abby someone. abby... normal.
Oct. 28th, 2012 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatrcooperHello hello! I am a silly, ridiculous person so I am terribly amused and delighted that like three of you bought my little story. Delighted I say! I dance in your general direction.
In other news, I know this is bad timing with the East Coast of the US on hurricane lockdown, but I will be without free time all week so this is me, begging you to take some cans of food down to the food donation bins in your local grocery store or to look up your area food bank online (Second Harvest is a good term to Google for this) and give a few bucks. I believe in the good in you. :)
As a reward (if you want to call it that, you might change your mind after reading) here is a snippet of what I am currently working on. Tim and Nathaniel, two werewolves who are being difficult and slow and everything (I blame Tim) but I still want them to have their happy ending.
Robin’s Egg brought him a coffee and a muffin and swept out of the shop again. Tim stared after her with the muffin already in his mouth and then called out a muffled, “Marry me!” as Carl took his usual spot next to the shop. Carl chuckled at what he would probably term Tim’s tomfoolery and then took out his newspaper and shook it to straighten it. Robin’s Egg hadn’t brought Carl his coffee, Tim noticed, instead she’d sent a waitress over to do it. Tim smirked about it in Carl’s direction then buttoned his pants up while inhaling the rest of his muffin. He didn’t bother with his hair, no one was looking anyway. He normally kept it buzzed pretty short so he wouldn’t have to worry about it, but he hadn’t trimmed it since coming to Wolf’s Paw and he couldn’t help but think that the way it stuck up made him look like an eager puppy.
It wasn’t a comforting thought after a night that had almost made him feel thirteen again, though his fantasies had been so much vaguer then. He scrubbed at his stinging cheeks and moved to head through the café to get another muffin, only then Robin’s Egg appeared again with a plate of fried eggs for him.
Her wink made him blush, not that it stopped from taking the plate.
“Known a few Weres in your time, huh?” he mumbled around a mouthful of toast dipped in egg yolk and of course brown gravy. Cosmo must make gravy by the ton.
“Hunger is all over your face, sweet cheeks,” Robin’s Egg teased him, with a look in her multicolored eyes that made Tim frown and want to duck his head. She wasn’t talking about food.
“This town is obsessed with my sex life,” he moaned at her and she touched him, a gentle pat on the back of his hand that didn’t raise his hackles.
“No such thing as privacy around here, but there’s no such thing as judgment either. You get used to it,” Carl commented without looking up from his reading. Robin’s Egg gave a delicate shrug.
“Privacy is more of a human concept,” she added, then patted Tim again before withdrawing her hand. “Wouldn’t do to upset him.” She smiled without explaining that and then took off, taking Tim’s empty plate with her.
He didn’t remember cleaning it, but he must have. He licked his lips, feeling full and confused and not any less tired than he’d felt before. “Wouldn’t do to upset who? Me?” he demanded, way too late for her to bother coming back to answer him. Carl wasn’t turning from his newspaper either.
Tim looked out the window again.
“Big news day.” Carl shook his paper again, drawing Tim’s attention. “Everybody and their mama was out last night, causing all kinds of mischief. There wasn’t a wolf in town that didn’t have to be, except you and maybe the Sheriff from the sound of it.”
“From the…?” Tim started to ask but caught himself before he could make Carl’s day by admitting yet another aspect of Were life that he didn’t understand. He focused on the rest of what Carl had told him.
“The Sheriff was working last night?” Tim blinked as he took in that news, then scowled. “He worked all day yesterday. He shouldn't have worked last night too!” He was probably louder and more excited than he needed to be. A few people in the café glanced at him. Carl, however, just nodded and kept his head down. Tim couldn’t see much of Carl’s face because of the hat he usually wore, a baseball hat with gold leaves and a number embroidered on it, but he assumed if Carl was hiding his face it was because Tim was embarrassing him. He tried to calm down. “I mean, that’s his business.”
Tim was the world’s smallest werewolf and the world’s biggest loser. It was a fact. But Carl didn’t jump all over the chance to make fun of him for his crush. He was still pretending to read the paper.
“The man takes on too much.” Carl made an old man harrumph noise. “Between his job and the strays like you it’s no wonder that he had nothing planned last night, so he could take the shift so his Were deputies would have the night off. Damn shame if you ask me. If I looked like that, I wouldn’t have so much free time.”
“What?” Tim asked blankly, because he was actually hearing this. “Carl are you trying to tell me that if you looked like the Sheriff you’d be knee deep in pussy? And you a happily married man. And no one did ask you.” He couldn’t believe he said it out loud, but anything was better than imagining the Sheriff thinking of Tim as just another stray, or the Sheriff picking up the dozens of men and women that probably hit on him daily.
Carl ignored Tim’s feigned shocked and looked up, right into Tim’s eyes. “But the Sheriff isn’t like me. He isn’t like most everyone.”
“He is considerably hotter,” Tim agreed, because he was too tired to argue. Carl’s fierce eyebrows got even fiercer as he frowned.
“Boy I am starting to wonder if you’re worth it. Stop pretending to be slow.”
“Hey.” Tim huffed back at him, more offended than he probably should have been for something Carl was saying just to bug him. It wasn’t like he cared about Carl’s opinion. But Carl kept on frowning at him, like he was waiting for Tim to get a clue or grow a pair, until Tim finally scratched his nose and tried to sniff out what it was Carl was trying to tell him.
All he got was coffee and newspaper and irritation, with a mix of old man smells. He finally rolled his eyes. “You’re very interested in his love life, Carl. Got a crush I should know about?” It wasn’t as much of a joke as Tim wanted it to be, not when he was fighting back a snarl, as if some part of him was pissed about the possibility of anyone else chasing after the Sheriff, even an old man.
Not that Tim was chasing after the Sheriff either; he wasn’t stupid.
Carl made that harrumphing noise again and looked distinctly unamused. “That smart mouth of yours is going to be the death of you.”
Tim hummed in casual agreement, though his pulse picked up. “You are not the first one to tell me that.”
“Good for deflecting things you don’t want to talk about, I bet.” Carl went back to staring at the paper. Tim was about to call him on his whole ‘pretending to read the paper while harassing Tim’ act when Carl took a noisy sip of his coffee and glanced at him again. “The Sheriff is working again today, you know. Letting his Were deputies sleep in, from my understanding.”
“What the fuck?” Tim glared out the window in outrage, startling someone who happened to be passing by and looking in. Well there was one more customer they wouldn’t have. He transferred his glare to Carl. “What is Zach thinking? I knew I didn’t like that guy.” To be honest, Tim wasn’t sure exactly what Zach was to the Sheriff, since, according to rumor that Tim had no reason to doubt, the Sheriff took a lover or two every summer. Zach might be the Sheriff’s pet, living in his house and working as one of his deputies, but he either didn’t know how to look out for the Sheriff, or he was a total self-absorbed douche.
Maybe they weren’t a couple. After all Tim had gotten the impression that Weres were more possessive, well, until he’d overheard those two moms talking last night. Now he didn’t know what to think, except that Zach was a useless tool. He let out a harrumph of his own and felt about five years old when Carl shot him a knowing look. His uncle had been a master of that look, though he’d usually followed it with a disappointed sigh before dismissing Tim from the room.
“You are evil.” Tim straightened up. “Do you like to torture me because you’re bored or do you have some objective in mind?” His uncle believed in always having an objective; Tim had just wanted to be left alone. He still wanted to be left alone, no matter what Carl thought. He flung a hand up dramatically when Carl opened his mouth to answer and turned away before sitting back on the stool to wait out his shift. He let Carl call him a drama queen without comment.
After an hour of watching Weres, and a few humans, stumble into the café with dazed, sated expressions on their faces, Tim gave up and went back to dusting. He went for the shelves this time, and then started making notes on which lube needed restocking. He found some condoms too, all expired, and assumed they were there for nervous humans who doubted the werewolf immune system.
Then when that left him with nothing to do, aside from going through the cabinets and not glancing toward the window as it got closer to lunchtime, he paced in front of the bookshelves and pulled out a book at random. It was a small book, printed by a local publisher, about the history of the town.
That seemed harmless enough as a topic. Tim flipped it open and walked over to the counter to look through it. He was too tired to do much more, though if anyone asked, he was prepared to say he had to know what it was about to recommend it to customers if he ever got any.
He had the book open in front of him on the glass counter and was deep in the history of Wolf’s Paw during Gold Rush when he realized he was being watched and raised his head. He straightened at the broad chest in front of him and gasped in shocked at the discomfort of twisting bones and emerging claws. He immediately put his hands behind his back and tried to recover from his surprise.
He blamed it on adrenaline as he looked up into the Sheriff’s face, because his heart was rabbiting inside his ribs and his mouth was open and the hair on the back of his neck was definitely raised. It was so embarrassing. He was a Were, he was supposed to be able to hear leaves falling to the ground. He was not supposed to be snuck up on, ever.
His face was flushed and he knew it though he cleared his throat and tried to ignore the fact that he was pretty sure he’d yelped. “I am so smooth.” He closed his eyes and immediately reopened them at the warm exhale from the Sheriff that might have been a laugh. An actual laugh. From the Sheriff. Humiliated or not, Tim had to see that.
Nathaniel wasn’t laughing that Tim could see, or even smiling, but his expression was pleased as he stared down at Tim. He had crinkles at the corner of his eyes and his lips were parted. He was so pretty Tim almost missed it when he spoke. “You’re reading about the town.”
“What? Oh I uh….” Tim looked down and was startled to see the book there. His gaze went right back to the Sheriff, while he thought that the Sheriff looked as exhausted as a werewolf could look, and yet the soft circle of his mouth wasn’t something that Tim could ignore. He kind of smiled back, because that was what it felt like the Sheriff was doing, like in some way Tim couldn’t explain the Sheriff was smiling at him without actually smiling, and then he forgot whatever he had been going to say. “Town, right.” They were talking about the town and not how the Sheriff was hiding his smile like this, or what Tim had done to make him happy. “It’s nice here I guess.”
The Sheriff agreed with a little hum sound that made Tim shift in place. His heart wasn’t slowing down. It was kicking against his ribs like it had someplace to be.
“But you didn’t go out last night,” the Sheriff went on, and if Tim had been flushed before he was flaming red and radiating as much heat as the Sheriff now. He looked at his mouth and then into those glowing, beautiful eyes, and for once couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He managed a nod. It was better than, I stayed home and thought about you while rubbing a few out. Which, if Carl and Robin’s Egg knew, than Nathaniel was going to know with one sniff anyway. “Not what I wanted,” he mumbled instead, watching the Sheriff watch him. At least his embarrassingly puny and half-formed paws were finally shifting back into hands. Tim brought them out from behind his back, stared at them for a second, and then smoothed his palms down his sides.
“I understand,” the Sheriff bit out the words in a rougher voice than Tim was expecting and then shook his head and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Little Wolf,” he said formally and then took another deep breath and held it. Tim watched him, fascinated, okay, obsessed with the rise of his chest and the fall when he finally exhaled. The Sheriff focused on Tim. His eyes were heavy-lidded now.
“You look tired,” Tim told him, then realized how rude it was. “And gorgeous, but yeah. That’s you all over. The tired is not. Uh, good morning, I mean. I’m a little tired too. It’s weird actually.”
He should ask if it was normal. Now would be a good time, but the Sheriff took that deep breath again and leaned in to look down at Tim’s hand. He made a small growly noise and then looked over across the café.
“Fairies,” the Sheriff murmured, probably to himself, then released a puff an air. “I thought you seemed quiet,” he remarked when he finally turned his head back toward Tim. Tim gave him the same glare he’d given Carl, who was of course watching them.
“Sorry. Is there some post-moon sexy thoughts etiquette or….” Tim bit his tongue on purpose, hard enough to make him wince and draw a little blood. It put a whole new tang in the air, like adding a pepper to a dish that was already delicious. Tim shut his mouth but he had to breathe, there was no avoiding it.
Nathaniel’s breathing was becoming more noticeable, sharp and heavy. Tim kind of hated him for his ability to take in air when it was so thick with all of Tim’s stupid feelings.
“Are you and Carl in this together?” Tim wondered out loud. The Sheriff stared at him for a second, clearly lost, then just blinked.
“And you’re pissy too,” he mused. “Did you not eat?”
“It’s not even lunch yet!” Tim protested in disbelief only to look around at the growing crowd in the café and realize that it was well after noon.
“I’ll be right back with something for you,” the Sheriff told Tim seriously and then headed into the café, where naturally the sea of people parted for him. Tim stared after him, not even ogling his ass, much, because what was that?
Carl, the bastard, rolled his eyes when Tim looked his way for an explanation. How depressing was it when an old human rolled his eyes at him for being a pathetic loser who couldn't get his own food, Tim wondered, but knew the answer: very.
“I know I'm tiny but really, I can look after myself,” Tim informed the Sheriff when he returned with what was probably someone’s phone order BLT. The Sheriff paused and drew himself up and gave Tim an odd look, which made Tim remember that he was dealing with an alpha wolf who didn’t have to fetch anybody lunch if he didn’t want to.
He fell back onto the stool and took the sandwich with the quietest “Thank you” he could manage. Anyway it smelled good. Bacon-y. The best smell in the world next to Nathaniel’s natural scent.
“Just eat,” Nathaniel grunted back at him and then went silent. Tim figured that he was cue to eat now to make the alpha wolf go away. He ate, glancing up once or twice with an increasingly pissed off glare when he saw that the Sheriff looked sort of zoned out, like he might fall asleep on his feet. Come to think of it, the Sheriff looked like he hadn’t slept much in months, which was dramatic considering he’d only gone one night without sleep that Tim knew of. Maybe there was some kind of werewolf sickness Tim didn’t know about.
He finished with a defiant little burp that was distracting for a moment only because it brought the Sheriff out of his sleepy daze. He looked down at Tim and smiled, really smiled, not just hinting at one, and that smile did slow, low, shaking things to Tim. It was completely unfair that his body took it as his reward for doing as he was told and smiled back at the Sheriff without Tim’s conscious consent.
He quickly turned the smile into a stern frown, because if he was tired and acting dopey, the Sheriff was being so much worse. He had fetched Tim a sandwich. There were humans out there who would have made dog jokes.
Tim narrowed his eyes and made like he wasn’t blushing. “You should get some sleep.” Tim took a breath and gestured at the door. “Go home.” He made himself look back down at the pages of the book, and felt like he had forgotten everything he’d just learned. Then he twitched and squeaked and replayed what he had just done, because he had just outright, straight up told the Sheriff what to do. Holy shit. He raised his head and swallowed. “Eat first, I mean, but go to bed. If you want to, is what I meant to add there and didn’t for some insane reason. I am not challenging you.”
Nathaniel’s eyes seemed a brighter green next to the shadows under his eyes, but his mouth stayed soft and slightly open. “Okay,” he answered quietly.
“What?” Tim instantly demanded in a louder, stupefied voice. He wasn’t even holding the book and he still almost knocked it to the floor in total surprise. “You can’t just say okay. You’re… you.” Leaders of packs, like most Type A personalities, did not take orders from others without at least some kind of fight about who was in charge. Not according to Tim’s uncle, who had been the A-est of Type A’s, the most alpha of alpha wolves.
“I’m ready to crash,” the Sheriff explained, watching Tim’s freak out with his head cocked to one side. Tim exhaled but nodded back at him. The Sheriff had been going to go home and sleep anyway, that’s why he wasn’t mad. That was logical, even if it still didn’t make sense to Tim’s way of thinking.
Luca would have had something to say about Tim giving him orders, even orders for things he’d been planning to do anyway, but suddenly Tim wasn’t sure if it was Nathaniel or Luca who was the odd wolf out. There was a slight but growing chance that Ray and Nathaniel were normal and Luca was just an asshole. For half a second, Tim wondered what Nathaniel would think of his uncle, if he would be awed like most people and then look at Tim as if wondering where he had come from, and then he pushed the thought away while he watched the Sheriff stretch, his body making cracking sounds like he needed a massage or a good night’s sleep or both. Tim got distracted for a minute or two imagining while himself participating in either of those activities.
A massage equaled sex as far as Tim’s brain was concerned, but curling up next to a sleeping Nathaniel, that was different. Tim twitched at the thought, making Nathaniel stop stretching to bend down a bit to study him closer, as if his gaze hadn’t already been glued to Tim’s face. Tim wasn’t sure how to classify the panicked, then calm feeling he got at the idea of watching Nathaniel sleep, except that it made him hot and shift restlessly and breathe a little harder. And yeah, the Sheriff noticed. He stared at Tim with his lips parted which gave Tim a glimpse of tongue.
“Thank you,” Tim told Nathaniel breathlessly and then jerked himself back and out of reach… which really meant keeping Nathaniel out of his reach before he did something else stupid. “Why aren’t you home right now?” Tim asked him, just a little desperately. He’d just spent a whole night devoted to thoughts of the Sheriff and apparently his body still wasn’t satisfied. At least Tim didn’t feel tired anymore. On the contrary, he felt wired, explosive, ready to burst. He was going to start pacing soon just to do something that wasn’t pouncing. Pouncing. On the Sheriff. It was such a bad idea.
“I had things to see to before I could rest.” The Sheriff’s voice was getting quieter, Tim would swear to it, almost like a low rumble tuned to just Were ears. He said it like he meant Tim was one of those things. Tim’s body chose to interpret that sexually. Of course it did. The moon was still fat, but Tim was pretty sure that much Nathaniel around him would get him aroused any day of the month.
“I hate you,” Tim muttered. It was directed more at his dick than the Sheriff, but the Sheriff stopped and lifted his head. His eyes narrowed and something in his expression made Tim swallow.
“Is this about those ideas of yours?”
Nathaniel was holding back a growl, Tim knew the signs now. He’d had plenty of time to learn them, what with how the first time they’d met, Tim had looked up to see that gorgeous god-like Being looking down at him and reaching for him and had blurted out a few fears that had been lurking at the back of his mind since leaving his uncle’s home. Things like “Don’t hurt me, you bullying alpha motherfucker, you can find some other wolf to main or mount!” in front of everyone in the café.
Now that Tim had known the Sheriff for a while, he could safely say he had never seen the man look as thrown as he had after Tim had shouted that. Cosmo had said something similar afterward, while feeding Tim donuts covered in gravy, something about how he’d never seen the Sheriff look so lost.
At the time, Tim had thought the elf was nuts. Now he just noticed that even Cosmo and Robin’s Egg called the Sheriff “The Sheriff” when they were talking about him. That was weird. Tim knew his name, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Nathaniel. Just thinking about the name made him imagine saying it against Nathaniel’s skin, though somehow he didn’t think that was why the others weren’t saying it.
“No.” Tim felt like he’d put his foot in it again somehow. “No I just have work to do. Stuff….” He waved around. Nathaniel narrowed his eyes and let the silence drag on, and Tim held his breath, certain that this time Nathaniel—the Sheriff—was going to ask why Tim was so afraid of him and everyone else. But then he stepped back and imitated Tim’s gesture.
“Yeah this much nothing won’t do itself,” he remarked dryly and Tim was so surprised by the humor that he didn’t know what to do. The Sheriff immediately frowned and got serious again when Tim stared at him. But that had been a joke. Tim so wasn’t ready to let that go, not for all the serious frowns in the world.
“Did you make a joke? Is this what you’re like when you’re tired? You get smiley and funny?”
He caught a glimpse of the Sheriff’s mouth as tightened into an unhappy line and then Carl said, “Boy” in a warning tone, as if Tim had done something else wrong. He opened his mouth to taste the bruised scent in the air and turned a confused look on at the Sheriff. But for once the Sheriff didn’t seem to feel like explaining.
Maybe, Tim thought quickly, maybe he wasn’t supposed to crack jokes to the wolf who ran the town. There was a mayor, sure, and a town council with a fairy and some humans on it, but everyone knew that wasn’t how Weres worked, and it wasn’t who they would answer to, ultimately. Maybe it was like those old medieval laws banning jokes at the king’s expense.
But air didn’t taste like ego, and if wounded pride had a look it wasn’t how the Sheriff put his shoulders back and stood away from the counter. He had been leaning against it, Tim realized suddenly, at ease and sleepy and relaxed against the counter and now he wasn’t anymore. Tim looked from the Sheriff to Carl.
“I have a big mouth,” he whispered, not looking at Carl, and not even sure why he said it because obviously he couldn’t shut up when he should. It was his defining trait aside from his size. “I talk too much, but you…” It seemed wrong to imply that the Sheriff had his feelings hurt and was hiding it, and yet Carl was looking at him now like Tim could vaguely recall his mother looking at him when he’d been six and had accidentally knocked over a human child and sent the poor kid flying into the pavement.
“Well if you’re talking like that, you must be fine now. The food did its job.” The Sheriff flat out ignored what Tim was trying to say and Tim scowled for no reason at all. The Sheriff continued on, all of the sudden as talkative as Tim usually was. “Hopefully those books will convince you to take part in our summer festivals. You will be busy in here, but you should have time to have fun too. The August Moon Fair… that… you should see that one.”
“Okay,” Tim agreed blankly, still trying to figure out where the relaxed Sheriff from a few minutes ago had gone. He hadn’t thought the man’s shoulders could get any straighter, but he pulled them back even more and gave Tim a stiff nod.
“That’s good.” He unbent enough to glance at Carl again, who was an unabashed voyeur, and then gave Tim another nod. “Tim,” he paused, “remember if you have any questions you can always ask me.’”
Carl snorted but quickly looked back at his newspaper when Tim and the Sheriff both shot him a glare.
“Okay,” Tim said again a second later, though his own personal alpha sheriff tour guide through a sex crazed town might actual kill him from the loss of blood to his brain.
At his answer, the Sheriff inhaled then turned on his heels with no warning and went over to grab his lunch from Robin’s Egg. It was To Go, so he’d been telling the truth about being on his way home, but he had to stop on his way out to talk to someone Tim didn’t know. He put one hand on the door to hold it open and then put it on the other person’s shoulder as they were talking.
They were talking about parking tickets. Tim eavesdropped and didn’t pretend otherwise, not with Carl the peeper still watching him. After listening for a while—without agreeing to do anything to get rid of the tickets, Tim noticed—the Sheriff left, heading toward the station and probably his truck. He sighed as he left, a slow, tired sound, and didn’t look back this time.
Tim watched him until he was gone and then collapsed onto the stool and looked at the pages of the book without seeing a single word.
“Tired?” Carl asked innocently. Tim flipped him off without looking up, then frowned and nodded.
“Yeah actually,” he admitted and Carl snorted again. Tim considered him for a good long while. “Since you have all the answers,” Tim sighed at him when he’d had enough considering, “how pathetic am I?”
“Want an honest answer?” Carl waggled his eyebrows. Tim gave him his best fierce stare then jumped in shock when Carl broke eye contact first to mess with his newspaper.
Tim watched him, thinking about the reports of wolf antics that had to be in there, and then wondering again why the effects of gravity should do such things to Weres. But he didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer and Carl seemed nervous. Tim didn’t want to know about things that would make a tough old guy like Carl nervous, so he slumped over the counter and stared out the window.
“It’s going to be a long day,” he whined to himself. Carl must have been feeling less anxious, because he snickered. Tim opened his mouth enough to show him a hint of fang. Carl grunted but shut up, so Tim didn’t feel even a little guilty about it.
In other news, I know this is bad timing with the East Coast of the US on hurricane lockdown, but I will be without free time all week so this is me, begging you to take some cans of food down to the food donation bins in your local grocery store or to look up your area food bank online (Second Harvest is a good term to Google for this) and give a few bucks. I believe in the good in you. :)
As a reward (if you want to call it that, you might change your mind after reading) here is a snippet of what I am currently working on. Tim and Nathaniel, two werewolves who are being difficult and slow and everything (I blame Tim) but I still want them to have their happy ending.
Robin’s Egg brought him a coffee and a muffin and swept out of the shop again. Tim stared after her with the muffin already in his mouth and then called out a muffled, “Marry me!” as Carl took his usual spot next to the shop. Carl chuckled at what he would probably term Tim’s tomfoolery and then took out his newspaper and shook it to straighten it. Robin’s Egg hadn’t brought Carl his coffee, Tim noticed, instead she’d sent a waitress over to do it. Tim smirked about it in Carl’s direction then buttoned his pants up while inhaling the rest of his muffin. He didn’t bother with his hair, no one was looking anyway. He normally kept it buzzed pretty short so he wouldn’t have to worry about it, but he hadn’t trimmed it since coming to Wolf’s Paw and he couldn’t help but think that the way it stuck up made him look like an eager puppy.
It wasn’t a comforting thought after a night that had almost made him feel thirteen again, though his fantasies had been so much vaguer then. He scrubbed at his stinging cheeks and moved to head through the café to get another muffin, only then Robin’s Egg appeared again with a plate of fried eggs for him.
Her wink made him blush, not that it stopped from taking the plate.
“Known a few Weres in your time, huh?” he mumbled around a mouthful of toast dipped in egg yolk and of course brown gravy. Cosmo must make gravy by the ton.
“Hunger is all over your face, sweet cheeks,” Robin’s Egg teased him, with a look in her multicolored eyes that made Tim frown and want to duck his head. She wasn’t talking about food.
“This town is obsessed with my sex life,” he moaned at her and she touched him, a gentle pat on the back of his hand that didn’t raise his hackles.
“No such thing as privacy around here, but there’s no such thing as judgment either. You get used to it,” Carl commented without looking up from his reading. Robin’s Egg gave a delicate shrug.
“Privacy is more of a human concept,” she added, then patted Tim again before withdrawing her hand. “Wouldn’t do to upset him.” She smiled without explaining that and then took off, taking Tim’s empty plate with her.
He didn’t remember cleaning it, but he must have. He licked his lips, feeling full and confused and not any less tired than he’d felt before. “Wouldn’t do to upset who? Me?” he demanded, way too late for her to bother coming back to answer him. Carl wasn’t turning from his newspaper either.
Tim looked out the window again.
“Big news day.” Carl shook his paper again, drawing Tim’s attention. “Everybody and their mama was out last night, causing all kinds of mischief. There wasn’t a wolf in town that didn’t have to be, except you and maybe the Sheriff from the sound of it.”
“From the…?” Tim started to ask but caught himself before he could make Carl’s day by admitting yet another aspect of Were life that he didn’t understand. He focused on the rest of what Carl had told him.
“The Sheriff was working last night?” Tim blinked as he took in that news, then scowled. “He worked all day yesterday. He shouldn't have worked last night too!” He was probably louder and more excited than he needed to be. A few people in the café glanced at him. Carl, however, just nodded and kept his head down. Tim couldn’t see much of Carl’s face because of the hat he usually wore, a baseball hat with gold leaves and a number embroidered on it, but he assumed if Carl was hiding his face it was because Tim was embarrassing him. He tried to calm down. “I mean, that’s his business.”
Tim was the world’s smallest werewolf and the world’s biggest loser. It was a fact. But Carl didn’t jump all over the chance to make fun of him for his crush. He was still pretending to read the paper.
“The man takes on too much.” Carl made an old man harrumph noise. “Between his job and the strays like you it’s no wonder that he had nothing planned last night, so he could take the shift so his Were deputies would have the night off. Damn shame if you ask me. If I looked like that, I wouldn’t have so much free time.”
“What?” Tim asked blankly, because he was actually hearing this. “Carl are you trying to tell me that if you looked like the Sheriff you’d be knee deep in pussy? And you a happily married man. And no one did ask you.” He couldn’t believe he said it out loud, but anything was better than imagining the Sheriff thinking of Tim as just another stray, or the Sheriff picking up the dozens of men and women that probably hit on him daily.
Carl ignored Tim’s feigned shocked and looked up, right into Tim’s eyes. “But the Sheriff isn’t like me. He isn’t like most everyone.”
“He is considerably hotter,” Tim agreed, because he was too tired to argue. Carl’s fierce eyebrows got even fiercer as he frowned.
“Boy I am starting to wonder if you’re worth it. Stop pretending to be slow.”
“Hey.” Tim huffed back at him, more offended than he probably should have been for something Carl was saying just to bug him. It wasn’t like he cared about Carl’s opinion. But Carl kept on frowning at him, like he was waiting for Tim to get a clue or grow a pair, until Tim finally scratched his nose and tried to sniff out what it was Carl was trying to tell him.
All he got was coffee and newspaper and irritation, with a mix of old man smells. He finally rolled his eyes. “You’re very interested in his love life, Carl. Got a crush I should know about?” It wasn’t as much of a joke as Tim wanted it to be, not when he was fighting back a snarl, as if some part of him was pissed about the possibility of anyone else chasing after the Sheriff, even an old man.
Not that Tim was chasing after the Sheriff either; he wasn’t stupid.
Carl made that harrumphing noise again and looked distinctly unamused. “That smart mouth of yours is going to be the death of you.”
Tim hummed in casual agreement, though his pulse picked up. “You are not the first one to tell me that.”
“Good for deflecting things you don’t want to talk about, I bet.” Carl went back to staring at the paper. Tim was about to call him on his whole ‘pretending to read the paper while harassing Tim’ act when Carl took a noisy sip of his coffee and glanced at him again. “The Sheriff is working again today, you know. Letting his Were deputies sleep in, from my understanding.”
“What the fuck?” Tim glared out the window in outrage, startling someone who happened to be passing by and looking in. Well there was one more customer they wouldn’t have. He transferred his glare to Carl. “What is Zach thinking? I knew I didn’t like that guy.” To be honest, Tim wasn’t sure exactly what Zach was to the Sheriff, since, according to rumor that Tim had no reason to doubt, the Sheriff took a lover or two every summer. Zach might be the Sheriff’s pet, living in his house and working as one of his deputies, but he either didn’t know how to look out for the Sheriff, or he was a total self-absorbed douche.
Maybe they weren’t a couple. After all Tim had gotten the impression that Weres were more possessive, well, until he’d overheard those two moms talking last night. Now he didn’t know what to think, except that Zach was a useless tool. He let out a harrumph of his own and felt about five years old when Carl shot him a knowing look. His uncle had been a master of that look, though he’d usually followed it with a disappointed sigh before dismissing Tim from the room.
“You are evil.” Tim straightened up. “Do you like to torture me because you’re bored or do you have some objective in mind?” His uncle believed in always having an objective; Tim had just wanted to be left alone. He still wanted to be left alone, no matter what Carl thought. He flung a hand up dramatically when Carl opened his mouth to answer and turned away before sitting back on the stool to wait out his shift. He let Carl call him a drama queen without comment.
After an hour of watching Weres, and a few humans, stumble into the café with dazed, sated expressions on their faces, Tim gave up and went back to dusting. He went for the shelves this time, and then started making notes on which lube needed restocking. He found some condoms too, all expired, and assumed they were there for nervous humans who doubted the werewolf immune system.
Then when that left him with nothing to do, aside from going through the cabinets and not glancing toward the window as it got closer to lunchtime, he paced in front of the bookshelves and pulled out a book at random. It was a small book, printed by a local publisher, about the history of the town.
That seemed harmless enough as a topic. Tim flipped it open and walked over to the counter to look through it. He was too tired to do much more, though if anyone asked, he was prepared to say he had to know what it was about to recommend it to customers if he ever got any.
He had the book open in front of him on the glass counter and was deep in the history of Wolf’s Paw during Gold Rush when he realized he was being watched and raised his head. He straightened at the broad chest in front of him and gasped in shocked at the discomfort of twisting bones and emerging claws. He immediately put his hands behind his back and tried to recover from his surprise.
He blamed it on adrenaline as he looked up into the Sheriff’s face, because his heart was rabbiting inside his ribs and his mouth was open and the hair on the back of his neck was definitely raised. It was so embarrassing. He was a Were, he was supposed to be able to hear leaves falling to the ground. He was not supposed to be snuck up on, ever.
His face was flushed and he knew it though he cleared his throat and tried to ignore the fact that he was pretty sure he’d yelped. “I am so smooth.” He closed his eyes and immediately reopened them at the warm exhale from the Sheriff that might have been a laugh. An actual laugh. From the Sheriff. Humiliated or not, Tim had to see that.
Nathaniel wasn’t laughing that Tim could see, or even smiling, but his expression was pleased as he stared down at Tim. He had crinkles at the corner of his eyes and his lips were parted. He was so pretty Tim almost missed it when he spoke. “You’re reading about the town.”
“What? Oh I uh….” Tim looked down and was startled to see the book there. His gaze went right back to the Sheriff, while he thought that the Sheriff looked as exhausted as a werewolf could look, and yet the soft circle of his mouth wasn’t something that Tim could ignore. He kind of smiled back, because that was what it felt like the Sheriff was doing, like in some way Tim couldn’t explain the Sheriff was smiling at him without actually smiling, and then he forgot whatever he had been going to say. “Town, right.” They were talking about the town and not how the Sheriff was hiding his smile like this, or what Tim had done to make him happy. “It’s nice here I guess.”
The Sheriff agreed with a little hum sound that made Tim shift in place. His heart wasn’t slowing down. It was kicking against his ribs like it had someplace to be.
“But you didn’t go out last night,” the Sheriff went on, and if Tim had been flushed before he was flaming red and radiating as much heat as the Sheriff now. He looked at his mouth and then into those glowing, beautiful eyes, and for once couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He managed a nod. It was better than, I stayed home and thought about you while rubbing a few out. Which, if Carl and Robin’s Egg knew, than Nathaniel was going to know with one sniff anyway. “Not what I wanted,” he mumbled instead, watching the Sheriff watch him. At least his embarrassingly puny and half-formed paws were finally shifting back into hands. Tim brought them out from behind his back, stared at them for a second, and then smoothed his palms down his sides.
“I understand,” the Sheriff bit out the words in a rougher voice than Tim was expecting and then shook his head and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Little Wolf,” he said formally and then took another deep breath and held it. Tim watched him, fascinated, okay, obsessed with the rise of his chest and the fall when he finally exhaled. The Sheriff focused on Tim. His eyes were heavy-lidded now.
“You look tired,” Tim told him, then realized how rude it was. “And gorgeous, but yeah. That’s you all over. The tired is not. Uh, good morning, I mean. I’m a little tired too. It’s weird actually.”
He should ask if it was normal. Now would be a good time, but the Sheriff took that deep breath again and leaned in to look down at Tim’s hand. He made a small growly noise and then looked over across the café.
“Fairies,” the Sheriff murmured, probably to himself, then released a puff an air. “I thought you seemed quiet,” he remarked when he finally turned his head back toward Tim. Tim gave him the same glare he’d given Carl, who was of course watching them.
“Sorry. Is there some post-moon sexy thoughts etiquette or….” Tim bit his tongue on purpose, hard enough to make him wince and draw a little blood. It put a whole new tang in the air, like adding a pepper to a dish that was already delicious. Tim shut his mouth but he had to breathe, there was no avoiding it.
Nathaniel’s breathing was becoming more noticeable, sharp and heavy. Tim kind of hated him for his ability to take in air when it was so thick with all of Tim’s stupid feelings.
“Are you and Carl in this together?” Tim wondered out loud. The Sheriff stared at him for a second, clearly lost, then just blinked.
“And you’re pissy too,” he mused. “Did you not eat?”
“It’s not even lunch yet!” Tim protested in disbelief only to look around at the growing crowd in the café and realize that it was well after noon.
“I’ll be right back with something for you,” the Sheriff told Tim seriously and then headed into the café, where naturally the sea of people parted for him. Tim stared after him, not even ogling his ass, much, because what was that?
Carl, the bastard, rolled his eyes when Tim looked his way for an explanation. How depressing was it when an old human rolled his eyes at him for being a pathetic loser who couldn't get his own food, Tim wondered, but knew the answer: very.
“I know I'm tiny but really, I can look after myself,” Tim informed the Sheriff when he returned with what was probably someone’s phone order BLT. The Sheriff paused and drew himself up and gave Tim an odd look, which made Tim remember that he was dealing with an alpha wolf who didn’t have to fetch anybody lunch if he didn’t want to.
He fell back onto the stool and took the sandwich with the quietest “Thank you” he could manage. Anyway it smelled good. Bacon-y. The best smell in the world next to Nathaniel’s natural scent.
“Just eat,” Nathaniel grunted back at him and then went silent. Tim figured that he was cue to eat now to make the alpha wolf go away. He ate, glancing up once or twice with an increasingly pissed off glare when he saw that the Sheriff looked sort of zoned out, like he might fall asleep on his feet. Come to think of it, the Sheriff looked like he hadn’t slept much in months, which was dramatic considering he’d only gone one night without sleep that Tim knew of. Maybe there was some kind of werewolf sickness Tim didn’t know about.
He finished with a defiant little burp that was distracting for a moment only because it brought the Sheriff out of his sleepy daze. He looked down at Tim and smiled, really smiled, not just hinting at one, and that smile did slow, low, shaking things to Tim. It was completely unfair that his body took it as his reward for doing as he was told and smiled back at the Sheriff without Tim’s conscious consent.
He quickly turned the smile into a stern frown, because if he was tired and acting dopey, the Sheriff was being so much worse. He had fetched Tim a sandwich. There were humans out there who would have made dog jokes.
Tim narrowed his eyes and made like he wasn’t blushing. “You should get some sleep.” Tim took a breath and gestured at the door. “Go home.” He made himself look back down at the pages of the book, and felt like he had forgotten everything he’d just learned. Then he twitched and squeaked and replayed what he had just done, because he had just outright, straight up told the Sheriff what to do. Holy shit. He raised his head and swallowed. “Eat first, I mean, but go to bed. If you want to, is what I meant to add there and didn’t for some insane reason. I am not challenging you.”
Nathaniel’s eyes seemed a brighter green next to the shadows under his eyes, but his mouth stayed soft and slightly open. “Okay,” he answered quietly.
“What?” Tim instantly demanded in a louder, stupefied voice. He wasn’t even holding the book and he still almost knocked it to the floor in total surprise. “You can’t just say okay. You’re… you.” Leaders of packs, like most Type A personalities, did not take orders from others without at least some kind of fight about who was in charge. Not according to Tim’s uncle, who had been the A-est of Type A’s, the most alpha of alpha wolves.
“I’m ready to crash,” the Sheriff explained, watching Tim’s freak out with his head cocked to one side. Tim exhaled but nodded back at him. The Sheriff had been going to go home and sleep anyway, that’s why he wasn’t mad. That was logical, even if it still didn’t make sense to Tim’s way of thinking.
Luca would have had something to say about Tim giving him orders, even orders for things he’d been planning to do anyway, but suddenly Tim wasn’t sure if it was Nathaniel or Luca who was the odd wolf out. There was a slight but growing chance that Ray and Nathaniel were normal and Luca was just an asshole. For half a second, Tim wondered what Nathaniel would think of his uncle, if he would be awed like most people and then look at Tim as if wondering where he had come from, and then he pushed the thought away while he watched the Sheriff stretch, his body making cracking sounds like he needed a massage or a good night’s sleep or both. Tim got distracted for a minute or two imagining while himself participating in either of those activities.
A massage equaled sex as far as Tim’s brain was concerned, but curling up next to a sleeping Nathaniel, that was different. Tim twitched at the thought, making Nathaniel stop stretching to bend down a bit to study him closer, as if his gaze hadn’t already been glued to Tim’s face. Tim wasn’t sure how to classify the panicked, then calm feeling he got at the idea of watching Nathaniel sleep, except that it made him hot and shift restlessly and breathe a little harder. And yeah, the Sheriff noticed. He stared at Tim with his lips parted which gave Tim a glimpse of tongue.
“Thank you,” Tim told Nathaniel breathlessly and then jerked himself back and out of reach… which really meant keeping Nathaniel out of his reach before he did something else stupid. “Why aren’t you home right now?” Tim asked him, just a little desperately. He’d just spent a whole night devoted to thoughts of the Sheriff and apparently his body still wasn’t satisfied. At least Tim didn’t feel tired anymore. On the contrary, he felt wired, explosive, ready to burst. He was going to start pacing soon just to do something that wasn’t pouncing. Pouncing. On the Sheriff. It was such a bad idea.
“I had things to see to before I could rest.” The Sheriff’s voice was getting quieter, Tim would swear to it, almost like a low rumble tuned to just Were ears. He said it like he meant Tim was one of those things. Tim’s body chose to interpret that sexually. Of course it did. The moon was still fat, but Tim was pretty sure that much Nathaniel around him would get him aroused any day of the month.
“I hate you,” Tim muttered. It was directed more at his dick than the Sheriff, but the Sheriff stopped and lifted his head. His eyes narrowed and something in his expression made Tim swallow.
“Is this about those ideas of yours?”
Nathaniel was holding back a growl, Tim knew the signs now. He’d had plenty of time to learn them, what with how the first time they’d met, Tim had looked up to see that gorgeous god-like Being looking down at him and reaching for him and had blurted out a few fears that had been lurking at the back of his mind since leaving his uncle’s home. Things like “Don’t hurt me, you bullying alpha motherfucker, you can find some other wolf to main or mount!” in front of everyone in the café.
Now that Tim had known the Sheriff for a while, he could safely say he had never seen the man look as thrown as he had after Tim had shouted that. Cosmo had said something similar afterward, while feeding Tim donuts covered in gravy, something about how he’d never seen the Sheriff look so lost.
At the time, Tim had thought the elf was nuts. Now he just noticed that even Cosmo and Robin’s Egg called the Sheriff “The Sheriff” when they were talking about him. That was weird. Tim knew his name, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Nathaniel. Just thinking about the name made him imagine saying it against Nathaniel’s skin, though somehow he didn’t think that was why the others weren’t saying it.
“No.” Tim felt like he’d put his foot in it again somehow. “No I just have work to do. Stuff….” He waved around. Nathaniel narrowed his eyes and let the silence drag on, and Tim held his breath, certain that this time Nathaniel—the Sheriff—was going to ask why Tim was so afraid of him and everyone else. But then he stepped back and imitated Tim’s gesture.
“Yeah this much nothing won’t do itself,” he remarked dryly and Tim was so surprised by the humor that he didn’t know what to do. The Sheriff immediately frowned and got serious again when Tim stared at him. But that had been a joke. Tim so wasn’t ready to let that go, not for all the serious frowns in the world.
“Did you make a joke? Is this what you’re like when you’re tired? You get smiley and funny?”
He caught a glimpse of the Sheriff’s mouth as tightened into an unhappy line and then Carl said, “Boy” in a warning tone, as if Tim had done something else wrong. He opened his mouth to taste the bruised scent in the air and turned a confused look on at the Sheriff. But for once the Sheriff didn’t seem to feel like explaining.
Maybe, Tim thought quickly, maybe he wasn’t supposed to crack jokes to the wolf who ran the town. There was a mayor, sure, and a town council with a fairy and some humans on it, but everyone knew that wasn’t how Weres worked, and it wasn’t who they would answer to, ultimately. Maybe it was like those old medieval laws banning jokes at the king’s expense.
But air didn’t taste like ego, and if wounded pride had a look it wasn’t how the Sheriff put his shoulders back and stood away from the counter. He had been leaning against it, Tim realized suddenly, at ease and sleepy and relaxed against the counter and now he wasn’t anymore. Tim looked from the Sheriff to Carl.
“I have a big mouth,” he whispered, not looking at Carl, and not even sure why he said it because obviously he couldn’t shut up when he should. It was his defining trait aside from his size. “I talk too much, but you…” It seemed wrong to imply that the Sheriff had his feelings hurt and was hiding it, and yet Carl was looking at him now like Tim could vaguely recall his mother looking at him when he’d been six and had accidentally knocked over a human child and sent the poor kid flying into the pavement.
“Well if you’re talking like that, you must be fine now. The food did its job.” The Sheriff flat out ignored what Tim was trying to say and Tim scowled for no reason at all. The Sheriff continued on, all of the sudden as talkative as Tim usually was. “Hopefully those books will convince you to take part in our summer festivals. You will be busy in here, but you should have time to have fun too. The August Moon Fair… that… you should see that one.”
“Okay,” Tim agreed blankly, still trying to figure out where the relaxed Sheriff from a few minutes ago had gone. He hadn’t thought the man’s shoulders could get any straighter, but he pulled them back even more and gave Tim a stiff nod.
“That’s good.” He unbent enough to glance at Carl again, who was an unabashed voyeur, and then gave Tim another nod. “Tim,” he paused, “remember if you have any questions you can always ask me.’”
Carl snorted but quickly looked back at his newspaper when Tim and the Sheriff both shot him a glare.
“Okay,” Tim said again a second later, though his own personal alpha sheriff tour guide through a sex crazed town might actual kill him from the loss of blood to his brain.
At his answer, the Sheriff inhaled then turned on his heels with no warning and went over to grab his lunch from Robin’s Egg. It was To Go, so he’d been telling the truth about being on his way home, but he had to stop on his way out to talk to someone Tim didn’t know. He put one hand on the door to hold it open and then put it on the other person’s shoulder as they were talking.
They were talking about parking tickets. Tim eavesdropped and didn’t pretend otherwise, not with Carl the peeper still watching him. After listening for a while—without agreeing to do anything to get rid of the tickets, Tim noticed—the Sheriff left, heading toward the station and probably his truck. He sighed as he left, a slow, tired sound, and didn’t look back this time.
Tim watched him until he was gone and then collapsed onto the stool and looked at the pages of the book without seeing a single word.
“Tired?” Carl asked innocently. Tim flipped him off without looking up, then frowned and nodded.
“Yeah actually,” he admitted and Carl snorted again. Tim considered him for a good long while. “Since you have all the answers,” Tim sighed at him when he’d had enough considering, “how pathetic am I?”
“Want an honest answer?” Carl waggled his eyebrows. Tim gave him his best fierce stare then jumped in shock when Carl broke eye contact first to mess with his newspaper.
Tim watched him, thinking about the reports of wolf antics that had to be in there, and then wondering again why the effects of gravity should do such things to Weres. But he didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer and Carl seemed nervous. Tim didn’t want to know about things that would make a tough old guy like Carl nervous, so he slumped over the counter and stared out the window.
“It’s going to be a long day,” he whined to himself. Carl must have been feeling less anxious, because he snickered. Tim opened his mouth enough to show him a hint of fang. Carl grunted but shut up, so Tim didn’t feel even a little guilty about it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 07:11 pm (UTC)Still liking Carl. *nods*
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 06:35 am (UTC)Tim is 20. His best friend is like an 70 something ish old man. Perfect.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-31 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 01:00 pm (UTC)Wow
Date: 2012-10-30 06:56 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing.
Kristi P
Re: Wow
Date: 2012-10-31 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-31 06:45 am (UTC)