#wolfden

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One of the small creatures tentatively approaches him, looking up from its diminutive height of just under a meter. Its bipedal body is made entirely of tree roots, making it easily blend in with the forest. Though the sharp branches that curl from the head, covered in foliage make it a little less creepy. Especially when the leaves partially obscure the void-like cracks in between the roots of its “face" that Carter claims to be their eyes.

Speaking of Carter, Wolfe looks away from the creature to the man. He’s sitting on a fallen tree, letting several of the creatures crawl all over him. One of them is on his knee and there’s one on his shoulder, who appears to be braiding his hair.

Carter doesn’t have his glasses on at the moment, and he has to avert his eyes lest he get caught staring again. Making up excuses for that the fist time had been embarrassing, and any time he can avoid the boy’s mocking is a job well done. It also helps him avoid any introspective questions on his own part.

Wolfe feels a slight tug at his pants and he looks down at the thing. It’s still looking up at him, the closest any of them had been to him so far. Sighing internally, he allows it to tug him along.

The mission they had been sent on did not go at all the way they had expected, but he supposes it could be worse. Though he’s going to have problems later coming to terms with the things he’s seeing now at a later date, when he’s not in the middle of all of it. Grumbling quietly, the thing tugs him to sit next to Carter on the log.

Carter frowns but restrains himself. This is impressive until he turns to the one who had pulled him over and says, “No, we don’t need to be closer. I’d rather he was farther away, actually.”

Through the familiar annoyance, he hears the creature make odd creaking and rustling noises. They’d been doing this off and on, with Carter always responding afterwards, so presumably this was their way of speaking. It was odd, but he’ll probably try to blot this experience from his mind later, so he will deal with it for now.

“No,” Carter says sharply, gaining Wolfe's attention. He looks oddly embarrassed. “No, he is not. I don’t know why you get that impression, but its false.” The creature on his shoulder tugs at his hair, making the younger man wince. “Seriously!”

Wolfe can’t take it much more and caves, “What are they saying?”

Carter huffs and looks away, crossing his arms in an oddly defensive gesture.

It’s kind of cute.

…

Wait, no. Carter is not cute. Wolfe wants to frown at the thought, and ends up having to play it off when he realizes that he is actually frowning. “What, are they criticizing you? You led us into this, after all.”

Carter practically snaps his neck turning to look at him so quickly, eyes blazing. “I’ll have you know that I wouldn’t have had to ‘lead’ us anywhere if the RSS could get their information right!”

“How were we to know that wearing certain colors can provoke things like that?” Wolfe snaps back.

The younger man throws his hands up in exasperation. “Gee! I don’t know! Maybe by asking literally anyone who knows anything about arachne?! And she wasn’t provoked, you idiot!”

“It came right for me!”

“She thought you were propositioning her!”

“WHAT?!” Wolfe can’t help the grimace and shudder.

“She wanted to scent you, not eat you!” Carter growls, mumbling a moment later, “At least not yet.”

“That is not reassuring, Carter!”

“We you didn’t have to draw your gun like that! It’s your fault we had to run!”

“Well, sorry for trying to defend myself! I can’t get back up like you can from that stuff!”

At this point, they’re both standing and several steps apart, facing each other. So, when Carter chucks his pen at him, it hits Wolfe square in the forehead and bounces off with a satisfying “thwack" before disappearing into the underbrush.

Throwing a hand to his forehead, Wolfe growls, “You-!” But he falters just a bit at the look on Carter’s face. Just enough to stay his tongue and instead of lashing out anymore, he turns and sits down harshly on the far end of the log. He cups his head with his arms braced on his knees and tries to take deep breaths.

The movement of the log is barely there, but he can tell that Carter has sat down on the other end, much farther away this time. There is a long, drawn out silence while the two calm and try to work out their thoughts. Wolfe hadn’t noticed it until then, but the area had gone quiet. Likely due to how loud their argument had gotten.

There’s a soft rustle, and some life starts to slowly pick back up, ending the eerie stillness. Wolfe rubs his face, exhausted. He’s not going to apologize. Neither of them is, but that’s no surprise. He’s not entirely sure he’s sorry, anyway. Or what he would be sorry for, exactly. In his peripheral, Wolfe sees Hayden hunched with his forearms braced on his thighs.

They are alone in their frustrated silence for a minute or more before he notices one of the tree-things pop out nearby. It approaches hesitantly, and Wolfe doesn’t know or care much about how it seems to be looking between the two of them. It ends up approaching Hayden… Carter. He turns his head just enough to see the thing reach up to him, holding something. A brief pause lets Wolfe see that it’s Carter’s pen before he’s startled by the man exhale loudly, ending in a raspy chuckle.

It’s…

Carter gently takes the pen and Wolfe looks away, back into the trees. He hears a rustle followed by a hum from Carter and wonders if he’ll start talking again.

The rustling of the tree-things picks up as several of them come back out from their hidey-holes. They all mostly approach Carter, but two stay further away but sit in a way to indicate that they are watching him closely now. The scowl twitches on his lips but he fights it.

The problem with Carter is that he’s far too good at riling people up. It’s troublesome and damn annoying. The kid is sharp as a whip and his tongue more so. He hates the way Carter can strip people down so easily – strip him down. He hates it.

Jason Wolfe does not like feeling defenseless.

And yet…

He grumbles, glancing away from the trees back over to Hay- Carter. The kid is sitting up now, no longer curled in. There is one of the tree-things in front of him that he seems to be talking to and another on his shoulders. There’s one more behind him, handing something up to the thing on his shoulders…

Flowers. They are putting flowers in his hair.

Wolfe watches with some kind of fascination, from interest or horror he isn’t sure. The one on the ground is picking the flowers from their surroundings and handing them up to the creature on Carter’s shoulders, who braids them in. Had he been paying more attention, he might have thought that this was the same tree- thing that had been braiding his hair earlier.

Carter suddenly looks over to him and Wolfe feels something catch in his throat. He tries to swallow it back while the young man blinks at him before scowling in a way that looks more like a pout. The flowers are forming a crown along his head, with some small ones slipping a bit from their position to creep down his bangs, framing his face.

He looks so young, like this.

The thought hits Wolfe uncomfortably. Having known the man for just a while now he’s been getting over some of his anger, but in moments like this…

The black sclera enhance the vibrant green irises and he is reminded by the fact that something must have happened to this kid to get him here. Sometimes, in moments like this, he wants to know. Maybe even more than just for leverage.

Wolfe’s head snaps back once again and the pen flies off into the forest once more. Carter’s growl grabs his attention, and he realizes he let himself get distracted.

“Now that I have your attention, Wolfe, why don’t you tell me when you’re ready to leave?” One of the tree-things rushes through the brush after the pen. The one of his shoulders is creaking unhappily, tugging at hair to perhaps try to wrangle it back into place.

“Leave?”

Carter snorts, “Yeah, the saplings are willing to lead us out of the forest and direct us to the closest residence. Then you can contact RSS and tell them you messed up the job and they need to get us out of here.”

“I-?!” Wolfe growls, tensing up in preparation to start another fight. His rebuttal is interrupted, however, by handful of flowers. They don’t make it very far, but they didn’t really need to, as the tree-thing that had been gathering flowers is now on the log next to him, having thrown them at him. Its leaves are shaking just a bit, and it waves its appendages at him in some sort of scolding gesture.

Completely stunned, Wolfe doesn’t look away from the only slightly menacing tree branch in front of him until he hears an odd noise. Looking up, he sees Carter.

Laughing.

With his shoulders up and arms around his stomach, turned just a bit more towards him, Carter is laughing. But it’s a tone completely unfamiliar to Wolfe and it stuns him just as much, if not more, than the creature had. Carter’s mouth is opened to breathe, lips turned up in a grin. The motions agitate his hair and Wolfe doesn’t – can’t – blink as a few of the flowers fall, tumbling across flushed cheeks.

“You-!” Carter giggles. “You look like a troublemaker being scolded by his mother! I never took you for anything less than rule-abiding, Wolfe!”

The stick creature had stopped waving at him and instead starts climbing up onto him. Wolfe jerks, but doesn’t react violently as Carter’s smile fades just a bit into concentration, watching him. He knows if he throws the thing off of him the man will make him regret it. So, while he grunts and twitches, he lets the damn thing climb up to his shoulders, where it starts pulling on his hair.

His eyes widen and Carter bursts into laughter once more.

“M-My hair! What are you doing?!” Wolfe stops his hands from going up past his shoulders but it’s a near thing.

“He just wants to braid your hair, too, Wolfe!” Carter cackles.

Wolfe sputters, “What?!”

“He thinks that braiding and adorning your hair with moonflowers will make you calmer.” Carter grins at him sharply, “These flowers are precious to them, you know.”

No, he did not know, you brat. Now he can’t shred them to pieces, either!

Carter’s laugh turns more into a condescending chuckle, likely guessing what he’d been thinking. Wolfe is distracted by a sharp tug of his hair and he has to hold back again when his first instinct is to lash out. His restraint is rewarded by the tugging gentling just a bit.

“Carter, how do I stop it?” he grits through his teeth.

‘Hm,” the man hums. I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?” Wolfe wants to punch that smug look off the brat’s face so badly, but a tug on his hair and a soft scent distract him once more. The brush of petals along his temple makes him twitch.

“Mm, yeah,” Carter comments, after a pause for his own hairdresser to readjust itself, “I think we’ll have to put a bit of a hold on leaving for now. That’s a shame.”

Wolfe grunts, angry and annoyed, but makes himself look away from the pain in his neck just a bit more than an arm’s reach away. Hopefully, Carter will be lenient enough to not mock him afterwards. But if he does, Wolfe can bite back easily enough with how lovely he looked with all those flowers in his hair.

Stupid.

He meant how stupid he looked.

…

“Hm,” Hayden glowers for a moment, then huffs and turns back to the paperwork. “I’ll reiterate, you’ll see that they listed a few details in this section that, as usual, are all wrong…”

Hayden’s voice is sharp, his aggravation due to the assignment made worse by Wolfe’s distraction, but he can’t help it. He tries to focus on Hayden’s debriefing, but his eyes turn once again. Messy brown hair looks even messier than usual, to Wolfe’s discerning eye, though he’s not at all sure how that could be. Maybe he bathed just recently? It never dries very tidily from what he’s observed, but he’s never had much of a chance to think about it before now.

Now, of all times, the thought of Hayden bathing comes to distract him.

The mass of fluffy hair curls around Hayden’s ears, framing the back of his neck ever so distractingly. Wolfe can only follow his imagination with his eyes, and he thinks of the path a drop from wet hair would take down that smooth, marked neck. Wolfe wonders what it would be like to leave his own marks there. To cover the dark mar already there with some of his own.

Suddenly he realizes that Hayden is looking at him again. He swallows and would look away if he could, but those eyes of poison-green on black lock him in. His pulse spikes, anticipating Hayden yelling at him again, then flutters when he realizes he’s not saying anything. Instead, a smirk blooms across his lips and his heart throbs for a vastly different reason.

“Oh, Jason,” the way Hayden murmurs his name makes him swallow on reflex, and he wonders if the immortal can see the blood in his head racing down to his gut. “I thought you were just trying to be aggravating.”

“Tsk,” Wolfe grunts, looking away and scrabbling for composure. Even with his belly churning, his face still feels aflame. “You’re the one who goes out of his way to be an annoyance.”

Hayden hums, amused, “I can’t say you’re wrong. Perhaps I was wrong, jumping to conclusions like I did.” Jason remembers them sitting at a table, with each of them on either side of a corner; but now the other man is much closer, leaning in so they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, seated right next to each other. “What, exactly, has you so distracted, my dear?”

There might have been words, but whatever they were, they were lost in an embarrassing choke in Wolfe’s throat. The coo Hayden gives at the noise he made might as well have set him aflame from the embarrassment, but Jason manages to gain some semblance of sense after a moment. “H-Hayden,” it’s still odd, not calling him Carter, even after half a year. “It was nothing, just… I’m just tired. Maybe we should debrief in the morning.”

“Nothing, huh?” soft lips turn in a pout and Wolfe feels a muscle in his jaw spasm. “If you say so, Jason. But I don’t know, we’re supposed to be preparing to leave tomorrow morning. Do you think we’ll have time in the morning,” he leans in just a bit more, both of them now pressed together, thigh to shoulder, “if we stop now?”

Jason has gone through all types of training to become better in many skills, but to this day there is still nothing that could possibly prepare a man to deal with Hayden Carter. Especially a man attracted to the menace. Still, he manages a breath, “Yes, I think it will be fine if we stop now.”

But when he looks back down, his stomach drops. The sly look on that deadly-sweet face does not bode well at all for any productivity.

Or for his self-control.

“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

He has several seconds to respond, Hayden being experienced at making his intentions known and Jason too good at jumping into action.

But he doesn’t move.

As Hayden slides from his seat.

To sit on Jason’s lap.

Long, thin arms wind their way over his shoulders, hooking behind his neck. His eyes slip down to watch the play of flexing muscles and tight fabric as Hayden makes himself comfortable on his lap, his long legs on either side of him.

Wolfe watches his larger, rougher hands automatically come up to rest on slim hips.

Hayden lets out a sigh and rolls his hips just the slightest bit – and he swallows at the show of just how big his hands are on his smaller lover.

The next sigh is close enough to brush his cheek, and he looks up into shining green eyes. Even the wide smirk on his face can’t dim the fire burning in his stomach.

“Jay~son,” Hayden purrs and Wolfe…

Snaps.

Further noises are muffled by the fierce press of lips against each other.

Hayden tilts his head for a better angle. Jason’s hands tighten on slender hips. He sighs and they bite, Jason giving a fierce nip to reddening lips when Hayden buries his hands in short hair, getting a chuckle and a satisfying tug.

Time loses meaning in that moment, no need for anything but the passion burning in and between them.

Hayden takes Jason’s bottom lip between his teeth and nibbles.

Jason presses his thumbs into the vee of his hips and pulls away at the gasp, only to move to lavish his neck.

Hayden lightly scratches his nails against Jason’s scalp, cooing at the growl he gets.

Jason slots his face against the curve of Hayden’s neck like he was made to be there and sets to task of covering up the pale skin with his own colorful marks.

Hayden sighs, melting into Jason’s hold when his arms tighten around him. His nails scrape at his skin in between burning caresses, his sounds only giving further encouragement.

The inferno calms but continues to burn, settling deep and ever-present in their chests. But they can’t let go.

Not yet.

Jason’s bites turn to kisses, and from kisses to a mere press of lips. Hayden’s grip relaxes, from tugging and tight until his hands are cupping the back of his neck, and his murmurs have quieted. They sit in the quiet, though such a thing is notably unusual in Hayden’s apartment, and enjoy the calm. Another spark can set them ablaze once more, perhaps run them even hotter, but for now they indulge in the warmth.

The warmth of Jason’s hands against his back sooths something sharp in his heart.

The warmth of Hayden’s hands against his head calms some of the rage and regret.

Jason sighs and rubs his cheek against Hayden’s neck.

Hayden gently runs his thumb along the sensitive spot on Jason’s neck.

It’s peaceful, something so hard to come by these days. Harder still to hold on to.

And yet they find it here in each other’s arms.

Fingers suddenly tug on Jason’s earlobe, pulling teasingly. He quickly responds with a pinch to the crease between thigh and butt-cheek and gets a jerk and a yelp, followed by a laugh. He has to quickly change his grip, his arms around Hayden’s waist and lifting him when the man tries to get the leverage to flip around him. The move gets him a jabbing hand to the side, startling a laugh out of him.

Hayden cries in triumph but cuts off in a squeal when Jason lifts him right up and tosses him over his shoulder. He bats away more attempts at tickling, but doesn’t think to avoid a full-on slap to his ass.

“Hayden!”

His lover is laughing, and he can’t help but laugh along, still high from their moment of intimacy.

He hopes, desperately, for many more moments like this.