Heron Lake Plateau [M] the red and the black

She was so close to him; the closest anyone had ever gotten, maybe, save for Seelie. He never wanted to leave — not now, not before, things just sort of happened to him, and around him, and led him away time and again. But hearing her say it aloud made the strangest feeling spread in his belly — no, lower. There was no reason for him to refuse her contact or to think his body's reaction was anything aside from natural. Nobody had given him The Talk, after all. (@Rannoch, you had one job.)

He breathed in the familiar scent of his big sister — his mother, his only real family — and sighed as she leaned against him. The boy was reminded of the night he'd spent with Seelie during the party, when he'd been so sad and he had cried in front of her. She hadn't been afraid to comfort him. Maybe his attachment to both women was because of a shared kindness — but then he thought of Sorina, and... If anyone needed a sobering thought right now, it was this boy, in this exact situation.

Oddly, it didn't. Maybe it was Raven's presence that soothed his worries, maybe it was the underlying allure of her wild scent that had snared him, but Screech thought of his friend Sorina and wasn't instantly revolted. If anything, his reaction got stronger — he remembered their rough-housing, their fight, the words she'd thrown at him later when Hydra had found them — and then he murmured, I did meet a girl, but we got in a fight, sort of. He didn't know how to explain what they'd done, so he left it at that for now.