Title: Live Hard
Summary: He may not even be considered much of a person anymore but the moon does things that bring out what he used to be, there's a reason the doctor has him on a sedative and there's one unlucky nurse's name on the bottom of the incident report following the bite.
Rating: M
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content
Spoilers: There are some but they are few and far between for the most part, this story works around the main storyline while incorporating it at key points.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf
A/N: So this chapter may look shorter but it's still 10,000 plus words I've just compacted the text a little bit because I like the look of it better, if you like it more spaced out tell me and I'll change it back. This chapter takes place during episode ten and before eleven so for those of you who don't remember Derek is captured by Kate so he won't make a full-out appearance in this chapter. Sorry for the wait, I live on the East Coast and Hurricane Irene stopped by to say hello and knocked some power-lines down.
Day 53:
She woke up furious, stayed up until it mellowed to calm rage, went back to bed seething and when she woke up again she was only mildly irritated. Until she looked in her garage and found his black Camaro parked in the free space between the tool wall and carpentry desk and then in a wild swing of emotions she ping-ponged between childish malicious glee and absolute volatility.
Lucette let her fingers drift lazily over the tools hanging on their hooks and in their plastic encasements, she paused and tap-danced her nails across a metal file and then stroked the handle of it as she removed it and measured the weight.
The sound of it ruining the paint job was almost erotic. She wondered where the bullet holes had come from but didn't dwell on them long enough for it to be more than a cursory thought.
Derek Hale was going to kill her, the idea made her smile as she went to split wood with her music player set to a country song about destroying someone's car.
She twirled the splitter on her palms and wondered when he was going to show up, soon she hoped hefting the tool over her shoulder and bringing it down with an ease that she was glad to have developed, the log burst apart like ripe fruit and she beamed with pride as she tossed the halves onto a pile that was reaching a proportion close to absurd.
A deer skirted around the edges of the visible woods and jerked its head up every time the crack of the splitter into a log rang out. It was familiar; she remembered the heartbeat of the doe from when she'd been pushing pins out in her living room. Something small crashed through the underbrush, she tilted her head and trekked its path in her mind forgetting about the wood in favor of enjoying the crispness of the day, the smell of the leaves and wet dirt and earthworm musk and the tang of little white mushrooms spurting up from the damp ground.
She heard the plush squish of paws over wet leaves and turned and let the large animal nuzzle her palm with its snout. With a twist of her torso and casting the splitter back with one arm she stuck it into the chopping stump.
"Hello there," Lucette gazed down and rubbed at the pooch's head. Looking up at the woods she paused, "I wonder where that other mutt is," muttering to no one. "What do you think, Brigs?" She looked back down and squatted to be at the dog's level.
"Should I punch him in the balls?" When she received no answered she tried to look cross, "Hmmm?"Lucette let herself fall back onto the ground and twigs and leaves. "He did leave me unconscious on the back porch, and it did rain on me, and divine retribution is hard to come by these days, ya know?" Brigadier licked her face and drool fell out of his jowls and onto her collar.
"Oh, you are back to being my sweet boy, huh? I love you dopey boy, you hear me, I love you. Oddles. Wanna kick it?" She raised an eyebrow and leveled her stare with seriousness. She sprung and started to run across the yard.
"Dude, you gotta run faster than that if you wanna catch me," she yelled when her dog happily gave chase, she let him catch her and raised her arms in mock surrender. "How about…we go on an adventure?" She asked tapping her chin. "I wanna go to the sport's place but I guess we can go to the pet store."
She peered into the woods again as if expecting Derek Hale to interrupt her fun.
"What do you think, should I get dressed you think? Or should I go all sweaty bastard? You're getting smelly, Brigs. So I'll give you a bath and then I'll get ready and we can both look sue-purr cute. Oh, I'm sorry. You're not cute; you're handsome, very handsome, and so charming too."
Lucette made the decision to go back inside with one last lingering glance on the trees.
Making the choice that she was no longer going to be caught in any state of undress she picked out her clothes before she took a shower and locked the connecting bedroom door into the bathroom.
Her stomach rumbled nosily as she fussed over her face and hair in the mirror and as she went about performing basic bodily functions before stripping and turning the shower spray to scalding. The heat and steam made her woozy and her hunger only more profound.
She swayed and put a hand across the tiles savoring the lightheaded haze, she looked from behind a wet curtain of hair at the awful and unsightly hole in the tiles where the soap-dish had been and frowned, deciding that she'd have to fix it or pay damages to the home owners.
Making a mental note to visit the home improvement store she turned off the shower and stepped out to get dressed. Her stomach roiled and her thoughts turned to food, and then to rabbits and deer. She wondered if she could catch a rabbit but shook off the idea when she realized it wasn't a thought that came from her but rather from the thing lurking around on the edges of her thoughts.
She settled for cereal and chased off the idea of breaking small animals and consuming them raw as she chewed and swallowed. Catching her lip between her teeth and pulling a strip loose she ran her tongue over the burning slash and relished the metal and salt flavor. It soothed something in her gut that had since waking up been tumbling around, leaden and cold.
Her nails had gotten long she noticed, she let her spoon clink against the glazed ceramic of the bowl and brought her fingers to her mouth to bite them down. Pausing to consider them she cast the idea aside like something old and used, she could keep them long since she wasn't working anymore.
Grabbing a file and her cosmetic bag she worked until they were of equal length and a stunning coral that she matched to her outfit. She deemed it necessary to do her toes too when she settled for heels instead of sneakers realizing that sometimes it was nice to play dress up for herself.
She primped and accessorized and arranged her hair and felt victorious and suitably girly for the first time in a long time. Her dog padded along down the steps with her to the back of the pick-up and jumped in. Lucette slammed the tailgate up and drove faster than normal and wishing that she was in something a little more speedy and wieldy.
Slowly to a stop at a red light she wondered if Derek Hale had left the keys to his Camaro, there were a few back roads she centered her mind's eye on that cops wouldn't be stationed on and a bullet holed keyed-up sports car wouldn't be noticed on when it got dark.
The idea was appealing in the best bad way that she almost turned around instead of carrying on with her errands. She pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall boasting an assortment of shops and eateries. She smiled at the way her heels clicked across the hard floor of the athletic shop as she browsed every aisle and meandered through the wares.
Spinning an orange metal tennis racket over the inside of her fingers she ran her nails over the lines strung across the frame and gave a glance around the end of the aisle before cracking open a tube of yellow balls and testing it's bounce. The options were endless now that she could actually run and jump and skid along on a court without pain. She could play for longer than an hour now if she wanted to.
Lucette tapped the ball up and down against the racket and looked over the other rackets, she liked orange as a color but the brand wasn't a pro one and she scowled at the plain colors of the more pricey more professional rackets. The only other orange one was obscenely priced and a more garish shade that she wasn't particularly fond of.
She scowled and tapped the ball up hard, it flew off and bounced down the aisle banging into things and rattling them, nothing fell and she breathed a sigh of relief. A sneakered foot stamped down on it, stopping its roll of escape out of the aisle.
If she'd been younger and had less on her mind she would have started drooling, it was the freckles, freckles got her every time. She suppressed the urge to whistle.
"Runaway?" His smile had wattage to it, and she wondered if he had dentists for parents. He was that stage of boy just on the cusp of manhood, with less than three percent fat and velvet skin pulled over every muscled bit. But still, he was undeniably highschool and too much boy where she preferred man.
"Can't keep a hand on my balls. Sorry. Throw," Lucette almost rolled her eyes at herself but didn't so much as show that what she said was humorous on her face, she kept her eyes chilly and her small grin stoic.
He lobbed the ball high and she teetered on her heels to catch it firmly in her hand, she let it roll back into its canister and clicked the lid back in place tightly.
"Nice catch."
"Thanks."
"Beginner?" He pointed at the racket and she looked at, spinning it idly out of habit.
"Not really. You?"
"Not my sport," he really had a killer smile. She eyed the maroon helmet under his arm and pointed.
"Hmmm, football?"
He shuffled and looked at the heavy melding of plastic and metal under his perfectly showcased in tight white cotton arm and smiled up at her. "Lacrosse."
"Violent," she commented hanging the orange racket back up and eyeing a red one.
"Violent enough."
"I can imagine," she got the feeling girls paid him too much attention because of the frown she caught from the corner of her eyes marring his handsome face as she perused the rackets instead of him.
"Tennis can be dangerous too."
"Yeah?" She questioned with a sage look that told him he was trying too hard. He seemed suddenly bashful and it made her heart swoon a little because he was young and cute and liked to hit on girls and not quite sure how to apply his technique to older woman. "I guess, sure," she took the red racket off the wall and stepped back to serve an imaginary ball, her shirt crawling up her abdomen and flashing a tease of skin that she knew he'd look at not knowing she did it on purpose for her own benefit.
"Yo, come on! I gotta pick up Colin!"
He turned his head to the voice that was no doubt calling to him, "Alright! I'm coming." Rubbing the back of his head and lowering his eyes he gave her a dazzling half quirked boy smile.
"Gotta go," he shrugged as if to say 'what can I do, right?'
"Yeah," she let her eyes drift across her racket slowly and made him wait for the rest of what she was going to say, just in case it was something he needed or wanted to hear, like her digits or her name, "Gotta go." She grinned when he came to the conclusion that he'd get neither out of her.
He stood awkward and less infused with bravado than he'd swaggered up with, oddly silent as if searching for something a cool guy would say to an older chick.
"Take it easy, kid." She told the red racket as she mimed lobbing a ball from a backhand in the middle of the aisle.
"You too," he answered automatically as he strode away denied of any more attention, he'd get more when he got to school, she was too old to find teenage antics amusing or endearing anymore.
She had money so she splurged and went with obscene as her price range; the red lacquer of the racket was growing on her.
The dumbbells were arranged by color and she picked a heavier set than she was used to and grabbed a boxed pull-up bar and arranged her goods under her arms and in her hands and clicked her way to the counter with a long stride that caught a few looks that made her smile girlishly and coyly.
Going into the pizzeria further down she bought and then consumed the greasy cheese covered slices with her dog on the pulled down tailgate in the parking lot and watched cars pass by in flashes of white and red lights against the asphalt. It was nice, it felt normal, and she liked the ease of eating pizza with her dog as night grew darker and the air got colder.
Day 54:
There was sweat creeping along the curve of her ass inside her jeans and spackle in her hair and her nails were going to need another polish job after she climbed out of the tub. Running a wrist over her forehead she sat back on her haunches and scrutinized her work.
It was harder than she thought it would be to retile the small area, and took a lot longer than she had intended. In the back of her mind she wondered where the hell Derek Hale was and wherever he was if he was still pissed off at whatever it was he'd been pissed off enough to hit her over.
The idea of him made her slap spackle onto the tiles harder than necessary and want to key his car again, or drive it into a tree or up one or around one or in any other car to tree collision scenario.
Thinking of trees made her shiver with nervous excitement. She'd been eyeing her property line every time she'd gone outside to the deck to walk off irritation or the antsy tension that came if she stayed inside for too long. She wanted to climb a tree she decided slapping the soap dish into the last space between tiles and held it tightly until it stuck.
The sky was a bleak gunmetal grey and the air was crisp like ice and whipped the leaves into tiny ground bound cyclones that crinkled and swirled around always a few feet from her tread but never over it, it seemed strange to notice that leaves did things like that all of a sudden, Lucette wondered if a person stood still for long enough if the leaves would eventually swirl around them.
But she supposed that if they did someone would have said something and she would have heard about it, would have seen it happen. She kicked leaves out of her path joylessly preoccupied with them but after a few steps stopped to kneel and arrange them around her unable to shake the idea of little leaf cyclones.
She circled them around her and stood up, waiting. The wind stirred them over her shoes and rolled them away across the dead gray grass. The whole failed exercise put her in a bleak mood that made her want the wind to wail out something mournful to match, it didn't and she was disappointed.
Inside her shoes her feet were itchy with sweat, she took them off and walked until the feel of leaves that snagged on her socks began to itch and she took them off and shivered from her toes up to her shoulders as the chill snaked up her soles and heels. The frozen numbness that settled into the tiny bones of her feet and ankles wasn't unpleasant, it was electric and made her calves burn as the muscles tensed. It was a neat feeling that made her keen in her throat.
There was a subliminal wildness to being barefoot in autumn, to run the pads of her fingers over the gooseflesh pimpling her arms, to have her hair tangle itself into knots as the wind lashed at it and threaded in leaves and dirt. It felt natural, it made her bones thrum and her muscles tremble, pent up energy sparking out and springing loose.
Her fingers and palms caressed the bark of the tall pine she made her way to and Lucette peeled off her sweatshirt to rake her forearms against the rough snagging surface of the trunk, it left red furrows across the delicate skin on the inside of her arms.
The climb made her breathing quicken and her heart race, branches tugged at her hair and bark and green needles caught the delicate flesh under her nails, pine cones pricked her face and arms and left the itch of sap in the tiny punctures the spiky lumps left.
But the view was superb and she sat in a cradle of heavy branches and the trunk at her back. Adrenaline spun itself like silk over her blood vessels and diffused into the stream that chased itself through the network of arteries and veins and capillaries, oxygen stabbed at her lungs, painful and exquisite.
The wind made her eyes tear and squint themselves, she rubbed her soles against the branch she lounged stretched out on and then pressed her heels over the knobs of the branch, her nails picked and peeled away lines of sap from the branch overhead and she shook her hair out into the needles and small twig projections, fanning it around her head and face and letting it knot and tangle and snag like a spider web of burnished red and brown.
She felt like a nymph, like a wild hunter, like an extension of the tree and she felt the sentience of her mind mute itself and hum, and the thing that was in her, the second nature melded and fused with her and languished with her on the branch, charming and cloying like an old lover offering comfort she was more than pleased to indulge in again.
Lucette wanted to call that second nature dangerous and dodgy, a tricksy thing that she should never dwell on, even in her most private of thoughts but she couldn't because it wasn't. It wasn't poisonous and it wasn't volatile, it was just there, a lingering taste on the back of her tongue, an echo of some quiet tune in her ears, a remembered sensation across her skin, a distortion across the span of her stare, a faint perfume of something on the breeze that made her tingle.
It was her.
It was everything she'd ever wanted to become.
Strong and fast and fierce.
It wasn't a beast that wanted to howl and hunt, it was a different shade of nature that wanted to feel and touch and have and take, it was hungry and she knew if she'd try to starve it would only become ravenous, only then would it be disloyal, it would listen, even delight in what she wanted but it wouldn't be ignored, it wouldn't be caged and forgotten about.
Something moved fifty feet below, skirting through the leaves loudly, its heartbeat a wild tattoo of excitement and tension. She stretched herself forward onto the tree limb moving her torso over her toes and her neck craning down through the pine needles and the cross hatch arrangement of tree limbs.
Her vision blurred peripherally and focused centrally, her eyes adjusting to the spatial difference of height and cutting out unnecessary details on the edges to make her gaze direct and free of distracting visuals. The hare was skittish and plump; its scent was an acrid bite of urine, wet fur, and open air.
The elongation of her teeth wasn't painful as she let her jaw line widen and reshape itself, her nails lengthened out of the cuticles without blood and shredded bark with no effort, and she moved her head so her hair fell off the twigs to settle down her back and over her shoulders.
Swinging down the branches silent and with the wind to drown the sound of cracking twigs she let her feet dangle and finally dropped gradually to the length of a thin limb soft and quiet, her arms holding most of her weight. When she landed on the ground it was on a patch of moist earth devoid of leaves. The small animal didn't even twitch its ears at her silent prowl closer.
When it smelled her she was already coiling her arm and snapping it out a second later to catch its raised hind legs before it bounded off into the underbrush. It struggled hard and its paws pushed at her arm and nose when she brought it up to her face to study and consider its wet, bulging eyes.
Fear had a tang to it that made her mouth water, too much would ruin her appetite and sicken her but just enough sweetened the meal to come. Even though she tried to be careful and patient the frightened and frantic struggle made her snap the hare's hind legs like dry twigs, rabbit urine rolled in streams down her knuckles onto the leaves and her denim covered knees, the screeching and braying of the broken creature made her growl and drop it in surprise.
The bundle of brown tawny fur tired to spring away but it faltered and delicate bones popped and split out of the thin stretch of skin covering its haunches, her fingers reached out and picked it up, she brought it close to her chest and cooed lovingly to the dying creature before the moist crackle of its neck snapping silenced it's yelping pleas and wasted efforts of escape.
She picked and pulled off the ticks from its coat and punctured the flesh between its ribs to pull its diaphragm apart. Merciless in gutting it she examined its remaining innards, red and purple with lines of slate blue, moist and glistening in the skyline splash of dusky periwinkle and indigo of impending nightfall.
Its heart was gristle and strings of tough muscle, its liver alternated between textures of soft and gritty, its lungs were thin and filmy and stuck to the roof of her mouth and teeth like an overblown bubble of chewing gum, they were all tiny and doll-like, miniatures of what she might find inside some bigger mammalian creature. Sample size her mind supplied with a hint of wry amusement.
The marrow she sucked from cracked long bones was briny and thick like salt and good soup; she licked the taste from her teeth and memorized the feel of its empty skin with her fingertips. Next time she'd make it a cleaner kill she vowed standing and leaving its remains for the forest.
It took well after sunset for her to come back to herself and her more human inhibitions. The weight of what she had done didn't settle so heavily upon her, her full stomach didn't sicken her like she thought it would, and there was no urge to vomit the ill-gotten meal out of her system. It had been just a rabbit, and though it made her eyes moisten that it had suffered before she killed it she felt no grief over having done it.
She felt curious and out of sorts, but guilt never came and lingered. She'd been hungry so she ate a rabbit. Simple, she decided, she hadn't done it to savor its fear or to hurt it, she was just hungry.
With a sigh she picked herself up from the porch and studied the tarp covered hole where her back door had to be, the drill battery was charged and it needed to be fixed she decided to tackle one more thing on her to-do list before settling in for the night in front of the television to wait for Derek Hale to make an appearance.
Day 55:
Dawn smelt cold and dusty, but the leather interior of the sleek car was heady and undeniably male. The stick shift was a nice touch and the thrill of sitting in the driver's seat held an undercurrent of rippling danger, she doubted he'd not notice her scent in the car the next time he went to drive it. She doubted he'd brush the gesture off with casual ease.
Derek Hale was really going to kill her, she thought. It excited her violently.
She found an extra key tucked up in the sun visor. He was begging for his car to be taken for a joy ride with that gesture and there was no wavering when she peeled out from the garage after letting the engine idle for a few minutes and revving it before putting it in reverse.
He deserved her taking hair pin curves at eighty miles an hour and double clutching for not showing up and leaving his car to tempt her. She was going to get murdered; she didn't let the thought bother her too much. She'd die happy. Even the wheel spinning under her hands made her smirk.
The success of the joy ride was so close to perfection that she half-expected something to shatter it, like him showing up in her garage as soon as she pulled in ready to tear off her legs, hang her upside down like a scared rabbit and pull her chest apart, the thought was so potent she actually wondered if she wanted to find him tapping his foot and crossing his arms and scowling when she got back, ready to dismember her.
There was no one in her garage and no one in her house except her dog and when she climbed out of the car and put the key back in the visor. She felt a pang of regret for marring the perfection of the sleek speed machine with the tool file. It was done and she didn't know how to fix a paint job, he'd have to figure out how to take care of that himself. She'd pay for the damage she decided, an olive branch, bridging the gap her mind intoned.
Her body was hot and fueled up on untapped energy; she realized that she was undeniably horny. The day was just starting and a joyride and getting off was a not bad way to kick it off she decided already picking out music to get off to and kicking her shoes to the foot of the stairs. Hers fingers depressed the door lock down from inside her bedroom and she pulled the rumpled bed covers to the bottom of the mattress before arranging herself on her stomach.
She tried to think of a suitable fantasy drudging through the most violent and perverse recesses of her mental sexual catalog. Something horribly depraved and debauched that she would just have to think about to get wet, never mind actually put her fingers and hands to work. In that unaccountable part of her mind where every urge held the undercurrent of violence and foul brutality, the Id of her personality, the part of the unconscious they called the primitive, the animal but there was nothing animal in constructed rage and created arrangements to kill and fuck in the most inhuman ways one could think of, no, nothing animal about that, just the dark half-soul of uncultivated and unrequited cravings and unspoken pleas to be hurt or injure something else she was wading through.
Being bitten hadn't made that place in her mind any darker or deeper or more profound in its immensity, in fact It scoffed at the idea of needing a complex scenario of fucking and being fucked in elaborate, impossible ways. Animals were simple, there was nothing more human than complexity and lack of pattern in behavior, habit existed in humans but it wasn't the same thing.
Her hips pressed down into the mattress, but her fingers merely clenched into the sheet over the mattress, fisted the material as she tried to run a circle around her thoughts, her abdomen clenched and she imagine what it would feel naked against someone else, ridges of muscles sweat slick and rolling over another body, she wanted to bite down on knuckles shoved so deep into her mouth her jaw cramped, she settled for the pillow under her face.
She wanted her thighs to shake and her hips to bruise from the slam of someone else's, she wanted to have someone's throat under her hands she wanted a forearm pressed tight against her windpipe, a hand yanking her hair, she wanted to rake her nails across someone's face.
Holding her breath she moved her hands between her denim encased thighs and shoved her groin into the cradle her thumbs made. She fixated on how sharp male stubble would chafe the tender inside of her thighs, her throat, the shape and color of the crenellated marks teeth would leave behind on her hips and ribs, how tight the shackle of fingers could be around her biceps if someone was lifting and pulling her up or turning her around.
The imagined weight of a heavy body across her back and the fixation of kneecaps pushed into the hollows behind her own made her rhythmic grind and frottage shaky and spastic. A fantasy of a hand splayed over the back of her neck and an arm like iron yanking across her hips and a long slow lick up her spine with the flat of a hot branding tongue made her let out a ragged breath into the pillow and a weak mewling pour out of her throat, it distracted her for a moment and made her thrusts falter.
Her shoulders burrowed further down into the mattress and her breasts pushed themselves flat as she kept her torso static and her hips snapping forward and back over the bed, harder into her cramping hands. Inhaling hair she rubbed it away from her mouth with the pillow and imagined strong wrists encircled with her fingers and her feet tangled around hard muscled shins while she bounced through the jerky motions of riding someone.
It tingled and waved like heat in its first stirrings across the base of her hairline in sticky prickles of beaded perspiration and then in-between and underneath her scapulas, twirling inward between her thighs and around her spine a tight ribbon, the throb and pulse came and built before stopping and she slowed and thrusted viciously seeking desperate friction and the throb burst and flared and she circled her hips and let the breath she'd been holding between chattering teeth and the wet mouthed pillowcase blow out in a great bellow.
The afterglow was the best and she rolled onto her back and ground the heel of her hand down of the zipper of her jeans, her muscles twitched and she let her heartbeat calm and slow and level out from the gallop she forced it to alighten to.
It was not a bad way to start the morning at all. She got up and did laundry while thumbing through her contacts on her phone, the lone voicemail she'd received while her phone was off was from her sister and said nothing else than a hello and a request to call back when she got the chance.
She called her sister and waited for the line to pick up.
"Hey."
"What's up?"
"I just wanted to tell you that you have mail waiting for you."
"From who?"
"The lawyer, he's supposed to call you some time, he called me about what's going to happen after my birthday."
Lucette smiled knowing her sister was grinning on the other line because of the small joy the younger woman got from, for a few months being only a year separate in age instead of two. Being older, Lucette never understood why it made her sister so happy but it did.
"Oh yeah, twenty-one this year, now you can blow all that money.
"Not yet," the response sounded glum.
"Don't sound so blue, panda bear," she sing-songed back over the phone.
"He needs you to sign some stuff I think."
"Yeah about my account, it's all legal stuff."
"Duh, I know that lawyers deal with legal stuff. I'm not a dummy."
"I didn't mean to make it sound like you were a dummy. You're still okay with trading?" Lucette frowned at the thought that her sister would not go through with the deal they'd had standing for years.
"Yeah, I'm not really into the boat. You still not going to gimme the house?"
"Not a chance," Lucette grinned at the angry scoff at her answer.
"I don't know why you got the house and I got the boat."
"Because you're younger, and really we're even if everything was about numbers."
"I like numbers."
Lucette rolled her eyes humorously with all the flair she could muster despite it going unseen, "And I like the boat. See it's perfect."
"Can we stay in the house this summer?"
"I'll think about it. I don't know if I'm taking another assignment after this one."
"Well I wanna have a vacation," her sister whined.
"Buy a house," she offered in response.
"I can't buy a house."
"Dad would try to make you buy a condo in Florida and move in with you so you could bake cupcakes and stuff for him."
"He had me bake him corn muffins yesterday."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, he was like 'Stella come over, let's have dinner,' and so I made chicken and he made me move lawn furniture with him after because there's supposed to be a blizzard."
"He's not very nice."
"No he's not. Listen butthead I gotta go."
"Okay, hey."
"Yeah."
"I miss you."
"I miss you too, Lucy"
"Don't call me that, Ethel."
"Ethel? Oh, yeah haha, you are so funny."
"I slay myself with rapier wit."
"What's rapier wit?"
"Sharp, biting, lashing wit."
"So that's what rapier means?"
"A rapier is a type of sword."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Okay, I really got to go though. I love you."
"I love you too."
"I'll call you later."
"Okay."
"Bye."
"Bye bye."
Tires running over gravel at the start of the road leading to her house cued her to look down at her clothing and tie up her hair. She went to the window and moved the curtain to peek out at the driveway and the sheriff pulling into it. She let the curtain fall back into place and opened the front door as the older man stepped out of the car and shut the door with a quiet thump.
"Hi there, Miss Bramble."
"Wow, a house call?" She demurred leaning against the door frame and crossing her arms. He climbed the steps and remained on the top one with a nervous half-cocked smile, "Is this a bad time?" Lucette shook her head in the negative, "No, what's up Sheriff?"
"Here," he held out a plain brown envelope with her last name written in black permanent maker scrawl. She took it and flipped it, bending the metal catches back and folding the flap over the prongs and slid the papers inside out far enough to gather that they were papers regarding a concealed carry permit for her gun.
"Oh, thank you."
"Did you think I was joking?"
"I did, actually. But thank you," she answered with a laugh that made him put a hand over his mouth to muffle his own and shrug his shoulders.
"No problem. I did a little detective work of my own and got copies faxed over to do the paperwork."
"You're a cool Sheriff…,Sheriff. Did you want to come in for a minute? I've got coffee." She pointed her thumb behind her and moved into the house, giving him space to come in. He walked forward and came in the house, "Sure, it's a slow day today."
Lucette set up mugs and showed him to the table, she made his the way he specified and sat down with her own plain black mug-full.
"Sorry about the mess. Brigs decided to be a bit rambunctious," she explained knowing that the debris of the backdoor was unsettling him. "Really?" She put on her best sheepish expression and rubbed the back of her neck and craned it to look at the door behind her.
"I was kind of being a goof and he decided that if I was going to taunt him with steak through a door that he'd break it down."
"Ah, I see," he leaned back in his chair and took a sip and examined her kitchen with an appraising gaze.
"So, any leads on the guy in the woods? Find the animal yet?"
"That's confidential information," he explained with a grin. "Sure it is," she joked back after a gulp.
"How's the nursing home?" Lucette took note of the misdirection but let it go, "They dropped my agency's contract."
"Oh?"
"The bureaucracy decided to pay us and show us the door, liability stuff. What can ya do? I'm not complaining it's a nice severance package." Waving a hand and offering a shrug she ignored the urge to complain about the unfairness of the situation. "So you're going home then?"
He sounded hopeful she realized, and his concern warmed her, "Oh, well…I've leased this house for nine months; the owners are on vacation so I haven't been able to get in touch with them yet."
"You can't break the lease?"
"I'm sure they'd be accommodating but, I don't know…, it was kind of a surprise and I'm here, and moved in and had this mindset that I was going to be here for awhile so…I guess, maybe, I might find another nursing job here. The agency is just a middleman I can still go solo."
"Glad to see our town hasn't scared you too much."
"It's not that bad. It could be worse."
"I guess it could."
She got up and refilled her mug, she leaned against the counter. He looked tired she noted, worn down, like he hadn't slept or shaved in a while, a man on a mission that was going nowhere, a lab rat running through a maze that had no piece of cheese at the end.
"So what's the scoop, Sheriff?"
"You a reporter now too?"
Lucette tilted her head and rolled her eyes jokingly, "Just curious, I haven't flipped on the news in awhile, I've been a little busy lately with paperwork and running around."
"Well it's a small town; the news at ten usually knows things about as fast as we do."
"So you haven't caught Derek Hale yet?"
Sheriff Stilinski tensed and when his shoulders relaxed they didn't do so completely, "Not yet, we will. Just takes time."
"Did he really kidnap somebody? I get the breaking and entering stuff but not that part."
"Imprisoning people in a place they don't want to be is kidnapping after a certain amount of time, but really the actual charge isn't kidnapping its imprisonment."
"Oh, and what about Peter Hale? Have you found him yet?"
Silence spilled out of the man and he leveled a curious stare on her that made her want to straighten her posture but she remained as she was and forced herself not to let the look bother her, "Miss Bramble, how do you know about Peter Hale?"
Pausing before answering she realized that he thought that no one should know about Peter Hale's disappearance but felt an ease of mind with how she knew, there was nothing sinister in her knowing what was going on, it wasn't information that had come from Derek Hale, "Sheriff Stilinski you don't know many nurses do you?"
"Well just one."
"Oh?"
"…," he raised a brow at her and she realized he was talking about her.
"Oh, me. Wow, I'm a little dumb today I guess. Sorry. The last day I worked was the day after Jennifer went crazy and all the nurses are under this impression that Derek Hale took Peter Hale."
"What do you think?"
Tapping her nails she wondered if she could smooth out some of the wrinkles Derek Hale was making in town, it seemed like a wonderful peace offering that she could brag about and guilt him with if he was still pissed off for whatever was that had him perpetual pissed off at everyone and everything.
"Well, I guess it makes sense in a logical way, but why would Derek Hale come back you know? And if he's on the run how would he be able to evade police and drag along his uncle behind him and not get caught?"
"So you don't think Derek Hale is involved?"
"…Well, I guess he could be, but the whole story is confusing, I mean there's probably other stuff that you guys know that we don't and the news doesn't know but if I was like a private eye I'd say there's a missing piece to the puzzle."
"Private eye, huh?"
"Maybe, what do you think?" Lucette struck a pose, "I got the Beretta and I could get a fedora and a trench coat and I smoke already, I can do a mean Bogart impression."
"Heh, well if nursing doesn't work out there you go."
The Sheriff looked at the bottom of the chipped mug she'd given him, she gave him a refill and finished off the rest of the milk with it, she mused out loud as she threw away the empty jug, "Derek Hale didn't seem to be a killer, you know. He was threatening, that night in the nursing home but he didn't have a psycho vibe, not really. And he was injured pretty severely; he couldn't have done that to himself."
"You think someone attacked him?"
She grinned knowing he couldn't see it and turned with her expression schooled into a masque of thoughtfulness, "Maybe, and it's just so wonky because, yeah, he showed up at the nursing home but why not just sneak into the supply room and get out fast? Why stay? He was there in the room for while before I noticed."
"You think he came to make sure his uncle was alright?"
"Yeah. That is what I think," she told him as if just coming to the conclusion, she sat back down and stared off into space. "He seemed to care a lot about his uncle, and it's what I think any person would do if they thought someone they cared about was in trouble."
She went quiet suddenly and waited for the Sheriff to take note of her wide eyes and nervous lip chewing, "Miss Bramble? Is something wrong?"
"Just, jeez…," She let out a breath and scrubbed a hand over her hairline.
"What is it? Did you remember something?"
"No. Yeah, sort of."
"Is there something you need to tell me?"
She let her eyes stop jumping around the kitchen and stared back at man across her table, "Yes. There is. But like off the record?"
"Off the record?" The notion seemed to amuse him.
"Peter Hale's Haldol levels had been odd for awhile and since Jennifer was the med nurse…well you can fill in that blank. I can't really tell you this because of patient privacy stuff," he nodded understanding why she'd asked for 'off the record.'
"Go on," he urged leaning the tiniest of bits forward over the table, suddenly very interested in what she had to say, "Well, why would she want to not give him his sedative?"
Sheriff Stilinski leaned back, crossed his arms and spoke to the ceiling, "You think she wanted him responsive?" He let his eyes look at her from over his nose and tilted face.
"Well, as responsive as a semi-conscious patient can be," she shrugged, "But Jennifer's dead and Peter Hale is missing and Derek Hale is on the run and there's a big blank in the whole thing because if Peter Hale isn't with Derek Hale, where is he?" She spoke with her volume increasing with every point and tapping her fingernails to the rhythm of her speech.
"That's interesting."
"That's an evasive statement," she pointed at him as if she were jabbing her cigarette out. "But I think if Derek Hale was making sure his uncle was okay that night after he may have gotten attacked then that says something, don't you think? Maybe Derek Hale is on the run because of the police or maybe it's because of someone other than the police."
"Miss Bramble, do me a favor and don't become a newscaster."
"Trust me I won't," she waved her hands and sat back with a whoosh of air escaping her lungs, acting as if the whole conversation had taken a toll on her, it had done that much to the Sheriff. His heart beat a wild staccato inside his chest and an odd smile was trying to pull his lips wide but he didn't let it, "Thanks," he said letting a bit of the smile come out, it was gone a heartbeat later.
"No problem. I'm a fan of law enforcement, especially cool Sheriffs, who am I going to tell anyway? I'm like a damn hermit," she was smug and self-satisfied that the Sheriff now had some connections made between things and that there were small crawl-space openings where there had only been rock-fall in his kidnap slash murder slash wanted man case.
"What's it like not working?" He diverted the conversation; she noticed but didn't try to redirect him again. She'd done enough, she planted seeds and he'd look to cultivate them into someone or something that fleshed out his police report and his man-hunt.
"It's boring and it sucks. I hate not working."
"I'll keep my eye out for someone who needs a nurse."
"Appreciate it," she replied with a curt nod. His cell phone jingled and he flipped it open to read the text message the sound signaled. "Gotta get back to work?" She asked.
"My son. He's grounded," he explained jabbing at the keys and sending off a response.
"What'd he do?"
"Crashed his car into a parked car."
"Well it happens, I guess."
"He hit a deer last week."
"Maybe you should get him glasses."
They exchanged a stare and a few seconds of silence before his thoughts formulated, "…you think that's what the problem could be?"
"Maybe," she waved her head from side to side, "my sister was horrible in school until she told us when she was fourteen that she'd do a lot better if she could read the board."
"They can't just make it easy and tell us they can't see, can they?"
"Of course not, that makes it less fun."
"Well, thank you for the coffee." He rose from the table and she offered to see him out to his car, "Thanks for the get outta jail free card. I'd totally vote for you but I think you have to be an actual town citizen."
"Haha, thanks anyway," he told her opening the door to his cruiser.
"I'd put a sign on my lawn but who would see it?" He laughed and she smiled.
"Have a good day, Miss Bramble."
"You too."
She watched him leave and then went out onto the back deck, it was a cold morning and she shivered in the light breeze that turned over leaves and knocked loose pine cones. She lit a cigarette and let her thoughts roll by lazily, she felt happy and content for a long time as she sat and watched the clouds and let her hands go numb and red from the chap of the breeze against her skin.
It was like a small dose of eternity that she was experiencing then, perfect and simple and she wanted the moment to last, to feel as if she was the only person that existed in the entire universe and it hurt to think that she couldn't sit and think like she was then forever.
And so when she heard the deer picking through the leaves she got up and climbed her tree to watch it, high up she looked down, still calm and content and noted the way it avoided the spot where the rabbit had died, it could scent the blood as well as she could.
Dead things and blood scared animals, it was a warning. The deer was scared of what had left the rabbit dead and bloody on the forest floor, cold and rotting and half-eaten. The deer was scared of her. The thought made her smile in savage glee, something was scared of her, of what she could do. She was a hunter in the dark, a stalker in a tree, a killer in the woods. An all too savory chill strolled up and down her spine like phantom fingers.
She crossed branches clumped close together and followed the deer's steps from high above, looking down while unsnagging her sweater from grabbing branches and sliding her sneakered feet across the sticky bark. When the wind snapped the trees into a harsh rhythm of reaching twigs and sharp sticking prickles she gave the deer one last glance and started her climb down and her trek back to the house.
Calling out to see if someone was waiting for her she came through the door with the full intention of being particularly waspish if he was there, he wasn't and she wondered what she would do with the rest of the day. She made coffee, she ate, she napped, she went for a run, she feed her dog, she took a shower, she watched the news, she sat on the deck, she saw the sun set, she fell asleep and woke up cold half-remembering a dream that made her cry, slowly, something pleasantly sad that reminded her of the conversation she'd shared with her sister, she'd been on a boat she hadn't seen in a long time and someone she hadn't seen in an even longer time was swimming and she'd watched from the bow, she felt homesick and tired, cold and old, she went inside and had a cigarette in the dim light of her kitchen feeling detached and robotic as her mind hibernated.
Day 56:
Anger ate away at her guts and made her wander aimlessly in the woods with her mind a spiral of mean words and meaner ideas, she was edgy and Derek Hale was being a prick. She wondered what it was with men that made them as temperamental as little girls sometimes, what made them spiteful enough to make other people so pissed off at them on purpose. It had been five days and after being used to having him show up every other day she found that his absence irritated her as much as his impromptu drop-ins did, at least with him around she could gripe, now she couldn't even do that.
The full moon was a week away and she wondered if that had something to do with her mood, she wondered how long he was going to be angry at her for being a bitch, and though she could admit she was a bitch she wasn't about to rationalize that as a reason to be a bigger bitch, which was all Derek Hale was proving to be with every day he didn't show up unannounced.
She'd hunted again, another rabbit farther away from the spot of the first when the urge struck to wait for the doe that she'd grown used to seeing to show up, that she'd stalked and spied on. The glaring of the afternoon sun conflicted with the icy temperature but even then she found that she was too hot in her own skin, burning up from the inside.
The festering rotting heat of anger made her nail beds bleed and her jaw shift into an uncomfortable set, It was unsettled, and it wanted to hunt again. She killed three more rabbits and a solitary and skittish squirrel. It knew what it was doing even if the more humane and human part of her mind didn't. It didn't want squirrels and rabbits to eat anymore, it wanted the deer.
Her deer.
She found it by the scent of it urine on the leaves, fragrant and sweet.
Her deer was cautious and ran when she stepped out in front of it. Wary of her it sprung away, she chased it and came out in front to spur it in the direction she wanted. It circled away from the scent of blood, like she knew it would, the circle of dead animals she'd left over two miles caroled it in, scared and unable to move in any direction besides the one she stood at, confused and unwilling the doe tried to sniff out a direction that smelled clean, untainted.
There was only one.
In its final dash it tried to go around her, she tore at the tender flesh under its tail and flanks where the large arteries were sequestered and the saying of being hungry enough to eat the ass out of a running deer made sense, though she wasn't about to sink her teeth into a deer rump her hands shot out with purpose and tore away delicate flesh until the doe fell jerkily and wailed to the trees.
She tore out its throat with her teeth and ate until warmth spiraled in her guts and eased the cramp of hunger and the knife stab of anger. When she finished she put her forsaken sweater over her bloody shirt and rubbed damp black dirt onto her jeans in case she was discovered in the woods by someone.
Wiping her fingers and mouth off with the inside of the fleece pull-over she started back and ran her tongue over the smooth wetness of her teeth, curling and pulling at the small strips of meat lodged between them in a few particularly irritating places.
She climbed her tree and napped with the flavor of iron inside her mouth, it lulled her and made her bones melt into the bark. The high wore off sometime after the moon glowed high above her tree with opulence and a taunting halo of blur that made her eyes bleary and drip viscously from the strain.
When she returned to her living room her dog sniffed at her a lumbered away weightily to another room not liking what she smelled of, she made a fire and watched it like she'd watched the moon, her face warming and her eyes slitted in the presence of its wafting rising heat.
The sound of it stung her ears and she whipped her body up and to the window, yanking aside the curtain and tossing up the window sill to take in the last dying notes of it without hindrance. The howl was a long low rumble, a memory of thunder reproduced and rolling out of someone's chest, mournful and desperate it made her hold her breath and listen, it wasn't a howl made by Derek Hale, she knew it wasn't, it didn't sound like a howl he would make.
Then when there came a response closer than the first howl and she knew if Derek Hale was going to howl then that was what he'd howl like, something keener with more reverberation to it, fiercer and bolder and frantic. The way dying things would how, final and hard.
She slammed the window back down and pushed away the waving fabric of the curtain to make long strides into her bedroom. The gun was loaded, and she attached it to her hip as she walked out and went to the laundry room to retrieve her folding knife from the toolbox.
With the direction of the second howl memorized and burned into her mind she focused on how far away it was, six miles, perhaps less, in the woods somewhere there was Derek Hale howling back at someone howling out for him. There was something happening that had kept him from showing up when he should have, something that wasn't a pleasant diversion or excursion.
The idea that he was howling like a dying thing because he was a dying thing made her tighten the laces on her boots enough to make her pulse throb in her shins.
She tore out the backdoor, flew over the deck railing and bolted through the woods.
Her lungs burned dryly and she ran close to the ground, kicking her legs behind her and roughening her palms on the cold ground and bark of fallen trees. The scent of charred wood coated the inside of her nosed and throat, she scaled a pine and maneuvered the branches from tree to tree no longer feeling secure to go by ground.
Blood was everywhere in the mile wide radius of where she was, it was unsettling and there were no animals roaming close by, they were scared, they had reason to be, something was hunting them, something like her was hunting them in large quantities.
She knew that she wasn't the only one who could climb a tree but it certainly made it harder to attack someone if they could hear you coming after them. Trees were hazardous, they added an element of hard terrain that was beyond what was on the ground, and all she could hope was that the distance and darkness was enough to hide her away.
There was quiet, encompassing and weighty like a smothering blanket that made it hard to breath. Lucette found herself snapping the bark off the branch above her head as she clenched and unclenched her toes in the leather grip of her firm boots sighing angrily and hoping for another howl, she knew she was in the general vicinity but that did nothing to divulge any clues as to where exactly Derek Hale and whoever the other howler were.
Lucette studied the shadows the burnt out husk of a house cast over what might have once been a spacious front yard. She settled against the trunk and let her foot hang and swing back and forth in time with the wind. The world was devoid of purposeful movement.
A large vehicle was coming from the east, the howls had been stationary and she wondered what was coming closer in four-wheel drive.
Something moved in the upstairs of the house, walking passed the broken window. From the corner of her eye she tried to follow its disappearance with her mind deciding where it was most likely going. She flicked the button on her gun holster open to avoid fumbling with it later.
Her aim was better but she wasn't about to try for an ace shot from a pine tree with a smaller than average hand-gun. She unfolded the knife from her back pocket and held it firmly with her arm languid and her muscles loose, easing her breathing and settling her mind to watch and wait and be prepared to jump if need be.
Then came the lilt of feminine tones, a duo crashing through the underbrush of the woods with the clicking and whoosh of objects moving and rustling against jeans and leather, the scent of perfume and hair product carried to her by the wind through the trees, it made her glad that she hadn't changed from her bloody and dirt smeared clothing, it masked her scent into something in tandem with leaves and sap and pine needles and the bite of ice in the wind.
Whatever was inside the house went out into the yard behind it in the shape of a man without so much as a glance at her tree but sparing one back at the house as it moved into the forest. Whoever it was it wasn't Derek Hale and it wasn't scared of whoever was coming from the woods from the east and advancing on the decrepit burned mess of the ruined house.
Whoever had come out wasn't leaving, they were repositioning, moving to outflank the women coming closer. Whoever had come out was getting ready to hunt. The women had stopped moving, but there was the sound of feet running over a harder surface somewhere, not wood, cement.
The movement grew in volume but there was another element she couldn't place to it, it didn't grow louder because it coming closer, it was surfacing in a direction that didn't denote someone coming from under the house to the floor above, it was underground in the woods. Dual heartbeats broke the surface closer than those of the two women.
Timbres of voice belonging to men, and she tried to focus on what they were saying, if either belonged to Derek Hale's. One did and she strained to hear but the wind and the rattle of trees swaying made it difficult to pick anything up besides a tone and pacing of the words being said.
She'd forgotten about the women until a metallic shift of something being slid against something else caught her attention. It wasn't a gun being loaded or a round being chambered, she knew those sounds, she didn't know the one she was hearing until something groaned as it stretched and gave the high pitch of whining velocity to something else cutting and pushing through air.
Who the hell used arrows anymore she thought pursing her lips angrily as flesh rended and pulled away from the impalement of metal and wood into the meat of muscle. She almost cried out but held in the yell. Derek Hale groaned and cried out commands while he pulled himself across the ground trying to drag and push someone along with him.
Lucette settled against the trunk. Watching and waiting. It told her to watch and wait and she nodded to herself knowing in her bones she was more hunter than hero.
A/N: The country song about destroying someone's car is "Before He Cheats." The boy in the sports store is Jackson and the person calling to him is Danny, the Colin he refers to isn't an actual character but just a name I picked for his unnamed date Danny took to the dance who I'm assuming is his boyfriend. And finally some action (even if it is just Lucette getting handsy with herself) please don't make an assumption that the vague imagery she comes up with to get off with somehow ties to Derek, because it doesn't. If it did you wouldn't have to assume you'd know, trust me I'd make it obvious. The Id is the animal drive of the human subconscious, there is also the Superego which is the ideal moral code or value set of a society, and the Ego is the mitigating force between the two. Based on what psychologist you're referring to there is some variation between the exact nature of the ego and superego, I'm talking on Freud's position not Carl Jung's or any other often referenced psychoanalyst, that's just bonus info and has nothing to do with the story really, fun fact for those of you who read author's notes. The conversation about a boat and a house Lucette has with her sister isn't important now but it might be something to remember. Again there's the I Love Lucy reference with Lucy an Ethel between Lucette and Estelle going on over the phone. When Estelle says that she loves numbers she's talking about money in case that wasn't clear. As a side note Estelle lives in Washington so does their father.