#sncrlisms

@sncrlisms

Whichever deity had come up with this concept of soulmates had a real twisted sense of humor. So many of the people Jo knew had a cute story about how they met their "one". A skinned knee on the playground at recess, an injury during a high school football game, or a cut finger while at work. Jo, however, had been feeling pain since she was a child. It started before she could even really remember. It would wake her up at night, burning and cutting, making it hard to eat, hard to focus, hard to think. 

The pain became so frequent, so constant that Jo began to worry when it faded. She always feared that days with no pain meant he, whoever he was, had died. But it seemed like just a matter of time until the pain was back, her ever present friend. It made her tough, strong. She learned how to ignore it, how to not let pain phase her. It came in handy as she started hunting, and she definitely felt less guilty about any pain she caused her soulmate in the process. If she could handle it, so could he.

One such hunt had brought her to the tiny town of Harmony, West Virginia. It was straight out of a story book. Quaint, cute, friendly. And the whole thing had a weird sense of familiarity, which was entirely unwelcome, as she'd never actually been to this particular town before. She wasn't entirely sure why Peter had called her out here, but when a friend called for help, Jo went where she was needed.  She checked the directions on her note one more time before making a turn, spotting his truck in front of an old house just outside of town.

Climbing out, Jo checked the pistol at her hip before making her way to the building, pausing for a moment at the open door, listening carefully before slowly stepping in. "Peter?" she called out quietly, immediately on edge when she heard a thud inside the house. The thud was quickly followed by the scuffle of broken furniture and crashing bodies. Clearly, there was a fight going on somewhere.

Pulling her weapon, she made her way deeper into the building, spotting her friend Peter in the middle of a brawl with an unknown man. A flash of silver glinted through the dimly lit room, a knife in Peter's hand that quickly sliced into the man's flesh.

Jo gasped at a matching flash of pain in her side. Eyes wide, Jo acted without thinking, rushing into the room. "Peter, stop!" the blonde shouted, grabbing Peter by the arm, ripping him off the other man. "He's a werewolf!" the man shouted back, clearly angry with the tiny woman who had now firmly placed herself between the two men. "I don't give a shit, Peter! I said STOP." She shifted her grip on the gun in her hand, tenser than she'd been in a long time. "Stand the fuck down, dammit!" The fury in her eyes, her sheer intensity, caused the hunter to step back, surprised at the man's reaction. Jo took a deep breath, turning to look at the man, the werewolf, her soulmate. She locked eyes with him for a moment, completely unsure of where to go from here.

Noah wasn’t exactly known for his paranoia - or at least that was what he was pretty damn sure of. He usually didn’t expect a potential threat behind every corner, or waited for some kind of disaster to occur. No - he was observant, not terrified of the unknown (though he definitely prefered those things he was at least somewhat familiar with. It was hypocritcal, at best, considering Noah’s own unpredictability.)

Either way - paranoid or not, Noah had recently started picking up on the presence of one particular man, returning to the sea over and over. Of course, some people were just drawn to the ocean, Noah certainly understood the appeal. But ... this was different, there was something weirdly unsettling about the man. Even worse? Noah couldn’t fully pinpoint why exactly he felt so uneasy whenever he spotted the .... visitor.

Was he searching for something? And if yes, what was it he hoped to find? It certainly wasn’t peace - people always sought out the ocean to clear their mind, and Noah greatly prefered providing the calm rather than the storm. Still, he was known for both, yet he couldn’t help but feel like this particular man had come for the latter. 

No matter how much he wanted to, Noah couldn’t deny that there had been some ... objectively strange occurances near the sea. His emotions had been all over the place, lately, and Noah still wasn’t sure how to keep them from showing in a way that caused sailors an untimely death, or scared happy families away. No matter how much Noah enjoyed providing peace, the sea hadn’t been a safe place for at least two weeks. 

And hadn’t it been two weeks since this man, this stranger had started showing up more frequently?

Bare feet leaving prints in the wet sand, Noah made a conscious effort to step closer to the by now familiar figure. He was done feeling haunted by ghosts that may or may not exist - maybe he had a hard time controlling his own temper, but he surely wouldn’t shy away from putting an end to this particular concern.

“-- I haven’t seen anyone else around in days. Do storms attract you?”

    the concerned redhead is swimming in eli’s gaze, blurring at the edges no matter how many times he blinked, though he knows that she’s probably asking demanding what happened to him. it wasn’t exactly everyday a scruffy, bleeding man stumbled into a stranger unkindly, on the verge of blacking out if he took so much as another step. the ‘wolf could do no more than wave off words, steel in eyes and grit in teeth, body forcing itself to straighten when all it wanted to do was crumple over. a grunted breath whistles past tight jaw, the closest thing to an answer he could utter. he didn’t need the concerns of some stranger hanging over him, he can manage this injury.

    “huh. didn’t know a burn could turn that color.”

"My clothes are washing. Needed somethin’ to wear. Figured I’d try something of yours.”