Smurf

“A cat.” Egg answers helpfully, a smile on the boys face. Knowing what his father was actually asking but deciding to be difficult.

“I know it’s a cat what the fuck is it wearing?” Maekar demands, not paying attention to his second son as your husband enters.

“Caraxes there you are.” Aerion say walking over to the cat to pick it up. The cat purring the whole time, rubbing its face up against him. “You weren’t in your usual spot I was worried.”

“What the fuck.”

“Oh father, meet my dragon Caraxes.” Aerion say turning so his father can see that cat in all its glory. Fabric wings included. Maekar having been away for a few weeks visiting Baelor.

“Why is the cat wearing wings?” Maekar asks exasperatedly, just wanting one normal dinner for once. Baelor getting to have normal meals all the time, his children never dressing animals up in costumes or making potions.

“My wife made them.” Aerion reply’s with a smile, loving that you made them for him.

“Again, why is the cat wearing wings.”

“Well I tried them on Meleys and Vhagar but they just kept scratching me so I put them on Caraxes and she loves them.” He explains, knowing he probably should have tried Caraxes first as she’ll put up with anything. Daella once putting one of her doll’s dresses on the cat.

“You’ve broken my son.” Your father by law says looking at you. “He used to be normal.”

“Did he?” You and egg respond back both of you giving Maekar a look. You all knowing Aerion has always been odd.

“Well he used to be less obviously weird.”

-

“Do you know where Vermithor’s gone?” Aerion asks entering the solar, Caraxes following him. Still wearing her wings.

“He’s cuddling Rhae.” You respond knitting a new dragon snug as egg would like one, after finding Aerion’s. Noticing your husband turn around to leave. “Where are you going?”

“To collect my dragon.”

“Aerion no, he’s claimed her. Leave them be.” You say knowing the girl loves that cat, him loving her back as he’s been sneaking into her chambers every night to cuddle her.

“But he’s mine.” Aerion whines still not liking to share every though he’s a grown man.

“You have plenty of dragons she’s allowed one.” You say giving him a look.

“Fine.” He say admitting defeat as he sits next to you. Caraxes jumping into his lap wanting cuddles.

“What the fuck is wrong with my son.” Maekar mumbles to himself as he walks past the solar just having heard your conversation.

-

“Night my love.” Aerion says to you softly while you fall asleep in his arms.

“Night.” You mumble into his chest, seconds away from sleep when he continues talking.

“Night Caraxes, night Silverwing, night Vhagar, night Syrax, night Meleys, night Tessarion, night moondancer, night Sunfrye, night Morning.” He says saying goodnight to all the cats in your chambers, Vermithor with Rhae while seasmoke is sleeping in with Egg. Balarion sleeping beside Maekar’s head, the man denying it if it’s even brought up.

entity!companion who falls asleep against his shoulder for the first time and wakes up to find he hasn't moved in four hours. his arm numb. his back aching. he needs to pee really badly. the camera on his lap, battery long dead. he didn't move because she was sleeping on him and he'd rather lose the arm than spook her again.

entity!companion who climbs into his lap one afternoon without preamble. just crawls across the safe room and settles herself in his lap and puts her face in his neck and purrs. and bobby goes so still his heartbeat is the loudest thing in the room and his hands hover over her back, not touching, remembering the hiss, and she grabs his wrist and puts his hand on her head and his fingers start moving through her hair and the purr shakes through both of them.

entity!companion who doesn't understand why she chose him. there are other wanderers. stronger ones. smarter ones. ones who don't try to film the things that want to eat them. but bobby smells like sunlight and old leather, and something warm she can't name, and when he talks in that low, easy voice her frequency goes quiet and still for the first time since the walls made her.

entity!companion who watches him try to make friends with mr kitty on level 974 and nearly die of secondhand embarrassment because bobby walks up to a seven-foot faceless humanoid entity and goes, "hey big guy, cool collection, is that a hello kitty toaster?" with the casual confidence.

entity!companion who growls at other wanderers who get too close to him. who has a very specific frequency she uses when humans she doesn't know approach her human and the frequency translates roughly to mine, fragile, will kill you. who doesn't understand why the other wanderers look nervous when bobby waves them over for group dinners.

entity!companion who brings him a blanket she found on level 11. drops it on his lap and walks away. doesn't explain. doesn't linger. simply the blanket appearing like a gift from a cat who won't admit it's a gift. and then a pillow the next day. and then a book. and then a jacket. his safe room slowly filling with offerings she pretends she didn't leave.

entity!companion who curls around him at night now. every night. her body between him and the door. her true form flickering at the edges in her sleep, limbs extending, wrapping around his sleeping bag, cocooning him. bobby wakes up in a cage of warm limbs that aren't shaped right and blinks at the ceiling and pats the nearest appendage and goes back to snoring soundly.

entity!companion who hears him talking about home one night. about his twin brother. about his mom. about a girl he thinks he was in love with but he can't quite remember her face anymore and the forgetting scares him. and her frequency goes very quiet. because she knows what it is to forget. to have the walls take pieces of the before. to reach for a name or a face and find empty space where memory used to live.

entity!companion who presses her forehead against his that night and clicks a frequency that means i know. i lost things too. we can be lost together. and bobby doesn't hear frequencies but he hears something. feels it vibrate through his skull. and his hand comes up and cups the back of her head and he whispers, "yeah. okay. together." and she purrs so hard his teeth rattle.

entity!companion who BB finds eventually. and BB takes one look at the cameraman sitting in a safe room with an entity curled in his lap and a broken camera in his hand and a collection of stolen goods piled around him like a dragon's hoard, and BB's borrowed jaw drops because his mate has a pet. she has a human pet. she's been feeding it and sheltering it and purring on it, and she's going to want to keep it. BB is going to have to share the nest with a creature that tried to FILM a howler.

"absolutely not," BB says.

you look up at him from bobby's lap, your arms tightening around the human, your clicking going sharp and territorial.

bobby looks between you and the entity wearing his face and says, "uh. why does he look like me?"

"absolutely not," BB repeats.

you hiss. bobby is coming home with you. bobby is living in the nest. bobby is yours and if BB has a problem with it he can take it up with your teeth.

bobby franklin. santa clara, california. the only human in the backrooms with a personal entity bodyguard who sleeps in his lap and an ancient apex predator who shares his face and is extremely unhappy about the new living arrangements thank you very much.

"you have a nest. on another entity's level. a tall, powerful entity's level."

you tilt your head back to look up at him better, his borrowed jaw is clenched. his borrowed eyes dark. his clicking has gone silent, which is worse than sound. silent means processing and processing is dangerous.

"it's not a nest," you rebuke smoothly. "it's a bed."

"a bed. with a pillow. and a blanket. in a designated space. that another entity built for you. specifically. in his territory. where you sleep." a pause, and the borrowed jaw pulses rapidly. "that's a nest. that's a mating nest. he built you a mating nest."

"it's a bed. there's a difference."

a growl vibrates in his chest. "there's no difference. a designated sleeping space built by another entity for your specific use in their territory is a nest and you have one and it belongs to a seven-foot faceless entity who collects pink things and I am going to—"

you burst out laughing. you can't help it. his frequency is vibrating with such outsized territorial fury that the blankets are trembling and a pillow is vibrating in your peripheral.

he flips you. your back in the blankets, his weight over you while his hands settle on your shoulders, pinning you flat. his borrowed face close, expression tight and dark with outraged. his hips press you into the nest, his body covering yours completely, and the possessiveness of the position is making his frequency do mine, under me, staying here signals.

"you are not going to other nests."

"it's a bed—"

"you are not going to other beds. you are not resting in other entities' territories." his hand slides from your shoulder to your hip. gripping. pulling you tighter against him. "especially not the territory of a seven-foot entity with a pleasant frequency who builds you furniture."

"they're very nice pillows though."

"I will get you better pillows." his other hand finds your jaw, tilting your face toward him. his borrowed mouth close to yours, his eyes dark and hot. "I will get you the pinkest pillows in the entire backrooms. you are not sleeping in his bed."

"they're pink."

"I will strip every pink surface from every level and build you a pillow fort so aggressively pink it's visible from the deep levels." his thumb pushes into the soft skin under your jaw, his hips grinding against yours with a possessive roll that makes your clicking stutter. "you're sleeping here. under me. in my nest. are we clear?"

you're laughing so hard your borrowed ribs ache. your body squirms under his, wriggling, and every wiggle makes his grip tighten, his hand flat on your hip, pulling you flush against him. his body is hard and jealousy is bleeding into arousal so thoroughly he can't tell which is which anymore.

you nip his chin. his jaw. his nose. quick, playful bites between giggles.

"so jealous," you coo, your borrowed hands finding his face, squishing his borrowed cheeks. "so jealous. my poor old man. so threatened by a pink pillow and a tall man."

"he's not a man he's a—and I am not threatened—"

"the oldest entity in the backrooms." you peck his forehead. "the apex predator." peck to his cheek. "three thousand years of unmatched power." peck to the bridge of his nose. "losing his mind because a seven-foot entity gave me a pillow."

"he's seven feet tall." his hand tightens on your hip, his mouth dropping to your throat. biting the soft skin there, sucking, scent-marking you while he argues, talking against your pulse. "he's tall and powerful and he lives alone and he built you a bed and those are mating behaviours. territory-sharing. nest-building. gift-giving. he's courting you—"

"he's being nice—"

"nobody is that nice without an agenda." he bites your throat again. harder. his borrowed teeth pressing possessive marks into your skin. "especially not a seven-foot entity with his own level."

"but he made me tea once."

silence, then, "how does a seven-foot faceless entity make tea?"

you hum sagely. "he's very dexterous, and the tea was lovely."

a snarl so loud your insides clench.

"i'm going to destroy level 974."

"no you're not."

"i'm going to destroy it and build a new level. level 974-b. with pink pillows, and tea, and no seven-foot faceless entities who build beds for other people's mates."

you stop squirming, look up at him. his borrowed face flushed and furious and so earnest it makes your chest warm.

you reach up, wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him down. he resists for a second (still bristling, still radiating territorial outrage) and then his borrowed body gives and he sinks into you. your legs hooking around his waist. your arms tight around his shoulders. you pull him close and bury your face in his throat and breathe in his scent (old, cold, mineral, home) and hum.

low and warm and sure. your frequency pressing against his, calming the bristle, smoothing the agitation.

"this is home," you murmur against his throat. "this nest. your nest. you."

his clicking stutters, goes quiet, restarts in a different register. lower. softer.

"the bed on 974 is nice. the pillow is nice. the blanket is very soft and very pink and mr kitty is kind and his tea is good." you press a kiss to the scar on his throat. your scar. "but I don't burrow into his blankets when i'm cold. I don't press my face into his side of the nest to smell him, and I don't fall asleep listening to his purr."

his arms come around you. tight. his face dropping into your hair.

"this is home," you say again, quiet but final. your frequency wrapping around his tightly, making him growl, a pleased, deep sound. "you're home."

silence. his chest expands with a breath he doesn't need.

"... i'm still getting you pink pillows," he mumbles into your hair.

"okay."

"and the blanket on 974 is getting confiscated."

"absolutely not."

"fine, negotiable. except the bed. the bed is being destroyed."

"the bed is mr kitty's property—"

"the bed is a hostile territorial claim and I will be addressing it with him directly."

"you are not going to level 974 to fight about a bed."

"watch me."

you bite his ear. he growls. you bite it again and wrap yourself tighter around him and purr into his throat. his growl softens into a rumble and the rumble softens into a purr and both of you lie there in the nest (his nest, your nest, home) wrapped around each other while his borrowed hands grip the back of your shirt and his frequency slowly, grudgingly, settles.

you drop onto the spare bed he keeps for you in the corner. it has a pillow. a blanket. both pink. both clean. he made this bed for you after your third visit, when you'd fallen asleep on his floor and he'd apparently decided this was unacceptable hospitality.

"different how?" you ask, pulling the blanket over your legs.

brighter. more layered. a pause. the psychic equivalent of squinting. there's a secondary harmonic in your base frequency that wasn't there last month. faint. intermittent. it spikes when you're distracted. another pause. longer. it smells like level 0.

you scowl.

ah, mr kitty drawls with the psychic weight of a creature that's just solved a puzzle. I see.

"you don't see anything," you gripe. "you don't have eyes."

I see plenty. for instance, I see that your scent profile has shifted. there's a mineral undertone that doesn't belong to you. old. cold. deep-level. the faceless head tilts further. someone's been getting close to you.

"another entity has been—" you search for the right word. "annoyingly persistent."

the silence that follows has a flavour to it. rich. warm. deeply, insufferably amused.

annoyingly persistent, mr kitty repeats, his psychic voice doing something that would be a grin if he had a mouth. and this annoyingly persistent entity... would he happen to be very old? very territorial? known for changing shape? the first thing the walls ever produced perhaps?

you pull the blanket higher. "I don't want to talk about it."

the shape changer. the old one. mr kitty sets down his book, his full attention on you now, which is a lot of attention from a seven-foot psychic. the smart humans call him entity 0. and he's chasing you.

you scoff. "he's bothering me."

he's courting you.

you bristle with outrage. "he is not—"

your frequency spikes every time I mention him. you're doing it right now. and your scent. mr kitty leans back in the armchair. you're thinking about him. at this exact moment. the thought is changing your scent and your base frequency in real time. I can feel the secondary harmonic getting louder.

your face is hot. your borrowed skin is betraying you in a way you can't quite control. "that's.... a human response. from the borrowed body. it doesn't mean—"

it means exactly what it means. you're responsive to him. your frequency reaches for his even when he's not present. your body is producing bonding pheromones. a beat. the way mates do.

"we are not mates." you sit up, your clicking going sharp with outrage. "he is a territorial, insufferable, cocky, infuriating—"

you're describing a mate.

"i'm describing a nuisance."

these are often the same thing.

you throw your pillow at him. he catches it. telepathically. the pillow hangs in the air between you for a second before gently floating back to the bed. you grab it and hug it to your chest, scowling openly at the wall.

mr kitty's amusement radiates through the room like warm light. i've known entity 0 for a very long time. longer than you've been alive, which is admittedly not a high bar. he has never, in all those centuries, shown interest in another entity. not the facelings, not the skin-stealers, not the things in the deep levels. none of them. and now he's chasing a newborn through his own corridors and rearranging exits and wearing a human shape he built from scratch. a pause. for you.

"he's a predator. it's hunting behaviour."

if he wanted to hunt you, you'd be dead. he's three thousand years old. you're eleven months. the fact that you're still alive and he's still chasing means the chase is the point, not the catching. the head tilts. he's playing with you, and you're playing back.

your displeased clicks saturate the air. "I am not playing—"

you ran past his territory border four times last week. you could have avoided level 0 entirely. you chose to cross within range of his frequency and then you ran. the psychic equivalent of a raised eyebrow. that is textbook invitation behaviour.

your clicking goes rapid and embarrassed. you bury your face in the pillow.

I don't say this to embarrass you, mr kitty adds, gentler now. the amusement softening into something warmer. I say it because you deserve to know what's happening to you. your frequency is changing. your scent is changing. your body is preparing for a bond whether your conscious mind has agreed to it or not. and the entity your body has chosen is not a small thing. he's the oldest. the most powerful. and he's obsessed with you in a way i've never seen him obsessed with anything.

silence. your face still in the pillow.

"he's very annoying," you mumble.

yes.

"he pins me to walls."

I gathered.

"he tried to ask me my name and when I wouldn't tell him he said he'd just call me 'pretty' until I gave him a better option."

... and what did you say?

"I bit his throat," you admit with a small huff. "ripped a chunk out."

a long pause. mr kitty's frequency does the psychic equivalent of a slow blink.

and he's still chasing you.

"he's still chasing me."

you ripped his throat out and he's still chasing you. and you're here, in my guest bed, thinking about him so loudly I can taste it from across the room. another pause. you're both hopeless. I want you to know that.

you snort. "shut up."

come here, little one.

you don't want to move from the bed, but his frequency is warm and steady, familiar in all the best ways, and you've had a long week of running from the oldest thing in the backrooms and pretending the running isn't foreplay.

so you drag the blanket off the bed and cross the room, curling up at his feet with your head against his knee, the way you've done a dozen times before. his large hand (too many fingers, too many joints, but gentle, always gentle) rests on your head.

you're quiet for a while. his frequency humming around you. calm and safe and free of agenda. the pink walls. the hello kitty figurines in their neat rows. the hand-drawn SAFE ZONE sign. this space he built for creatures that need rest.

"thank you," you say quietly, shyly. "for letting me stay here. for the bed. for the food, back when I was new. you didn't have to be kind to me."

kindness isn't transactional.

"it is for most entities."

i'm not most entities. his thumb traces a slow circle on the top of your head. and neither are you. that's why I like you. you protect wanderers. you guide them to safe exits. you fight things twice your size to keep fragile creatures alive. most entities see humans as food or entertainment. you see them as people worth saving.

your clicking goes soft. the comfort frequency.

"I just don't think they should die here," you say quietly. "nobody deserves to die somewhere this lonely."

the weight behind the words lands in the quiet room. mr kitty's hand stills on your head, his psychic field pressing gently against your frequency, feeling the shape of the grief underneath the sentence without looking at it directly. he never looks directly. that's why you trust him.

you're always welcome here, he says. whenever you need rest. whenever the chasing gets too much. whenever the old one does something that makes you confused or frightened or angry. the bed is yours. the food is yours. the quiet is yours.

"and the stickers?"

the stickers are negotiable. a pause. but yes. the stickers are also yours.

you smile against his knee. close your eyes. let the warm, safe quiet of level 974 settle around you.

his hand resumes its slow circles on your head.

he'll be good for you, mr kitty says quietly. almost to himself. if you let him. he'll be good for you.

you don't answer. your clicking has gone slow and rhythmic. the comfort frequency. already half in stasis.

there are two facelings on level 3 who have been lingering near your patrol routes for weeks. not threatening. just. present. their frequencies doing a polite, curious, tentative version of hello? do you notice me? i'm being very noticeable right now. entity flirting. and they're not the only ones.

a cluster entity on level 7 changed its patrol route to overlap with yours. a tall thing on level 5 that nobody can identify has started leaving small objects in corridors you frequent (shiny things, a piece of glass that catches light, gifts, mating overtures, the entity version of flowers on your doorstep).

you don't notice any of this because you're oblivious. completely, spectacularly oblivious. you walk past flirting entities the way you walk past wallpaper.

BB notices. BB notices all of it. and the territorial response is so disproportionate it's become its own source of entity gossip.

the facelings on level 3? their territory borders "mysteriously" shifted overnight, pushing them twelve levels further from your patrol route. the cluster entity? it found one of its access points sealed with a frequency lock that only entity 0 can produce. the tall thing on level 5 leaving gifts? the gifts started disappearing. every single one. replaced with a single, unmistakable scent-mark that translates, in entity, to: mine. back off. this is your only warning.

and the cradle-robber thing. okay. so entities don't have the same age-based social norms humans do, but there IS a general awareness that the gap between entity 0 (three thousand years) and you (eleven months) is somewhat notable.

the older entities find it amusing in a detached, clinical way. the frequency equivalent of raised eyebrows across a room. he's how old? and she's how old? and he built a face for her? interesting. fascinating. deeply embarrassing for him personally.

mr kitty, when asked about it by a nosy pariah entity who stopped by 974 for gossip, simply blinked his faceless blink and projected: love is love and it's none of your business. would you like a sticker?

the pariah entity did not want a sticker. the pariah entity wanted gossip. mr kitty gave it a hello kitty pencil topper and sent it on its way.

the funniest part (the part that makes you cackle when mr kitty tells you later, curled up in your pink bed on 974) is that the prevailing entity theory about why BB is wearing the meat suit isn't romance. it's senility.

the general consensus is that entity 0 has finally, after three thousand years, gone weird. cracked. started doing bizarre things like wearing faces and purring and letting wanderers through his territory. the younger entities think he's losing his touch. the older ones think he's having some kind of entity late-life crisis. nobody (except mr kitty, who knows everything and says nothing) has figured out that the oldest thing in the backrooms is simply, catastrophically, head-over-heels in love and has chosen to express it by building a body from scratch and tripping over borrowed shoes in the dark.

the entities will figure it out eventually. probably around the time the mating bond kicks in and the combined frequency of two apex predators locked together rattles every level in the backrooms simultaneously.

your eyes are on him. constantly. across the table, across the room, tracking him when he leaves and finding him again the second he's back. you touch the back of his neck when you pass behind his chair. you laugh at something he says so quietly nobody else even heard it. and brendan (brendan who does not talk at family dinners, brendan who has spent twenty-two years being the quiet one, the twin nobody notices) is sitting there being LOOKED at like he's the only lit thing in the room.

bobby's golden to everyone. he always has been. every room, every time, without effort.

except this one. except you. your eyes exist only for his twin.

and then the middle of the night happens.

he gets up for water. it's 2am and he's in his boxers, half asleep, and he pads down the hall toward the kitchen and hears something from the front room and makes the catastrophic mistake of looking.

and there's brendan. on the couch. head tipped back, throat bared, and you're straddling him with one hand clamped over his mouth to keep him quiet, moving in slow sensuous rolls, your teeth at his neck and the sound coming out of you that's closer to a growl than anything bobby's ever heard a girl make. brendan's hands are white-knuckled on your hips, and he's letting you, taking it, shaking with the effort of staying quiet.

and then he stops letting you.

his hand comes up and grabs your jaw. firm. turns your face toward his, and bobby watches his quiet, mumbling, can't-hold-eye-contact brother look at you like he's owed something.

and you bite him.

teeth closing on the meat of his hand, hard enough that he inhales sharp through his nose, and then you drag your mouth across his palm and take his thumb into your mouth and suck. hard, deep, eyes on him the entire time.

brendan makes a sound bobby has never heard from him in twenty-two years of sharing a womb and a house.

and then he's hauling you in by the hair, and you're kissing, properly kissing, open-mouthed and wet, his hand fisted in your hair and yours flat on his chest, and when you finally break apart you knock your forehead against his with the faintest smirk on your face, and he's breathing like he's been running, arms loose around your waist.

bobby flees. back down the hall like he's been electrocuted, no water, heart slamming so hard he can feel it in his teeth.

he lies in his childhood bed staring at the ceiling being infinitely more turned on than he has any right to be about literally any component of what he just witnessed.

he doesn't sleep, and doesn't make eye contact with either of you at breakfast. terrence asks if he's feeling okay.

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.

valarr had to fight for every inch of your softness, had to earn it, had to break and rebuild and prove himself over and over before you let him past that wall. and brendan gets it by being awkward at breakfast. by dropping his fork. by going quiet at a party and needing you to find him. his day-to-day fumbling pulls something protective out of you that valarr had to bleed for, and you give it freely, and you don't even notice you're doing it.

valarr notices. because valarr notices everything.

he'll watch you fix brendan's hair with fond patience you've never once shown him and go so still it's terrifying. won't say a word. will be perfectly, immaculately gracious. and then go home and stare at the ceiling for four hours trying to figure out what exactly it is about that man that unlocked you so much faster.

the answer is that brendan never built the wall in the first place because no one ever wanted him. valarr built his so high trying to be perfect and beloved that he forgot where the door even was.

that's it. mumbled against your inner thigh like a fact he's reporting.

and then he kisses your cunt. just. kisses it. like that's a normal thing to do to a person.

and then he eats you out like he's starving.

no technique. none. no annoying sexy talk. he doesn't know what he's doing and it doesn't matter because what he lacks in skill he makes up for in sheer, devouring appetite.

sloppy, wet, messy, his whole face buried, his hands pinning your hips flat when you try to arch away. you try to steer him and half the time he follows, and the other half he ignores you completely, goes somewhere only he knows. some angle or twist of his tongue he found by accident and immediately memorised, and you come harder than you have in years with your fingers fisted in his hair and your thighs shaking around his ears.

and he doesn't let you up.

because eating you out was so dizzying, so overwhelming, so utterly consuming that he's hard again already and the second time is different.

still awkward. he doesn't know what a good pace is, his hips bump yours, he slips out twice and has to fumble back in with his face burning. but you've got both hands in that sandy hair, and you're face to face and you can taste his desperation in his mouth, the sheer NEED of him, and it feels (oddly, unmistakably) like two young wolves mating. desperate. hard-edged. clumsy. learning.

the thought makes you shiver and he feels it, and something in him answers it. this time you come together, mouths open, panting into each other, his forehead against yours.

and then it's over and you're already reaching for your clothes because that's what you do. that's the pattern. that's how this goes. you claim what you want, you leave.

except his fingers lace through yours.

and he says, very quietly, not looking at you, "will you stay?"

like he's already braced for you to laugh at him. like he's offering you something to kick for your own amusement.

and despite yourself. despite every single thing you know about who you are and how you operate.

you stay.