Heron Lake Plateau [M] the red and the black

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After encountering his friends and reaching a consensus — whatever that may be — Screech knew he couldn't just up and leave. He wouldn't burn that bridge so easily. All he wanted at this moment was to find Towhee and tell her what was up — except the more he roamed, the less and less inclined he was to seek her out. He ended up touring the border and investigating the territory; wondering about what could have been, mostly. He kept far from the hungry, sleepy, road-weary wolves that had taken up residence on the plateau whenever possible — but by the time night had fallen, he had drifted a little closer.

It felt strange to be on the outside looking in, especially when his family was right there, and being with them again had been a dream of his for so long. Dreams were corruptable — it had been too long, he had seen too much and been left behind too many times, so instead of being pleased with their sudden arrival, he was more dismayed by the sudden but inevitable betrayal that had played out. Towhee's scent dominated a segment of the plateau already, as did the scents of his family. His own markings - and Redshank's - had been fading before their arrival and now, they'd been obliterated. Screech paced through the dark and studied the markings, but found himself being led away through the reeds by a familiar scent which made his chest constrict.

He stopped when he saw the dark woman's silhouette, and crooned a sad note in her direction.

She had searched for him in the days following the standoff between their two packs, but Titmouse had never been one to stay in one place for long. That fact about him had larger implications than simply where he was at any given moment. Would he stay with the Redhawks? His track record for staying close to home was less than stellar, and while Raven wanted more than anything for him to settle down and find happiness here, part of her doubted that would actually happen.

Because Titmouse was the way he was, and there was little any of them could do about it. The young wolf yearned for something he'd never been able to find within the boundaries of his family. Perhaps he might have found it with the small band of friends he'd gathered here at the plateau before the Redhawks arrived. But they would never know now, would they?

Raven's thoughts were a mixture of good and bad, but an overarching sense of guilt colored almost all of them. She couldn't reconcile with the fact that they'd stolen this from him, no matter how many offers of acceptance Towhee extended to him. Perhaps the inconvenient cocktail of hormones running through her system were amplifying the emotions she felt, but there was no way to tell.

She lingered in the dark, sleepless, eyes searching the stars that spangled the velvet-black expanse overhead as she mulled over her jumbled thoughts. A quiet, somber voice came to her then, softly carried on the sounds of the night, and she knew who it was before her eyes ever picked out the dark shape moving toward her through the shadows. She remained where she sat and watched him approach, a fond smile painting her features. She was so glad to see him.

As soon as she turned and he saw her face, he felt many of his emotions abate. There was a sense of freedom here, of safety, as if she exuded an aura which made the vicinity a safe space. Screech came up beside her and smiled, then poked her cheek with his cold nose - Hey, he sighed as he sat beside her, and then looked up at the stars which watched from on high.

A period of quiet settled between them, but not for long. He could smell Towhee's scent on Raven and his contentedness shifted to something closer to faint guilt. Is she okay? He asked, his voice thick like molasses in his throat. Raven would know what he meant by that - it was easy to assume the resident healer would tend to his sister. The wounds were superficial at best (just like his level of care).

Her smile widened as he nosed her cheek in greeting, and the calm that settled between them as he sat beside her was comfortable and warm. She loved all her siblings with everything in her, particularly the ones she had raised alongside Finley, but Titmouse was quietly, secretly, her favorite. So many disliked him for his reckless ways and questionable choices, but perhaps that was what made her treasure him so much. He was the one little duckling she'd never been able to keep with the bunch, and where it drove others crazy with frustration, it only made her love him more.

She leaned into his solid warmth, loving that he was safe and alive and here. His voice came thick, his words freighted with the weight of so many mixed feelings as he inquired after Towhee, and Raven nodded. "She's fine," she answered with a soft sigh. "Questioning her decisions, for sure. As we all are." She pulled away from him and looked him over with a healer's care. "Are you hurt?" Sadly, she knew the worst of his wounds were on the inside, where she couldn't reach them to help them heal.

She was likely the only member of his family that cared about him, and he could bask in her company - and her love - without the usual constraints. There was a lot on his mind and the inquiry towards Towhee's condition was the tip of a very large ice berg. It was mostly his way of starting a conversation; while he had no trouble voicing himself in the past, things felt as if they had reached a tipping point.

When she asked about him, he wasn't expecting it. Screech glanced at her - studied that face he hadn't seen in months - and dismissed her with, I'm fine.

Not knowing what to do next, he resorted to silence and good company while his thoughts ran away within him.

He commented that he was fine, and while Raven wanted to ask him are you sure?, she didn't push. One thing she'd learned about him long ago was that if he wanted to talk, it had to be on his terms. Still, the loaded silence that fell over them now contained a subtle air of awkwardness, and Raven shifted a little. There was so much she wanted to know, yet she didn't want to pick the wrong topic and accidentally step on a figurative landmine. "So," she began, looking once more at his face. His missing eye bothered her, but only because it pained her to see his perfect face so marred. Little maternal instincts occasionally rose up within her like that, and she secretly wanted to mega-hulksmash whoever had disfigured her brother so. "Tell me about your friends? That pretty blonde wolf -- is she your girlfriend?"

Raven tried to break the silence and her effort was commendable. He wasn't sure how to answer at first, and sort of gawked at her for a split second before responding, Niamh? She's a girl, and I think she's my friend.. But we only met a little while ago, I don't know her that well. The implication that they might be together flew right over his head.

But it did get him thinking of the events of the previous few days, which led inevitably to, And you met Redshank, he's the one that got in your face earlier. Sorry about that. There was no telling what the fallout would've been if Redshank had done serious harm in that moment. He might've cared about his friend to a great extent, but he would lay down his life for Raven.

With this in mind, he somberly added: I've missed you.

"WHAT ABOUT REDSHANK IS HE UR BF??" XD

She'd known her abrupt question would surprise him, and she grinned at his answer. And truthfully she felt a strange sort of relief -- no girl would ever be good enough for him, in her opinion. To his comments about Redshank and his subsequent apology for the young wolf's actions, she merely shrugged dismissively. She held no hard feelings toward him, as she understood he'd simply been defending his territory and his packmates in that moment. That was just the way it had to be sometimes. The only injury she'd suffered had been to her pride, and that wasn't saying much since pride had never really been a thing for her.

His next words warmed her heart, and she leaned into his shoulder again. "I've missed you too. I'm glad you're here." Maybe nobody else felt that way, but she had enough love for him in her heart to make up for everybody else. She turned her head and buried her face in his neck fur, his musky scent tinged with wood and rain and spring air filling her senses for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice came soft and muffled from within his thick ruff, "Please don't leave me again."

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.

He didn't reply to her words, but he didn't have to. She knew he'd heard them, and she hoped that he would take them to heart. He was a Redhawk, after all -- he was hers -- and he belonged here. A strange heat radiated from his body, though she was entirely unaware of its origins. Something nagged at the back of her mind, some instinct telling her that something was amiss, but she ignored it. She remained as she was for a few moments until he spoke again, telling her of a girl he'd met but had fought with. "That's a shame," she commented as she sat back, looking once again up at this face. "What happened?"

What happened? she asked, and he could only shrug and look at the dirt at his feet. Screech wasn't a quiet person usually, and had even begun reverting to his usual obnoxious self during this short visit with Raven, but the memory of Sorina made him clam up a little bit all over again. Then he  murmured, She said — but cut himself off before he could finish the sentence, which would've concluded as: 'She said I fucked her,' which he wasn't comfortable saying near Raven for some reason. He didn't know what that meant. Up until that point in his life Screech had thrown around naughty language without caring if it made sense or offended people, he did it for shock value. With Sorina had used it, it had been in the form of an accusation, and it didn't make sense.

Without explaining, he fell quiet and pulled away from his sister. But it wasn't for long; he paced around her and asked, Here, stand up, and whether she followed his request or not, he went on to explain that weird day. I can't remember what we fought about, but I remember we kind of... He waffled a bit for the right term, and in the end couldn't come up with anything, so he began to act it out. She didn't like when I did this, and he jumped up, innocently landing his chest on the small of Raven's back if it was there.

She watched him expectantly as he struggled to explain, but utterly failed. She cocked her head, wondering what on earth had happened to make the ordinarily loud-mouthed, very-aptly-named Screech clam up like this. He fumbled for words before finally getting up and asking to demonstrate. She shrugged and did as he instructed, standing in place with her neck craned around to see what he was up to. When he reared up and placed the weight of his body on her back, she (in her characteristic, occasionally-dimwitted way) somewhat obtusely asked, "Oh. So uh, you jumped on her back...?"

He nodded to answer her question, but realized she wouldn't be able to really see him. So he said, Yeah. We were kind of sparring, but not seriously. And when I did this she got snappy, but I wanted to win - right - so, he shuffled then, aligning his hips and sliding his chest further along her back so that he was in the position like before — the way he'd settled atop Sorina in those strange moments. While doing this he lost his footing and staggered, bumping his chin against Raven's back — the whiff of her scent brought that warmth to the pit of his belly again, but he was focused on recounting everything that happened with Sorina and didn't think anything of it.

I wasn't... I wasn't hurting her. I kept grabbing at her, he demonstrated this next, reaching for Raven's shoulders with his snout, and then grabbing playfully at the fur of her nape, combing it with his teeth. I couldn't do anything from here and so the fight stopped, kinda, and we just shouted at each other - and it became a game, I guess? He was all levels of confusion now, and the memory which had ingrained itself within him was now replaying before him, except that Sorina had been replaced — and he wasn't sure why, but Screech felt pleased to be in this position, and that brought more questions to his mind.

He sighed, and murmured: This doesn't... It doesn't hurt, does it? I didn't want to hurt her.

Screech was heavy, but not terribly so, and she found that by bracing her rear legs a little further apart, she could support him better. As he explained what had happened, Raven nodded and punctuated it with the occasional "uh-huh" and "okay". When he asked her if it hurt, she shook her head and answered, "No, not at all." Actually, it kind of felt nice...which confused her and elicited a lot of questions in her own head.

His way of sparring was awfully strange. She supposed if one wanted to win a fight, squashing them with the full weight of their body was a pretty good way to go about it. Then, a thought occurred to her that made her brows knit together, and the dim little lightbulb over her head started to flicker just a bit. Maybe there was a good reason why his mystery girl had fought with him, because this was starting to look an awful lot like...

o_O

"...Oh. Um...Screech...?"

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Heavily implied sexual content.

Screech was flooded with validation when she confirmed that no, it hadn't hurt. It had not been a Bad Thing. Whatever garbage Sorina had screamed at him that day had been just the usual nonsense - but he wasn't finished yet (oh god, no pun intended I am so sorry).

Thinking that he was just re-enacting this little game, or spat, or whatever, took some pressure off of him. But he felt something else — something kind of like a want — which accompanied the heat in his belly. He took a deep breath as he adjusted his weight, and the scent of Raven wasn't really her scent after that. It became something different. There were notes to it that he hadn't been aware of before, aspects which might've been a little intoxicating before, but now that he was here, he couldn't ignore. She stopped being family for that split second.

It was a confusing moment.

But he was still curious, and had to ask — softly, innocently, as he pulled her hips against him with a lazy little hug — This -- what about -- what about this? This felt right; this was just like what had happened with Sorina. He had to get to the bottom of this and find out if her words had wrung true and so, he didn't stop — at this point, Screech couldn't help it, he was swept up in the moment. He simultaneously wanted to reach that brief moment of goodness that he'd felt, but he also desperately wanted to prove Sorina wrong and achieve some kind of confirmation. Certainly if this felt good then it wasn't a bad thing — little did he know.

Fade to... some shade of grey.

"Err...uh...Screech, sweetie..." But he wasn't hearing her. He was gone somewhere now, swept up in the heat of his young hormones and their chemical reaction with her heretofore-forgotten heat. If a wolf could facepalm, she most certainly would have at that very moment. How could she have been so stupid as to forget she was in fucking heat? Granted, it had only come upon her in the last twenty-four hours or so and the blood-fire hadn't begun yet, but still. As Screech pulled her tighter, breathing words into her nape that she no longer heard, she began to squirm in an effort to get away. "No baby...this isn't--"

And then the worst thing that could happen in that situation happened. She felt his warrior enter her sacred temple and while literally everything in her was screaming "Yaaasss! It's about time you got some D!" all that was rational and sane in her revolted and the only thing she could think about was getting away. She struggled and clawed at the dirt, but he was larger and stronger than she was, and his arms around her waist were locked in an unbreakable embrace. "Screech--no! Stop!" she snarled, but it was too late. He was too far gone.

The problem with acting out a memory was that, to some degree, it was fantasy. There would be no returning to that moment. He couldn't fix what happened between himself and Sorina, the same as he couldn't fix what was going on between himself and Raven — this event which would, most assuredly, ruin his life at some point. The fantasy came to an abrupt halt when he clued in to Raven's protest; she moved against him the way that Sorina had. Maybe not with the same venom to her voice — but this was unfolding in exactly the same fashion as his first time.

He heard her screech the command to stop through bared teeth, and he tried. Screech came back to the present — to reality — and understood intimately that this could not happen no matter how badly his body said otherwise. This was his sister. He didn't know why he was so caught up in the performance of it all. He gasped and pulled, and his ears flattened when his next breath became a small groan; he was trying.

But it was done. They would be locked in formation for an awkward length of time before he could back up, slip down, and be on his feet again. His head was downcast once he'd managed these things. Screech had wanted to prove that he wasn't a horrible person somehow, and that Sorina had been lying when she said -- Fuck, he peeped, realizing that he had done something bad, now. Something unforgivable. 

He didn't speak again, and though his legs felt like they were ready to fold beneath him like wet lake grass, he was gone by the time Raven could turn around — his silhouette shooting across the plateau.

Raven right now, questioning a lot of life choices XD


He tried to stop, but the deed was done. They were locked together, end to end, in the lovers' tie that should have bonded her to literally anybody else but Screech. She just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the ground, eyes wide with shock. What the actual fuck just happened? She glanced back at Screech, barely able to look at him now. It wasn't his fault. He was a yearling. She was the adult here, and she never should have allowed him to put himself in this position. It was all her own fault. She heard his uttered curse and whispered, "It's....it'll be.....it's okay...", but couldn't tell if he heard her or not. After a short while, she felt the tie release and suddenly his footfalls were fading away in the distance. She watched him go and for once she was glad to see him leave, only because she needed time to process what had just happened.