In a dramatic twist, the lizard is oblivious to the werewolf's big gay feelings.
There you go, leave it to you to send me the prompt that I cannot possibly place into the canon story without spoiling everything, so here’s a ridiculous modern urban fantasy AU I keep coming back to in my mind because why the hell not. 1545 words, how did this even happen.
The first time she entered the tattoo parlour you work at, she did so to investigate a crime, or so you were told later. It had seemed strange to you at that time that someone like her would have any interest in the kind of work you do - she had no tattoos, no piercings, not even earrings. In fact, she didn’t wear any kind of jewelry at all, unless you want to count the eyepatch covering her left eye as such.
But here she was, asking you a lot of questions about your work, how much you charge, how long it takes, what your usual customers are like. Of course you couldn’t give her a decent answer to half the things, what did she expect? Oh, here, have five bucks, get ink? That’s not how it works.
Eventually she gets to a more interesting point: Special services. Yes, you do offer those, but you’ve learned your lesson long ago, so you play dumb and tell her you don’t know what a special tattoo service would be, but if she was talking about certain other things, well, all she’d have to do was ask, and maybe meet you for a few drinks at the Red Siren later.
She rolls her eye at this, declines your offer, and returns to her original question, this time narrowing it down closer to charms and the likes. Ah, so it is magic she is after, and now you’re curious how she knows about such things. Normal people don’t just come into a shop and ask about spells and charms, and even if they do, none believe it to be real anymore. You haven’t been around long enough to remember times when that hadn’t been so, and frankly, you’re quite happy. They would probably have burned you on the stakes for being a witch long ago had you been alive then, despite the fact you never traded in your soul with a demon for exchange of magic power.
But what is her interest in the matter? A quick glance at her in the magical spectrum gives you no clue either. You have developed a spell for that, allowing you to check the aura surrounding witches and spells, but to your surprise, she has none. So, not a spellcaster of any kind then. But there was a hint of something surrounding her, a sort of disturbance you could not quite point your finger at, just like the illusion of water that air creates on hot asphalt in summer, but when you take a closer look, it’s just gone. Weird.
“I might, O nameless one, but I’ll have to insist on you buying me drinks before I shall speak.” You say, with a grin.
“Fine.” She huffs. “And it’s Ilyana.”
Ilyana did indeed show up at the Red Siren that very night, and she looked completely out of place with her neat and entirely too formal attire. Pants? In this place? Ridiculous. She spots you in the far corner, lounging on a pile of pillows and smoking a hookah with some people you quickly tell to leave. When she sits down next to you awkwardly, and keeps her eye fixed on your face, you start suspecting she must have never set foot in a place like this before. You have actually bothered putting on something at all for tonight, aside from the ink on your skin that is. She orders something explicitly non-alcoholic for herself, aswell as whatever it is you want, and you can’t help but become more and more curious about her. It’s not every day someone trying so hard to be perfectly normal comes into your life after all. Not when there is so much screaming that she’s not anyway.
When a waiter brings you your drinks, Ilyana sniffs at hers a few times, then scrunches up her face and puts the glass on the small table, without even taking a sip.
“Lemons. I hate them.” She states when you give her a puzzle look, and then continues. “Let’s keep this simple. I’m a private investigator. I help out when things get.. well, weird. A few days ago, someone had been killed, and I suspect a spell was involved, one does not simply drop dead like that. I traced a potential suspect, but lost him at your workplace. Do you know anything about that?”
You almost spill your drink as you exclaim. “I.. what, how did you even? You’re not a magic user!”
“I have my methods.” Ilyana says calmly. “Now, you do know something about this, so how about you tell me.”
“Only if you tell me your methods, and why the hell you have this weird something in your aura.”
She reluctantly nods, and you tell her everything you know. There had been a guy in the shop a while ago, and he did ask about a spell. Someone from one of the gangs that sometimes come to you for their tattoos. You didn’t do this job, one of the other artists did, so you don’t know all the details, but promise you can have a look around the studio tomorrow, to see if you can dig up anything, and then she should come here again, say, on the weekend, and maybe you’ll have something for her.
As promised, she lets you in on her secret.
Weeks had passed since Ilyana had asked for your help in solving a case. You had read about it in the newspapers after, they had caught the culprit, and she had sold them evidence that the murder weapon had been poison. Not a spell, nobody would have believed it anyway. Too bad that it all had been over this soon, there had been so many things you had wanted to ask her after she had revealed to you that she is a werewolf. A real werewolf! Of course you knew they were real, but usually they stick to their packs and never do much outside of these groups. Yet there she had been, just an arm’s length away from you, and just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone again.
Until she showed up in the Red Siren one Friday night, and heads straight to your usual spot. She greets you, you order her a drink, making sure there would be no trace of anything lemon in it, and ask her if there’s another case she needs help with.
“No, not really. I took a day off from work today and thought I could show up here. See what you’ve been up to perhaps.” She says, and you immediately conjur up lists of all customers you’ve seen in the past days. Nope, nobody who wanted anything suspicious. It just doesn’t seem right for her to spend her free time in a place like this. The Red Siren is somewhat known for being a hotspot of crime, although nobody could ever find enough evidence to close it down. The owner, Adrasteia, who is also one of the most capable witches you know, is taking care of that.
You get more suspicious of her motive when she starts asking about you, what you’ve been up to, if you spend a lot of time here, where you live and such things.
This continues for the whole evening, and the next one too, as she shows up again. When you ran into her at a grocery store on Wednesday afternoon, you start getting paranoid. Is she surveiling you now? What’s she trying to find out? You haven’t done anything illegal, not lately anyway, and never anything that lead to anyone dying. Not as far as you know anyway, and even if, that cannot have been recently.
Deciding you’re not really in the mood to spend your evenings at the Siren anymore, you instead go home quickly once you’re done with work. You were almost starting to relax again, but then she had the nerve to show up at your work, asking when you’d be done for the day.
“Okay look, I have no idea why you’re following me, but I promise I have done nothing wrong!” You blurt out when you see her waiting for you on one of the sofas in the entrance hall.
“What?” She looks up at you, slightly baffled by your sudden outburst. “Follow you? I’m not. I was just worried because you haven’t shown up in the Siren at all the past two weeks, so I thought I’d drop by here and offer my help, if needed.”
Okay now you are completely lost as to what kind of game she’s playing. It must have shown on your face too, because her lips quirked in amusement.
“What were you thinking? That I was trying to get you jailed?”
“You’re not?”
“Hell no, why would I want that? I was thinking more along the lines of buying you those drinks you mentioned the first time we met, and see what comes of it.”
Wait, wait, wait, is she being serious? That is what this is all about? You curse yourself for being an idiot, tell her you can totally skip the drinks if she wants, and throw yourself at her when she just rolls her eye at that.