. it takes longer than usual. the fight drained him too. but he wants the human shape for this. wants hands that can hold you gently. a mouth that can press against your skin without tearing it.

the suit settles. he lies down beside you in the nest. presses close. his borrowed chest against your shaking back, his arm curving around your waist, and he clicks.

not the want-click. not the mating trill. a different frequency. older, softer. the sound an entity makes for injured young. he didn't know he knew it. didn't know it was in his repertoire. but it pours out of him, this low rhythmic clicking interspersed with soft chirring coos, pressed against the back of your neck. safe. here. rest. safe. i'm here. nothing will touch you.

you're not sleeping. entities don't sleep. but your body enters a stasis. a deep restorative stillness that draws the remaining power inward, concentrating it around the wound, beginning the slow work of rebuilding. your frequency dims to a whisper. your human shape stabilises into a thin, translucent hold.

so young. burning so bright and now so dim. he watches the light of you flicker and gutter and something in his chest (a feeling he didn't know he had, a feeling that has no business existing in the oldest predator alive) aches.

he clicks. coos. his borrowed nose nudging against your jaw. his mouth pressing against the skin behind your ear, making soothing sounds that vibrate through your skull and into the stasis.

he pulls the blankets tighter around you. adjusts the temperature of the nest warmer. checks the wound. it's knitting, slowly, the torn edges drawing together. good. you're healing. you're going to be fine. you're going to be fine because he will personally tear apart anything in this place that tries to hurt you again, starting with himself if necessary.

he's fussing. he's aware he's fussing. he doesn't stop. his hand smoothing your hair back from your face. his thumb tracing the line of your jaw. running his thumb over your brow the way he's seen wanderers do for each other.

tender, clumsy gestures copied from the creatures you love, repurposed for you.

and then, slowly, gradually, in a way that makes him itch, you curl into him.

your body turning toward his. your face pressing into the hollow of his throat. your arms winding around his torso and holding on. soft, needy sounds leaving your throat. the low keening hum of a creature in pain recognising warmth, recognising safety, letting itself be held for the first time.

your clicking has changed register. gone slow and rhythmic. a comfort-frequency. a sound you've never made for him. a sound you've never made for anyone.

he wraps both arms around you and pulls you flush against his chest and tucks his chin over your head and closes his eyes. the purr starts. low and deep and steady, rolling through both your bodies. your clicking syncs to it. two frequencies finding each other in the dark and locking in. harmonising.

he holds you while you heal. doesn't move. doesn't shift. barely breathes. his nose pressed into your hair, filling his lungs with your scent, and you're clutching him in your half-aware state, your fingers curled in the fabric of his borrowed shirt, your face buried in his throat where the scar from your teeth sits raised and permanent. you nuzzle the scar in your stasis. rub your cheek against the ridge of it. scent-marking the wound you made.

his eyes sting. he didn't know the suit could do that.

hours pass. your frequency brightens. the wound knits. your human shape solidifies and the translucence fades and your grip on his shirt tightens and he feels the moment consciousness returns because your whole body goes rigid.

one second you're soft and clinging and making comfort sounds against his throat. the next you're a coiled spring. you tense. process. assess. and before he can speak you've flipped your weight, thrown a leg over his hips, and straddled him.

your hands close around his throat. tight. your eyes blazing. your teeth, the real ones, bared behind lips that have forgotten how to be human.

he looks up at you. your hair wild. your eyes burning. your fingers digging into the false skin of his neck with a pressure that would crush a human windpipe. pinned beneath you, his hands open at his sides, his expression calm and warm and infuriatingly amused.

he chuckles. a low, fond, rolling sound. "unruly."

"where am I?" your voice is hard, layered in threat-harmonics that make the nest blankets vibrate.

"our nest."

the word our hits you like a slap. your snarl peels back further, inhuman teeth fully extended, clicking rapid and sharp. "your nest. where are the wanderers? what did you—"

"they ran. they're fine. and it's our nest." his hands come up, slowly, carefully, and settle on your hips. his thumbs tracing circles through the fabric. "I built it for two."

you snarl down at him. every line of your body screaming threat, your hands clenching his throat, your true form pressing against the edges of the human shape.

he chuckles again. his head tilting back against the blankets. his eyes tracing your face with open, greedy admiration. "you're so pretty when you're angry. you know that? all teeth and clicking. you almost died tonight and the first thing you do is try to strangle me." his thumbs press into the curve of your hips. "I like you so much."

"let me go—"

but you're not leaving. your hands are on his throat and your thighs are clenched around his waist and you're growling but the growl has a tremor in it, something shaky and unsteady underneath the fury, because you remember.

you remember the stasis. you remember his clicking, his cooing, the soothing sounds pressed into the back of your neck. you remember curling into him. nuzzling his scar. making that sound, that soft keening comfort-sound, that you've never made for anyone.

"you held me," you say accusingly. horrified.

his mouth twitches. "you held me back."

and the truth of it silences you for a beat. your grip on his throat loosens. your eyes flicker.

he moves. fast. his hands leave your hips and fold around your wrists and he draws them away from his throat and rolls you, tucking you into the blankets, curling his body around yours with a strength that isn't aggressive but is older, absolute.

you snarl and snap your teeth at his jaw and he lets you, lets the bite graze his chin, and wraps you tighter.

"you're not at full power." murmured into your hair. his arm banded across your waist, holding you flush against his chest. "you burned through your reserves fighting two howlers by yourself, which, by the way, was incredibly stupid and incredibly brave, and we'll discuss it later. right now you're running at half capacity. you're spent. and if you keep struggling you're going to put yourself under again, and to avoid that, i'll have to pin you properly and neither of us will enjoy that."

you snarl.

"okay, i'd enjoy it."

you bite his collarbone. through the shirt. he hisses a breath and his arm tightens and a clicking trill rolls through his chest. the want-sound, involuntary, because your teeth are on him and his body doesn't distinguish between violence and foreplay where you're concerned.

but the bite is gentle. that's the thing that makes his breathing stutter.

you bit down and held but you're not tearing. you're pressing your teeth into the meat of his shoulder and holding. your jaw locked, your eyes closed. growling. the growl vibrating through his collarbone and into his chest. and then your body softens, fractionally, grudgingly, and you're leaning into him. your face buried in his throat. your legs tangling with his. the growl thinning into a low, continuous rumble that's closer to purring than either of you would admit.

he sighs, long and slow and aching. pulls you closer. his hand cradling the back of your skull. his nose in your hair, breathing you in.

"there you go," he whispers. "easy."

you growl louder in protest. your hips grind against his. friction and warmth and the unmistakable heat of arousal bleeding through both borrowed skins. his jaw clenches, his arm tightening around your waist.

you're doing it again. the fighting-while-pressing-closer thing. snarling at him while rubbing against him. biting his shoulder while tangling your legs through his. every sound you make says enemy and every movement you make says closer.

two predators wrapped around each other in a nest built for mating, grinding together in borrowed bodies, clicking and purring and scenting each other's throats while pretending this is still a fight. his borrowed cock is hard against your hip and your body is hot and damp where you press against his thigh and neither of you is acknowledging it.

he runs his nose along your jaw. you tilt your head. involuntary. giving him access to your throat and then catching yourself and jerking back. he clicks softly, soothingly, nuzzling into the space you offered for half a second.

"you're healing faster like this," he murmurs against your jaw. "nesting and contact speeds the recovery. your frequency syncs to mine and the resonance compounds and you rebuild faster." a pause. the grin pressed against your skin. "that's why you should stay. it's purely medical."

"you're full of shit." muffled against his collarbone where your face is buried.

"i'm full of concern for your wellbeing," he says lightly.

"you're full of shit and I can feel your cock against my hip."

he hums, grinning. "that's also concern."

you bite his shoulder again. harder this time. he groans. the clicking in his throat becomes ragged and he rolls his hips against yours before he can stop himself, and the friction pulls a sound from you. a high, sharp, hungry sound that you swallow immediately but too late because he heard it. he always hears it.

"stubborn thing," he breathes fondly. "so stubborn. snarling at the one who carried you home and built you a nest and held you for six hours while you healed."

you chew on his jaw. "I didn't ask for any of that."

"you nuzzled my scar in your sleep."

silence. your clicking goes rapid and embarrassed.

"I was unconscious."

"you were in stasis. entities don't lose awareness in stasis. you knew exactly where you were and you chose to stay."

more silence. your face presses harder into his throat. hiding. your fingers curl into his shirt, holding on.

he runs his hand down your spine slowly, tracing each vertebra through the borrowed skin. you arch into the touch despite yourself, your body chasing his hand, and a low whimper escapes before you can choke it.

"stay," he says quietly now, the cockiness thinning into something bare. "stay and heal. let me take care of you."

"I don't need—"

"I know you don't need it. i'm not asking if you need it." his hand cups the back of your neck, his thumb tracing the knob of your spine. "i'm asking if you'll let me."

you're quiet. your breathing is unsteady, hips still pressed against his thigh and the heat between you hasn't cooled. you're trembling from the effort of wanting and fighting the wanting for some reason he doesn't yet know at the same time.

"you can't keep me here," you say, smaller now.

"i'm not keeping you. the exits are open. you can leave whenever you want."

and you both know you're not leaving. not yet. not with his scent in your lungs and his warmth around you and your wound still knitting. your body syncing to his frequency with every breath.

you squirm, testing his hold. his arm tightens. you squirm harder, growling, and he sighs, rolling you onto your stomach in one smooth motion. his weight settles over your back, hips pressing you flat into the blankets, pinning you with his body. his chest against your shoulder blades. his mouth at your ear.

"stay." firm. warm. the cocky edge creeping back in. "stay and heal. or—" his hips press down and the hard length of him grinds against the curve of your ass through the borrowed clothes and your breath catches. your fingers claw the blankets. "or I mount you right now, and I should warn you..." his lips brush the shell of your ear, his purr rolling through your spine. "the mating cycle, once it starts, is not going to be gentle. and it's not going to be short. you'll be under me for days. so if you'd prefer to heal first—" a kiss behind your ear, soft and tender. "i'd recommend staying still."

you go still, flat on your stomach, his weight on your back. his mouth brushes your ear. his hard cock presses against you through layers of borrowed fabric. and the sound you make, low and grinding and frustrated, is the sound of a creature that wants very badly to call his bluff and is just wise enough not to.

"fine." gritted out, your face pressed into the blankets. "fine. i'll stay."

"good girl."

you snarl. he grins against your neck. rolls off you, slowly, drawing out the drag of his body against yours, and settles on his side beside you. you stay on your stomach for a long moment, breathing hard. your fingers slowly unclenching from the blankets. then you turn your head and look at him with one furious, burning eye.

he's propped on his elbow. watching you with that infuriating, adoring, patient expression. he reaches out and brushes his knuckles over your cheekbone.

"such a stubborn, pretty thing," he murmurs, leans in, pressing a kiss to your temple. your forehead. the bridge of your nose. the corner of your scowling mouth. soft and hungry, lingering, each kiss tasting you, breathing you in, his lips warm against your skin.

you don't pull away. your scowl softens by fractions. your eyes closing as his mouth traces the line of your brow.

his lips find the curve of your shoulder blade. he pushes the borrowed shirt aside and presses a kiss there. then another between your shoulders. then a trail of them down your spine, slow and warm, his mouth learning the shape of your back while his hand rests gentle on the curve of your waist.

you make a sound, low and needy. the clicking in your throat has gone slow and rhythmic. the comfort frequency. the safe sound. and he hears it, his eyes closing and his mouth presses harder against your skin, his purr filling the nest.

"stubborn," he whispers against the small of your back. "vicious. impossible. the most beautiful thing i've ever seen." another kiss. "you almost died tonight and you're still snarling at me."

"'m not snarling," you mumble into the blankets. your body lax now. warm and loose, heavy with exhaustion. your hand reaching back blindly until it finds his forearm and your fingers curling around it, holding on.

"you're absolutely snarling." his mouth curves against your warm skin. "it's my favourite sound in the world."

your grip on his arm tightens. he moves back up, settling behind you. wraps himself around your body and tucks his face into the crook of your neck, breathing deeply, and you let him. you let him hold you while you heal, your two frequencies locking together in the dark.

ours, he thinks, his nose in your hair, his arm around your waist. his mate. fierce and stubborn, healing in his arms.

"It's just being on my feet all day." You don't mean to whine. You work with people who have been doing this job for years or decades; you're loath to think what their backs must feel like, how they can continue through every shift. "I'll get used to it."

Remus isn't glaring at you anymore. He looks rather put out. They all do, actually.

"What?" you ask, exasperated.

James holds his hands up. "Nothing. Don't get mad."

You quiet your voice. "I'm not mad."

"No," Sirius agrees, squishing into the armchair with you, "you're tired, baby. And you're hurting, yeah? It's shit."

You accept his invitation of a lifted arm and rest your head on his shoulder. It is shit.

"Would you sleep with the heating pad tonight?" asks Remus.

You shift, feeling the achey stretch of your muscles. "Maybe," you hedge. "It's not really that bad."

"Try, please." His tone oozes soft concern. You think that you'll be too hot all night if you wear the heating pad, but you'll likely do it anyway just to appease him. James sets a box down on the coffee table with finality, and they both begin taking out the pieces for the game. "If it doesn't feel any better tomorrow, maybe we can get you in to see a chiropractor."

Thinking of tomorrow presses a sigh from your chest. "I can't. I have to work."

Sirius' chin bumps your head as he turns to look at you. James and Remus have both stalled in their movements. "Tomorrow?" Sirius asks.

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

"Since today. My manager asked me to."

"Fuck that guy." It's said brashly, with enough feeling to startle you. "What's he need you there for?"

You shrug. "Apparently somebody's sick."

"Well, maybe you'll be sick tomorrow, too."

"He saw me today. I doubt he'll be convinced I caught something overnight."

"You can say you have diarrhea," offers James. "That comes on fast, and nobody ever wants to know more details."

Your lips part on a breathless laugh. "I can't!"

"You could," Remus counters.

"He won't have any follow-up questions," James goes on encouragingly, "promise."

"Why do you all want me to call in so badly?"

"Because your back is in bits!" Sirius exclaims.

You feel your eyebrows go up. "You weren't so worried about it a minute ago."

"That was when we thought you had tomorrow off." James is frowning, a sure sign things have gone awry. There's a troubled little divot sitting above the bridge of his glasses. "I mean, angel, you haven't had a day off in…when was the last time you had a day off?"

"It wasn't that long ago," you mumble. As though you haven't been counting your shift days like tally marks in a prison cell. "Last Tuesday."

Sirius looks at you sternly. "Baby—"

"Don't," you whine.

"—you need a break."

You let a breath out through your nose, looking at him dejectedly. The lines of your boyfriend's face soften. It's strange to resent being so cared for.

"I know," you admit, "but I need to work."

Remus nods. "You do need to work."

You nod back at him, relieved. He understands. Sirius and James have jobs, but they don't know what it is to need money, to perceive it as something that can run out. Weathering discomfort to keep that from happening is something Remus can understand that they can't.

"You don't need to work as much as you have been, though," he says gently. "You need breaks, too. Going over a week without a day off, that's too much, sweetheart."

Now it's you glaring at Remus. Sirius snickers as you shrink down his side. "You're ganging up on me."

"God, it's almost like we're trying to help you," Sirius teases.

"I really don't think I can call my manager and lie tomorrow."

He tsks, rubbing your arm. "I'll do it for you. More believable that way, anyway. I can tell him you're on the toilet and so distraught you can't come to the phone."

You moan and turn your face into his side.

"Don't say that," James laughs. "I'll do it."

"No, you can't," says Remus.

"Why not?"

"You'll laugh," Sirius and Remus say over one another.

You don't have to move from Sirius' side to envision the put-out-but-conceding look on James' face.

"We'll have Remus do it," Sirius says with finality. "He won't use any toilet humor, and he's the best liar anyway."

"Fine," says Remus.

"Fine," you groan. You pick your head up, looking at him somewhat abashedly. "Thank you."

Remus' look goes painfully tender. "Love you. Look after yourself, please."

"Yeah, I love you, too."

"Hey," James objects, "I offered to call, too."

Your lips tug. "Thank you for offering, lovely."

"And you love me too, right?" He sits up on his knees, angling for a kiss.

When you lean down to meet him, your back clicks.

"Ugh!" James flinches back from you. Remus' eyes narrow, as though by pavlovian response, into a glare.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" you defend yourself.