Heron Lake Plateau you don't need an uber, you don't need a cab

tegan was back on his feet.

well, barely. he was still technically on bedrest and still technically not allowed to leave the territory but-- let's face it. tegan gave zero fucks. his head didn't hurt today so he was just gonna go fuck shit up in the territory. he wouldn't leave the plateau. seriously, he wouldn't. he'd sort of listen. 

besides! fucking @Bat seemed to harass him eeeevvvery day. i mean, he loved bat, sure. she was his prodigy, #1 fan, and great company. but she was always trying to get him to get up and do shit with her and he couldn't stand having to keep saying no to her! he was supposed to be teaching her, god damn it!! being on bed rest sucked! it meant he wasn't allowed to do anything cool. i mean, yeah, he got to say no to dumb shit like chores, but he couldn't go exploring or anything. 

and that sucked. so he was giving in to bat's whims and going to do whatever thing she'd asked him to do earlier that day. he just had to find her. he followed her scent,  ears pricked up and facing forwards, tail swinging. he spotted her big ass ears from a mile away-- way before he saw any other part of her. "hey, pup!" he called out, realizing a little too late that yelling that loudly actually hurt. 

ugh, maybe he should've stayed in bed. 

too late.

"whasgood? still need a partner?" he asked, trotting up and giving her a nose to the shoulder.

Shouldn't have eaten that rotting rabbit, Bat thought with a groan as her abdomen cramped and she produced a messy, noisy and stinky deuce. After evacuating her bowels, she did feel a bit better. She stood and kicked some cold dirt and snow over the waste, turning with surprise when Tegan halloo'd her.

It was a little embarrassing and gross to be discovered in this state, though Bat tried to make a joke out of it by observing, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..." She motioned for her pal to move away from ground zero and kept moving once she started, commencing a leisurely stroll.

When Tegan referred to himself as her "partner," Bat's belly did a funny thing. Ignoring it, she cracked a smile and said, "I was thinking we could hunt for a mole today." She'd told him all about that story and if he'd realized her error (quite likely), he hadn't set her straight. The youth still thought it might be plausible to find and train one of those peculiar insectivores.

haha gross. if tegan had ever once been attracted to bat, it certainly wasn't after he'd walked in on her taking a massive deuce. she played it off pretty smoothly and maybe it was the concussion, but tegan couldn't think of anything witty to say to her about it. so he dropped it. ugh, oh well. he'd be back up to his normal speed in a few weeks,

wait-- a mole? oh, right, a mole. tegan remembered the story a little slower than he normally would've, but all the same. he hadn't corrected her originally, it wasn't worth it plus it was actually pretty funny to play her along like this. anyhow. 

"oh yeah?" he questioned, a little demeaningly but not so much so that it was noticeable, "where do'ya think we're gonna find one?"

"Underground," she replied without missing a beat, "ya' dingus." She clicked her tongue at her friend, then offered him a shit-eating grin and scooted out of reach in case he felt like batting her (pun intended). "It's almost like you hit your head or something. Do you think you have permanent brain damage?" Oh boy, it was fun teasing Tegan, especially when he was being slow.

"It'd be easier if one of us was a hunter," she pointed out in the next breath, "but we're scouts. Searching is in the job description." Bat paused, pushing her tongue thoughtfully into her cheek before speaking again. "I guess we could start by finding some holes? And keeping our eyes peeled. They're pretty easy to spot, since they're ugly little mother fuckers. You've seen one before, right?"

"hey, motherfucker!" warned tegan, "dial it back, i'm injured you gotta be nice to me." which was true. you can't be a dick to a crippled person for no reason. and if tegan seriously had permanent brain damage then like... that sucked. he didn't wanna think about it. ): he wasn't about to be some sensitive ass bitch though, he played it off well. bat wouldn't have been able to tell he was secretly worried.

and then bat said something stupid. at least, it was stupid to tegan. "what, you can't hunt?" he questioned, ears pricked up, "every wolf can hunt, you don't gotta be licensed hunters or shit-- those wolves just like, can really hunt." at least, that's what tegan thought. tegan also thought he was great at everything so, take his opinion with a grain of salt. 

and then he took his shot at bat, finally.

"you know i've been wondering for a while why you've always looked so familiar, and i think i just figured it out," he started with a bright flag of his tail, "you look like a mole." ugly little motherfucker. "HA!" hahaha. ha. tegan sat down, his head kinda hurt from laughing at his own joke. so now he just shot her a snarky little look which, in turn, got his canine stuck on his upper lip.

Bat smirked at Tegan's scandalized reaction, then blew a raspberry to let him know what she thought of that. When he teased her in turn about hunting, she snapped her tail and replied, "'Course I can. I fed myself when I was on my own, didn't I?" She'd mostly eaten carrion, true—or gone hungry, to be honest—but she was living proof of his point. "You're the one being dumb about it—"

But then Tegan cut her off with a savage burn. Her tail lashed again. "At least I don't look like a mole's asshole!" she retorted, baring her teeth, though it was all in good fun, of course. Tegan was rather fetching, actually, and that thought actually crossed her mind: Tegan's pretty good-looking. And on the heels of that thought came another: I hope he doesn't actually think I'm an uggo.

Bat was usually a pretty sensible and easygoing kid, so it took her by surprise when that thought actually wounded her a bit. Surely he was only joking though! Play it cool, bitch, she said to herself, then noticed his snaggle tooth and pointed at him. She meant to make fun of him but she was busy laughing too hard, she couldn't even form words.

"i found you half-starving," tegan reminded her-- but he actually, truthfully, couldn't remember what she looked like when he found her. was she starving? was she fat? he had no idea. but he would rather win this argument so, selective memory. 

"yeah me too, that'd really suck, wouldn't it?" he added, completely deflecting her shot off of him. she didn't say he looked like a moles asshole. so, hah. he was still winning. cool as a cucumber. but, actually tegan was suddenly feeling less than cool. actually kinda hot. damn. he really didn't do that much-- just tracked bat down and then had some banter. but maybe that was pushing it-- damn... maybe he really did fuck himself up. was he supposed to feel like this for this long? 

she pointed at him then and he realized his lip was caught. as smoothly as he could, his tongue flicked out and he fixed it, ears pressed forwards. "it's a look," he insisted. 

he shook his head, kinda slowly. "hey, actually-- i think i gotta sit this out," he said with a loud huff, "i thought this was calm but... well ion think it's gonna happen." his shoulders rolled, tail flicking with a bit of agitation. "actually i'm probably gonna make a sacrifice to some demon, get this concussion shit sorted out. if you wanna help i could definitely use a virgin for the offering." haha zinger!! tegan was a virgin too but whatever it didn't fuckin matter he was just here to cause a ruckus. hah. virgin.

The laughter relieved some of the strange tension inside Bat and went on long enough that a single tear escaped her right eye. She swiped it away with a final snort as Tegan smoothly fixed his lip. She felt a flash of heat herself, entirely inexplicable in her case, and then a roll of disappointment when he abruptly announced a change in plans.

Her brow begin to lift at the mention of a demon and then when he pegged her with an insult, Bat indignantly retorted, "I'm not a virgin!" which was quickly followed by, "The fuck is a virgin? You're a virgin, virgin."

bat got defensive pretty quickly, which tegan expected from her. also, tegan had no earthly idea how old she even was. he assumed older, cause she claimed to be older, and why the fuck would she lie? so to him, all these crude jokes didn't sound inappropriate(well, it was in other ways but not in that he was talking to a child). anyhow, tegan was now pretty wrapped up in how hilarious this could get. "oh so you've had sex before?" tegan challenged immediately, eyebrow quirked, "got your guts rearranged?" he didn't bother sugar coating it, cause this was way funnier. 

he explained, however, for her own benefit, in case she couldn't pick up on the context clues, "a virgin is someone who hasn't had sex before. people sacrifice virgins to gods. for some reason i dunno." tegan hoped no one sacrificed him before he had the chance to lay some serious pipe. ):

Her face froze when he mentioned sex, then scrunched at the words "guts rearranged." "Fuckin' gross, man!" blurted Bat, mostly at the latter bit. The idea of mating—once explained to her behind the scenes by another of Magdalyn's creations—didn't bother her much. It seemed kind of odd to her, as an inexperienced youngster, although...

And just like that, her mind was suddenly filled with an image of Tegan mounting her and humping away. Bat blanched beneath her dark fur, spluttering loudly. Probably the worst thing about having such an indecent picture in her head was the fact that she didn't hate it.

Realizing she must look a fool right now, the juvenile scrambled for a way to recover and respond to her best friend... and crush? Was that what was going on here? She was having her Sexual Awakening right here, in front of fuckin' Tegan (lol), because of fuckin' Tegan (LOL)?

"what?!" tegan exclaimed in a loud yip as bat suddenly went all sorts of bat-shit crazy on him(pun intended). why'd she look like that? what the fuck was that? why'd she get all squirmy? 

if tegan was half the pussy-slayer he claimed to be, he might've understood that it was because bat was totally hot and bothered right now. but he was none-the-wiser, so he just looked confused with his face all scrunched up. "hey calm down-- being a virgin isn't a bad thing," he tried, but he wasn't really sure if that was gonna save this whole thing. he didn't dare reveal that he was a virgin. not willingly, anyway. you'd have to pry it out of his cold. dead. mouth. bitch.

"seriously we can drop it-- stop doing that with your face," he added, ears pressing forwards and green gaze settling on her own sterling one.

Her mental scrambling only grew worse as comprehension dawned on her. Actually, I take that back: she simply went blank. By the time Tegan told her to fix her face, it had begun to slack into a dead, expressionless visage. But his words snapped her out of it enough that she blinked, then squinted, then winced, then sighed, then tried her best to put on a poker face. She did still need to work on that.

Something about his remark about her face pressed against that tender spot from earlier, that fear that he might think she was ugly. Bat swallowed thickly. It made more sense now, though that did nothing to alleviate the fear that began feeding on her. Her mouth opened as if she was going to ask him about it but Bat clapped it shut an instant later. This situation was already awkward enough. She'd just realized she had a crush on her closest friend, for fuck's sake.

"Uh," she said rather dumbly, trying to regain some sense of equilibrium between the two of them. "So if we're not looking for moles or sacrificing virgins"—oh boy, that last part just about squeaked out of her—"then what are we gonna do?" Because some might have wanted to run for the hills after having an epiphany like this, but it just made Bat want to spend more time with Tegan than she did already (which was sayin' somethin', tell you what).

she kinda lost it for a second but... eventually, she regained a little bit of composure. it helped settle tegan's nerves, which were on END motherfucker. he hated awkward situations. tegan wasn't awkward, just by nature. homeboy could talk about anything all day. but as soon as someone else started acting weird tegan seriously lost his own edge. and bat was seriously rounding out that edge into a full ass circle. 

but she asked him a question that tegan unfortunately didn't have a good answer too. "i dunnnooooo," he groaned, throwing his chin up towards the sky exasperatedly-- which kinda caused him to wince. too fast head moving. "this concussion thing fuckin sucks, the only thing that doesn't hurt is sleep," he admitted to bat, clearly kinda frustrated, "but i don't wanna spend the next two months sleeping, ya know? i'm gonna get fuckin fat. like lucca. i'm gonna fuckin look like lucca." oh no, and lucca didn't get any broads. fuuuuck. 

"whatever," he muttered, apparently solving his own problem, "there's nothin i can do. you don't have to lay around if you've got moles to find." he added the last part quite genuinely, since he didn't expect bat to do much lazing around. he got to his feet, tail flicking twice.

Tegan seemed genuinely exasperated, although thankfully it didn't seem directed at her but at the situation. Nonetheless, Bat recoiled a bit on the inside. She felt particularly tender about everything at the moment, especially his suffering. It bothered her deeply that he couldn't shake this thing so easily. She didn't just miss scouting around with her best buddy, she also worried that there was something genuinely wrong with his noggin, all jokes aside.

Promptly and without thinking, she replied, "I want to stay with you, be your pillow pal." She felt herself flush immediately thereafter, though thankfully it wasn't visible. Nor was the hot sensation crawling all over her skin. Just by having her revelation, everything about their dynamic had changed instantly. Cuddling up to Tegan now was going to be an entirely different experience altogether. Bat worried at her lip, not entirely certain if this was a very good or very bad development.

"gross," muttered tegan, just at the idea of it, but whatever it was cold and he could use the companionship. he wouldn't complain. "but good," he added, and motioned that they go back to wherever tegan had been resting. it was windier out in the open. "i don't wanna freeze my nose off in my sleep. it's a good sniffer," was his reasoning. 

when they got there (it was not very far, thank god) tegan plopped down and rolled onto his side, legs all to one side, leaving a nice lil gap for tiny lil bap to curl up in. "i'm gonna sleep for 4 years i hope you're prepared."

Bat's heart fidgeted at the word "gross," though Tegan was only teasing. All of a sudden, she felt so unsure about that, about everything. When he began to move away, presumably to find a good spot to settle, she didn't follow immediately, her limbs apparently locked.

She eventually forced them into motion, uncharacteristically quiet as she tagged along behind him. When Tegan flopped to the ground and left a space tucked up by his side, just for her—a common practice between them by now—Bat's heart did a somersault. She assumed her usual position, curled up alongside him.

Definitely good, she decided, veritably humming with newfound energy despite their relaxed positions. Long after Tegan's breathing deepened, she lay awake, mind a-quiver with this latest development.