A/N Teen suicide is real. Speak up.

TIC Extra #28

Timeline: B2

Characters: Paul, Cassie, a bronze pig

Rating: T

Word Count: 1416

Warnings: None

Paul didn't get a lot of time off from patrolling and work, at least not the kind of time that wasn't already used up in sleeping and eating. But every so often the stars aligned, the world tilted on its axis, or an acting-Alpha Beta decided to insert himself into Paul's business, and Paul would find himself with a day off.

Those days had officially become spoken for, and the one doing the speaking was current speaking. A lot.

"Paul? Isn't it amazing?"

Paul didn't personally think much was amazing, he was a bit of cynic that way, but there were a few things that he could agree were in fact amazing. How many words his imprint could say without taking a breath was amazing. How many times she could become distracted and zigzag from a straight, simple path in the span of a minute was amazing. How she could walk downslope on that high of heels without losing her balance was amazing.

But a bronze statue of a pig was not amazing. It was just…strange.

"I already have a picture of me sitting on the pig," Cassie continued blissfully, tugging on Paul's hand. "But since I'm an imprint now and half of a whole, it doesn't make much sense to have a picture of half of a person on a pig when I could have a whole person instead. What would you prefer, Paul? Head or tails?"

"I'm not sitting on a pig statue, Cass."

Pretty hazel eyes looked up at him, and Paul could see her mind working. Then she smiled, rendering 'pretty' as a completely inadequate description. "Okay, Paul. I'll sit and you can stand, and then we both can be happy. I suppose it would be a bit ridiculous."

"I'm thinking this little imprint is going to go whee whee whee all the way home," Paul said with a lazy grin, pinching her bottom and making Cassie squeak.

It wasn't quite a whee, but Paul was ready for them both to go home.

Paul's version of a home would never be a hotel room, no matter how nice that room was, but he preferred it to people pushing too close, filling Pike's Place shoulder to shoulder. He wasn't used to being bumped into, and he couldn't figure out how to keep the other shoppers from bumping into his imprint without coming across as a total ass. He could always eat them all…but that conflicted with Cassie's desire to have a nice, fun, happy, something or other, too many descriptors kind of day.

"You're not having fun, are you Paul?"

She sounded sad, and Paul felt the wolf inside him stir, wondering what he had done wrong this time. His smile may have been a little forced, but it had more to do with the small children screaming as they ran past and the internal lecture he was currently receiving than not having fun with his imprint.

Cass was the epitome of fun. He knew because Collin reminded him of it constantly.

"I'd have more fun back at your place, Cass," Paul told her with a wink, making her grin at him naughtily. Then he ruined it on purpose by launching into a description of how good the room service menu was, and reminding her that the Seahawks would be playing soon.

His imprint wrinkled her nose, then she grinned and told him that she was sitting on the pig again because that's what tourists did. When she was done, room service sounded good too.

The streets of downtown Seattle sloped downwards towards the piers, making the trek back to Cassie's hotel less relaxing than the trek from it, and Paul knew that Cassie's legs were hurting more than she was saying that day. So when she'd pigged herself out and worn herself down, Paul drew her into a side alley between buildings, wide and clean except for a few dumpsters at the far end. She followed him trustingly, her small hand tucked into the bend of his arm, manicured fingernails drumming lightly across his bicep.

He had figured out weeks ago that meant she was bored, but he had figured out a couple days ago that if Cassie had less people and things to look at, less distractions other than him, those fingers would slow.

Call it a whim, or maybe intuition, but Paul wanted to see if he could make those fingers stop.

"You know, Paul, my mother always told me that women who went willingly into dark alleys rarely came to good ends," Cassie teased, bumping her slender hip into his.

The only reason she was able to do it was because she was wearing the most ridiculously delicate stiletto heeled boots that Paul had ever seen, leaving her almost five inches taller and sheathed in lime green leather from toe to mid-thigh. Paul had already learned that his imprint used her wardrobe as means of communicating things to the people around her, and these said that she was feeling particularly energetic that day. Energy was good, but pain was bad, and if he'd thought he could have gotten away with it, Paul would have chewed those things off with his bare teeth. Unfortunately that would have left her in nothing but a piece of stretchy black cotton that he was pretty sure had been intended as a shirt instead of a dress, and a small change purse that other women had been eyeing hungrily all day long.

Paul had no idea why. It was shaped like a cow of all things, and mooed whenever she opened or closed it.

Halfway through the alley, Paul saw what he had been hoping to find: a small depression that fit a wolf and his imprint, and not a single other thing. He backed her in, making Cassie beam with pleasure at his actions. Paul dipped his head—at least the boots were good for something—and brushed a light kiss on his imprint's lips.

He kissed her again, nibbling lightly at her lower lip to encourage her to open her mouth. Cassie made a soft, pleased noise in her throat that made the wolf inside Paul stop lecturing him, perk its ears and take notice. It liked their mate and it liked her noises. It liked that for once Paul wasn't messing this up for them, and that was somewhat relieving.

"Paul? Why are you grimacing?"

"I was being lectured about making you sad and now I'm being lectured about not kissing you enough."

She laughed that soft breathy laugh that Paul already loved, twining her fingers through his own.

Shutting the wolf up was good, but kissing his imprint was better. Giving her a piggyback ride was best, because she kept telling him what she liked as they walked past, her lips brushing his earlobe and he got to keep his hands wrapped around her thighs.

"Hey Cass? You are wearing underwear, right?"

"I think you should have sat on the pig, Paul. You really would have liked it."

"Because you're mooning everyone right now, Cass."

"It was a really nice pig. I don't know all that many pig statues, but I think it's probably one of the best ones."

"I think I feel a thong. Is that a thong?"

"I named it Herman, Paul. Isn't that a good name?"

"For the thong? I thought it was Hermes…"

Paul didn't get much time to himself, and not that long ago he never would have spent that time learning about the difference between Hermes scarves, Hermes shoes, and Herman the bronze pig statue from a half-naked nymph on his back. But that night he fell asleep with the same nymph in his arms, a bag of gummy bears lodged into his waist band, and sugary stickiness in too many places. The Seahawks had lost and he had officially eaten everything on that room service menu three times now. His home was better, and there wasn't much about her hotel room that didn't make him feel awkward and out of place.

Still...

"Herman's a good name, Cass," he told her as she dreamed her chocolate chip cookie dreams. Paul drifted off to sleep with a slight smile on his lips, thinking that she would get him on the damn pig eventually.

After all, the stars had aligned this way.