Animal Instincts [Closed]

Todd had quickly found that Pittsburgh was a suffocating city. He was usually fine in cities, he could do bodies and people, the stink and noise that came with them, but he always forgot how bad a big city was to live in. Thankfully, like all big cities, Pittsburgh had hiking trails. He'd already made the mistake to coming here in the afternoon, when most of the trail's occupants were hipsters in obnoxious clothing drinking canned beer and pretending to enjoy the open air while also on their cell phones the whole time. He'd even started to question his decision to come to Pittsburgh at all. Maybe moving out to a suburb wouldn't be a bad idea.

His doubts faded away when he found this offshoot trail, though. A branch off the main one, it seemed to be frequented by people who actually read the signs to "take only pictures, leave only footprints". No litter, no crowded babble. Todd even took the cap off his own camera, one of his more expensive possessions, and taken a few good shots of birds and squirrels and a tree that was shaped like an X. He was an amateur at best when it came to this stuff, but it helped clear his head to focus on the animals and plants, the blank space between human beings. It helped him ignore the cold in his bones, too, even if it didn't actually do anything about it.

A pair of wings fluttered nearby, and Todd looked up to see a sparrow leave its perch on a branch. He raised his camera to follow it, focus in better where his other senses had failed, but as he stopped he felt his senses stir. There was a smell in the air, heavy and thick, not quite human. He could have sworn he heard a sigh, too. He lowered the camera and took a quick glance around, squinting in the grey afternoon light.

There was a creak, and a groan, and rustle of fabric against wood, and Todd's head snapped up at the sound of a very human “Eep!”

Sure enough, a figure now dangled from the limb. Hooded, gloved, booted. He couldn't make out any real facial features, but as he took a breath he caught another whiff of that scent from earlier. Almost animal. Then again, what another person smelled like wasn't any of his business. Really her hanging there wasn't any of his business either, but it'd be weird for him to just move on with them upside-down like that.

"Hey there," he said, feeling kind of awkward as he took a step towards the stranger. "Do you uh... need help?"

The "p" caught on his lips with a faint pop, an emphasis to stay casual. His cold blue eyes wouldn't seem too worried, especially given they'd caught themself instead of breaking their spine on the ground. Just a polite check-in, really. He'd be fine to move on in a second when she said everything was okay and went back to....

"What're you doing up there, anyway?"

He chuckled back to hide the edge of his nerves. "I can see that."

Quite the predicament he'd gotten himself into by asking. The longer he stood by her - and now he was sure it was a girl, teen by the looks of her, with a very strange face, eyes with no pupils or irises. Is she blind or something? That'd be rude to ask, and Todd wasn't in the business of making enemies right away. But the longer he stood near her, the more certain he was that she was the source of the musky animal smell. Some kind of cat, maybe. He wasn't thinking too hard about identifying what she was, even if it did make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. She wasn't dangerous, just offputting.

But now he couldn't just walk away. He'd offered to help, and while she was good enough to stay on the branch, getting back up - or down - was clearly a different problem. He turned the possibilities over in his mind. Climbing up to help her would probably be his best option, but it was clear she was having a tough time hanging on. Catching her would be the better bet, then. He'd be betraying a somewhat better than average strength, and she looked heavy, but he could use a good deed right now. Every little bit counted, after...

He took a deep breath to get rid of any thought of Summer. That incident was three months behind him, and he'd been working against his decisions back then. Helping a stranger wasn't going to completely fix it. But walking away wouldn't do him any good, either. Call him superstitious, maybe. It was always better to be safe than sorry.

"Alright, kid, I'm about to ask a lot of you." He took his camera off, and set it on the side of the trail as he walked toward the tree. He talked the whole way, just in case the girl really was blind. "You're going to need to trust me. If you can do that, then when I say go, you need to let go. I'll be right down here to catch you."

He came to a stop under the tree and braced himself. "Okay. When you're ready... Go."

The second Todd caught her in his arms he realized his mistake.

He caught her. He'd never worried about that. She was a little heavier than he'd been anticipating but she landed across his arms bridal-style with barely a shift to make sure she was secure. He wasn't even worried that she'd notice the layers of clothing between her and his actual body. Most people didn't pay that much attention, and even if she did, there were dozens of reasons he could be dressed that way.

The problem wasn't her weight at all. It was her warmth. The heat of her body burned through his thick clothes and triggered a pang of hunger that cut him like a winter wind, leaving him staggered. His grip on her wasn't paralyzing by any stretch, but perhaps... perhaps it was just a touch more than it should have been, as his mind raced against the bone-deep ache that haunted him.

How long had it been since he'd eaten?

Summer. He hadn't eaten since Summer. A kind of penance. There'd been a time when he could go for months without even feeling peckish. Even now, the throng of the city hadn't yet bothered him, hadn't yet touched that instinct. But he was alone out here. There were people, sure, but he knew where to hide in the woods, and it wasn't like there'd be a body. If he took off at a run she would take a second to process what was happening. There'd be time.

But at what cost?

Summer. He thought of Summer. Judging by her face, the blind girl was the same age, albeit built very differently. And there was that smell to consider as well, the one that made his skin crawl. Even if he'd ever tempt fate - which he wouldn't, his own skin was too valuable for that - this wasn't food. The hunger didn't go away, but Todd reigned it in. He'd find another way to satisfy it. Maybe get lucky on his early patrols of the city. Not a girl, and not this girl.

Less than a second had passed. It'd been an infinite second, but a moment's decision was made between catching the girl and a deep breath. He leaned her towards the ground, and as her feet touched he helped pull her upright. If he'd noticed anything strange about her gloved hand, he didn't show any indication, lost in thought as he was. She might notice the slight tremble in his grip, solid though it was, as the cold refused to dissipate.

He swallowed hard before he spoke, but his smile was as warm as before, and even the coldness in his eyes was the former coldness of color and not of malice. "See? No sweat. Safe and sound on solid earth."

She sensed something was wrong. He could see it in her eyes as she backed away from him, felt it in the tension of her body like a coiled spring. His earlier suspicion that she might be blind completely vanished as he felt the pressure of her gaze, and for the first time he noticed the tufts of fur poking up from under her white hair. His expression didn't change, and he didn't return her idle curiosity. Instead he gestured back to the trail, to the camera at the side of it.

"Just touring. I'm new to the area. Needed some time off the streets, so I'm out here enjoying nature."

That was the truth, albeit a little vague. His reasons for coming out here had been a little vague. He wanted to ask her a question in return, but he could already tell that wasn't going to get him anywhere. He felt like they were assessing each other, though to what purpose he had no idea. The last actual predator he'd tangled with was a normal bear. He definitely didn't stare at the cat ears, or express anything indication he'd noticed her featureless eyes besides polite contact. Now it was time to turn up the charm, just enough to be neither too forward nor aloof. Polite.

"Todd, by the way. Todd Fowler." He offered his hand, and gave her a polite amount of time before he pulled it back. He wouldn't be offended if she didn't take it, or return with her own name. He could just walk away, too, but he felt like for some reason she wasn't going to leave well enough alone. Difficult to understand, since she seemed to have a good head on her shoulders.

"Maybe I could take you to get a bite to eat?" Shit that sounded weird. Especially if she'd caught the whiff of cold from earlier. "I saw a Chinese place on the way in. We could get there by bus. My treat - least I could do after scaring you like that."

Fuck, that sounded weirder. The words were out though, and he didn't change his tune. Taking it back would make a bad situation worse. He really did mean it. And the promise of possibly getting banned from a Chinese buffet was... weirdly enticing, all things considered. Though that might just be his stomach talking.

The suspicion in her blank eyes didn't go away. Her distrust was actually unexpected, but if she had the same hair-raising feeling he had about her, it would make sense. Rather than try to soothe the detected danger, though, she seemed to just watch it. That was fine. As of right now, there was nothing to see. Just Todd, smiling patiently as she shook his hand. He couldn't make the slight trembling go away, but he met her firmness with a reasonable amount of his own.

"Adelyn," he repeated politely as he watched her grab her bag from the roots of the tree. Somewhere nearby, a squirrel chittered. "That's a nice name."

He'd turned back toward the trail when his sensitive hearing picked up the muttered comment about the food's ethnicity. Which in its own right was just begging for a cannibalism joke, but he refrained. That kind of thing was definitely not cool, especially around someone who already didn't trust him. She'd probably catch him with a ghost of a smirk as he started to explain.

"Chinese food? Like...Kung-Pao chicken. Beef and broccoli. Fortune cookies." He turned to examine her face, but she seemed serious. He hadn't had much exposure to the world before a certain point in time, either. And she didn't seem like the sort to eat out too often. "It's where the recipes are from. Usually run by people from there, too."

They made it back to the trail, and he recovered his camera. He checked the battery, then replaced the cap, turned it off, and slung it over his neck. Distantly, he could hear other people coming in their direction. He turned away from them, back the way he'd come. The chewing sensation against his bones hadn't actually subsided, and the closer they got to the city, the better he knew he'd feel about his own self-control. In the meantime, he figured he'd fill the silence with something.

"So, Adelyn, you from around here?"

"Oh, I'm from a little bit of all over," Todd replied, without the tone of someone who just didn't want to talk about his past. He hadn't stayed in one place long enough to really call it home since... Well, since Billings. Since Arlo. Adelyn didn't need to know about Arlo. Or Summer. Ever, if this was going to be a regular kind of thing. The feeling in Todd's gut, the one that wasn't the cold gnawing hunger, said that this whole situation was turning into something familiar. He didn't like that thought.

He cleared his throat a little as he pulled himself back to the present. "I haven't seen too much of the city either. Really just here for work until the road calls again. Don't like staying in one place for too long."

He had to admit, the sunglasses were effective at hiding the blank white of her eyes, and the rest of her getup, while warm, seemed designed for excursions like this. He had a feeling she was hiding more oddities under the gloves and boots, the same way he hid his frame under too many clothes when he didn't eat for a while. Stopped people from staring at the very least, although he'd learned that most wouldn't take the time to actually ask what was wrong with him. Cat ears might be a little bit different.

Kid had a lot of questions. Todd didn't necessarily mind them, but he did have to think before he spoke, just to make sure he didn't say anything offputting.

"Bit of anything that won't keep me rooted, actually." He started to list on his fingers. "I like working with my hands - had a brief stint as a mechanic, then did some work for a landlord as a handyman. Did a few jobs like that on and off. I've also done retail stuff - coffee barista... that didn't last long... grocery store bagger, stocker, and clerk. Had a gas station job for a bit at one of those old-fashioned places where you pump the gas for a customer. That was cool. They had uniforms and everything."

He saw Adelyn pick up a piece of trash, and without really thinking started to do the same as they walked. He started by just collecting them in his arms, but if Adelyn offered a bag he wouldn't refuse. When she asked her question, he fell silent long enough for her to rethink her question. The opening was there to just let it go, but he also had a creeping suspicion that it would just come up again later, when he was in a slightly worse mood. If there was a good time for it, it was now, with no one else around and a clear (well, mostly clear) head.

"Well, I uh... No, it's no problem." He breathed deeply through his nose, catching a whiff of that edge where city and forest met. "I grew up in the foster system, actually. Most of my life. I actually don't even remember where my parents were from. They bounced me around a lot - I guess I have some distant relatives that couldn't deal with me at the time, so in the system I stayed. Second I got out of it I was off like a shot. Found a place as far away as I could drive, settled down in middle of nowhere Montana for a long stretch. Then I heard the road call for the first time. Haven't really been able to sit still since."

Half the truth had to be enough. He'd been running from Billings ever since Arlo, and townhopping, while a formative experience, had more to do with not wanting to be recognized than "the call of the road." Although he did like the travel. That wasn't a lie. The foster system wasn't a lie, either, but it was vague enough that even if she did tell (and he was sure she had no idea how to tell, even if she wanted to) she wouldn't have any information of value. He'd changed his name the second he got out, too. Precautions every step of the way. At the time he'd been running from something. These days, he mostly felt like he was running in circles. But Adelyn didn't need to know that. Adelyn just wanted to know about his home. And it was the truth to say: he'd never had one.