Commissioned Story: Fang, Part 4 (Patreon)

The cigarette hissed as the man drawing upon it took a deep drag.  Its fiery tip briefly illuminated the scarred lips that held it, surrounded by thick, rough stubble.  A notched nose, hooked and having been broken more than once, loomed over that mouth, pursed in thought, as the dark eyes above glanced over the numerous spreadsheets before him.  Paper really was the only way to go for records-keeping.  Fancy computers and such were just ways to potentially lose your information, even if they at least let one back up their stuff.  Still, no one would ever shake his conviction that the written word was still the only way he would accept.

A hand, ring finger a mere shortened stump, tapped down one of the annotated lists.  He noted the previous transactions before they seemed to begin to fall off, coming later and later until finally ceasing entirely.  The neighborhood attached had always been a problem one.  Considering the number of complaints he had on file with it, even his most recent order for peace-keeping, it seemed that more drastic actions needed to be taken.

Glancing behind him into the shadows of the warehouse office, lined with file cabinets, bottles of expensive liquor, and a notched-headed baseball bat on a special wrack, he eyed the person still lingering there, discernable only by the shape of their powerful frame displacing the darkness around them.  Bright eyes met his and he resisted, even with the 50. caliber revolver just inside his desk drawer, a small tremor passing down his spine at such a cold gaze.

"You know what the problem is with neighborhoods?" he drawled in a thick accent at his compatriot.  Silence was their only answer.  "People mistake what community really means.  They think it makes 'em all empowered.  Like it gives 'em strength and unity."  He leaned his chair back, propping up his expensive, steel-toed boots on top of the polished surface before him.  The wood of his desk was much finer than the drab and peeling paint of the office walls.  "Nah.  A community is a bank.  It's people pooling their little resources, all their little dimes and dollars into one place.  They say it's all about helping each other out, but the instant someone comes to town, it's all hush hush and locked doors."

He glanced again at their silent, looming shape.  They said nothing; that was a constant for them.  Action needed no long winded speeches, he had heard said before.  But he was a talker; money meant he didn't have to be one of the doers.  Like his enforcer; there was a doer.  He took their silence again for confirmation.

"Community is just a fancy word for free market, y'know?" he continued.  "Like one of those little villages in Medieval Europe.  They may claim they have homes and land and rights, but they're really just squatters unless they're making sure the person who really holds all the cards is getting his dues."  He spun in his chair then to face the shadowy corner directly.  "Let me asking you somethin'.  If I walk into one of those little crappy houses and say 'Give me all you got' and they just do it, who's got real power here?"  He jabbed a finger out the shuttered window.  "Because that's what I do.  I got it, right here."  His ring-covered hand stabbed into the papers of his records.  "They can piss, and moan, and complain, but they're smart.  They know it ain't worth it to 'em to deny the status quo."

There was a soft huff of breath from his companion, cold eyes gazing at him without any emotion at all to them.  He might as well have been talking to the wall itself.

Harsh, angry eyes fell upon that name from earlier.  "But then you get a little white knight.  A little, wannabe Robin Hood.  He thinks that stepping up to the plate is enough; he don't get that saying 'I don't gotta pay my dues' and causin' trouble only makes that trouble for his precious little neighbors.  He thinks he can post a call, anonymously, to the cops and they won't bark for who donates more to them than they pay their entire shitty precinct?  He's lucky they're so damn bad at their jobs they don't even know how to tell me who placed it, but oh I know it was him.  And now... now I come to find out he's refused to keep making payments.  Some grand gesture.  Like he's gonna stand up and everyone's just gonna rise up with him, huh?"

The mobster stood from his desk, crossed to a cabinet, and poured himself a glass of whiskey from a bottle nearby.  Tumbler now in hand, he turned again, leaning his fine suit pants against the metal drawer behind him.  He proffered a similar glass to his employee, even made sure it was a larger one since the one he was using would barely have been close to a shot glass for comparison.  They didn't react so he shrugged and returned to his seat.

"Problem is," he sniffed, taking a sip of the smooth drink and assuaging the burning feeling at the back of his mouth.  "He's gotta point.  One problem starts up and if you don't nip it in the bud, you got fifteen more.  And that's where you come in.  You, my little problem solver, my little gardener, ain't ya?"  He chuckled as he spoke, pointing haughtily at the glowing eyes.  "You gonna go and teach this little prick a lesson for me, just like you did before."  This time, the lack of response made him glower.  "Just don't try and take liberties like you did the last time we needed peace-keeping done.  The next time I tell you to burn down a shop, you don't make sure it's empty first."

Silence, almost a glowering one right back at him.

A couple seconds passed and he leaned back again, scoffing.  "Eh, mysterious deaths actually would have brought competent cops around, you're right.  Point got across.  But this ain't that time.  This time, you follow the word of the letter I give you.  Understood?"  Silence again was his confirmation.  "You're gonna go with the boys.  You're gonna pick me up something, and have it brought here.  And you're gonna keep an eye on where you picked it up from, to make sure no one asks or starts probing into our delivery system."

A soft rustle from the corner disturbed the outlines of the shape there.  "And after I'm done."  It wasn't a question.

Rolling his eyes, he snickered to hide the surge of rage that welled up inside of him at their brazen, soft-spoken tone.  "I'm gonna assume you're just playing a game forgetting who's in charge here."  He flipped open another, small notebook hidden underneath the others.  "This ledger still has red in it.  Don't make me have to add more."

He sensed, more than seeing, hearing, or even smelled, the rising tension from the owner of those eyes.  The rolling of a deep breath, the rumble of its exhale, the minute shifts of calculated, premeasured footsteps.  His other hand dripped beneath the desk, ready to grab the revolver at the first rush of movement from them.  There was a pause, barely a few seconds long but seeming to take a lifetime as two were measured out.

"We clear?" he demanded.

They didn't respond, simply turned and stepped towards the exit.  "Yeah, boss," was their only reply as the door opened and then slammed shut behind them.

Vinny Obersteer settled back into his plush chair and sipped at his whiskey in self-satisfied victory.  "Now that's power," he muttered to himself.

***

The soft chirping buzz of a phone disturbed Nemea from her slumber.  Soft warmth tickled her scarred and notched ears, monotonous and slow.  It was such a calming feeling that she considered just ignoring the alarm but forced herself to sit up.  Her green eyes flickered open, glazed over with the fetters of sleep, and she looked around blearily.  The darkened interior of Raife Comics greeted her muddled gaze.  She lifted her head from the cushion of her powerful bicep and the plush, if ratty couch underneath it, and then winced at a twinge of discomfort from her neck.

Rubbing at the sore spot, she looked down at a small shifting sigh that came from where she had been leaned against.  There on the couch was Sam, still asleep or mostly, laying on his side and curled in around where her head had been.  His glasses were laying on the arm nearby and his face, even bruised as it was, looked wholly content and peaceful.

Wordlessly, Nemea brushed one huge, fuzzy finger across his unmarked cheek, tracing the faintest of lines across his freckles like it was a connect-the-dots.  He murmured sleepily and smiled a bit more, even after she retracted her paw and looked around for her errant cellphone.  She spotted it just barely poking out from underneath the skirting of the couch and she palmed it, yawning wide and flashing her huge, saber teeth.

'6:15, Final Alarm, Wake your fat ass up,' the screen read.  Now lifted up from its muffled position below, the ringing alarm was much louder and made Sam stir unhappily.  She hurried to put in the password to turn it off, having to solve a basic equation from the app she used to make sure she didn't just press the snooze button.  It eventually clicked off and she settled back with a deep sigh.  Spirits, how she hated that alarm, but it served its purpose to make sure she was never late to open up.

A  thought crossed her mind as she scratched at her itchy hide with a claw, now fully and reproachfully awake.  While it was a normal workday, this was hardly a circumstance where anyone might blame her if she didn't open the gym up for one day.  She eyed Sam, still dozing fitfully, beneath her, and decided what she would do then and there.

Gently, the huge Alpha Anthro jostled his comparatively-slender frame with one paw.  He stirred but didn't rise.  Given how beaten and battered he was, not to mention the exhaustion that came with the body trying to repair and deal with the damage, she couldn't blame him.  Biting her lower lip, she pondered what was even appropriate to do.

A rude awakening, even one as gentle as she could manage by shaking him or even using a bit of cold water, a common tactic back when she commanded her squad, might exacerbate his stress levels, causing starts and twitches that could hurt him even more than he already was.  Realizing she didn't have many other options, she nonetheless hesitated for a moment.  The idea she had in mind was not something she would ever have considered on any normal occasion, and especially not with someone as relatively unknown to her as Sam.  Even still, she had to get him to wake up, and this was a special circumstance.

So, moving very carefully, Nemea worked her huge paws in underneath his sleepy form, making small adjustments here and there, until she plucked him up as weightlessly as a doll or pile of laundry and, closing her eyes tight to shake off her hesitancy, leaned him up against her upright upper body.  His head now rested atop her prodigious chest, unbruised cheek pressed deep and firmly into her bountiful cleavage.  Her paws, each wide enough to envelop what parts of him they held onto, held him to her, supporting his weight with ease.  It was almost like holding a cub, but somehow even more intimate than that.

With him nestled into her breast fluff where it poked up and out over her top, Nemea Spartos began to hum.  It was an old Anthro lullaby, or perhaps morning prayer song, meant to wake particularly stubborn cubs from their rest in order to begin the day.  It was an equal combination of both lyrical hums and soft, growling purrs, acting as bass and tenor alongside one another easily as she rocked him gently back and forth.  There were words to it too, she knew, ones that someone very precious to her had once sang for her as a Cub, but she wasn't about to do so herself.

'Wake now my dear one,' was far too intimate for them just yet.  Just yet?  She shook off that pondering and just continued what she was doing.

It didn't take long for the song to work its magic.  Sam stirred in her arms, unconsciously nestling himself deeper into her fur and letting out a soft groan of contentment.  She kept going, knowing this was normal and trying not to let the fluffing up of her fur and folding back of her ears from embarrassment distract her from the melody.  Turning slowly, she angled his face more into the scant rays of sunlight poking through the closed blinds in the window, letting their gentle beams fall across his fair, freckled features.

He winced and tried to turn away, just at the part of the song where a singer would have laughed at the reproachful cub still not waking to rise.  Shutting her eyes tight, committed to seeing this through now that she had begun, she lifted him ever so slow and gently from her collarbone, and brushed the soft tip of her tongue and warm muzzle lips against his hair and forehead.  His skull lolled for a bit as weight returned to it and he sniffed in surprise before that, yet another warm, soft sensation made him sigh deeply, as if all the hurt and stress of the world had melted away at its touch.  He tasted...surprisingly nice.

It did the trick.  Sam gave a deep inhale of awakening before his eyes, both of them, managed to flicker open.  He blinked them several times, yawning deeply, and then leaned back right into her soft muzzle as if intending to just stay there.  That alone, shook her nerves enough to make her rumble with a chuckle, and she repeated the nuzzle-lick, maybe a bit more comfortably this time, serving to shake him enough to make him lean back on his own strength and look at where he was.

Bright blue eyes widened as he finally came fully and immediately awake.  Their gazes met and, like so many times before, Sam's face went so red that it made his fiery hair seem blonde in comparison.

"N-Nemea?" he muttered in shock.

She rumbled, blinking once in a feline nod.  "Awake now?" she teased, rough voice lifted by yet another chuckle.  "I didn't want to have to resort to the next part of that tradition.  We usually only go through with it for the most resilient of late-sleepers.  Your soft skin doesn't have the fur to handle a full on tongue-bath."

"Tongue...bath...?"  His mouth barely seemed to be working enough to stammer out those two words and he quivered slightly in her grasp.  A smell came to her then and her sharp senses picked up on it easily.  A soft rumble emanated from her chest then and made him shiver against her.

Their gazes remained locked onto one another for a long second, or perhaps several minutes, she wasn't really sure.  Eventually she coughed, fluffing up more for a second and finally the spell was broken.  He looked away at the same time as she did, both of them shyly fidgeting against each other.

"All right then, enough of all that," she rumbled and easily slid him off of her and back onto the couch.  He went with only a small, perhaps begrudging sigh and she felt his eyes shyly, greedily rake her plush, powerhouse frame but she didn't mind.  She instead busied herself in inspecting his bandages and bruises.  He looked a whole lot better after apparently a full night's rest, although her back and neck were still rather stiff from having fallen asleep leaning over an undersized couch.  Once her lookover of him was complete, she nodded.  "You look better.  We might as well get going."

"Get going?" he asked, looking surprised enough to stop staring at her so strangely.  Even the color faded from his pale cheeks back to near normalcy.

Again, Nemea blinked in acknowledgement.  "We can't stay here; safety states you never linger at the sight of an attack.  You regroup in friendly territory, assess the situation, and plan a counter strike or recovery effort from there."

For some reason, Sam grinned.  "Wow, it's so sexy when you talk Army stuff like that," was his jibing tone up at the Saber-tooth Alpha.

Scowling down at the impudent human to mask her own amusement, she scoffed and rose back up to her full height, only barely remembering in time to not smash her head into the ceiling of his store.  "If you're able to joke, you're able to walk."

Completely unsurprisingly, Sam nodded and made to do just that, swinging his stiff legs out over the couch and then attempting to stand up on his own.  Also to the lack of her surprise, he struggled mightily to do just that and after a few minutes of red-faced exertion, he eventually succeeded, wobbling on legs that might as well have been stilts.  His eyes lifted to meet hers, so high above his own, and gave a cheeky, if exhausted grin.  "No sweat," he puffed.

Nemea's shoulders slumped somewhat, deflating from her playful gruffness slightly as she saw him wince as he tried to take a step.  Shaking her great, fuzzy head, the Alpha Smilodon sighed and abruptly scooped him up into her paws again.  He gave a small sound of protest before she cupped him against her burly chest once more, cutting off his complaints of being perfectly able with a simple, "Just stop."  He quieted against her as he detected the note of worry in her thick voice.

"...Okay," he muttered, admitting defeat and instead just leaning more heavily against her bulk as she cautiously, and carefully, weaved her way through the wracks of comic books.  They stopped at his desk, her reaching down and around it to snag his office key once he told her where it was, and then they exited the store, locking the door behind them.  Thus began the walk back to the gym.

They didn't say much, him cupped against her, his knees pressed against her ribcage and seated upon her scarred forearm.  His soft, red hair brushed her cheek as she walked, his arms hesitantly woven around what of her he could reach, one hand knotted into the fabric of her shirt and the other gripping the wrist beside him.  The stark difference between their sizes was almost laughable but she didn't find it amusing.  If anything, the sheer dissimilarity of their statures made her feel something she'd never given much thought to over the years, although there had been admittedly a distinct lack of the availability for such.  She couldn't put a word to it, just yet, but whatever it was, she liked it.

She liked...him.  And the fact that someone had hurt him so badly had her stomach in knots.  Her teeth ground against one another inside her scarred muzzle and her eyes were hard as flint, constantly scanning their surroundings for possible attackers or if they were being followed.  No such aggressors revealed themselves to her keen senses and they made the trip with relative, almost peaceful silence.  The earliness of the morning meant few people were even awake, let alone wandering the streets like they were.

"Thank you."

Nemea started at those two, muffled little words from beside her notched hear.  She glanced to the side at where they had come from, feeling Sam's face buried in her thick neck fur.  Her other heavy paw lifted and brushed his back once, making him shiver against her.  She noticed the gym was coming within sight through the mist so she just leaned her head against him a few pounds more heavily in pressure.  "Save it for when we're inside," she growled softly.  Sam nodded, but his grip on her got a bit tighter.

It wasn't easy, unlocking the single entry door to the gym with one paw, but she made the best of it, juggling him around in her grasp like a sack of groceries until the lock clicked and she slid inside before quickly reclosing and locking it back up.  The interior of the gym was dark but her keen eyes spotted everything the way she had left it before.  Other than the entry door at the front and left side, which not many other than her employees knew about, the only other entrance to the warehouse was the double pair of sliding bay doors set in the front of the half-dome building.

The metal stairs creaked as she stalked up them, past her office, and into the backroom where she usually slept.  There she deposited Sam on the huge old mattress covered with sheets and clicked on a lamp for his benefit.  "Wait here," she rumbled, and flashed out of the room again to get some things from the storeroom in the back of the gym.  She returned only a few minutes later, setting the box she was carrying down beside him.

"Okay...we have water bottles, some protein bars," she listed off.  “Now strip.”

Sam went from laying there before her, watching her move around with interest and gingerly holding his side to wide-eyed, gaping stare up at her.  “W-what?!” he stammered out, voice cracking from a combination of panic and surprise.

It took Nemea a minute to realize why he was suddenly so flustered.  When she got it, at first she too was embarrassed but it was swiftly overshadowed by a heavy, rolling growl of a laugh.  “Easy there, Fire-hair,” she chuckled, giving him a warm glance from her eyes.  “I have a better first aid kid here than you did at your shop, plus more room, so I’m gonna need you to get out of your clothes.”

Sam immediately seemed to relax and he smiled a bit more, even if his cheeks remained inflamed.  His hands began worming himself out of his shirt, reexposing that pale, cloth wrapped chest and then worked on removing his pants and shoes as well.  He hissed quite a lot as he had to bend and lean to do so, but fervently shook his head when she arched an eyebrow, asking if he needed help.

Nemea settled back to watch as he divested himself of his clothing save for the boxer briefs he wore and faded socks, approaching only when he gave her the nod to do so.  Her eyes scanned up and down his lean form, not unused to the shape of it from how often she oversaw his workouts but his clothes tended to be rather baggy on him and thus concealing the limbre, lithe form underneath.  He had very little body-hair, or at the very least what he did have was so pale red that it didn’t show up much against his fair, freckled skin.  What did show up were his scars.

Sam had quite the collection of scar tissue crisscrossing his frame, most of them long, shallow lines gained from any number of innocent misadventures.  There were a few other varieties: a wheel mark on his palm probably from a burn, numerous tiny markings on his fingers supposedly from papercuts, even a row of deeper indentations on his calf that looked like a bite, although from the size it couldn’t have been from an anthro, maybe a dog or something.  She arched one eyebrow down at him as she inspected him up and down, on the pretext of checking for any other injuries she had missed the night prior.

That was when she noticed that he had apparently been staring up at her the entire time she had been staring at him.  Even with her imposing height over him, nearly double his, he seemed completely unafraid of the oversized Alpha.  Her ears folded slowly back against her skull and her jowls quivered nervously at the size and brightness of those ocean-blue orbs behind the glasses and thick red bangs.  It was a look she wasn’t used to anymore; in truth, no one had ever looked at her like that.

Growing up, Nemea had always been too big.  Males avoided her from feeling threatened, and females from that she was so drastically larger than most.  Even the rare few fellow Alphas she met weren’t as easygoing with her as they were with others.  She had become a model in order to find a place to belong, but even that had quickly soured when she had been drafted to participate in other ‘photo shoots’ she had been uncomfortable with doing.

The military had at least welcomed her with open arms; Anthros always had a use for a powerful fighter no matter the size.  After Basic Training, her enlistment in the Black Legion, and subsequent personal instruction underneath its founder who was easily the most intimidating woman she had ever met, had at least made that portion of her life easier to handle, even if it was also the most chaotic and traumatic portion of her years as well.

Yet, here and now, this tiny, frail Human was looking up at her like she was not some gargantuan Alpha, as if instead she was not only appealing but also desirable.  Her fur fluffed up more as her paws carefully undid his medical gauze and inspected the purpled flesh underneath.  He made tiny sounds of something close to discomfort as she probed and dressed the worst of them before reapplying new bandages from her massive first aid kit she had brought.

When she had finally finished her inspection of him, she produced a set of plastic-wrapped clothes from the box as well; they were not much, just basic workout clothing in the form of a sleeveless shirt and track pants sized, mostly, for him.  She helped him put them on as much as she could, given that the level of dexterity required was a bit out of her range without having to be even more paws-on than she already had been.  And the entire time, Sam still wouldn’t look away from her.  His gaze was like a physical weight she could not shake as she attended to him, hand even lingering on her paw once when she was helping him shrug into the shirt.

At long last, she settled back onto her haunches in front of her floor-level mattress and nodded, trying to dispel her flustered emotions by returning to her taciturn, grumpy self.  “That’s as much as I can do,” she grunted.  “And you’ll have to pay me back for the clothes.  I’m not running a charity.”

Sam’s smile grew even wider than it had been, almost teasing.  “I think the amount of care you’ve given me already would have to count as charity.  I couldn’t have asked for a better nurse.”

Scowling, the Saber-tooth Anthro pushed him back onto her pillows with a single, padded finger, minding her sharp claw of course.  “Lay down and get some actual rest,” she ordered.  Checking the time on the nearby wall-clock, she grumbled.  7:03.  Trainers would just be starting to head in as they worked from 8 to 5 and she had always made it a policy to have everyone open early to make sure the equipment and schedules were set up correctly.  “I need to go to my office to make some calls.  Stay here and sleep.”

The Human had yawned as soon as his head touched her pillows and he threw her a weak salute.  “Probably a good idea…” he mumbled.  “Getting your ass kicked apparently takes it out of you.”

Nemea grunted in a chuckle but he was asleep before she could muster up a rebuttal.  Her paw gently stroked his fiery hair and then, before she could stop herself, she leaned down and brushed the tip of her tongue and her fuzzy muzzle against his exposed forehead once more.  She leaned back, plucking his glasses off of his nose and setting them safely to the side.  “Yeah, it does,” she muttered softly.  “Sleep well, Sam Raife.  You’re safe here.”

She stood and left the room, closing the door behind her and locking it with her key from the outside.  He had everything he might need in there for now: water, snacks, even an attached, private bathroom to the room he was in, plus books if he got bored.  Her collection wasn’t the grandest, and she had to restrain the urge to go back inside and hide what little she did have as they were all of a considerably…similar smutty nature.  She liked romance novels, so sue her.

Once inside her office, Nemea began to make the rounds of calling her trainers one by one to let them know that the gym wouldn’t be open that day.  Very few of them questioned her, all apparently sounding confused but non argumentative at the idea of a day off.  At last she drew to the end of the list.  The line rung and rung several times before, assuming she was going to voicemail, Nemea was startled to hear the line click open.

“Yeah,” came the monosyllabic response on the other end.

“Kilboros,” she responded, adopting the same flat tone which they always used with one another.  “Not opening the gym today.  Personal matter.”

“Yeah?” they grunted again.  “Must be serious for you to call in.”

“A friend needs my help,” Nemea explained in as little detail as possible.  The distant thunk of car doors came then, muffled, as well as the sounds of other voices.  “Thanks for being understanding.”  There was a grunt from them, as well as more voices, maybe three or four.  “Out with friends?” she asked, managing to even chuckle a bit.  “Didn’t know you had any.”

“They’re not,” was the short, sharp reply.  “It’s my other job.  Wouldn’t have been able to come in today anyway; suppose this is for the best.”

Something about that made her pause for a second.  Although it was already extremely hard to tell over the phone, Kilboros sounded uncharacteristically stiff.  “Is everything all right?” she asked, leaning forward a bit in her chair.

There was a long drawn out pause, every second only making the situation seem all the more tense.  Finally, they gave a noncommittal, “Yeah.”

A scuffling sound alongside the muted ding of an overhead door bell came to her sharp ears then.  “Yo, Big un!” grunted another, distant voice.  “Get your ass in gear.”

There was a soft, almost imperceptible growl before Kilboros spoke more hushed and without any intensity at all to their voice.  That most of all made Nemea’s nerves stand on end.  “Got to go, boss.”  Then the line clicked and the call disconnected.

Nemea lowered the phone from her ear and gazed at it worriedly.  It wasn’t like Kilboros to ever sound like that; in a way their taciturn and often emotionless responses were liken to beaming smiles and bright laughter.  They just weren’t the most expressive of beings, so to hear that droning growl of a voice change like that had her seriously concerned.  Even so, she knew that probing wouldn’t earn her any favors, and Kilboros’ personal business wasn’t any of hers.

She returned to locking up the shop, checking emails and answering them in return before she finally closed it all down and returned to standing guard over Sam.  The entire day was spent with her watching him sleep, eventually surrendering to a nap herself and curling gently over and around him on the mattress as he rested.  Even she had to admit, as his slumbering little form curled into her more, this was something new.  Something good.

It was late evening when she woke up and checked the time.  Her bright eyes went wide and she sat up to see it was already past 5 o'clock.  She never slept all day like that.  Looking down at Sam who was still snuggled deep into her fur, she realized she probably had a good reason why.  He looked so comfortable nestled there that she was loathe to wake him after he had gone through so much, but she was hungry and she suspected he would be too.  Protein bars would not a proper dinner make.

So, even if she would happily have let Sam sleep in more, she again used the Anthro waking lullaby to lull him from the confines of peaceful slumber, although this time without the soft nuzzles.  Something told her that he’d had such good sleep but rarely in days before now.  He didn’t take as long to wake and immediately, even in the dimness of the barely lit room, his eyes shone up at her.

“Morning,” he yawned loudly, making her fight hard not to yawn in return.

“Evening,” she corrected the Human.  “We slept all day.”  He chuckled.  “You certainly seemed comfortable,” she teased him.

His face flushed just a bit but he shrugged.  “Been a while since I slept on a real mattress,” he explained.  Then he looked away from her and his grin took on a more sheepish look.  “Or…next to someone.”

She chuffed down at him, using humor to disarm how cute that had been.  “I suppose that’s perspective then.”  At his curious look, she relented in explaining.  “I spent so much time crammed into sleeping quarters back in my Legion days that I look forward to a bed where I can stretch out as much as I can.”  Then she winked one eye down at him, the gesture easier with him for some reason.  “Truth be told though, you take up so little room and also make such a good snuggler that I found I didn’t mind.  Just needed to be careful I didn’t roll over and crush you.”

His eyes sparkled and the Human grinned back up at her, still laying side by side with her.  “I can’t honestly say I probably wouldn’t enjoy you crushing me just a bit.”

One fluffy eyebrow raised up above her scarred visage and the Anthro woman growled in a heavy chortle.  “Ok, little masochist, but this isn’t some ‘step on me’ Simp fantasy I’m talking about.  I would actually squash you.”

“Won’t know until you try,” he shot back.

She rolled her emerald eyes.  “Yeah, you’re feeling better, I can tell,” she grunted and sat up a bit, looking down at him now on her bed.  Her eyes caught on the sheer picturesque perfection of his position on it then, one arm stretched up over his head and the other crossed over his belly, clothes rumpled, gazing up at her with a look on his face that expressed hesitation, fondness, a shy curiosity, and much more.  Her muzzle crinkled as confusing emotions rushed through her before she looked away from him.  “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asked, sounding confused.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she growled.  “Like you’re expecting us to kiss or something.”

Sam’s sudden laughter made her whirl around on him with a glower.  He cut it off behind a hand but he looked incredibly pleased about something.  “Less an expectation,” he giggled, wincing only a little as his stomach strained underneath the bandages she had reapplied.  “More of a…stupid hope.”

Her eyes went wide for a second before she rolled them again, sitting up fully and turning to face away from him.  “This isn’t some rendition of Beauty and the Beast.  I don’t turn into some beautiful woman from the handsome prince’s magical lips or something.”

“So you think I’m handsome then?” Sam asked, sitting up more and leaning around to try and look up at her face once more.  She growled low under her breath at the jibe, refusing to rise to the bait.  Then a soft thump came and she started, glancing down to see his head leaning directly against her furry arm.  “And you’re far, far out of my league anyway.  You’re the Beauty and the Beast combined.  You’ve done so much for me for seemingly wanting nothing in return; I’d be selfish to want anything more from you.”

Without meaning to, Nemea leaned a bit more of her weight back against him but still looked pointedly away from him.  Her short tail twitched behind her, fur fluffing up around her face.  “I said you’d pay me back,” she snapped with absolutely no conviction.

“For the clothes,” he agreed.  “I can pay you for those anytime.  But it’d take me a lifetime to repay you for everything you’ve done for me so far.  All the risks you’ve taken on yourself, seemingly only for my sake.  I can’t believe you wouldn’t do the same for anyone else who needed your help.”  A pang shot through her as some painful memories began to resurface before she bludgeoned them back down.  She came back to reality in time to hear him mumble, “But that doesn’t make what you’ve done for me mean any less.  I guess I just…I understand those stories of people falling for emergency responders after being rescued better now.”

Nemea’s stomach suddenly had no bottom to it and she gruffly huffed out a breath.  Her eyes felt abruptly tight and hot and her ears were pinned flat against her skull.  “It’s…no problem…” she managed to grate out through her teeth, too flustered to say anything otherwise.

“It is,” he told her, still speaking in a hushed voice.  “Because it makes how I already feel about you all the more intense.”

Her eyes turned slowly back towards him, chest tightening, gaze falling squarely down onto his at the same time his head turned up to look at her.  Her paw inched towards his small hand and wordlessly it slid up into hers, stroking hesitantly and shyly along the scarred paw pads.

“I’m not…asking you to just suddenly go out with me,” he muttered, voice barely audible but somehow resonating inside her notched ears.  “There’s a lot going on, and I have a lot of baggage.  But I’d…hate myself if I didn’t at least tell you honestly that’s how I feel.  How I have felt since you came up to start training me weeks ago.”

There was the smallest of tugs, maybe he pulled on her paw, or maybe she only imagined it, but she was abruptly reclining back onto the bed with him, returning to their huddled positions side by side with her curled almost completely over him, but now their heads roughly on the same level.  Nemea breathed out a hot, shuddering breath before she saw his hand which had been touching her paw rising.  It hesitated before she gave a long, slow feline blink of consent.

His fingers, scarred over multiple times from papercuts, trailed slowly over her muzzle, disturbing her short, wiry whiskers and up along her jowls, teasing the tips of her extruding fangs over her bottom jaw, and then along her jawline in the lightest of touches.  He traced her scars, for once someone’s gaze upon them not making her shiver, as if he were marveling at how they completed the whole picture that was her.

Something in her, something old and heavy, broke.

“Thank you,” she whispered down to him.  His face flushed in that adorable, characteristic way of his that rivaled the color of his hair for intensity of hue.

He raised an eyebrow up at her, wordlessly expressing his confusion.

Realizing she had to explain, Nemea growled to herself before just knuckling down and saying what she could.  “No one has…ever talked to me that way.  Not in years.  I’ve got baggage too, so yours doesn’t scare me.  Mainly because, with you, it doesn’t feel so heavy anymore”  He nodded silently, hand still brushing her scarred cheek.  Those soft, feathery touches made her rumble deep inside and she sighed deeply.  The courage had faded but the warm glow it left behind was left to stay.  “…I’ll admit I don’t know what else to say right now.  I’m not good at these big emotional talks when I’m hungry.”

The Human broke out in a huge grin, petting underneath her chin and making her tail quiver before he finally relented.  “Maybe we don’t have to say anything else right now.  But yeah, I’m hungry too.”  He began to chuckle, wincing only a little from a twinge to his belly.

Nemea chuckled along with Sam, the sound rolling from deep within her chest and she cautiously leaned in to rub her nose against his once before leaning back.  A Cat’s Kiss, nothing more.  Then they were leaning back up, refusing to look one another in the eye again but for better reasons now.  One paw found and lifted her phone.  “What do you want to eat?” she asked, already loading up the various takeout restaurants that did delivery.

“Can I pay for it?” he asked.

“Do you have money?” she shot back.

“...Can I pay you back for it?”

Her warm eyes glanced over him once and then away.  Her free paw reached down and enveloped his hand, squeezing it once.  “You will,” she growled, and she felt him wriggle and lean against her more as she ordered them their meal.  They ate and talked late into the night, going back and forth on books, where they came from, and music, before falling asleep as they had before, him in her arms and no need for a blanket for her heavy furry bulk wrapped almost entirely around him.

Their final words of the evening were perhaps her favorite of the easy, joking back and forth they had fallen into.

“You never said it,” Sam muttered softly from her collarbone.

“Never said what?” she asked.

“You never said it back.  That you like me too.”

“What is this, high school?” she growled.  Then she wrapped him even tighter in her burly arms that were wider across than his thighs.  “I don’t waste breath on stating the obvious.”

“I’ll make you say it someday,” Sam muttered from beneath the now almost enveloping weight of muscle-bound Alpha Saber-tooth Tigress atop of him.

“Dream on, short stack.”  They laughed softly against one another as they fell asleep just like that.

Nemea was cautious to admit she was happier now than she had been in a long time.  She was happy, even if, as always, she feared it wouldn’t last.  This time, however, she would fight tooth and nail to keep it.

***

It had been several days of Sam holding up in Nemea’s backroom, or at least that was what he estimated it to be.  She stuck around as much as she could while still coordinating the gym outside; for as much as he knew, no one but her was aware that he was here.  And while the backroom was spacious and quickly having become a place of safety and contentment to him, it wasn’t quite home yet.

So eventually it came to the day he had to ask Nemea to take him back to the comic book store to get some of his stuff. Her response had been…less than enthusiastic, but they had settled on that she would go herself and he would be left behind at the gym.  With the door locked and no one else aware of his living there, it was agreed between the two of them that he would be safe.

Thus when the doorknob began to rattle an hour or so after Nemea had left, he sat up expectantly, eager to see the Anthro woman again.  Pathetically, he had begun missing her as soon as she had left; there was such a charm to her gruff, savage demeanor that was not undermined but rather made more endearing by her real, rather shy and emotional side that she didn’t show anyone.

Anyone but him, apparently.  It made his heart soar to be counted as someone special to one like her, to be accepted, hell, even loved.  He had no idea how he might resolve the neighborhood issue, but he dared to hope that as long as they were together, everything would be okay.

The door swung open and the heavy, shuffling footsteps of a large form entered, big but not nearly big enough.  Eyes glowed through the darkness at him, as Nemea didn’t have many lights set up in here to help facilitate sleep better, only a few mood lights strung up across the walls.  As Anthros could see much better in the dark than Humans could, she didn’t need them, and he was used to her glowing, green eyes being the first thing he saw when she came to see him in the evenings after the hustle and clanging noise of her gym had closed.

The eyes that gleamed at him, laying on the mattress, however, were not green.  They were iron-hard and cold.  Eyes he remembered.  “You?!”  He exclaimed in shock, sitting up straight in bed, heart hammering as multiple other dark shapes entered the room, moving less suredly but nonetheless implacably towards him.  The first intruder never said a word as they converged on him.  There was no point to scream.

The ensuing scuffle took less than a few minutes.  Still injured, Sam had been unable to muster up more than a few good punches and kicks before he had been restrained, a gag shoved into his mouth and a bag over his head before he was carried down the metal stairs.  He was thrown into the trunk of a car and heard it slam closed after him, his entire world thrown into darkness.

***

The phone line rung twice before a gravely, self-satisfied hum of a voice answered.  “Give me good news,” it drawled.

“Package acquired,” Kilboros muttered in response, eyes downcast as they watched the car speed away from the warehouse district.

Heavy laughter came, making them wince to hear that voice sounding so pleased against their notched, gang-tag emblazoned ear.  The fur would never grow back thick enough to hide those marks of shame.  “This is why I keep you around, Enforcer,” he sneered.  What they wouldn’t give to wrap their big paw around his throat and squeeze.  “You found him when no one else could.”

They gave an unenthused hum and eyed the open side door they had used their key to allow the thugs access to the building.  “Any more orders?” they snapped, eager to cut him off.

“Yeah, stick around to make sure no one goes poking around wherever he was holding up,” the mobster ordered them.  “And if anyone asks questions, take care of it.”

A dread weight, cold and heavy, settled into their stomach but not from the order.  “Yeah,” was all they said before they hung up the phone and sat down on the metal steps to wait for the inevitable.  Regret was an old feeling to Kilboros, a cold poison that soaked into their limbs and made them heavy as lead.

There was no honor in this; their Ancestor Spirits would judge them harshly for such despicable actions as they had undertaken to pay back their old debts.  It had been this or let the mobsters loose their violence on even more people they cared about.  Even Spartos couldn’t stop a drive by or squad of gun-wielding Human goons.

At least one life was likely to end tonight, possibly more.  Before the end, they wanted to at least do something right.  As the side door squeaked open, accompanied by her usual smell and Alpha presence, they sat up straighter and said a quick prayer to the Spirits.

‘Ancestors, keep the righteous from harm, and bring judgment to the wicked and depraved.’

They did not say the prayer for them.

End of Part 4.