!General warning! : this story features a lot of heavy themes - namely rather graphic violence, pure-blood supremacists / hate crimes, sexual assault (referenced, not shown in great detail), past child abuse, panic attacks, suicidal ideation, self-harm - though the main romance is (more or less) healthy. Please proceed with caution :)
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It started as a vague idea I had once in the shower and it SOMEHOW evolved into a nineteen-chapters story, with a plot and everything. Ahem. Enjoy?
(I'm done writing this, btw, so don't worry, I won't give up halfway through the story!)
/TW: referenced hate crime, murder threats\
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Agata's eyes don't leave the road, even if the Back Alley is still half-asleep, this early in the morning. The morning sun bleeds crimson rays over the pavement and the crumbling buildings, highlights among the cracked stones puddles the young lion doesn't want to dwell on. The voices from the radio fill the car. It's some kind of talk show he's only half-listening to, but he got the hang it was about a police investigation and they invited the victim's father on air. If you ask Agata, it feels a bit distasteful, but he is not going to drive around in silence with his boss in the passenger seat. He doesn't like where their conversations usually go, not one bit, and it's too good of a morning to get murdered just yet.
"She looks a lot like her mother. 'Looked', I guess I should say…" The strain in the father's voice on the radio is audible, but he goes on bravely: "I love my wife so much, her delicate features, her big eyes… I was delighted at first to find our daughter looked so much like her. But… I should have known better; antelopes are so frail… so fragile…"
Aren't gazelles a sort of antelopes? Agata glances nervously on his right, but Melon is slumped against the car door, looking outside with a bored frown after he has lost interest in the radio.
"You know…" the guy on the talk show continues. "I wished she had taken more after me. Anyone would hesitate to go after a bear, even if it's just a teenage girl…"
Wait, a bear? Wasn't she a herbiv- Oh? Oh, no… As the picture starts to form in his head, Agata feels his blood run cold.
"The police said they broke her legs first. Her long, beautiful legs… so she couldn't run away. Then, and then only, they brought her to that lake and l-lynched her. She has always exhibited more herbivore's instincts, I was happy she did because I thought her life would be easier this way… but now, now I see."
Agata very nearly misses the red light and he slams on the brakes at the last moment, his muscles straining to avoid colliding with the steering wheel.
"Hybrids," says the voice on the radio without mercy, "should take more after their carnivore parents. Just so they could survive."
Melon shuts off the radio so hastily that his fingers collide painfully with the dashboard.
Newfound silence stretches uncomfortably in the small space. Melon is still bent forward, his elbow nearly touching Agata's thigh, both of their gazes fixed on the now-mute radio. The young lion is holding his breath, afraid the smallest sound could tip his boss over the edge.
Their gazes meet for just an instant and the hybrid huffs, leaning back into his seat. He opens his mouth to say something – when they are interrupted by an angry car horn behind them. Agata realizes suddenly that the light has turned green and restarts the car, feeling like the spell is broken. He can breathe again. He doesn't dare take his eyes off the road, though.
Nor think about what the bear on the radio said.
"We are here, Boss," he says after what, to him, felt like hours – he has to peel his fingers off the wheel one by one, only realizing now how hard he was clutching it.
Mechanically, he follows him around as the hybrid marches straight to a small door, hidden under a flight of stairs. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but once you're underground, you'd find yourself in a very vast room, walls carpeted with black velvet, colorful LEDs lights, and enormous speakers that buzz as if alive. At night, it's packed with so many animals that if you lost your footing, the crowd would probably still keep you straight up.
At this hour, though, it's empty, and you can see the concrete floor. The heat hasn't quite dissolved yet, weighing down the air filled with scents of sweat, perfumes and alcohol. Agata scrunches up his nose, already longing for the fresh morning air from outside.
They are here to collect their part of the underground club's earnings. It should be an easy enough task, one Melon doesn't usually involve himself in, but the owner has proven reluctant. Agata only hopes he won't have to clean up blood this early in the day. He has the feeling it would come to this, though, because his boss is responding to the owner's half-baked excuses with an increasingly sweet tone, and also the words "don't worry, yes sure, I understand" just don't feel right in his mouth. Agata knows this particular tone a bit too much – it's like the honey used to attract flies, only that instead of letting them drown in one last sweet ectasia, you would take them out, pull their wings off, and place them in a spider's web, watching in delight as it injects them with venom and sucks up their liquefied insides.
The gunshot makes his ears ring.
The owner's eyes are blown comically wide as he stares at the mirror in front of him – at the cracks originating from right in the middle of his reflection's forehead. He looks very much like he has seen a ghost, and that it was his own.
"Money, now."
He hurriedly complies.
Agata breathes a sigh of relief when he steps back outside – only for the relief to get stuck somewhere in his throat when a car screeches to a halt just in front of them. The stench of leopards hits his nose a millisecond later.
"Hey, Shishigumis, do you have so little members now that your boss had to do door-to-door to get a few green notes?"
"Back the fuck off, kitties, or you will find yourselves four members down."
"Ah! I'd like to see you try!"
"A kid and a gazelle with a few more teeth, sure, I'm so afraid…"
The Madaragumis giggle at their own oh-so-witty taunts, as Melon takes his gun back out and steps forward. Agata panics – they are four against two and, once again, he doesn't fancy dying at 9 a.m in a stupid gang clash.
"Boss!"
Without thinking, he grabs Melon's gun arm and yanks him away from the leopards. He can feel his muscles flexing under the soft fur of his arm, thin and sinewy, harder – stronger – than he expected. His grip nearly falters when Melon tries to break out, but he takes one more step away, dragging him backward, and the Madaragumi's car finally, finally takes back off with one last sneer. Only then, the hybrid seems to calm down.
With his chest pressed against his back, his smaller body almost entirely encompassed in the lion's, Agata can't miss the tremors that run through him. He doesn't quite know if it's from anger, adrenaline, or something else entirely. His other hand is on Melon's shoulder, large palm covering the entire joint and fingers sprawling down to his collarbone. That makes him realize with a furrow of his brow just how skinny, bony even, his boss really is. Antelopes are so frail… The words from the grieving father, on that talk show, echo through his mind and he shakes his head to try and push away the thought.
Under the rough pads of his fingers, he can feel a raised scar running down from the base of the hybrid's neck, hidden under his tattoos. It is strikingly reminiscent of a bite mark, making Agata wonder with a shudder who exactly tried to have a taste of mixed blood and how long it took for the unfortunate carnivore to die after that.
He doesn't realize he has frozen into place until Melon cranes his neck up to glance at him. The tip of his horn comes to rest just over his carotid, where you can feel the pulse if you press with two fingers, so very close to pierce the skin – and the lion is, of course, acutely aware of this.
"… Are you planning on letting me go now, Agata-kun?"
He backed off as if burned, raising his hands by instinct.
"I'm sorry! I didn't realize!"
Melon chuckles, feline eyes narrowed in an expression that makes a shudder runs down the young lion's spine. He touches his neck absent-mindedly and something churns inside him when he feels a single, tiny drop of blood. So close… He glances back at his boss, eyes darting from the leopard fangs to the nails – not quite as sharp as a pure-blood carnivore, but almost –, to the pointy horns, from the holster of his gun to the tiny knife he knows is strapped to his leg… and he wonders what happened in his brain to make his instincts see the hybrid as someone to be protected, even for a split second.
Hybrids should take more after their carnivore parents.
Melon hasn't. And yet, he could kill in the blink of the eye – and yet, he has survived this far.
He has been suffering from meat-withdrawal again.
After their little expedition the day before, he has started to feel nauseous and the whole afternoon has come and go as he was shivering under the covers. Melon has come by during the evening, and Agata was reluctantly bracing himself for whatever he would ask of him when a tube of mints has landed on his bed next to his hand.
He has looked up in confusion, wondering if it was a trap, or if he was actually supposed to say "thanks".
"Your carnivores are such pitiful creatures, I thought you could use the help."
He hadn't quite decided if it was just an insult or his boss' weird attempt at being nice that Melon was already gone.
By morning he was feeling better, so when the other lions suggested a trip to B-strike, he said yes. They should leave soon now, so for the time being he's just sitting on his bed, scrolling through his phone. His heart skips a beat when suddenly in full-screen the news website displays a picture of what he can only guess is the murdered young hybrid from the radio. She doesn't have horns, and she inherited her bear father's small eyes and round ears, but overall, her face very much reads herbivore. She looks sweet, he thinks. He struggles to tear his gaze off her.
The article subtitle, underneath the portrait, tells that because of medical issues, assaults and suicides, hybrids' life expectancy is twenty-five years.
"Is this kitty back to being operational?"
The high-pitched voice feels like cold water dumped on him. Agata immediately straightens on his bed, phone slipping out of his hands as he hastily tries to close the website. Melon is leaning against the door frame, slender legs crossed, and in the shadows cast by the wall, his face almost looks just like a gazelle's – except for the slit-like iris, just a black drop in the middle of glistening half-lidded eyes.
"I am, Boss, do- Where- what do you want me to do?"
"Nothing right now. Just checking in, after yesterday."
Does he…?
Melon shifts and the shadows swallow his gaze, the light catching instead on one solitary fang where his grin pulls his lips up.
"I like to know when I can or cannot use my pawns, you know?"
Ah. Why is he surprised, again? By now, he should indeed know what to expect.
"Also, the other kitties are downstairs. I think they are waiting for you."
They are. By the time Agata comes downstairs, they were already putting their coats on. He is struggling to put on his shoes while grabbing his jacket at the same it, half-hoping on one foot in an attempt to hurry, when his eyes fall on Melon. The hybrid is watching them from the near kitchen, hands clasped around a steaming mug. And Agata's tongue betrays his mind:
"Boss, do you wanna come?"
Melon chokes on his coffee.
The mug hits the counter with almost enough force to shatter, scalding hot liquid splashing on his hand without him noticing. He coughs, sputters a squeaky "What?!" then coughs some more.
Agata can feel his fellow lions' gazes boring through his skull and he rubs the back of his neck, uncomfortable, cursing himself for saying that out loud. The tip of his ears burns and he's very glad for his dark fur that covers his blush.
"I mean, you're part feline too…" he says while cringing internally at himself.
Melon raises a hand as to stop him, tries to answer, but his breath is still wheezing and- Is he… laughing? The sound grates against Agata's sensitive ears like nails on a blackboard, scraping up the hybrid's throat like broken glass. It's not a happy sound.
"What would you- wait- I-" Melon tries to get out in between giggles. "What do you think- hy-hyped up carnivores would think if- if they caught sight of herbivore horns in their turf, um? Ha, you made me want to, eh, go just to see their faces. 'Would be f-fun. But no." His laugh dies down, replaced by that fake, high-pitched tone that makes Agata so unconfortable. "I don't fit with you kitties. Go on, have fun! Try not to break a nail, um?"
Agata nods, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He stammers, trying to say that um, yeah, he's gonna go, the others are waiting for him; he grabs a water bottle and nearly drops it. He feels horribly hot by now.
"Hey, kitty, by the way."
He squeaks a pitiful "yes?".
"Tonight, I want you at the crossroad between Laika Street and Unsinkable Sam Alley. I need to, let's say review with you what happened on a certain afternoon."
"Yes, sure, I- wait, what afternoon?"
Melon mimics a gun to his own head and Agata's eyes widen as it dawns on him. Of course, he didn't forget. That Dolph's sudden appearance halted everything doesn't change the fact he was set on killing him.
"As your boss, I can't let it slide that easily. I'm sure you understand, Agata-kun... I can't let it be swept under the rug, or else said carpet will soak up my blood sooner or later, hum, don't you think? So, I need to ensure the loyalty of my pawns."
The young lion nods again, helpless. What else could he do?
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Trouble starts next chapter, this was just to set the mood :P