Yoko woke up to thanks to a strange rumbling sensation tickling her ear.
That, and she was warm. Far warmer than she should've been in the crisp autumn morning air.
As she blinked the grogginess out of her eyes, she became aware of a few other things. A heavy, misshapen arm was draped over her abdomen, and she was using another one as a pillow. Judging from the dark, gnarled skin and claws at the end of the arm she was resting against, it could only be one person.
And he was purring.
At least, that's what she guessed the soft rumbling emanating from somewhere between his chin and solar plexis was.
She was too sleep-drunk to be flustered or shocked just yet. Yoko laid there silently, closing her eyes and enjoying the unfamiliar -- but not unpleasant -- sensation of someone leaning against her bodily. Being this close to him, his smell was pretty strong. Mostly sweat and dry mud, but there was also an underlying musky scent that was almost...
The thought that crept across the back of her brain jolted her awake, and she hastily wormed out of the beastmen's sleepy grasp. Sleep had made her forget about her injured leg, though, which was now sore and stiff. Still, she managed to shuffle away from Viral without waking him, and carefully pushed herself out of the tent. With some effort, she managed to right herself.
As she patted herself down, her hand landed on the flask still on her hip. Yoko shook it; empty. Good, fetching more water would take her mind off her sleeping arrangements.
She grimaced and tried out her leg. It worked, but putting much weight on it made the deep slashes in her hip burn. Luckily, there was a lake nearby, and plenty of trees between here and there to lean against.
The sloped lake shore was going to be more trouble than she realized. Dammit. Yoko was far too used to having a full range of mobility. Still, she persevered and hobbled her way to the water's edge, carefully leaning down against a boulder to scoop her flask into the lake.
Her mind wandered as she watched bubbles disturb the water's surface. Try as she might, she couldn't keep it from meandering back to that earlier warmth.
What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Even after supposedly becoming an ally, he had always remained standoffish and distant from his human colleagues. He regarded everyone with a cold feline glare and he was constantly showing off those horrible teeth. That attitude certainly hadn't changed when she ran into him yesterday -- though, granted, she could understand why he might be a bit peeved at someone who shot him.
She could not understand why he would suddenly decide to spoon her in the night.
It had to be unconscious. It had to be. Maybe he was thinking or dreaming about someone else. Did beastmen even have those kind of feelings? There wouldn't be much point, would there?
An explosion of water jerked her back to the outside world. There was a lunging open maw amidst that spray of water, and for a split second she stared down a fang-brimmed gullet.
It was a crocoroo. Though normally peaceful omnivores, the amphibious white beasts were unpredictable and could turn to fleshier prey if an opportunity presented itself. It made its intentions clear by snapping down on her flask, tearing it out of her grasp in a froth of mud and water.
She screamed and stumbled back, then cried again when she inadvertently shifted her entire weight to her bad leg. The crocoroo's long ears pricked at the sound of her pain and dismay. Horrified, she realized she had just given herself away.
The white beast hauled itself out of the water, her mauled flask still dangling from its maw. Its empty black eyes were pinned on her. It shifted back onto its rear legs, thick haunches coiling for an immanent leaping attack.
Instinctively, Yoko reached for a gun that wasn't there. She'd left it back by the tent. Panicking, she tried to run, a flood of adrenaline drowning out the pain in her leg. It refused to be ignored entirely, though, and it was still stiff and difficult to control. She could only manage a slow limping gait.
A wet, heavy weight hit her hard and threw her to the rocky ground. She saw blackness and stars. The reek of dank fur and old fish told her that she had been caught.
This was not how she had imagined her death. She had survived an apocalyptic battle in the deepest regions of space against an astronomical enemy determined to wipe out all life in the universe, only to be eaten by a smelly beast with rabbit ears.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of flesh violently striking flesh, and the weight was dragged off of her.
She was still, gasping for air and listening to hear heart race in her ears. Once it quieted, she became aware of a cacophony of snarls, thrashing and animal shrieks. Yoko lifted her head warily.
The crocoroo's pale coat was stained with running blood. Long, oozing cuts had been carved across its back, sides and over its muzzle. It had something pinned.
Suddenly, there was a flash of blond hair and a high-pitched yelp from the crocoroo. It stumbled backwards, shaking its head frantically and spraying blood on the shore. One of its ears was gone, replaced by a jagged patch of blood and tissue.
Yoko soon realized exactly where the missing appendage had gone.
The mauled ear was dangling from Viral's bloodied maw, dripping gore down his stony face. She had never seen his eyes so fierce.
For an incoherent moment, her terror magnified at the prospect of being in the presence of two bloodthirsty beasts.
The crocoroo didn't spend long mourning the loss of its ear. Viral barely had a chance to stand before it overtook him again, sinking its teeth into his arm and twisting with such force that it was visibly wretched from its socket. He howled. Rivulets of blood ran down his thick forearm from beneath the animal's clamped jaws.
Her fear of Viral took a sharp turn into fear for him. She tried to stand, but she was numb. All she could do was watch.
Viral clasped his hand over his upper arm. His lips wretched back in a silent snarl of pain, and he snapped his shoulder back into place with a sickening pop. He then lifted the wounded arm and twisted bodily, throwing the weight of the still-attached crocoroo against a tree and pressing his arm deeper into its muzzle to trap it there. It flailed uselessly, kicking out and swinging its tail at him, but he seemed immune to the blows.
Then he finished it.
Yoko's eyes widened as he dove for the beast's throat. It was not one clean bite. She could see his jaws grinding. The creature gurgled as his serrated fangs sawed through its tough flesh and severed vital arteries. He was up to his cheekbones in the the gouge, blood and sweat making his hair stick to his face.
He didn't stop until the mortally wounded beast stopped thrashing and hung limply in his grasp.
His neck and head jerked away violently, taking a chunk of meat along with it. He then freed his shredded arm from the dead crocoroo's mouth and let the beast crumple at his feet.
His entire face, throat and collarbone was splattered with blood, slicking back his bangs and the crop of fuzz on his chest. It dripped from his claws as he stood there, motionless but for a faint tremble.
The swath of flesh he'd torn from the predator's throat was still impaled on his teeth. Viral rolled it back into his mouth and swallowed it without hesitation. The motion seemed more automatic than deliberate. Mouth now unoccupied, he licked his maw and panted raggedly.
After a moment of recuperation, the bloodied victor turned toward Yoko.
"Are you okay?"
She jumped away from him slightly and unintentionally. The residual panic still making her shake must have been evident on her face.
An oddly wounded expression creased his brow. His deadly red-stained mouth sank into a soft frown. His eyes were no longer fearsome, but somewhere between rejected and still hopeful.
Finally able to gather her wits, Yoko sighed. "I'm... I'll be okay, I just have a few bumps and bruises. Y-y-you're the one that got your arm nearly torn off..."
He didn't seem to believe her and crouched down beside her, scanning her carefully. She could taste the scent of blood rolling off of him. It dribbled onto the rocks below him with a quiet stream of plip plip plip.
It gave her a chance to look at his wounds in turn. Well, what she could make out of them, at least. Most of the cuts and bruises seemed faint and shallow already, practically closing up and fading before her eyes. The deeper tears on his mauled arm were far worse, and she noticed he was already looking paler than usual. The weary nausea that came in the wake of an adrenaline rush was settling into them both.
"Viral... s-sit down, you've lost a lot of blood," she urged, touching his shoulder to get his attention. He looked at her tiredly, and then dropped down into an inelegant lounge close beside her.
Despite the fact he was covered in filth and blood, Yoko didn't have the urge to pull away from him or demand he go clean up. Instead, she found herself very glad to have him there. The wind dragged some of her hair into his shoulder and it stuck there. Hell, they were both bedraggled and filthy by now. It had been a violent day and a half.
Yoko was faintly aware of him nosing the crown of her head with light, feathery touches. It felt like some sort of animal expression of reassurance. Without realizing it, she leaned into his side, unconsciously trying to recreate the strange comfort from before.
Viral recuperated after a long stretch of shared silence, at least enough to help Yoko to her feet. He stepped away for a moment, back to the churned mud left after his battle with the crocoroo. The beastman grabbed the carcass by the tail and dragged it back over to her.
"No reason to let perfectly good meat go to waste," he grunted, answering the quizzical look she'd given him. "Here."
Viral looped his wounded arm over her shoulder, letting her prop herself up against his body so she could favor her bad leg. He took both woman and corpse back to the camp site. Once there, she stumbled away from him and looked herself over.
"Ugh.. I'm disgusting," she muttered miserably, frowning at the blood and dirt matting her hair and staining her skin and clothes.
"You look fine to me." He shook out his own messy hair, rolling his neck and stretching his sore shoulders.
"Are you blind?! You... you really made a mess," Yoko mumbled, wetting her fingers and trying to rub some of the blood off of her arm. She couldn't know if it belonged to the crocoroo or Viral.
"I can clean you off."
He said it with a completely straight face. The look she gave him was even more horrified than the one on the shore.
"I think... I think I can wait until I get back to the schoolhouse," Yoko mumbled, still trying to brush away the dirt and gore in vain. Her face was almost as red as the blood decorating them both. "It's not much more than a day away from here."
He stepped closer, tilting his head. "Can you walk that far with that leg?"
Yoko looked up. He was well within her personal bubble and apparently oblivious to it.
He reeked of everything. His hair was a tangled, sticky disaster. There was a day's worth of light blond stubble underneath all the blood spattering his lower face. Despite all this, she still felt a strange nervousness that was not at all related to his capacity for brutal, feral violence.
Viral picked up on the change in her mood and frowned guiltily. He backed away, and Yoko swore the tips of his slightly pointed ears drooped. When did he become so attentive, anyway?
"I'll be okay," she said carefully, looking away from his face, "Besides, I'll be able to treat it better once we're back in civilization."
"We should get going, then, but," Viral looked back at the torn lump of dead crocoroo, "Not before we eat."
He had obviously done this before.
Viral had hung the crocoroo carcass upside-down on a sturdy tree branch and sliced a wide slit in its gut to bleed it dry. It was a macabre display; Yoko had primarily hunted small game before, and brought the big kills back to Ritona for the butcher to deal with behind closed doors.
She watched him cut arcs into the beast's hide and peel swaths of the tough, dirty skin off with ease. She did not watch him saw off the head.
Instead, she busied herself with expanding the small fire pit she had built for herself earlier since it was hardly large enough to roast a full grown crocoroo. It kept her mind off of her discomfort, both from the lingering jitters of being attacked and the grime covering her. There was something else, too, a nagging in the back of her mind that tickled her spine. She didn't understand it, but it made her keep glancing over her shoulder at her unlikely companion.
This time, she caught Viral shaking out his hair and rolling his bare shoulders. The strange crest of -- fur? -- going down his back shifted along with his scarred skin as it was pulled over his musculature. The lean, but well-defined arches of a body honed by years of training and rough living were obvious even under all the muck. She caught herself and wondered why she was paying such close attention.
Admittedly, he looked far more human than most of the beastmen she had seen in all her time above ground, but there was still something distinctly raw and primitive about him. It clashed with his high sense of honor and smooth, well spoken speech. In both fighting against and alongside him, he had shown his fighting style to be far more refined, pragmatic and disciplined than the reckless, gung-ho humans. The beast was more civilized than the men.
That idiot tenacity was something she had both admired and hated in Kamina. Him, Kittan, Simon -- all the men she had known had been full of the fighting spirit of an entire army. They had been fiery, bursting volcanoes. The killer in her presence now was far... icier.
Except he leaned against her. He purred. He looked like a kicked puppy when she rejected his awkward attempts at helping her. That really dashed the stony facade.
The sound of something wet and meaty hitting the ground interrupted her thoughts. He'd finished gutting the crocoroo and a pile of still-warm entrails had fallen on his feet. Viral grunted distastefully. They reeked.
He cut them loose and kicked them into the far brush without hesitation.
Yoko completed the spit and he sheared away a slab of haunch muscle. On a creature with such powerful legs, it was by far the thickest and juiciest cut. Viral looked back at her, seemed to consider something, then walked over to offer her the meat.
"Here." Not allowing her room for argument, he picked up the spit stick and speared the sirloin on it, "I'll wrap up the rest so you can freeze it when you get back."
"T... thanks," Yoko stared at the dripping slab, then back at Viral, "Aren't you going to eat too?"
"Later," he looked down at himself and lifted his lip disdainfully, "I'm going to go clean off."
"Um, okay," Yoko blinked, caught off guard by a mental image of Viral licking himself off like a cat. She shook her head forcefully.
When she recovered, he was already gone.
"What the hell is wrong with me?!"
Once out of Yoko's meager human hearing range, Viral quickly shed the cool front he'd managed to keep while carving the dead beast. Seething, he tore a bush out of his path, sending leaves flying. With a sharp twist of his knuckles, his claws unsheathed to their full extension and he used them on any branch or brier that got in his way.
This vacation was not helping in the slightest. Not even the thrill of slaughtering the crocoroo seemed to satisfy the restless urges wracking him. He sank his claws into a tree and dragged through the wood, leaving curled bark in his wake. He threw off his clothes in a rage and leaped into the water.
The shock of hitting the frigid water startled him out of his frustration.
His protective system quickly warmed his body back up to an acceptable temperature. He relaxed.
Viral tried to busy himself with scrubbing off the old blood caked onto his skin and hair. He tore off the stained bandages around his stomach and examined his recent wounds; there was little trace of them.
The fearful look she regarded him with after he dispatched the crocoroo was far more upsetting than he had let on, mostly because he was becoming convinced it was not completely unfounded.
He did want to go after her. He wanted to grab her and pull her close, far, far more than he had anyone else. Being alone with her in the wilderness exasperated it. He wanted to smell her and taste her. She stirred a kind of hunger in him, though this one didn't come from his gut.
Viral sank into the water, long hair drifting around his head. Even in all his years of hunting humans, he'd never had the feral desire to attack them like he might a fish or a wounded raccoonbird. Killing them was a duty, not sport. It made no sense that this urge would manifest years later towards someone he considered an ally, maybe even a friend. But then, he'd already hurt her.
On the other hand, if this were a thirst for killing, it seemed odd that one of the few times it was almost quenched was when she was completely in his grasp. When she was leaning against him, completely vulnerable, warm, soft...
He was pretty sure most predators didn't get this strange tingling affection when they were close to their prey.
When he'd heard her scream that morning, his first impulse was not to act on an opportunity to strike, but to protect her. Seeing the crocoroo trapping her on the shore didn't inspire jealousy at another hunter stealing his kill, only unbridled rage. He attacked it completely without precision, planning or forethought.
And when he offered to clean her, he had meant it completely innocently. He would've been happy to go wet the blanket for her and help her scrub off the stubborn filth. The look she had given him was so aghast, though, he could only imagine she had misinterpreted his intentions. Did she think he wanted to groom her with his tongue?
His mind lingered on that thought. He inhaled the water deeply.
Maybe he did.
Viral shook his head furiously. He huffed in frustration, sending air blasting out his gills and bubbling to the surface. Goddammit, this was confusing. Leeron better have some answers when he returned.
Speaking of returning...
He was frantic get away from her earlier before he burst, but he already found himself longing to go back. Just in case she needed something. He had a responsibility to her. After all, he was the one that lamed her.
He was suspicious, though, that even if she was in perfect condition, he'd still be hovering around her.
He didn't want to miss any chances to touch her.
