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Tommy was doing pretty well for himself, all things considered.
He’d heard people talk about being the man of the house, and since he didn’t have a house, that meant he was the man of the whole city! So of course he was doing well! It didn’t matter that he wasn’t big enough to win fights, or that he went hungry sometimes. He was the man, the biggest ever, so he had a spot to sleep under a dumpster where nobody else could fit, which meant nobody else would even try to fight him for it! Because he’d bite their ankles and stay under there where they couldn’t reach him and win!
And being under a dumpster meant that he also had access to food, which was very important. Too bad for everybody else that they couldn’t take his sleeping spot because it was awesome.
Speaking of which.
Tommy wriggled out from his sleeping spot, his ears pricked up. He couldn’t hear any people, or any other animals, which meant he was probably safe to rummage for a bit.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, and felt a prickly sensation crawl all over his body, and then he opened his eyes and he wasn’t on four legs anymore.
Nobody liked shifters. They were weird, and dangerous, even though Tommy couldn’t really hurt anybody when he had his fur on, even if he wanted to.
(He did want to, sometimes. Humans were mean, and sometimes he hated them like they hated him, and maybe if he bit them and it hurt bad enough they’d leave him alone.)
Shifting was what helped him stay alive, though. He wasn’t big enough to reach the dumpster with his fur on, and he wasn’t small enough to fit in his sleeping space with his human skin on. He needed to be both.
Tommy looked around again, and when he still didn’t see or hear anything, he turned and hopped up onto the boxes stacked next to the dumpster. He knew how to push the dumpster lid open by now, and he knew how to keep it from banging against anything so people didn’t know he was looking in it. Humans didn’t like when he took things from here, which was stupid, because they weren’t using them anymore! If they wanted the things Tommy took, they shouldn’t have thrown them away in the first place!
He was in luck today. There was a whole half a sandwich, and he scooped it up quickly, a purr building in his chest. This was great. If he kept his fur on, he could probably make this last several days, even!
In his excitement, he let the lid drop a little too soon. The bang made him flinch, and it nearly made him fall off the boxes, but he managed to catch himself in time.
There was a low growl from the end of the alley.
Tommy turned, his heart suddenly pounding in his ears.
There was a dog. A big, mean dog with patches of missing fur. Tommy could see his ribs, which meant he was hungry. And hungry dogs were dangerous dogs. Its gaze was locked onto the sandwich in Tommy’s hands.
An instinctive hiss started building in Tommy’s chest; this was his food and he didn’t want to give it up. But the dog was big, and it was walking slowly toward him, the growl getting louder and louder.
Tommy took a shaky step backwards and missed the edge of the box. He fell off with a yelp, landing hard on his hip.
The dog snarled and lunged.
A shriek tore out of Tommy’s mouth, and he instinctively shrank down into his smaller shape so he could hide. But he couldn’t reach his sleeping spot in time - he didn’t have enough time to wiggle in - and he was too small to fight. So he grabbed a big chunk of the meat out of the sandwich, turned, and ran.
The dog followed. It paused at the sandwich, sniffing at what was left, then kept chasing Tommy with an awful, angry bark.
Oh no.
Cats liked Tommy. He was like them, kind of, so even if they weren’t nice to him, they left him alone. Other animals, though, didn’t like him one little bit. Including dogs.
Tommy would almost prefer if it was the other way around, and cats were the ones who didn't like him. Their teeth weren't as big.
He ran as fast as he could, and his paws ached with how hard they were hitting the concrete, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even slow down. He could hear the dog behind him, panting and barking, and he couldn’t let it catch him.
His sleeping spot was near the edge of the city where he lived, because that meant there were fewer humans around. It also meant that it wasn’t very long before he was running out of buildings to dart around. The concrete and asphalt was starting to turn into grass, and he could see the trees of the woods.
The dog snarled behind him, and there was a puff of hot breath against Tommy’s tail.
He bit back a distressed noise and ran faster. If he could make it into the woods, there were probably a lot of hiding places, or maybe he could climb a tree and get away that way.
It couldn’t get a lot worse than this.
Techno was bored.
Patrolling his pack’s territory was important. It meant that threats could be quickly identified and dealt with, and it was especially important considering how close they lived to a human city. That didn’t mean it was exciting.
In fact, it usually wasn’t exciting at all. That was the point. Boring meant safe, though that was sometimes difficult to communicate to some of the younger wolves, so Techno had volunteered to patrol alone this time. He needed a break.
He was just approaching the forest near the city when he heard it - something was barking and growling and generally making a racket.
Techno crept closer, his ears pricked forward to listen. He saw the cause of the commotion soon enough. A stray dog from the city was pawing at the base of a bush; probably chasing a squirrel or something.
Not on Techno’s watch.
He rose to his full height and stepped into full view, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
The dog paused, its tail automatically dipping and its ears pinning back.
Techno knew he was intimidating in his wolf form. His size and the scars across his muzzle and shoulders made him look like a threat, and he knew exactly how to leverage those factors. He took a pace forward, his growl sharpening.
Just as he’d hoped, the dog turned and bolted, leaving behind whatever it had been after.
Techno snorted in satisfaction and turned to continue on, but paused when he heard a soft sound from under the bush. It wasn’t a familiar noise, by any means, but…
Very slowly, Techno crept closer, ducking his head to see what exactly the dog had been chasing.
He paused as he made eye contact with a tiny, shivering kitten, little back arched and ginger fur standing on end. There was a gentle spark of recognition, one shape changer to another, and Techno realized that oh.
This was a shifter.
A baby shifter, at that; judging by their cat form, they couldn’t be older than ten, at the very oldest. And they were so thin.
He leaned forward just a little to get a better look, and the baby shifter hissed, such a tiny little sound, and leaned away from him. Their little claws were unsheathed and digging into the dirt below them.
Oh, that was precious.
The kitten was wedged under the bush in such a way that the dog had had trouble reaching them, but Techno was no dog. He was, unfortunately for this terrified little baby, capable of strategizing.
Techno sat back with a huff and shifted forms. He took a moment to shake out his limbs, then leaned forward to look at the kitten again.
They hissed even louder at him this time.
“Ah, yes, you’re vicious, aren’t you?” Techno murmured, unable to keep all the fondness out of his voice. The kitten was just so cute, and they seemed alone enough that his instincts were demanding he take care of them. It was occasionally obnoxious, with something in the back of his brain insisting he adopt every baby he encountered into the pack, but in some cases…
At the very least, the little one needed a meal.
“Come on, then.” Techno reached out slowly, and just as he’d predicted, the moment his hand was in reach, the kitten yowled at him and lunged to attack him. The little pinprick claws and baby teeth didn’t even break skin, and Techno used the moment of distraction to scoop the little thing out from under the bush.
They froze the second they were out of cover, and they tried to let go and make a break for it, but Techno quickly stood up with his free hand wrapped carefully around them.
(Gods they were tiny, they would probably fit in the palm of his hand if they stopped squirming.)
“Easy, little one,” he told them as they redoubled their efforts to disembowel his hand. “Easy, easy, I’ve got you.”
The kitten hissed and spat and dug their little teeth into his index finger.
“Ow,” he said, just to placate them.
He started walking. Patrol was done for the day; the baby was more important. Techno needed to tell Phil about their new charge, however temporary of a charge it was, and he needed to get the little one some food and a bath. Even in his human shape, Techno could smell the reek of human trash on their fur. He was fairly sure there were no fleas on them, but it would be good to check.
And it would be nice to let the kitten calm down enough to not be a kitten anymore. Shifters tended to have trouble shifting under stress, especially young shifters, and he should probably ask their name.
Tommy was going to die.
Being chased by the dog was bad enough. That was awful. But he was smart and the dog was dumb and he’d gotten into a place where it couldn’t get him.
(He hadn’t been sure, for a minute. The dog had started to dig, and he’d been so scared that it would force its way in enough to grab him.)
And then the dog had run away. Because of the werewolf.
He was huge, he was bigger than any dog Tommy had ever seen in his whole life, and he had scars all over him. He probably never had to worry about getting food taken away by anybody, or not having a good sleeping spot. He could fight anybody for anything he wanted.
He’d been about to go away, and then one of the terrified noises Tommy had been keeping quiet the whole time he’d been running had forced its way out. It had been quiet, but it had been noise, and then the werewolf had seen him.
And then he’d shifted and grabbed him and was carrying Tommy somewhere where he would probably eat him.
Tommy kept biting the werewolf’s fingers as hard as he could. His jaw was starting to hurt just a bit, and his hip still hurt from hitting the ground, but he had to keep going. He didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to, and maybe if he hurt the stupid werewolf he’d let Tommy go.
“Ow,” the werewolf said in a really calm voice that didn’t sound like he was hurt at all.
Tommy hissed at him, his tail lashing.
“Yes, you’re very fierce.” A finger came up to gently brush the fur on top of Tommy’s head. “A little warrior, aren’t you?”
Yes! He was very fierce! And he wanted to be put down!
It would be easier to make the werewolf let go if he could get his human skin on, but he was still too… too nervous, not scared, he was too much of a big man to be scared. He couldn’t shift when scary things were happening, it was like his body wanted to be in his fur to be safe, even if being in his fur wasn’t safe at all.
Tommy wanted to yell and scream and say the curse word he knew as loud as he possibly could. Instead he had to just scream like a cat.
The werewolf hummed, and his voice was so deep that the sound rumbled in his chest. “You’re a vocal little thing.”
Instead of replying, Tommy tried sinking his teeth into the werewolf’s hand again. It still didn’t work, but it was better than not doing anything at all.
“It isn’t much further,” the werewolf told him, and that made Tommy’s stomach drop.
He wanted it to be so far away. So very far, to give him lots and lots of time to get away or bite him or - or something, anything to get back to his sleeping spot and whatever the dog had left of the sandwich he’d found. Anything to not get eaten by werewolves.
Tommy really didn’t want to get eaten.
The werewolf brushed a finger along his head again. “There we go, kitten. This’ll be easier if you’re calmer.”
He wasn’t a kitten, not really, and the werewolf had to know that. Tommy had known he was a werewolf the second he saw him, there was just… something that said there was a person under the fur. From what little he knew about shifters, that was common in all of them. You looked at another shifter and you just knew.
Would they be nicer because he wasn’t a real kitten, or would they be even meaner?
The werewolf ducked around a tree, and then there weren’t any more trees.
Tommy blinked in surprise at the sudden clearing. There was a house in front of them, made out of wood, and there were rows of little baby plants nearby. That hadn’t been there a second ago.
He flinched as the werewolf laughed, quiet and deep. “Surprised, huh? It’s not a good idea to live this close to humans without a bit of magic.”
That… made sense. Tommy had wished a few times that he could hide his sleeping spots away from everybody, so they could just be his and nobody else could find them at all. It was… admittedly a little bit cool that the werewolves could do that with a whole house.
And then the werewolf started walking toward it, and Tommy remembered that oh yeah, the werewolf was taking him home to eat him, and he bit his fingers again.
“Stubborn,” the werewolf murmured, and it almost sounded like he was laughing, but not quite.
He didn’t bother knocking when he got to the door. He just opened it and kicked off his shoes without setting Tommy down. “Phil?”
“In here, mate!” somebody else called from further inside the house.
Tommy’s ears were pinned all the way back, and he was curling down under the werewolf’s hand, now. The whole house smelled like werewolf, and something in the back of his head said it was a bad, dangerous smell. It smelled like predators. Tommy was going to stay curled up right here and be so still and so quiet they’d forget he was even here. Yeah. That would work, right?
The werewolf made his way deeper into the house and walked into what looked like a living room. There were two more people here, one with blond hair sitting on the couch and one with brown hair who had his head in the blind person’s lap. Werewolves, both of them, Tommy realized.
“You’re back early,” said the blond person, running his fingers through the other person’s hair. It looked curly, like Tommy’s, when he was person-shaped.
“Somethin’ came up.” The werewolf carefully held Tommy out with both hands, curling his fingers away just enough that the other two could see him. “Look who I found.”
The brown-haired werewolf sat up, and they both stared at Tommy with wide eyes.
“Oh,” the brown haired one said, more like he was breathing out than saying a word.
“Mate, where…?” the blond one asked softly, glancing from Tommy to the werewolf holding him.
One finger started rubbing gentle circles into Tommy’s back as his hands closed a little, giving Tommy some more shelter. “Found them at the edge of the territory, bein’ chased by a stray dog. Figured I should bring them back here, at least for now.”
Tommy couldn’t help it. He started to purr, melting into the petting. Nobody had done that in such a long time, and it felt so nice.
“There we go, little one.” The werewolf’s voice was so soft, and he sounded so nice and so happy, it was hard for Tommy to remember right at that second why he had been afraid. “There we go. You’re safe here.”
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Maybe he was.