Swiftcurrent Creek you call out

You're welcome to fade out with your next post if you'd like, but I'm also happy to keep it going. :) I heart these two!

From an outsider's perspective, there was some irony in the way both of them protected themselves. Fox would not allow herself to feel for him, and he would not allow himself to feel for her. Even if they were feeling something for one another in that moment, they seemed to be feeling entirely different things. Or were they? Perhaps this outsider is up far too late and reading too much into things.

Fox had known family. Her own had been perfectly normal from what she could tell, and yet she had never felt at home with them. Her parents had surely loved her, and while she had scrapped with her siblings day-in and day-out, they had never hated one another. There was a kinship among them that would never be broken, no matter how much Fox tended to forget that her past had happened at all. So no, family was not a foreign concept to her. But having Haunter as some kind of family was about as foreign as it could get. He had all but promised to leave them come springtime, and Fox did not believe that his change of heart would last.

But she could not deny him.

“Then stay,” she said softly, a stark contrast to his half-threatening growl and gravely voice. With much care, Fox curled herself up on the floor of her den, glancing up to invite him to join her. There were no adulterous overtones in her motions because she lacked the capacity for them. It would be at least a year before she came into her own in that regard. She would not be surprised if he passed her up on her offer, but she would also not be surprised if he accepted it. If he truly did wish to protect her as he said he did, then staying by her side when she was at her physical weakest was the best course of action.