by Red, Lynn
Off in the living room, King was still grumbling about someone having drunk all of his coffee without asking. He was stomping toward the kitchen – not angrily, but because it was hard for him not to stomp on the hardwood flooring – and as soon as the footsteps went from thumping against hardwood to patting against the tile in the kitchen, Jill heard King let out a single, booming “HA!”
“King!” Jill shouted, over the lurching, groaning, slightly thrashing Rogue. “What’s wrong with him? Why are you laughing?! You’re not the one who laughs. You’re serious all the time. I’m not sure my heart could take it if you suddenly started in with a bunch of jokes.”
“Serves him right,” King offered, with a grim look on his face. He set his coffee mug on the countertop with a heavy thunk of ceramic on granite. “Bastard drank my coffee.”
To exhibit what he meant, King lifted the mug and turned it upside down over the sink. With exaggerated slowness, a single drop of almost syrup-thick coffee slid down the side of the cup and dropped into the metal basin with an audible report.
“That’s... coffee?”
King narrowed his eyes. Rogue’s were still rolling around in his head, and the hair on his arms and the tops of his feet had become a 1970s club fashion choice of coarse golden fur. “He’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” Jill was starting to get worried that somehow caffeine was going to kill one of her mates, although the other was just looking on with a slightly irritated, but mostly bored, expression. “He looks like his heart is gonna explode. How do you make this shit anyway? This doesn’t look like any coffee I’ve ever seen.”
She held onto Rogue, trying to guide him to a chair, which she finally did. The huge, furred-up, half-bear slumped over into one of the chairs with a groan – though it was hard to tell if it came from the bear or the chair, or the floor. He draped himself over the arm rest, and started breathing a little more evenly, if still alarmingly ragged.
“Just like you do,” King said, still unimpressed with his co-alpha’s apparent agony. “I fill the pot with coffee, then pour in water. Turn it on until it boils.” He shrugged. “Suits me fine, if a little bitter.”
“You what?” Jill squawked, surprise tinging her voice along with the concern for Rogue’s continued existence. “That’s not... no, you... I can’t even...”
“See?” King said, nodding toward Rogue. “He’s getting better.”
Better was a fairly loose definition for what was happening to him, but at least the green hue on his face was beginning to reduce somewhat, and his eyes seemed to focus. At least a little bit.
“God damn,” he grumbled. “What... what happened?”
Jill, fists digging into her hips, stood with her feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, and regarded King coolly. “Why don’t you tell him what happened, King?” she asked. Her voice was exaggeratedly irritated, but she did feel a little irked at the big bear for just standing there laughing – in his own way – as her other mate rolled around going crazy. “Why don’t you tell him exactly what happened?”
King sat down and faced Rogue, very obviously trying not to laugh. This levity was both cruel and at the same time, pretty funny – especially coming from the super-serious Broken Pine alpha. “I told you not to drink my coffee,” he said.
“That stuff wasn’t bad,” Rogue finally sputtered, laughing a little. “But how the hell did it make me... well, whatever it made me do?”
“I make it strong.”
Before either of them could come to terms with what was going on, entirely, the ancient, hardly-working flip-phone that Rogue insisted on using instead of anything made in the last twenty years, started buzzing.
“That thing could be a sex toy,” Jill said, slightly irked at the buzzing.
It kept buzzing.
“Yurk,” Rogue wretched. Puffing out his cheeks and pausing in a halfway-standing position, the big bear went pale, and then his eyes got all fluttery. He paused, holding the sides of his head, and looking about like he was going to lose the contents of his stomach. “Can, uh, one of you get that?”
The humor was finally starting to get to Jill, who decided maybe she could help out instead of just judgmentally staring at her one healthy mate.
“Remember that one time you convinced me that if my head started spinning, the best way to fix it was to drink more vodka?” King asked Rogue. It was starting to sound like a fraternity party. “Well, consider us even.”
Rogue laughed despite his obvious discomfort. As soon as his chuckling started, he also began to look incredibly ill. “Fair enough,” he finally croaked, patting King on the shoulder. “Give me a minute, huh? Just... one of you answer that?”
Jill already had the old Nokia in her hand, and was already flipping it over. “Hello?” she asked.
On the other end was just fuzzy static and a bit of a hiss. “Hello?” she asked again. “Hellooo?”
“Rogue?” The voice was raspy, sounded a little confused, and vaguely familiar. Whoever it was coughed lightly. She heard the flick of something – a cigarette lighter? “Draven?”
Without a second’s pause, Rogue jumped to his feet and snatched the handset from Jill’s hands. She glared at him for a second, but then shrugged and went back to putting crap in the kitchen cabinets as Rogue hunched over the countertop, talking very quietly.
“We gotta go,” he said as he stood up for a moment, before hunching back down, to brace himself on the counter. “Ugh, uh... maybe it can wait a few minutes.”
“Draven?” Jill’s passivity turned into a curled lip. “What could he have wanted? I thought he was on the run or in hiding or something.”
“He is,” Rogue sighed, managing to slowly settle himself back down into the same chair. “That is true. But there’s more.”
King snarled and released a low growl. “He’s a traitor.”
“He saved us, King,” Rogue was clearly losing his patience with this subject. “Whatever you think of him personally, he made his reasons for leaving the clan pretty clear.”
“But there was that mutant, that... experiment.”
The way his words curled from his lips made Jill’s stomach gurgle slightly. There had been a bear who attacked them, apparently a cousin or a brother, or... well it wasn’t ever terribly clear with these bears. Regardless, he attacked them, Jill filled him full of lead, and that was the end of it. And until just now, she hadn’t much thought about those events – mostly to protect herself, if she was being honest.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine, so he’s done some shady shit in the past, but Rogue’s right – he did save us from GlasCorp. Maybe he should have another chance? Maybe don’t think he’s out to get you for no particular reason?”
King grumbled and frowned down at the floor, momentarily defeated by logic, but still not liking it one damn bit.
“Fine,” he growled. “I don’t have to like him if there’s something that needs to happen. I’ll give him that.”
“Thank you,” Rogue said with a snarky grin. “Very generous of you. But we need to go. He said we were in a hurry, he said—”
“What is?” Jill cut in. “What’s the big hurry? What’s the rush?” Suddenly, something hit her in the stomach. And it was a hit. It was like a fist crashing straight into her gut, forcing the air out of her lungs. “Did he find someone? Something?”
“No,” Rogue said. “Someone found him.”
That, to her recollection, was the fastest that Jill had ever packed a bag, and the fastest Rogue ever moved. And no matter whether or not he’d admit it, King moved fast too. Whatever it was, he was either panicked, or hopeful.
As usual with King, it was hard to tell.
Very hard.
But something was bothering him. That much, Jill could see.
-8-
“What the hell was that thing? What’s up with all the bears everywhere?”
-Claire
“Why are you doing this?” Stone was grim-faced as ever as Fury gathered
some things in the pre-dawn darkness. “How are you going to find your way to town? And what are you going to do with a dog when you get it?”
Fury shrugged. “She gave me vague directions from the GlasCorp building to her house. And from there, she said something about a leash, and sacks of dog food, but to be honest with you, I figure I’ll just tell the dog to follow me and things will work out.”
Stone looked very irritated. “What if you get caught? What if you wander too close to GlasCorp and get taken back to... that place?”
“I won’t,” Fury said simply. “And even with being locked up for all those years, I know you can feel directions as clearly as I can. By the stars? The sun? Finding my way through the woods won’t be a problem.”
“You’re sure about this?” Stone had one of his brows furrowed in concern, but his face was softening. “Why? What’s the purpose of a tag-along dog?”
“It’ll make her happy,” Fury said, nodding toward Claire’s slumbering form. “That’s worth the danger. It’d be worth any danger.”
The two exchanged a quick glance, nodded, and before another moment could pass, Fury was shifted and running back toward the horror he’d just escaped. This time though, he was coming back with a friend.
And, apparently, a fifty pound sack of grain-free dog food.
*
Dawn was just breaking as Claire lifted her eyelids and looked up to the pale blue sky. Remnants of night were still clinging; the moon was still visible, if pale. The stars pricked the sky, but only barely.
She yawned, rolled over to her side and immediately noticed someone was missing.
“Where’s Fury?” she asked Stone, who was tending a fire already. He was squatting near it with his hands on the rocks ringing the pit. Even in the pale dawn, his bronze skin shown against the light from the fire. Claire, despite her best effort, couldn’t force herself to look away.
“He’s... bringing something,” Stone answered, cryptically.
Claire looked at him sideways and furrowed her brow. “Are you trying to be confusing?”
“No.”
A jingling sound from the fringe of woods around the small clearing where they’d settled the previous night. Claire’s ears perked up and she felt a little tingle creep down her back. “He didn’t. Did he?”
Stone arched an eyebrow as a very excited bark preceded a very winded-looking Fury.
Cleo charged straight at Claire, knocked her over, and gave her a massive tongue bath. Fury was laughing, despite the red face and heavy breathing. “That dog of yours is... uh, well, she sure is something.” He flopped the giant bag of food on the ground, and handed a duffel bag to Claire.
“What’s this?” she asked, already opening the zipper. “Wow! Thank you! Were you able to get in and get my stuff without any problem? And how the hell did you get her back here without her running off?”
Cleo shambled over to Fury and licked his fingers before sitting down on his feet. “You won’t believe this,” he said, “but I just told her what to do, and she did it. But we gotta get going. I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed before we cut off from civilization for a while.”
Claire grabbed Fury’s hand, and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she said. “I mean it – you... I can’t believe you did this for me.”
“I said I would,” he said with a grin. “And we bears do what we say, even if it’s sort of crazy. But come on, we need to get as much distance between ourselves and that building as we possibly can.”
She grabbed his hand and held him fast, refusing to let go. “I mean it,” Claire said. “I owe you. I owe you big.”
“Well,” Fury had another of those damn grins that made her knees go weak. “Don’t worry about it. For you? Getting your dog is the least of what I’d do.”
Without another word, he squeezed her hand, kissed her on the side of the neck, and wandered off to gather up the dog food. Cleo followed him, licking at his hand as Claire looked on, smiling.
*
“Okay,” Claire said, breathing slightly heavier than she was willing to admit and having slightly more trouble than she was ready to accept trying to keep up on the hike through the forest. There was only a tiny wheeze tapering from each breath, so that was good at least. “Here’s the deal.”
She sat down and Cleo lapped at her fingers, just as happy as ever. She smiled down at the bowling ball-headed pitbull and scratched her smiling friend behind the ears.
Maybe there’s no point in hiding it anymore. Both these guys keep looking at me and keep going slower, so it isn’t like they don’t know.
“We need to move,” Stone insisted, though he slowed to a halt. Fury went ahead a little further, to the edge of a clearing, before he climbed partway up a tree and looked around.
“All clear,” he called back. “We can rest if she needs to rest.”
“I do not need to rest,” Claire called back, red-faced and very obviously needing to rest. She pushed herself to her feet anyway, willing her body to keep going.
Fury slid backwards, turning a somersault and landing deftly on his feet. As he came back into earshot, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, “All right, that sounds good. Let’s keep going then. I figure we can get another ten miles before dark and—”
Before that other day with Eckert, Claire had never struck another human being. But right then, she claimed her second victim. She hauled back and planted an elbow right smack dab in the middle of Fury’s muscled stomach. He grunted, laughing, and then started to wheeze as the air swiftly exited his body, leaving a painful vacuum behind.
“Damn!” he sputtered, still laughing through the pain. “If you kill me, whose going to go get your dog?”
Stone held his face still, frowning deeply, but when Claire elbowed the other bear in the side, not even Stone could keep his composure. “I will,” he said. “Small price to pay to be rid of your terrible jokes.”
Hacking with laughter, Fury doubled over. He braced himself with his hands on his knees, his entire body trembling. When he finally stood back up, his face was purple, tears were running down either side of his face.
“You want another one?” Claire was a little red-faced still, but was smiling just the same. She wheeled back like she was about to plant another one in the bear’s gut, but instead she stumbled over a stick that was resting near her feet.
Fury caught her in his muscled arms, cradling her as easily as a grown man would cradle a newborn. The way he stared, the way his eyes caught the afternoon light, Claire couldn’t help staring back at them and feeling the quailing in her chest.
Unconsciously, she arched her back against those huge forearms, and felt her nipples pucker against the soft cotton of her ancient tee. “Maybe,” she whispered, “I do need a break.”
Stone tromped over, nearer to where Claire and Fury were staring at each other. He crouched, and brushed a fallen tendril of hair away from Claire’s slightly-puffy cheeks. After the hair was moved, she flicked her eyes in Stone’s direction, and stared at him instead. “How is this real?” she asked. The words trickled from her lips the same way laughter had slid off Fury’s lips like honey only moments before.
“It always has been,” the serious bear intoned, with his usual gravity. “I think... before you were born, before we were born, this was already real.”
She tilted her head to one side, clearly not knowing what he meant. In answer, Stone lifted his arm and snatched Claire’s hand. He flattened it against his considerably muscular side, the ripples reminding her of the way muscles were drawn on Superman. “What’s...?”
“You’re not the only one with that mark,” Stone said softly. He ran his fingertips down the sides of Claire’s face, watching the freckles on her cheeks as the skin dimpled under his fingertips. The way the light bounced off his eyes, the way it shadowed the lines that framed his cheekbones, it made her look away for fear of losing control of herself again.
Of course, looking over at Fury didn’t do a who
le lot of good in the whole ‘keeping her cool’ department.
The breath burned hot in Claire’s lungs, but something in Fury’s eyes took her out of the moment. “What is it?” she asked, when she sensed he was distracted; distant. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t respond, and neither did Stone, although his oppositely-colored eyes took on the same narrowed gaze. Stone gave away a bit more though, when he cocked his head and looked to the tree-line, obviously hearing something outside of Claire’s human earshot.
She twisted her head around, worked her way out of Fury’s arms, and closed her eyes, concentrating. She could hear something, but it wasn’t the helicopter chopping she had grown used to hearing. It wasn’t the sound of wind whipping through blades, or of gas being chugged through an ancient and amazingly inefficient engine.
But there was something.
A hum – a buzz – something.
“What is that?” Claire asked again. “I... what’s that noise?”
Stone closed his eyes. Fury’s were still narrowed as he studied the impending darkness. Fury shook his head, his long, brown curls tossing back and forth. “Not sure,” he said. “But I get the distinct feeling that sitting around and kissing probably isn’t going to be the best course of action right now.”
“What is?” Claire asked, as the buzzing grew closer, the humming more obvious by the second.
“Running,” Stone said, standing up, grabbing her hand and yanking Claire to her feet.
“Now,” Fury finished.
Before she could take a breath – before she could understand what was happening, what was going on, she felt her feet moving underneath herself. She felt the leaves crunching, the breath burning in her chest.
She was running.
From what? Claire had no idea. But if it spooked these two bears that much? She could deal with some sweaty pits, some aching feet, and some side stitches, and a little wheezing. But the inhaler in her back pocket would take care of the wheezing, and she had faith that something else would take care of whatever else came along.
