A/N: Stupid, pointless, somewhat fluff-ish stuff ahead. Had to get this out of my head. :D Thank you to fanfic. addicted01 for beta-ing and starting the Hogwarts AU which paved way for a talk about animagus forms! So here is that idea in a more "canon" setting.
Entry to the AO3 Lara/Jacob -challenge. Prompt: "One or more characters can shapeshift into an animal form."
Jacob has done it again. And in her sleepy haze, Lara notes how she is once again missing her part of the blanket. Or rather, she has twisted and turned to find a better position, but Jacob has failed to follow. The man can sleep like the dead at times, fingers crossed over his stomach like waiting to be resurrected at any point during the night. Of course, they usually sleep in some sort of a cuddle, but if she moves too far out of his reach, Jacob's subconsciousness still often refers back to sleeping alone for so many centuries. While heartbreaking on its own, it leaves Lara without the warmth of him and the help of the blanket; and make no mistake, the old stone-built Manor is not a warm place. And thanks to his experiences with the Siberian winter, Jacob is very, very good at holding on to the blanket.
And now she is cold, waking up next to a man who is sleeping soundly. On most times, she would think of his sleeping form as cute, but now she is simply annoyed. It was a tough day in research yesterday, and she'll have to continue that work urgently in the morning, and now she cannot even sleep well.
She is too sleepy for it to be a fully conscious decision, but, by instinct, she transforms into her animal form. It's warmer with all the fur. Yet, she feels more drawn to make a point as the animal in her accentuates her feelings. So, she simply pulls herself gracefully into a sitting position near the pillows, stretches a little, and stares at Jacob with her over two feet long tail whisking lazily behind her. She had been happy to receive the black-panther form from one ancient artifact - well both of them had actually, but Jacob has seen less use in being able to transform into a huge cat. She loves it though, it helps her in battle, helps her to hide when needed, and just overall, who wouldn't want to be able to shapeshift out of whim? The only drawback is that it's not the biggest of animals to be able to transform to. Plus, their size difference had stayed, giving Jacob a much larger form when transforming. But still, she is nearly four times longer than an average cat and weighs ten times as much, and thus, creating a nice dip on the head of the mattress. She tilts her head at how the slope in the mattress makes Jacob's perfectly poised plank slightly less stable. She has time. She has all the time in the world right now just to watch him breathe and sleep. He may be very endearing and soft, but no mercy is given to those who disrupt the rest of the Queen of the Night.
So, she stares, yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness that loses to the blackness of her fur. She extends her foreleg and ponders over poking Jacob on the cheek with her paw - claws retracted of course. She flexes the toes, her foreleg still hovering inches away from Jacob's face, as she contemplates how squishy Jacob's cheek would feel under her touch, but eventually, she decides against disturbing his sleep too much, she can wait patiently, yes, she can.
And at some point, Jacob starts to do minimal corrections to his position, signaling that his deep sleep phase is becoming lighter. Lara bares her teeth out of reflex. Jacob might be a deep sleeper, but he is still a man who has lived through wars, who has always worried over his people being safe, and most importantly as he once said, is a single father with one ear kept constantly on alert over the years to listen that Sofia was okay.
Once Jacob's mind has concluded that something is out of the ordinary, he quickly begins to pull himself to the present and squints his eyes at the weight next to him. Lara doesn't break her stare. Her eyes must be a very fast clue because she does have a history of transforming whenever her heart calls for it, leaving Jacob quite good at learning to read her mood.
And even now, her enchanted senses can easily pick up the barely audible sigh that dares to become a low chuckle even if Jacob is almost as asleep as she had been when transforming.
"The blanket?" he guesses correctly and earns a low, quiet, agreeing growl from her. Jacob moves to push himself to a more upwards position, but instead of giving her the blanket, just draws her down next to him. Damn his strength and size. Of course, it's more luring than actual pulling, but it gets the job done as Lara moves to curl next to him, snout less than a foot from his face and eyes still gleaming.
Jacob, on the other hand, seems to consider his task completed and is already letting his eyes close again, which earns him a warm puff of air to his face.
"Come on. Let's go back to sleep," he murmurs, unfazed by the annoyance shown by a large predator in a biting distance. Moreover, he simply moves to scratch the looser skin between the back of her ear and neck. It feels all too good, and she curses at him for having learned the right pressure-points so quickly. She gives another warning growl, but it comes out more as a purr than anything, giving Jacob the audacity to smile while already almost asleep again. She resorts to her last weapon and gives Jacob's face a long lick with her tongue, finding her own amusement over the crunched-up expression that she elicits from him and in the salty taste the action leaves on her tongue. Okay, maybe it was more of a peace offering, and Jacob seems to agree as he pulls her closer, continuing the petting with his eyes closed.
She stares at him until her eyelids began to droop by the sinfully good massage, and she turns her head to find a good position not to crush her whiskers before falling asleep.