Theme: Fairy Tales; Prompt: "A comedic take on Little Red Riding Hood, where Orihime is Little Red and Ichigo is the Big Bad Wolf. Sexual innuendos are highly encouraged. 3" by Nagi.


Inoue Orihime loved fairy tales. She reveled in the idea of playful magic and tricky sorcery, as well as how the hero (or heroine) would defeat the evil character in the story. But above all, Orihime found herself immersed in the romance aspect of the story. For some reason, she thought the idea of being awakened by the kiss of a prince to be a perfect way to open your eyes and wake to see the world. Who wouldn't like waking up to see a hot guy inches away from your lips? It was an embarrassing thought, but it intrigued her nonetheless.

Such romance she truly loved had her nose buried deep in a fantasy book she found at the library no more than two days ago. She had discovered the original tales of the Brothers Grimm, and as she continued to read, she found it was darker than she'd ever imagined. Still, she found it interesting regardless.

With this, she continued to read on as she trekked through the forest, a girl on a mission. She was sent by distant relatives to bring her grandmother baked goods. A week ago, she could easily say she didn't know she had a grandmother, and even now, she still wasn't so sure she could say she really believed she had a grandmother. However, if her relatives were bent on her having one, she couldn't really complain.

Lifting her eyes from the book for a moment, Orihime recalled how her relatives described her grandmother. Brown hair slicked back with too much gel and cold, piercing eyes. Her grandmother talked to others like she was better than the rest and rambled on with mentions of wanting to be a goddess. She always thought grandmothers were supposed to be happy, old ladies, but they made hers seem like she was the epitome of evil. No wonder Orihime hadn't heard of her before; her relatives made her seem crazy!

A crunch of a branch had her jumping, dropping her book onto the leafy ground. Her big honey-colored eyes darted around, looking at her surroundings to find what the source of the noise could be. Upon finding none, she shrugged it off and blamed it on a squirrel or some other woodland creature. Picking up her book again and resuming her reading, she continued on the path, very unaware of dark brown eyes staring at her from behind a large oak tree.

Hm... This one actually looks good.

A few yards away stood an odd creature bright in color. The animal stood high and proud with a small smirk on its face, and from a distance, looked to be a man. However, this was no ordinary 'man' watching a girl in the forest. He was a half-wolf, half-man hybrid. Bright orange fur, like the color of his hair, covered his lower half while his top was completely exposed. And of course, a creature like this wouldn't be complete without fluffy ears and a long, furry tail.

Even though this animal was adamant on eating people, as the witch who had turned him into this originally told him he needed to do, he hadn't eaten a full meal in weeks. He could feel his animalistic instincts becoming aroused and he wanted to jump the next human he saw just to satisfy his hunger.

A dark blush rose to his cheeks as he first smacked his head against the oak tree at his way of thinking. Not jump like that, you freaking idiot, he fumed inwardly to himself. She's going to be a meal, he kept telling himself. N-Not a sexual one either! Dammit!

Swallowing his pride and moving on, the man-wolf hybrid stalked his way behind other trees before he lost the girl entirely. He hadn't seen a full human around for quite some time, and he'd be damned if he'd let her go now.

Once he managed to catch up to her and hide behind a closer tree, he could clearly see the girl sitting down for a break, reading a picture book she had in her hands. As he glanced around the tree, he could feel his palms growing sweaty. What would he say to her, if he said anything at all? Should he ask what she is doing and why she is in this deep of the forest?

The creature growled to himself as he inwardly beat himself up for acting like a hormonal teen. He wanted a meal, not to ask this human on a date. Perhaps if it was food he wanted, he should just try to be upfront and scare the girl. His stomach grumbling gave him a cue that he should eat her, and quick.

Snapping around the other side of the tree, he threw up his hands and snarled at the petite woman, growling with all the intentions of frightening her until she was frozen with fear.

Unfortunately, her reaction was much less than expected. She wasn't scared at all! Aside from jumping in her place at being startled, she merely stared at him with big eyes. It wasn't a moment later that a smile grew on her face and excitement shimmered in her eyes.

"Hi there!" She chirped, snapping her book closed. He could feel his dignity as a predator shriveling away the more he took in that she wasn't scared.

Trying to growl at her again, he got on all fours instead so he could see her eye-to-eye, and his canines, which were quite long, looked sharp and dangerous. Again, she didn't look unfazed in the slightest. Instead, what she did next was quite surprising.

"Uwah, you have such cute, fuzzy ears!" The girl smiled as she kept her book in her lap and reached her hands out to stroke at the upright ears. Even he knew he'd never moved as fast as he did now, retracting back from her grabby little hands. She managed to get a hold of them for just a few short moments, and that time alone had him blushing. He'd never had someone touch his ears like that, and he really, really hated to admit it, but it felt kinda sort of interesting, in a good way.

"D-Don't touch my ears!" He yelped back, his voice unnaturally high from his current freak-out. He died a little on the inside from that very unmanly moment of sounding like a girl.

"Wow, you have such a high voice too!"

Right about now, he could care less about food. He just wanted to crawl into a deep, dark hole and salvage what masculinity he had left.

"I don't have a high voice," he hissed back, purposely lowering his voice back to normal. "Goddamn it, aren't you scared?"

"Why should I be?" Orihime asked, tilting her head curiously to the side. "You don't look too scary to me."

Just kill me now.

"You should be scared because I'm going to eat you!" Hopefully she'd get the message as he fixed his stance to appear more menacing. Again, she looked at him curiously, but now a tinge of red dusted her cheeks.

"What kind of eat?" She asked.

"What do you mean what kind of eat? I'm going to eat you, end of story," he growled again, taking a step closer to her form. She took a step back in unison, her eyes now showing some form of fear.

"Well, my aunt, Rangiku-san, says there are a couple types of eating... Um..." Her cheeks grew visibly redder now and he cocked a brow in return. "There's eating food and digesting it, but she also said there's..." Orihime trailed off as her eyes dropped from staring at his brown eyes to the rest of his form. His tan skin made her eyes go wide and the fact that his lower half was nothing but fur made her embarrassed for some reason. Bringing her eyes back up to meet his, she nervously licked at her sudden dry lips. Goodness, how could she get so warm over a man like this so quickly? It was scandalous!

He eventually took the hint and saw her blatant checking out and he took a few steps back again, mortified.

"W-Why the hell would I want to eat you like that?" He hissed again, gripping his hands into tight fists. "I mean the digesting kind, and-" He stopped for a moment and growled loud, obviously aggravated. "You are the weirdest girl I've ever met!"

A-And you're the cutest wolf-boy I've ever met, Orihime let her mind wander to such terrible things. Her cheeks were burning hot and she couldn't seem to shake it off.

"W-What's your name?" She asked softly. After he managed to recollect himself, he looked at her warily.

"... Kurosaki Ichigo," was all he grumbled. A cute name to match a cute boy, she commented on the inside, the smile from before finding its way back to her lips.

"It's a very nice name, Kurosaki-kun," Orihime mumbled to him, twisting her fingers into nervous knots. Ichigo raised a hand to rub at the back of his neck.

"Yeah, well... It's time for you to wake up," he told her back, which quickly caused her to drop her expression.

"Eh?"

And her eyes fluttered open, groggy at first. It took her a few moments to see everything clearly again, and when she came to, she discovered she had fallen asleep while reading her book. Orihime sat on her couch with the Grimm Brother's fairy tale book in her lap. Coincidentally enough, the page she left off was in the middle of Little Red Riding Hood.

Tilting her head to the side while stifling a yawn, Orihime began to wonder why she had such a dream. More importantly, she wondered how exactly she would try to explain this to Ichigo at school tomorrow. Knowing very well she had a dream about her boyfriend clad in nothing but partial fur and adorable ears would make her act very funny around him for a while and he would no doubt ask her about it.

Throwing her hands up to her now burning cheeks, she let out a semi-distressed sigh.

"Mou, what an embarrassing dream!"

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