“Hello?” I mutter.
“Did he wake up at all?” Hunter barks. No manners, whatsoever. The Beast was more polite than this! And he gave Belle a library! A library!
“I’m great, thanks. How are you?” I whisper, looking around my dark apartment. I wonder if turning on the TV is too dangerous. Will the light wake Matty up? I do it anyway.
“Did he wake up?” Each word is bitten off like he’s a lion tearing at a piece of meat.
I keep quiet.
“Sera? Hello?”
“How are you, Hunter?” I’m being stubborn. I shouldn’t be. Matty is more important. But I want to win – at something. Just this once.
Hunter sighs, the sound weary. “I’m tired. I’m tired of all this shit. I’m really fucking tired.”
“I hope ‘shit’ doesn’t include Matty.”
He chuckles, chokes it off, like he doesn’t want to laugh at my jokes. The kind of surprised laughter you have when someone you want to throw a brick at is surprisingly hilarious. “Is he awake?”
“Who the frak is awake at five am?” I sputter. I see that having just watched my first Battlestar: Galactica episode has already changed my vocabulary. What an awesome word.
A pause on his end. “What’s frak mean?”
Sera, your geek is showing. And he says frak really well.
“Never mind that. We ate supper, I gave him a slice of cake-”
“YOU DID WHAT!?” Yup, definitely like the Beast. “Open you’re fucking door right now before I break it DOWN!”
I’m stupid, I know. Potential homicidal maniac standing outside my door with enough anger in his voice to warn me that opening said door is a bad, bad idea. I open the bloody door, but push past him and close it behind me so we’re standing chest to chest outside in the hall (more like boobs to upper abdomen).
Hunter’s chest is pumping up and down as he sucks in air, nostrils flaring. I half expect him to paw the ground with a foot and charge me. He does none of these things.
“Let me see him. Please.” The words come out like orders, and the last bit of politeness is nothing but a joke.
I came out of my apartment ready to do battle. I can’t explain what I’m feeling, what I’m doing.
“He’s fine. I know what I’m doing. My Mom’s a diabetic, remember? I made him a special cake and only gave him a tiny portion. Don’t wake him up, he’s had a long day,” I yell-whisper in the hall.
Hunter’s eyes are narrowed to slits like I’m worse than shit on his boot. “You don’t know fuck all of what’s happening, of what he goes through.” He moves into my space, crowding me against the door. Using his big body against my not-so-smaller one.
Fuck this.
My hands go to his shoulders as I lift my knee. As close as we are, only my upper thigh connects with Dick and the Twins, but I keep going, momentum as it is, crashing into him. The softness of him collides with my thigh muscle. I’m kinda glad he didn’t get the knee, but that’s the cowardly part of me talking.
The brick wall that’s Hunter falls backwards as he cups himself gasping, moaning but trying to stay quiet about it. I crouch down, fingers tented in front of me, balancing my weight on the balls of my feet.
I wait for the curse words, the swearing, the slurs he’s bound to launch at me. I wait for him to recover, watching as the rocking back and forth slows down and eventually stops and his eyes come to me instead of being squeezed shut.
“I deserved that. Fuck. I deserved that,” he groans, not moving his hands from his crotch.
I fall on my ass, losing my balance. “You’re giving me whiplash with your fraking moods. What the hell is wrong with you?”
His lips quirk up in both corners. I have the insane urge to Tarzan yell and beat my chest. “There’s that word again. You gonna tell me what it means?”
“I don’t think so. It might spin you off into another tantrum.” My hands have fisted in my lap, and in a wave of realization that chokes, I realize he sees what I’m wearing. Black sleep shorts, and a kawaii version of Spider-man hanging underneath the word AMAZING shirt. One of his fingers swipes at my smooth leg, burning my skin. It’s just a leg, just the pad of his finger. Two patches of skin that when they come together shouldn’t mean much – but, Christ, they do. I gulp down air, try to calm myself down.
Hunter gets vertical and moves his giant paw in front of my face. To be an asshole, or not to be an asshole? Shakespeare and his questions. “You just gonna stare at it?” he asks, fingers curling in impatience.
I shake my head. Placing my hand in his, I get to my feet using his strength. I open the door and let us in, the glow of the TV the only thing we can see by. Matty’s curled up on my couch, the blue glow on his face making him look deathly pale. I freeze, wondering if he’s dead, if he died while I was just outside. My stomach convulses, and acid burns up my throat.