wolves & girls

RORY PAREDES. 22 years old. BALAM. WEREWOLF. "There are wolves, they would say. And there are stories about wolves and girls. Girls in red. All alone in the woods. About to get eaten up. Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth."

[incatsclothing]

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[incatsclothing]

I gotta kill that fucking worm.

[bladesandtrades]

[pm] I wouldn't try to understand it, you'll break your brain. [...] It's not all for sport but not all of it is [...] justified, either. [....] Sure.

[incatsclothing]

[pm] Oh, is that what happened to your brain? Shame. [...] Well, it sucks. Hunters suck. [...] Oookay, captain vague.

[taliasshaw]

Oh my god. You youth have no respect.

Hm. Okay. Veto.

[incatsclothing]

None at all <3

Sorry, you can't veto. He already approved it.

[madisonnotmaddie]

[pm] I'd love that very much. I don't love fireworks all the time, but they are pretty. It would be nice to hang out on the roof. Do you want me to bring anything?

[incatsclothing]

[pm] They're kind of cool sometimes. Like, it's cool that there's a socially acceptable way to blow shit up, isn't it? You don't have to bring anything. Just you.

[wildcmbcrsupdates]

Andrea Chaparro via Instagram, 07/01/2024.

[incatsclothing]

BITE THEHAND ( A RORY PAREDES PLAYLIST ).

↳ listen to the full playlist here!

[hotbearsawyer]

SHRIMP TO GO!

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Rory's Apartment PARTIES: @incatsclothing & @hotbearsawyer SUMMARY: Sawyer and Rory meet up to eat some Gobf fried shrimp! CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

The boom boom sauce recipe seemed easy enough to follow. There weren’t as many ingredients as Rory had assumed there would be, and the instructions really were as simple as just whisking everything together. Rory was still kind of in the beginning stages of learning how to cook — she’d followed a few of her mom’s recipes mostly from memory, and had enough lessons with Morgan that she felt relatively confident making simple things — but she was definitely confident in her ability to mix things together in a bowl. And the sauce, when she’d stuck it in the fridge, had looked… saucy, or whatever, so she was pretty sure it was fine.

She certainly hoped it was fine. Rory didn’t have a very wide array of friends. She never really had. There were a few people in town she liked, sure — Madison, Owen, Talia, Maggie, Cleo, Nova, even a few more — but things with Clem had shown her just how quickly blossoming friendships could sour. At any moment, Rory was well aware that any one of the people she considered to be a friend or a confidant could decide she was no longer worth the trouble and turn their back on her, so… it was good to have backups. And Sawyer seemed cool, actually. Sawyer seemed like the kind of person she could actually get along with.

All this to say, Rory needed the boom boom sauce to be good, or at least not so bad that it made Sawyer never want to hang out with her again. It was a decent amount of pressure to put on a sauce, but she thought it would be fine. She’d invited Sawyer over to her apartment, which she’d recently gone back to after her extended stay at Talia’s post-gunshot wound. And she wasn’t nervous, per say, but she wasn’t… not nervous, either. She tapped her fingers absently against her thigh, watching the door. She could hear shuffling in the hall, footsteps heading towards it. A second or two later, a knock sounded, and Rory got to her feet. Swinging the door open, she nodded. “Hey,” she greeted. “The sauce is in the fridge, but I’ve also got, like… ingredients, if you want to try to make a batch yourself. Did you bring space shrimp?”

—

This wasn’t a Gobf funeral where Sawyer had to convince some annoying internet stranger to eat space shrimp with her. Rory actually seemed more enthusiastic about eating random shrimp that Sawyer found out in Gatlin Fields. Unlike Nova. Ugh. No, she wasn’t going to think about how obnoxious Nova was. Instead she was going to just think about sharing some fried shrimp with some random person off the internet. Which, by the way, did not at all worry Sawyer. It seemed rather normal to go over to a stranger’s home. Rory seemed pretty chill anyway. Anyone who didn’t whine about food was a winner in her book.

With a container of space shrimp in head, Sawyer hopped up to the apartment building’s front door and walked through the hall to the apartment number. She knocked and was glad when the door swung open. “Hey! And yeah, you bet I did.” She grinned and held up the container. She had frozen most of her space shrimp collection, ensuring that it would last her a few months. It wasn’t like more space shrimp would ever fall from the sky again. Maybe not in her lifetime, at least. Sad. She walked into the apartment, glancing around at the space, deciding it could use some animal bones on display. “I’m sure the sauce is great.” 

She set the shrimp down on the kitchen counter and turned around to face Rory. She leaned back against the counter. “So I read online that we’ve gotta, like, heat up the shrimp in the oven or an air fryer. Some cooking advice blogs said fried shrimp would taste bad reheated in the microwave. Oh! Yeah, so I did have these in my freezer, but I let them thaw a little bit. Should be good to just pop them in or whatever.” 

—

The sight of the container caused Rory’s grin to widen, and she opened the door a little further to usher Sawyer inside. As the other woman walked by her, she caught a whiff of something musky and half-familiar, an animalistic scent that she wasn’t quite skilled enough to place. Sawyer was probably some kind of shifter, but Rory didn’t have enough experience with them to know off the bat what sort. Not a balam or a werewolf, but those were the only two she was really familiar with at this point. It didn’t matter. She liked Sawyer, and would have liked her even if she were human. Knowing she was a shifter was just an extra point in her favor, as far as Rory was concerned.

“Well, you’ll be the judge of that, I guess,” she replied. “And you’ve gotta be honest about it. Like, if it sucks, I want to know, you know? Because that probably means the recipe is shit, and I don’t want to keep using a shitty recipe. What if I make it again later, right? I need to know it’s actually good.” Sure, Rory had taste tested the sauce herself, but that had been in the midst of making it, and it was hard to trust your palette in those moments. She’d seen Cutthroat Kitchen, she knew that just because something tasted okay to the chef didn’t mean it was good. 

Watching Sawyer set the shrimp down, Rory brightened. “Oh! I think we have an air fryer, actually.” She didn’t even know if it was hers or Mickey’s, technically. For all she knew, it had been left in the apartment by the last tenant, but it worked and that was what was important. Rory moved over to the left of Sawyer and pulled it out of the cabinet, setting it on the counter and plugging it in. “That’s definitely our best bet. Have you ever reheated leftovers in one of these babies? Fucking game changer.” She set the air fryer to preheat. “This is going to be great, dude.”

—

“I will be the judge,” Sawyer teased. “Very judgy. Like a judge on a cooking show or whatever.” She knew well-enough that she would be the worst taste tester for anything. She had eaten a lot of strange things in her life. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes because she thought that a random piece of metal just looked tastier than anything else around her and she couldn’t ignore the growling in her stomach just at the sight of it. It had put her into strange predicaments throughout her life, when she would eat just about anything. 

“Perfect.” Sawyer grinned as Rory pulled out the air fryer. “I’ve yet to actually get one for myself. I keep meaning to because they seem wicked awesome, but …” She trailed off and shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t really need an air fryer when she could just … eat the shrimp. And she found so many of her meals and snacks while in her bear form that some kitchen appliance seemed unnecessary in her kitchen. Her barely used kitchen. “It’s going to be so great. You’re gonna love the taste of fried space shrimp. Very space-y. Though, I don’t know what space tastes like, but I’m sure it’s this.” 

She popped off the lid of the container. The scent of the shrimp, even a bit thawed, smelled amazing to her right then. But she needed to keep up some semblance of normal human behavior—okay, so she knew that talking about eating space shrimp was so not human behavior, but did it really matter? This town was filled with all sorts of supernatural beings. “Okay, so I know we’ve gotta wait on the shrimp to reheat, but,” she drew out the word but, “I’m thinking I can taste test the sauce. And maybe we can get some drinks going too.” Whatever it was about Rory, she was already liking the younger woman. Anyone who wanted to eat space shrimp and make sauce and drinks with her was good in her book. 

—

“Good. That’s exactly what I’m looking for, actually.” She almost wanted to ask what cooking shows Sawyer was into, but she figured it might be better to hold onto that question for when the dialogue got stale. She didn’t want Sawyer to get bored of her, after all, didn’t want to find the other woman making excuses to duck out because Rory was hard to be around. Sawyer was someone she thought could end up a friend, if she played her cards right.

She nodded, tapping a finger against the air fryer that might have been hers and might have been Mickey’s and might have been no one’s at all. “I use it all the time,” she said, which was true. “You can actually make, like, a decent steak in here. And like I said, it’s a total game changer for leftovers. Like, it actually makes them taste as good as they did at the restaurant, you know? Even the fast food shit.” She wasn’t sure why she was doing a commercial for an air fryer right now. Nerves, maybe, which was stupid. She never used to be nervous when trying to befriend people, but… well. A lot of things had changed for Rory lately. She was still trying to figure out how to get her feet back underneath her again. “I bet space totally tastes like that,” she agreed. “I mean, that’s where the shrimp is from, right? What else would it taste like?”

With the air fryer getting itself ready, Rory circled around to the fridge as Sawyer got the lid off the shrimp. She pulled out the container of sauce she’d prepared ahead of time, already chilled and ready to be used for the space shrimp. “It’s right here,” she said, popping the lid off and sliding it down the counter to Sawyer. “What kind of drinks were you thinking? I’ve got ingredients for a couple of different options in here.” She’d been practicing some bartending stuff at home, too, wanting to get better even if only to say that she had. “I can make cocktails, if you want.”

—

Sawyer smirked as she listened to Rory rattle on about air fryers, as if trying to sell it to her. She leaned one hand against the counter as she listened to all the wonderful magical things about air fryers. “Wow, do you sell these things?” she teased, as she tapped her hand against the air fryer. “You make a great saleswoman. You’ve almost got me convinced to buy one. Tell me more.” She leaned both elbows down onto the counter and rested her chin in her hands as she playfully joked around with Rory. She didn’t really want to hear more about air fryers, but she almost wanted to see if Rory could keep up a joke and charade. At the mention of space shrimp again, she laughed and nodded her head. “Yeah, true, they are from space so they should taste like it. I think some of them have tiny pieces of space rock and everything, if you think you can handle that.” 

Sawyer guessed that most humans wouldn’t be able to handle eating literal rocks. Though as she paid a bit more attention to her surroundings—the looks and smells—she realized that all too familiar animalistic smell. As Rory brought out the container of sauce, she stepped just a tiny bit closer towards Rory. The scent was coming from her. Sawyer tapped her fingers against the counter, debating if she should bother bringing up the possibility that they were both maybe shifters of some sort. Maybe Rory could handle space shrimp with bits of space rock, depending upon what type of shifter she was. 

“Don’t worry, my paws are clean,” she joked as she dipped her finger into the sauce. She popped her finger into her mouth and nodded her head. “Mmmm,” she hummed. “Yummy.” Sawyer slid the sauce back over to Rory. “Definitely going to go well with the shrimp.” She tapped her finger against her chin as she thought about what cocktail might go well with shrimp. Margs were always a great option, but those tended to be her go to drink. If she had a bartender here ready to make whatever, maybe she should shake it up a bit. “Maybe mojitos? Something refreshing and sweet to go with our savory space shrimp?” 

—

She liked the way Sawyer joked. If the tone had been different, Rory might have thought she was being made fun of, but it didn’t feel mean spirited with the way Sawyer said it, and so she laughed. “Yeah, you caught me,” she replied dryly. “I’m actually in an air fryer MLM. I invited you here to trick you into joining under me so I can get a free trip to Utah for the big conference. If you get someone to join under you, you can come to Utah, too. We can be roommates. Isn’t that the dream?” She grinned, glancing to the shrimp with some interest. Did they really have pieces of space rock in them? Would that do crazy things to her digestive track? She wondered if balam — if werewolves were built with digesting things like that in mind. There was no telling what she got up to when shifted, even with the small flashes of memory she’d been experiencing as of late. Maybe she’d eaten rock before, too. “Well, I definitely want one with space rock in it. I wonder if these shrimp are technically aliens?” 

She didn’t miss the way Sawyer stepped in a little closer, though she wasn’t entirely bothered by it. Rory had spent enough time at the Chimera to know when another shifter was sniffing her out. There were some patrons there who considered that sort of thing to be rude, but Rory had never been among them. She had been desperate for companionship since she’d first arrived in this town. In a way, having someone sniff her out like this felt like some kind of validation, even if she’d never admit to it.

Sawyer didn’t seem too concerned with subtlety, at least not based on the way she referred to her hands as paws. Rory found herself smiling faintly, pleased by that just as much as she was pleased by the compliment to the sauce. “Sick,” she nodded, setting the sauce aside until the shrimp was finished. Drinks were the new priority, so she started fetching a few ingredients… and subtly googling ‘how to make a mojito’ from behind the open door of the fridge. It looked simple enough, so she grabbed some limes from the fruit bowl and the white rum and simple syrup. Luckily, she’d stuck a mint plant on the windowsill when she’d first decided she wanted to learn how to make more legit cocktails. She grabbed a few leaves from it to muddle. “I can totally do mojitos,” she said, voice full of unearned confidence. “I’ll have them done before the shrimp’s ready.” The air fryer buzzed, announcing it was preheating. “Want to throw them in the basket?”

—

“Oh Ursa Major, I should’ve known,” Sawyer groaned, the sly smile still plastered across her face. “This was all an MLM scheme. Can’t believe you’ve done this to me!” She tapped her fingers along her chin as she still held up her head. “Though you’re really enticing me with this Utah trip. I bet I know a few people that I could convince to buy an air fryer, and then off we’ll go, flying to Utah! Roommates for the whole conference! We’ll order room service too—shrimp cocktails.” She noticed how Rory looked over at the shrimp, and she could only hope that whatever Rory was meant that she’d be comfortable eating space shrimp and space rock. “You know, I hadn’t thought about that at all. I guess they are technically aliens.” She looked back over at the shrimp herself. “They mostly taste similar-ish to shrimp from earth, but…I don’t know. I wonder if they have different shrimp anatomy. Ugh, actually, I wonder what else was on Gobf. If it had shrimp rings, there had to have been, like, life there, right? I wonder if there was more shrimp or something else.” She hated that that stupid planet blew up before they could learn more about it, find out if there was anything interesting on the planet itself. 

Rory didn’t seem all that surprised by Sawyer stepping closer to her, so Sawyer took that as a good sign. She might’ve been familiar enough with the world of shifters that she knew what Sawyer was investigating. She caught Rory’s faint smile at the mention of her paws, which further confirmed what Sawyer suspected. Luckily her compliment on the sauce wasn’t a lie either. She thought it would taste perfect with the shrimp. “Perf,” Sawyer replied, excited about the mojitos. She turned her attention to the air fryer. “Yeah, totally.” She did as instructed and looked at the machine, debating the next steps. She pulled out her phone real quick and googled how long she should let them heat. “Oh, it says it’ll take like five to six minutes? Awesome.” She set the timer, feeling accomplished that she managed to do such a simple task. Maybe she should get an air fryer. 

“Oh! I almost forgot.” She walked over to where she left her messenger bag at the front door. She shoved around through the items until she spotted the two straws. “Tada!” she announced as she walked back over to the kitchen. She held up two straws—both were a dark blue with little cartoon moons and stars on them. “For our space themed drinks! It’s totally fine if we don’t have any of the colorful stuff or edible glitter, but these will go perfect with our drinks. I managed to find them at a shop downtown.” Not that she was searching that hard. No way. Just casually looking at a bunch of stores for space straws.  

—

She laughed at Sawyer's dramatics, though she noted the odd exclamation. Ursa Major. Rory knew about stars, of course; her father was an astronomy nerd, a telescope set up on the back deck year round. That was why Rory and her siblings were all given space-themed names — their dad loved the stars. Ursa Major, the Great Bear… Bear shifter, then? Like the old guy at the salt lick that one time? Rory filed the thought away, though she didn’t ask about it. It struck her as a little rude to ask someone what kind of shifter they were. “Shrimp cocktails would be great. And, of course, the room service is on the MLM’s dime, so we might as well go all out. I bet the hotel has some kind of shrimp meal, too. Utah’s definitely known for its shrimp.” The fantasy was stupid, but it was kind of nice to imagine she and Sawyer could be friends, or whatever. Sharing shrimp cocktails in a fancy hotel room didn’t sound so bad. “Maybe their insides are different?” She suggested, squinting at the shrimp. “I mean, who knows, right? I’m not a shrimp scientist.” She considered whether there could have been life on the exploded planet. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? “Maybe they’d all already died off,” she suggested. “Like, they were probably shrimp-like, too, right? So maybe they had a super short, shrimp-sized lifespan.” That felt better than the idea of a planet full of people just… exploding, or whatever.

Sawyer got to work setting up the shrimp in the air fryer as Rory finished up the mojitos, and she was reminded briefly of working in the kitchen with her sister as a teenager. It was rare for Rory’s mother to invite her to help cook in the kitchen — there had been a lot of kids in the house, and the older ones were more likely to be tasked with cooking — but sometimes, when it was just Rory and Celeste at home, they’d cook together. They used to move around each other like water parting around a stone, a seamless thing. This, with Sawyer, felt a little clunkier — they were still mostly strangers, after all — but it was still nice. She still enjoyed it. “Yeah,” she confirmed, “it’s pretty quick. That’s why they’re so easy to sell for the MLM.”

She looked up as Sawyer declared she’d almost forgotten something, brow furrowed as the other girl dug around in her bag. When she produced the straws, Rory couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, those are sick,” she said delightedly. “And that reminds me!” She moved to the cabinet, grabbing a small container and wriggling it. “I did get some edible glitter. It was, like, in the checkout line.” It definitely wasn’t, but she didn’t want to look too desperate. She moved back to the mojitos, sprinkling a bit of the edible glitter into the glasses. “Ta-da! What do you think?” They looked good. Rory had no idea if they’d taste decent.

—

“Oh yeah, that’s what I’ve always heard about Utah. It’s famous for its Church of Latter-day Shrimps too. The shrimp culture is crazy out in Shrimp Lake City,” Sawyer joked, flashing a smile towards Rory. Though now she was back to investigating the space shrimp, as she wondered if maybe there was something different about these. Everything about them looked the same as shrimp on Earth, but it didn’t make sense for how Earth shrimp ended up on a planet in space. Unless Bellamy and Nova were right, that this was all some sort of conspiracy. But Sawyer didn’t like that idea. She much preferred believing that Gobf was real. “They probably were. Just a planet of shrimp. Unless, maybe the shrimp on the rings were the old life. Maybe Gobf had a weird gravity or atmosphere thing going on where the former shrimp life all ended up in its atmosphere or whatever.” She paused. “I’m not at all a scientist, if that’s not obvious. I don’t know how planets work.” 

Sawyer chuckled as Rory joked about the MLM again, and she folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the counter. She watched as Rory finished making the mojitos, and she couldn’t help but think about how casual this all was. Sawyer wasn’t exactly the type to go over to a friend’s place to hangout or invite someone over to hers. If she was meeting up with someone, it was somewhere else—somewhere outdoors or at one of the restaurants in town. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have someone else in the kitchen with her—not that she ever spent much time in the kitchen anyway. She usually found herself lounging on the couch with her father and brother while her mother and younger sister cooked. Standing there in Rory’s kitchen and joking around with her felt almost nice. 

At the sight of edible glitter, Sawyer clapped her hands together. “Amazing! We’re so staying on theme here.” She grinned and leaned against the counter. “They look great!” She plopped the straws in the glasses and took one for herself. She knew what mojitos tasted like at a bar, but she still didn’t consider herself the best judge when it came to the taste of things. She took a sip of the mojito and hummed. “Mmm, yum,” she said, giving Rory a nod of approval. “You should try selling space mojitos at whatever bar you work at. Capitalize on Gobf or whatever.” She set her glass down right as the air fryer timer dinged. “And now it’s shrimp time!” 

—

Rory laughed in response to Sawyer’s statement. She doubted there was a Church of Latter-day Shrimps in Utah… but it did sound like the kind of thing that would pop up in Wicked’s Rest, if they weren’t careful. This town had a way about it, sometimes; the oddest thoughts you could imagine seemed to materialize from thin air, becoming reality no matter how little sense it made. That was how you wound up with a new planet appearing in the sky one day without warning, then exploding itself into smithereens and raining shrimp down on the Earth the next. Rory wondered if this sort of thing was observed elsewhere, too. How could an exploding planet be visible in Wicked’s Rest but not make the news in Portland? Sometimes, it felt better not to question it at all. “I mean, that sounds as probable as any other theory I’ve heard,” she replied, shaking her head. “None of it makes any sense, right? I doubt scientists can explain Gobf or space shrimp. They’d probably just tell us we imagined it or something stupid like that.”

It felt oddly comfortable, in the kitchen with Sawyer. It had been like that back home with her siblings, where they knew each other well enough to work together fluidly without any kind of issue, but Rory had struggled to match the same energy with anyone else. She’d come close with Clem, but… well. That whole thing had been ruined before it ever even started, hadn’t it? Even if Clem’s insistence that she was a werewolf before she was ready to hear it hadn’t torn their friendship apart, Rory doubted it would have survived the eventual revelation that it was her who had torn Clementine’s life apart with her teeth. Maybe it was better that their friendship had been slain in infancy. It was less painful that way. Still… working with Sawyer like this made her miss Clem a little, as stupid as it was. It ached more than she’d thought it would.

“We’re totally killing it,” she agreed with a grin, inspecting the mojitos. They looked even better when Sawyer plopped the straws in, too. She found herself nonsensically nervous as Sawyer took a sip, as if the mojito being bad would turn Sawyer against her entirely. But the fear was unfounded; Sawyer liked the mojito, and Rory’s grin widened. “Oh, we could never sell anything like this where I work,” she replied. “The owner would flip. One time he accidentally got a shipment of someone else’s ingredients, and he almost had a heart attack. Apparently blue drinks are too much for him, I don’t even want to know what he’d think about something this glittery.” She took a sip of her own mojito, humming at the taste. A little too strong, probably, but not the worst thing she’d ever made. It’d probably pair nicely with the shrimp. “Paper plates are under the sink!” She said, leaning against the counter. “Want to grab a couple?”

—

"My theory is that the scientists were too busy with the moon. They had so much more going on with moon photos and the astronauts and stuff, that they didn't want to talk about Gobf right then." Sawyer was mostly joking about that conspiracy theory. It didn't make any sense if you thought about it for more than five seconds. But she could keep up a stupid joke for a while. "And then Gobf exploded so..." She shrugged, though a silly smile stayed on her lips. "Now it's why everyone is trying to convince us it was fake." 

She raised her brow as she took another sip of her space mojito. "Really? The owner sounds totally lame," Sawyer commented. "Blue drinks are fun. Definitely a way to get in more customers who will pay for overpriced drinks. Especially if you add glitter to them. He sounds like such a snooze." She decided that if she ran a bar, it would be space themed. Astronauts, planets, stars, all that sort of stuff to really draw in a crowd that liked a themed bar. Definitely she would have these mojitos on the menu. "Where is that you work again?" 

"Can do!" Sawyer said, turning towards the sink and grabbing two paper plates. She should have stopped somewhere and tried to find some space themed paper plates. They probably had some at a store somewhere... but then that might seem like she was putting far too much effort into the whole space shrimp thing. She hummed to herself as she handed a plate to Rory. She opened up the air fryer and grabbed a couple pieces of shrimp and placed them on her plate. "On the count of three, we try them together, yeah?" Sawyer suggested. She grabbed a shrimp, blowing on it a little to cool it off. She wanted to watch Rory's expression at the taste of the space shrimp. "One, two, three." She bit into the crunchy shrimp. 

—

“I guess that makes sense,” Rory agreed, ignoring the brief surge of quiet resentment at the mention of the moon. It was stupid, of course; the moon was not the source of her problems, even if she sometimes wished it were. It would be simpler, she thought, if she could blame all her issues on a celestial body so far away that she could never hope to touch it, but that just wasn’t the case. Her problems fell at her own feet, or at the feet of people she loved who had lied to her for reasons she still did not understand. “Those moon pictures were pretty lame, anyway, in comparison to Gobf. They picked the wrong thing to focus on. Everybody already knows about the moon.”

She found herself feeling a little defensive on Harvey’s behalf, despite the fact that she often called him totally lame herself. “He’s a good guy,” she said. “Just… a little old school, I guess. Likes things simple. He’s not interested in making more money, I guess, he just wants to serve his normal drinks and make sure people leave him alone.” Which was, frankly, a goal Rory could get behind. “The Wormhole. It’s in Worm Row. Kind of a dive.” Kind of was being generous. 

As Sawyer gathered the plates, Rory took a moment to let herself feel proud of all of this. She made a friend; she made sauce; she made mojitos. She didn’t have a lot to be proud of, these days, and so those three relatively simple things felt like a lot. The feeling would probably fade later but for right now, she felt pretty content. And she had shrimp to eat, which was a nice added bonus. Taking the plate, she loaded it up with shrimp and offered Sawyer a nod. She waited until she got to three, then took a big bite. The shrimp settled on her tongue, and… 

“It just tastes like shrimp.” What a let down.

[madisonnotmaddie]

@incatsclothing replied to your post “[pm] Dude, those house shoes are sick. And I'd...”:

[pm] They're great, seriously. Hell yeah! Are you free this weekend?

​[pm] They seemed perfected for you.

I absolutely am!

[incatsclothing]

[pm] Want to come over? We can probably catch a firework show from the roof of my building.

[howlinjack]

@incatsclothing replied to your post “[pm] Hey. It's Rory. From [...] the woods? This is...”:

[pm] Wow. Do you ever think you might have too much downtime? Buddy, I hate to tell you this, but I don't think you were ever uphill to begin with. [...] No, so far you're the only tree-punching weirdo I've run into. Which is good news for you. It means your tree punching title is secure.

​[pm] It's summertime, students are on vacation. And I probably need to get better hobbies or get out more...yeah, you're probably onto something.

Nah, probably not. Especially not with this, uh, wolf-shaped boulder we're pushing. But hey, there's a promised land uphill somewhere, right?

Oh good, then the competition pool stays small. For now.

Hey, quick question for you, actually, sorry.

Do you lock yourself up dur

Does it wo

Do you hurt people t

What's your...full moon approach? Tactic?

[incatsclothing]

[pm] I'm definitely on to something. Do you need someone to help you make friends? I know this old guy who probably Maybe you should get really into classic cars or something.

Sure. If the bolder doesn't roll back down and crush us next full moon. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

Careful, this town is probably full of dudes who punch trees.

Okay.

[user swallows uncomfortably.]

[...]

I go out in the woods as far as I can and [...] chain myself to a tree. But I've only been doing that the last couple months, so I don't know if it works long term.

[taliasshaw]

So his car is ancient. Doesn't mean he is. And I'm older than him, so tread carefully.

Okay, I missed that in the conversation. What exactly will he be wearing?

[incatsclothing]

Okay, so you're both old?

[user attaches the same image she sent daniel.]

[danielabrams]

Sure. Come on over.

[incatsclothing]

On my way!

[danielabrams]

That's fine. What color are you thinking?

[incatsclothing]

Half pink, half purple, orange stripe down the middle.

[incatsclothing]

@loveandluc replied to your post “[pm] I'm so sorry- Mickey said there wasn't...”:

[pm] [d: Not white and not *that* tight and that's not the point] I'm so sorry.

​[pm] Hey, I'm just happy you're both getting laid. Can I send him pics of you in the denim thong?

[bladesandtrades]

[pm] Yeah. We're They're not taught to think of the things they hunt as any different than animals, alright? Dangerous animals. Lot of them, anyway. So yeah, people hunt for sport and so do hunters. I can put my ear to the ground for you.

[incatsclothing]

[pm] How do they explain us having jobs, and paying bills, and living our fucking lives, then? They're dangerous, too. Hunting people for sport. Jesus. [...] Thanks. Do you [...] get a lot of them coming into your shop, or whatever?

[infinityandmadness]

[Doesn't see the screenshots]

I don't, though? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about!

Look, you're clearly never going to shut up about this, are you?

So, I'm going to do what you should have done the first time I was apparently an asshole to you.

[Blocks Rory again]

[incatsclothing]

[user takes being blocked as a sign that she won the argument.]

[incatsclothing]

TIMING: sometime before rory bit madison. LOCATION: madison's apartment. PARTIES: @madisonnotmaddie & @incatsclothing. SUMMARY: rory goes over to madison's to watch a movie. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

There was something comforting about horror movies. It sounded stupid, Rory knew — movies about terrifying situations, full of blood and guts and entrails, designed to be unsettling shouldn’t have comforted anyone — but it was true. In horror movies, everything was formulaic. You could pick out every trope with ease, could pinpoint the exact musical beats meant to make your heart pound, could pick apart the makeup decisions and the special effects failures. Horror movies were like a warm blanket for Rory, who’d come to love the genre.

They weren’t like that for everyone, though. And that was all right. Madison, she had learned, preferred something a little softer. The last time Rory had come over for a movie night — so soon after the basement and Brigit’s death that she’d still been trembling a little, even if she’d hidden it well — Madison had watched horror movies with her without question or complaint. Rory had quietly lost herself in the artificial trauma, temporarily forgetting about the real thing. It had worked for her. It also meant that, this time, they’d watch something a little more Madison’s speed.

Howl’s Moving Castle had been put up on the screen quickly after Rory’s arrival, and after the credits rolled, she’d clicked play on Kiki’s Delivery Service without hesitation. Movie night was more fun if you didn’t limit yourself to just one movie… and Rory didn’t really want to leave just yet. “I’m going to pop some more popcorn while it’s starting,” she announced, standing up. “No need to pause or whatever.” She was pretty comfortable in Madison’s living room, at this point; she no longer felt like she had to tiptoe around the other girl’s apartment (though Rory had never been one to tiptoe for long). “Do you want the jalapeno seasoning?” 

—

Hanging out with Rory was something special. Here was someone who Madison had been convinced was rude and not good to hang out with, but as it turned out, she’d been very wrong. She was decent at admitting when she was wrong, or at least she thought she was. She could be, in this particular case. She wanted to be, because even if it felt a bit weird, she liked the vibes that Rory gave off and wondered if Rory could sense any reciprocal vibes from her. Madison wanted to like the same things Rory did, but horror movies were still very much a work in progress. 

Besides, friendships were about balance and so they could trade off, and it wasn’t like Rory only liked horror movies. She seemed plenty agreeable to watch other things too, and today they’d watched Howl’s Moving Castle, and then Rory had chosen something else, and that made Madison feel happy – she wasn’t ready to be alone, and Rory’s company was one of her favorite companies to have.

“Popcorn sounds good.” She knew that she didn’t have to tell Rory where to find anything – she’d figured it all out pretty quickly, which made sense, because she seemed like the sort of person who would always have a good memory and who remembered everything. “Jalapeno seasoning sounds perfect.” She watched the opening scene, though she was more focused on the sound of the popcorn popping in the background and Rory’s footsteps making themselves at home in her apartment. “Maybe bring some more over, just in case we need to add in extra?” She called out. “I don’t want you to miss too much of the movie!”

—

Her oldest sister once said that Rory had a habit of making herself comfortable a little too quickly. She’d meant it as an insult, frustrated that her kid sister wouldn’t stay out of her room when she had a boy over, but Rory had stubbornly refused to take it as such. It was a good thing, wasn’t it? Being able to pretend you belonged hard enough to convince someone else you did? Maybe she’d never been able to convince Stella that she belonged anywhere — Stella had seen with her own eyes that Rory didn’t even belong in her own family, after all — but it had been easy enough to convince whatever boyfriend Stella had that month that Rory fit in. 

She thought it was easy to convince Madison, too. This wasn’t a bad thing, of course; it didn’t mean that Madison was stupid or easy to fool, though Rory did think her friend could be a little naive at times. (Again, not a bad thing, just a fact.) If anything, it made hanging out with Madison feel better. Rory got to pretend she belonged, and Madison let her. She never questioned it, never asked the kinds of questions that made Rory feel itchy and small and unsteady. She just let Rory help herself to her cabinets, her cupboards, whatever. And Rory liked that. Rory liked a lot of things about hanging out at Madison’s place, really.

The popcorn was popping in the microwave, so Rory popped open the cabinet to snag the seasoning. She knew Madison would say yes to the flavor even before she said it; she’d gotten familiar with all of Madison’s favorites by now. “Bet,” she grinned, tossing the container idly from one hand to the other as she watched the popcorn through the small window of the microwave door. “Oh, that’s smart,” she agreed, nodding her head. “It doesn’t really matter if I miss much, though. I’ve seen it a million times. It’s just… one of those that’s fun to rewatch, right? All nostalgic and shit. You want another drink, or are you good?”

—

She liked that Rory seemed to already feel so comfortable. Madison was quite deeply aware of the fact that she needed people to feel comfortable but it also just felt good. To have a friend who was comfortable around her and who was good with making herself at home in Madison’s apartment. Rory, from all that she’d gathered, was a picky person and to have her approval in any form was a massive and incredible win.

She and Rory got along. It wasn’t as though Madison considered herself someone difficult to get along with, but again, Rory seemed picky and the fact that she wanted to spend time together even after their initial meeting and argument meant the world to Madison. Even if being near Rory did make Madison’s skin feel sort of weird, and made her a bit itchy, but that didn’t matter so much, not really. All that mattered was that they enjoyed each other’s company 

“I know, but I still don’t want you to miss much! It’s a fantastic rewatch, for sure for sure, but I also don’t want you to be doing all the work while I’m cozy and comfortable on the couch.” There was also a part of her that needed to make sure Rory’s presence wasn’t some sort of blip of the imagination, that she was here. Though the itchiness of her skin told her that Rory was nearby. The itchiness should have been uncomfortable, but much like how she’d memorized the smell of Rory’s shampoo, it made her feel at home. “I’m good on drinks for now, though I might need to make some sort of something later!”

—

The sound of the popcorn cooking echoed through the space, each small pop of a kernel bouncing around in the bag easy for Rory’s sharp ears to pick up. She was good at making microwave popcorn for this reason; she tended to be able to listen well enough to know when to pull the popcorn from the microwave without burning it but while still ensuring that the maximum number of kernels possible ended up popped. Right now, though, her attention was split three ways: the popcorn, the movie, and Madison. The last item on the list was what had most of her attention, of course. Madison was definitely more interesting than a bag of popcorn or a movie she’d seen a thousand times before.

“It is a good rewatch,” she agreed. Then, with a laugh, she shook her head. “Let’s not get dramatic, Mads. Popping a bag of popcorn and grabbing sodas from the fridge isn’t really work, right?” This wasn’t even the sort of thing she’d have complained about if her siblings had made her do it back home. (Of course, back home, Rory would have been too thrilled at the idea of her siblings willingly hanging out with her to really complain about much of anything. It was every child’s nature to look up to their older siblings. Rory, despite her cool exterior, was much the same.)

She nodded as Madison assured her that she was all good on drinks, though she knew the motion wouldn’t be visible from the other room. She grabbed herself a soda all the same, spinning back towards the microwave a second before it beeped and popping it open to grab the bag. “Okay, one bag of popcorn, coming in hot,” she announced as she made her way back over to the couch. “Emphasis on the hot. Watch your fingers.”

—

Rory called her a nickname and Madison didn’t hate how it made her feel. Normally Salem was the only one allowed to call her anything other than Madison, but Mads felt good coming from Rory’s lips. Right, even. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had all too many friends outside of her family before, and so she’d never really been able to experiment with how it felt for other people to call her other things. “It’s still something that you’re doing. It’s not really work, no, but it’s also not something I should just like, take for granted and stuff, so…” Her siblings paid attention to her at home, but she had been raised to always be extra polite, just in case. Even though this didn’t seem like one of those just in case cases, she wanted to be sure. She didn’t want to mess things up with Rory, not when they’d only recently settled into a comfortable friendship.

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, smiling genuinely. “I think that together, we can easily handle this popcorn.” Because that was what friends were for – to make anything and everything more easy, even things that were seemingly easy by nature, like opening up a bag of microwave popcorn. She opened the bag up and quickly poured it into an empty bowl that sat between the two of them. Madison grabbed a few pieces with her fingers and popped them into her mouth, crunching them and nodding before she looked back over to Rory, “they are all safe, you’ve got my word.” She gave a half-salute sort of gesture, holding out the bowl toward Rory. “Though it will absolutely be improved with jalapeno seasoning, as most things are. Well, maybe not, like, water?” She scrunched her face up, “but we could always try that sometime.” She rearranged herself, sitting crossed-legged on the couch. “Let me know when I can hit play again.” Because she had paused the movie, no matter what Rory had said, it didn’t feel right letting the movie keep on playing, even just the beginning, while Rory wasn’t right near Madison. “I love Jiji so much, you know? If I had a black cat I might have to name it after him.”

—

Rory had never been what anyone might call soft spoken. If anything, she was the opposite. She was loud, and brash, and opinionated. When something bothered her, she made sure everyone knew about it. When she felt something was unfair, she didn’t often stew in silence. Her parents had tried to instill manners into her as much as most parents tried instilling manners into their kids, but Rory wasn’t always sure it had been a successful endeavor. She didn’t think herself rude, most of the time, but she also wasn’t the same level of polite that Madison was. She would have never felt bad about someone else getting popcorn and soda while she sat on the couch, would have taken it for granted without thinking. Madison took it into consideration without so much as thinking about it, though. It was kind of nice, being… thought of, she guessed, even if she found it mostly unnecessary. “Well, you don’t have to worry about it,” she assured Madison with a small smile. 

The smile widened a little as she made her way back to the sofa, huffing a small laugh at her friend’s confidence. “Oh, yeah, it doesn’t stand a chance,” she agreed, settling back onto the couch as Madison grabbed a few kernels. “Glad to hear that,” she said, reaching forward to grab some kernels of her own. “Nah, I bet jalapeno water would be great. Water’s boring, right? It’s always better when you add flavoring.” She passed Madison a soda, leaning back on the couch. “Ready when you are,” she said with a nod, eyes flickering to the screen. It was paused on a still image of the little animated cat, and she felt her chest warm at the sight. “I’d love a black cat,” she nodded. “They’re great.” She’d love any cat, really, but she was determined to wait for one to come to her. That was how you knew a cat was meant for you, she was sure of it. 

—

“Okay, then I won’t worry.” Or at least, she wouldn’t worry too much. She’d try her best to not worry at all, but she was a worrier by nature and therefore she knew that she couldn’t follow through on all of that, and Rory was someone who made her want to follow through on everything she could. She felt connected to Rory, and that wasn’t something that Madison had any intention of taking for granted, ever. Not now, and not in the future where she hoped they still got together to watch movies or do other things that friends did. She knew what friends did, in more than just theory, but she’d never had someone in her life quite like Rory. She wasn’t disliked back home, but she’d never had a real best friend. Friends, in passing, but that was mostly just so they all had someone to sit with at lunchtime and to be in a group with in AP Bio. Or because they were all on the same soccer team. Being on the same soccer team had helped her have many friends, but here Rory was, not someone who played soccer and not someone who she needed to sit with during lunch. Here Rory was – exceptional and extraordinary and choosing to spend time with Madison.

She shrugged. “Then we’ll have to try jalapeno water sometime. But maybe not right now. But it could be the next new viral trend!” A glimmer of mischief flashed over her eyes and her lips curled up into a brighter and more relaxed smile. “Black cats are great. I’d have to ask Euler his thoughts, but I think so long as I made sure the cat liked him, he’d be chill. If you had a black cat, that’d be even better!” She faced Rory, “ ‘cause like, then I could hang out with it but it wouldn’t live here and you seem like you’d be an amazing cat parent.” Madison wondered if the cat would make Rory happy – if it would, Rory needed to find one (or have a cat find her, cat distribution system and all that), because if there was one thing Madison felt a hundred percent confident on, it was the fact that Rory deserved good things. “Do you have a set name you want for a cat, or would it be more based on what name seemed to fit whatever cat found you?”

—

It was nice, how easily Madison accepted what Rory told her. Rory said she didn’t have to worry, and so Madison agreed that she wouldn’t. It wasn’t the kind of thing Rory had ever really experienced with anyone else, wasn’t something she’d had before. Most of the time, she felt as though she was fighting to prove every claim she made, even the most simple ones. She was the youngest, after all, and being the youngest was so often synonymous with being disbelieved. She’d gotten used to her siblings, who googled everything she said ‘just to double check.’ It wasn’t something they did to be cruel, she knew; it was probably a natural thing. You didn’t want to believe you could learn something new from your baby sister. In school, too, she’d had a reputation for inventing things, though she really wasn’t much of a liar. It was just… something people assumed about you when you were the sort of person who skipped class to smoke behind the bleachers, she guessed. She’d probably earned the disbelief, but it still felt nice to have a situation where it was absent. It still felt good to have Madison simply accept what she said as simple fact, even if it was something as simple as he saying Madison didn’t need to worry. 

She let out a laugh as Madison proclaimed that they could try jalapeno water sometime, wrinkling her nose. “I’ll try it if you try it,” she agreed. It was an old dare, one she made with her siblings and friends all the time. Mutually assured destruction, sure, but also mutually assured fun. “Maybe it’ll make us TikTok famous or something.” Which wasn’t something Rory wanted, if she was being entirely honest, but it might be fun to achieve with Madison all the same. “I bet he’d get along with a cat. Animals that live in the same house warm up to each other sooner or later, right? Even, like, cats and dogs.” Her family had never been big on pets — her dad used to joke that he had enough animals living under his roof already, ruffling the hair of whichever kid was close to him to punctuate the thought — but Rory had been to plenty of houses with pets of all sorts, and they usually got along. It was easy for her to assume, then, that having two pets of different types was a simple thing. “If I had a black cat, you could hang out with them any time you wanted,” she agreed with a grin. She felt validated by Madison claiming she’d be a good cat parent, using it to further her unfounded belief in its truth. “I don’t have a set name or anything,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’d want to choose a name to match the cat, you know? Make sure it was a good one, make sure it fit.” 

—

There wasn’t even a question in her mind of whether or not she’d believe what Rory said. Rory was someone who she’d grown very close to in not too much time, but Madison chose to see that as perhaps a sign that they were always meant to find each other. Throughout her life, Madison had often been believed and trusted – at least up until she started talking about sensing things that were supposedly not there –  but she’d quickly learned to stop talking about any of that and had resorted to superhero metaphors and found other things she was interested in. Soccer and math were much more acceptable topics of conversation than her feeling the need to vibe check everyone around her and figure out what was going wrong – or thinking that something was going very much wrong. Marielle had given her answers to that, but she had moved here so that she’d understand in a far more complete manner. At least she was off to a small start with all of that.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” She almost wanted to make Rory pinky swear on it, but for now, just the thought of an agreement was good enough. More than good enough, if she really thought about it for more than half of a millisecond. “You never know. I don’t even know the exact, like, algorithm to becoming TikTok famous, but we’ll see.” While creating some sort of viral trend could be fun, it wasn’t the main reason why Madison had agreed. She agreed because it was something else to do with Rory and that alone made it worthwhile – made it feel like a win. It felt good when Rory remarked that Euler would probably get along with a cat – that it was something natural, even. That it was inevitable. “I – yes!” She nodded enthusiastically. “I guess it’s just like, made up that cats and dogs will never get along because there is no way that someone was able to examine every possibility or look at every set of cat and dog in the whole wide world – so maybe it’s like, even a rude assumption that they won’t get along. Maybe they get along very well!” She liked the idea of going and visiting Rory’s future cat. She’d make sure to spoil it (with her friend’s permission, of course) and do everything she could to see it as often as she could. “Yes, that makes sense. I picked Euler’s name once I’d met him. You’re right, you want the sort of name that fits.”

—

She grinned as Madison solidified a deal between them, the expression sharp but not unkind. A Cheshire Cat grin, her brother used to call it, and Rory had liked that. It had felt like a validating metaphor, even if it was a silly thing to feel validated by. Her grin was that of a cat, so it didn’t matter that shifting didn’t come as naturally to her as it did to her siblings. Her grin was that of a cat, so she belonged. She didn’t feel she needed that to belong here, with Madison; she and Madison were not the same species, and Madison didn’t even know about the supernatural underbelly of the world around her. And yet, Rory never felt as though she was bending over backwards to make Madison recognize that she was someone worth having around. Madison made her feel that way without even trying, most of the time, and Rory liked that. 

“I think we’d figure it out. There’s some guy I’ve seen online who has, like, a billion followers on YouTube, and all he does is talk about history or whatever. If he can do that, we can totally blow up on TikTok.” She nodded along as Madison spoke. People made a lot of assumptions about animals, of course; humans liked to think they knew everything there was to know, that there was no species out there that could come close to matching their intelligence. Rory knew better. Not all cats and dogs were the same, just like not all humans were the same. It felt like common sense, knowing that. “Maybe they do,” she agreed, flashing another grin as Madison validated her desire to name an animal only after she knew it. “Exactly. Like, you can’t just pick a name and slap it on any old cat, right? They’ve got their own personalities and stuff.”

—

Rory’s smile was one of the first things she’d really noticed. That was, after all the fiasco-ing of the pop tart argument – something that felt especially silly now, with both of them sitting on a couch and smiling and laughing. She didn’t wish things were any different, because they’d wound up right here and that felt right. Madison figured she would have felt a lot more guilty if they’d stayed snippy with each other – not that she would have been able to bring herself to be angry at Rory in the long run. There was something about her friend that made it impossible to feel any sort of genuine frustration at her, even if she did make Madison itchy and confused. She didn’t like to think about what the itchiness could mean – that was, what it could mean outside of her thinking Rory was very cute – and so she didn’t. She didn’t have to, at least not right now. She felt comfortable with Rory, itchiness and heated cheeks aside, and that was something she craved far more than she could ever bring herself to admit.

“A billion? That’s so many and like, I guess history’s important but that’s so many.” She couldn’t help but make a face. “I think we could go viral for sure. Though again, I don’t know if I’d want that.” The idea of it seemed magnetic, but Madison hardly liked to get up in class and show off what she could do. The one place she really felt comfortable showing off was the soccer field – and maybe, eventually (hopefully?) she would feel that way about hunting. But right now was about movies and talking about cats and that was what she wanted to do more than anything. “Right, yeah! You can’t just pick a name and assume it’ll work for the cat you end up with.” She shook her head. “You have to vibe check it, I guess. Or not totally vibe check, but just like, see what’s up with it and let it tell you what it should be called.”

—

“Right?” Rory huffed, pleased that Madison’s thinking was similar to her own. This wasn’t entirely rare, of course; Madison and Rory usually agreed on things, with the notable exception of whose Poptarts were on the shelf the first time they’d met. It was nice, having someone who thought she was right most of the time. If Madison had known anything at all about the supernatural, Rory might have told her about how stupid it was that so many people in town had attempted to suggest to her that she was something she wasn’t just so that Madison could agree that Rory was right, just so that she could validate the certainty that lived in the forefront of Rory’s mind. But of course, Madison couldn’t validate what she couldn’t understand, so Rory wouldn’t ask her to. 

At least on every other subject, Madison would offer validation. Rory smiled, nodding her head in agreement as her friend spoke. “Yeah,” she said. “Everybody deserves their own name, right? Cats, too. You can’t just… pick something arbitrarily. That kind of thing matters.” It was something she believed wholeheartedly, and so it was nice to see that Madison understood it. Rory was not often skilled in explaining herself; she liked it best when she didn’t have to. “Anyway. We should get back to the movie, right?”

—

“Totally.” Their flow of thinking was easy – so much so that if she were any less desperate for a friend, Madison would have found herself repeatedly questioning just how easy it was. But she was desperate, and Rory was a good friend to have either way. So she pushed the questioning out of her mind. She could do that plenty all on her own whenever Rory wasn’t around. Right now, she’d just enjoy the time she was having.

She grabbed some more popcorn, watching the way that Rory’s lips curved into a smile. At least she could cause that. She made her siblings smile plenty, especially Salem, but it was nice to be able to do that to other people who she wasn’t related to. “I agree. It matters a lot. You want to honor the cat, not just give it a name all willy nilly.” It was a simple and easy agreement, and the words fell together naturally, just as her and Rory’s friendship did (Pop Tart fiasco notwithstanding). “We should get back to the movie. Let’s do this!” She said, hitting play before grabbing her Dr. Pepper and pulling her legs up onto the couch, watching Rory before she turned back to the movie.