#mr.wolf

“Woah.” Wolf said aloud after waking up randomly in the wee hours of the morning. His gut was pulsing with anxiety, as well as some indescribable, sharp, hard emotion. “Something’s up.” He whispered to himself before quietly but quickly standing up from the couch.

Sliding his blanket off his body and gracefully laying it on a couch cushion, Wolf tiptoed to Diane's bedroom. By the time he was in front of her door, the sharp feeling in his gut made him wince and press a hand on top of his furry abdomen.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. I hear you. Shhhh, sh, sh." Though it was weird to do, talking to his body relieved the strength of his intuition so he could concentrate on softly entering the room.

"Babe?" Wolf asked in a quiet voice. He scanned around the opposite side of Diane's neat, minimalist room before he noticed she was sitting up and crying into her hands. "Oh." A unbendable frown replaced his small smile as soon as he set eyes on her.

He nimbly walked over to the right side of her bed, then leaned his body over the firm but fluffy mattress. "Ohhhh, baby... what's wrong?" Wolf spoke.

Diane dabbed her eyes with her knuckles before replying. "I had a reawwy bad nightmare-" She cried out before her voice was drowned out with suffocating heartache.

"Ohhh, oh, oh, oh. C'mere..." Without hesitation, Wolf scooped Diane in his arms.

"P-put me down!" Diane yelled in protest while her body shook in his grasp.

"Oh, I'm sorry! How rude of me..."

"N-no, don't be... it's fine..." Diane mumbled while her cheeks burned.

"You sure? I don't mind letting you g-"

"Don't let me go!" Diane screamed, pulling on his suit. "Never let me go!" She pressed a fist to her mouth after choking up. Tears as small and elegant as dewdrops sticking on a plant twinkled on her eyelashes in the dark baby blue moonlight that slid through the cracks of the window blinds.

"Y-yes ma'am." Wolf said, voice shaking while a shameful warmth tingled at his face. Well, at least she laughed.

Not another word was exchanged while Wolf transported Diane over to the couch. While he held her, Wolf felt his motivated steps slow to the speed of a tortoise. The clock on the wall that was anxiously clicking calmed down with his speed. Without even thinking to do so, Wolf's eyes slid down to stare at the trembling female fox that he had the pleasure to carry. Though it tugged at his heartstrings to see her so shaken up, her creamy orange fur and her dainty damp eyelashes made her a timeless picture of beauty in his vision. To top it all off, her body fell perfectly into his manly twig arms, which made his heart race with glorious passion.

"Oh, how I want to litter your face with kisses right now." Wolf bluntly muttered aloud to make her giggle.

"I'd love that, but I'm so jumpy right now I would probably kick my knee into your stomach." Diane responded, struggling to keep her soft and vulnerable eyes open. 

"Fair enough." Wolf said before he looked up and stopped in front of the couch. "I'm gonna put you down now, alright?" Wolf warned upon getting closer to the piece of furniture.

"Okay~" Diane said softly. With her approval, Wolf carefully lowered and sat the fox on the couch as if she was a precious, one-of-a-kind artifact. She stared at the ground, while his eyes stayed locked on her.

After a dreadfully depressing silence, Wolf sat beside Diane. "What's going on?" She, who was lifeless as a statue, said nothing.

"Hey." Wolf grabbed her quaky, shaky paw and stroked it with his thumb to calm the tremors. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

She finally showed a sign of life with a heavy exhale. "Of course." The twitching in her paw had traveled up to her neck and ears while she slowly turned her head 90 degrees.

"Then what happened, baby? What did you see in your nightmare?" His gentle question warmed up her cold, fear-bound heart. His voice made her brave.

She released another sigh from her system before paraphrasing her dream. "Remember the confrontation with Kitty I told you about earlier?"

"Of course."

"Well, I basically relived the whole thing, except she- she..." Oxygen was suddenly snatched from her airways, and her voice had shrunk to frequent shaky and unstable breathing.

"It's okay. Take your time. I'm here~" She felt his grip tighten on her paw. Though she was about to break down, she swallowed and held back the emotional whirlwind inside her chest.

"She had a gun, and she s-shot m-me." Diane choked out against the insurmountable pressure upon her heart and throat. She then dipped her head down,wrapped her arms around her body, and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Oh my god." Though she didn't see his mortified expression, she could feel his heart beat with anxiety, which added even more emotional baggage onto her sky-high load. 

For 9 years and 25 hours, 3,286 days, 78,864 hours, and nearly 5 million minutes, she had been subjugating herself to this vicious cycle of enduring an indescribable amount of trauma followed by bottling up her emotions, storing those bottles in a briefcase, and then throwing and attaching that briefcase to her back as a souvenir of her latest incident. Her health had been put on autopilot, and every hoarded ick of her life was being purged from her overloaded and over pressured body in the form of waterfall tears.