After an exhausting amount of walking, Ryn was cold and wet. She was shivering, nearly tucked into Jasper's side for heat.
"You're cold because you're so thin. Get off of me." He muttered.
Ryn was so shocked by the mean comment that she didn't know what to say. "Sorry." She murmured, keeping her distance.
Finally, they arrived across a small house with white clapboards. Ivy crawled up the sides, undeterred by human effort. It was rare for pack members to live so far away, but it wasn't like she was going to ask him about it.
He picked up a key out of the ivy covering the small porch, unlocked the front door. He opened the door, waiting expectantly for her to come in.
The aura was strange. So stark, yet so messy. There was nothing of personal value, nothing indicating taste, and anything that was in the room either wasn't even upright or lying on the floor. Not that there was much at all to begin with.
She looked at him, concerned.
"If you don't like it go back to your house." He muttered gruffly.
Ryn walked further into the house, and she heard the door close and lock behind him. She stood idly in what seemed to be a living room, though there was no couches or anything to indicate such. There was just a mattress in the middle of the floor with sheets awry and a comforter kicked off to side.
"Just," he held up his hands anxiously, "just sit. And don't... touch anything."
Very calmly, she sat on the mattress, still shivering.
He paced back and forth, muttering to himself.
Gods, he was a madman.
"I'm not crazy." He told her abruptly. "I'm fucking cursed. By your kind." He spat.
She stared at him.
"What?" He demanded, stopping his pacing. "Go do whatever it is teenage girls do. Go text all your witchy friends that you've been kidnapped by a monster."
"I don't have any witch friends." She said softly. "My mother was the only one I knew."
He winced, like something had stung him. "Car accident. Left you scarred. Hospital. Five months." Jasper suddenly blurted out, then started rubbing his temples.
She blinked at him. "You're an oracle." Ryn murmured. Everything made sense now. The sparse, messy house, why he lived so far from everyone else. All that activity would give him visions constantly. He would only keep around tried and true items that wouldn't trigger his sight. From what she knew, the ability was debilitating. Migraines, night terrors, social isolation.
"I'm cursed." He muttered again, holding his head.
The poor man was in agony. He must've been constantly.
She stood slowly, as to not frighten him, and walked in front of him. "I can help you." She murmurs. "I promise. It was one of the first things I learned. My dad even lets me do it and he hates magic."
His bright blue eyes flickered open watched her cautiously. "I'll kill you, I don't care who you are."
She didn't quite know whether the threat was for her not to use magic on him or for her not to harm him with it.
"I couldn't hurt a fly," she assures him, "ask anyone. You saved my life, the least I can do is save you a headache. I have no coven ties, see?" She pulled up the sleeve on her left wrist and showed him.
Finally and with a grimace, he nodded.
She lifted her hands to his face, replacing the fingers on his temples with her own. Ryn focused her energy and transferred it to him. After a moment, his shoulders sank.
Smiling softly, she drew her hands from him. "Better?"
Jasper nodded. "I dunno what to do with you." He said honestly. "I hate witches."
"I gathered." Ryn told him. "I'm... Barely a witch, I promise. That pain spell and making tiny storms in my hands is about the extent of my repertoire."
"Tiny storms?" He questioned.
Ryn shrugged. "Yeah. I just... Make clouds, sometimes. Here," she cupped her hands and lifted them up, blowing lightly into her palms. The air swirled and condensed, making a small cumulus cloud. He watched her hands with interest and fixation, so she continued. "I can make cirrus clouds," cupping it in one hand, she raked three fingers through the cloud, causing it to fracture into multiple small wisps, "or stratus." She flattened the wisps and drew her hand away, revealing a flat, sheet of fluffy gray. "I can make it rain, too."
She tapped the little cloud twice and rain began to puddle into her hand. Slowly, the stratus cloud disintegrated, and she was only left with a tiny collection of water in her hand. She shook it out. "Not all that scary. I promise."
"What, are you going to make a rainbow next?"
She laughed. "No can do. That requires light bending, which I haven't gotten ahold of yet." She studied him. "You look tired. If you don't know what to do, we could probably just sleep."
He eyed her suspiciously.
"Are you afraid I might harm you in your sleep?" She asks, hurt. "That burst of energy I threw at the fae was a lot of the magic strength I have. Just those clouds took a lot more out of me than usual. I'm only eighteen, I don't have any technical, complex magic. I couldn't hurt you."
He analyzed her for a second, then suddenly leaned in and kissed her. He felt like... well, magic. He felt like the warmth in the fingers as she held them to his temple and took away his pain.
It ended all too soon. She stared at him in shock and as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Had to make sure you weren't lying." He muttered.
She blinked at him. "You could've just... Touched my arm or something."
He shook his head, flushed mildly. "Not for deeper secrets."
Something told her that he'd had to do that more than once, and not necessarily just to females.
He jerked his chin to the mattress, "before I change my mind."
Awkwardly, she walked over to it and sat down at the top. While she stripped off her cardigan and took off her slippers, he kicked off his boots and collapsed into the mattress, his bulky frame taking up most of it.
"Don't be incompetent." He muttered, "you suggested this." Jasper tugged hard on her ankle, and she squealed. He readjusted her some more until her back was against his chest.
After several moments, his breath slowed and he was out like a light. Strangely enough, she wasn't all that far behind.
*
Chrissy awoke draped in a blanket. She blinked away the sunshine, sat up. So, it wasn't all a dream after all. She wasn't in her own bed - She was most certainly not in the couch she had fallen asleep in last night. Chris was in Tristan's bed. How in the hell did she end up here?
She vaguely remembered waking up, but being quickly put back to sleep.
Tristan wasn't anywhere to be seen, either.
Chrissy looked down. She wasn't wearing pants, but she wasn't when she went to bed. Her flannel was buttoned, and on further inspection, her ruined bra was nowhere to be seen either. Ho... Scary. Scary? Maybe.
She blinked it away, and saw one of her favorite things: the undefended closet of a male.
She stole her brother's things all the time, and occasionally Ryland's but usually only with his say-so.
Chrissy slipped out of bed, and started rummaging through Tristan's things.
"The Dead Milkmen? Tour dates and everything? Badass." She took off the flannel and put on the t-shirt, knotting it in the front to keep it from hitting her knees. There seemed to be a whole stack of band tees. She looked through them, rattling off names. "Rob Zombie, The Eagles, Smashing Pumpkins..."
There were newer ones too. Cage the Elephant, The White Stripes, The Black Keys. Damn. He had pretty good taste in music, she couldn't refute that.
I'd have to introduce him to my soft rock. She thought idly. "What?" She muttered to herself. "Hell no." Nobody likes Paramore anymore anyway. "That's not the point." She said, still to herself.
As it seemed like nothing was going to stop her, she proceeded to look through everything else he owned. She started to question... Exactly how old he was. He looked late- twenties to her, but the more she investigated, the more she wasn't convinced of that. She found his wallet, which had a photo of a teenage girl from what seemed like the forties. On the back it was dated as '46, meaning she got the era right. Her name was there too: Emily Soileau. It would be... Strange to keep a teenage photo of your mother in your wallet, so the only other two options were wife or sister. Since she looked so much like him, and she also looked so young, she had to go with sister.
There was a neat box of records, too, with a player. They went way far back - like the twenties. She found a photo of a family in probably same era as Emily. The harder she stared at it, the more she was absolutely convinced that Tristan was staring at her from the photograph. The same intense eyes, same lips, same cheekbones.
"That is me, if you're wondering."
Chrissy shrieked and nearly dropped the photo, clutching her chest. "Jesus, you startled the piss outta me." She took a few breaths and carefully put the frame back into place.
She looked up at Tristan, who, strangely enough, was not looking at her near nakedness but her face.
"I see you had fun poking through my things." He gestured to the room.
She jutted out her chin. "I did. How old are you?"
He looked up at the ceiling like he had to think about it. Or, it occurred to her that maybe he actually did have to think about it. "I was born in 1752, so... Two-hundred and sixty-eight."
"Shut the fuck up!" The history buff in her was running sixteen million miles an hour. "You were born before the Revolutionary War!"
His brows creased. "I'm honestly surprised you know when that is."
"Are you kidding? Of course! You must've been old enough to fight, did you?"
He nodded. "I am nothing if not a warrior. I've fought in almost every war this country has ever seen."
"Iraq? Afghanistan?" She questioned.
He sat on the bed. "I was in Desert Storm, went back in 2002, got back in 2008, then left again in 2015 and got back here a little over a year ago."
She was now absolutely fascinated by him. "Vietnam? Korea?"
He nodded. "Both. I'll swear to you up and down that the devil lives there, and that he's made his own private hell." He had to pause. "This interests you?"
"You're my own private history textbook." She whispered.
He shook his head, laughed. "American history, I suppose."
"It's all interesting." She was staring at him with wide, curious eyes, fully prepared to dissect his brain. "Please tell me you have books of all the shit in your head."
He snorted at that. "No, I don't."
She looked disgusted. "So I actually have to talk to you?"
"Strange concept, I know."
She waved him off and started to leave. "You're not interesting anymore."
He followed after her. "What do you mean, 'I'm not interesting anymore'? Where are you going?"
"I want pants and I'm hungry. Also," she jumped down the last two steps, "I guess I've missed school today."
For something so little, she was fast. She snagged her jeans that had been left on the floor the night before and put them on, though he already missed her little lace panties.
"Not that I care particularly, small town curriculums are shit and I basically already know everything." She started rummaging through the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice and drank straight from the bottle. Eggs, bacon, and cheese were tossed on the counter. "However," she continued, pulling open all the cabinets to find whatever it was she was looking for. "It's probably in my best interest to finish out senior year."
Rather than telling her she wouldn't need it because she would soon be queen of the lykans, he settled on something else. "We have a pretty significant pull. We could fudge some paperwork and get you a diploma." He picked up a glass out of the cabinet while she skittered around the kitchen, and poured orange juice into it, putting it back into the fridge.
"I mean, I don't really have a problem with that-" she cut herself off and contemplated for a second. "Actually, fuck it. I couldn't care less. Sounds awesome." She grabbed the glass of orange juice and took a sip out of it while she started breaking open the package of bacon and heating a skillet. "Do I live here now?" She glanced back at him. "Not here, but-" she made a wide gesture "here." She paused, stared at the drink in her hand and then pointed at it. "You do this?"
"Yes, you live here with me, and yes. I got you a glass. You don't live in a barn."
She laughed sarcastically. "Very funny. Do one of my brothers have a place here?"
"Christine, you live with me. It's how this works." He was deadly serious about this.
"I ain't seen any guest room." Chrissy drawled, picking up a pair of tongs. She gestured between the two of them. "And the day I sleep in the same bed with you is the day Hell has snowmen."
"Christine." The tone of Tristan's voice made her stop and stare at him. "This is not something up for debate."
She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to say something else.
"I'm not fucking kidding, Chris." He snapped. "No matter what you think, I only get one mate my entire life. You are it. My people only get one queen. And the next time you roll your eyes at me, I'm giving your ass a hefty swat."
She turned her back to him, started laying bacon in the skillet. "Well... How do you know it's me? How do you know I'm the one?"
"That kiss. Last night. The way you smell. The way instinct claws at me constantly to bed you, mark you, and make you mine. I've only lied to you once, Chrissy. I swear on my life. It was about living on that street."
She didn't want to think about last night. "Do you want food too? Or..."
He sighed. "Whatever makes you happy."
Several minutes later, as Tristan was steeping over a cup of coffee and reading the news, a couple of slices of bacon and a cheese omelette was carefully placed in front of him.
She sat down with her own, picked at it for a moment. "You care about them. Your people."
He looked at her consideringly. "There's not much that I do care about. But yes. I do."
She was quiet for a couple moments more. "Do you want a queen for them or for you?"
He'd actually had thought a little on this already and didn't quite know how to say it to Christine without her running with terror. "Both." He responded. "Typically women, as leaders... Have a better touch, I guess you could say. A softer one. They're very clearly a maternal figure; there's strength in that. You trust a maternal figure. Men can be such tyrants."
She didn't skip a beat, and asked the question he was hoping to avoid. "And you?"
He cleared his throat. "I'm as flesh and blood as anyone else."
"Well, you won't get any of that out of me. Maternal. Softness." She scoffed.
"Christine."
She looked up. "Yes?"
He pointed to his plate. "You fed me."
Chrissy felt her ears burning. "Well, I-I had all the stuff out and I always feed my brothers so it's instinctual at this point."
"If that's not maternal I don't know what is." He added seriously.
She threw her fork at him and he dodged it, chuckling.
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If you can't tell I literally love writing this. Stay tuned peeps you'll probably have one tomorrow too.
P.s. im trying so hard to make chrissy and tristan funny am I achieving