Lazy, and lying on your belly -- 4039 words

Changeling has spent the better part of three hours watching Yu-Gi-Oh on its phone, laying half splayed out against its headboard. It is still over the covers because that means it is not "going to bed" yet, which means that it does not have to take its headband off yet. The room is quiet, aside from the tinny sound of the duel race and the light sound of the little piercings Tiffany had helped put into its furry ears, rattling every time Changeling shifts its head.

They jangle louder when the unexpectedly abrupt opening of the door startles the Changeling so bad it nearly drops the phone on its face.

Augustus — the culprit — barely reacts to the fierce scowl Changeling sends her way. She does not even bother speaking in her defense, instead tossing herself to lay face down in the empty side of Changeling's bed with enough force to send it sliding down the headboard a few inches further.

"Did you walk into the house without knocking?" Changeling asks, torn equally between incredulous and annoyed, but not enough to actually bother pausing its show to ask. Its mother had left for work a few episodes ago, it recalls — she had stopped by its room to say goodbye. "Was the door unlocked?" it demands, something sharp and alarmed pricking at its lungs.

"Your mom said I could," Augustus replies before the panic can hook itself in too deeply. "She told me where she hides the spare key."

Well, that is its own kind of alarming — they should not have a spare key hidden out in the open at all. That is how stupid burglaries happen. If its mother had wanted to give Augustus access to the house, she could have simply given the copy to her. That would have been safer — Augustus never misplaces keys, she keeps them all clipped to her belt.

(It spares a thought to consider if Augustus should be gifted such a key. Certainly, it had not been Changeling's idea, and its mother had neglected to ask its opinion on this course of action. But, Augustus has been visiting regularly for over a year and a half by now, and although she has remained thoroughly annoying for all of it, she has never dropped by at inconvenient times, and has been historically adept at accepting when she has begun to overstay her welcome and leaving without protest. It does make sense for her to be granted the freedom to come and go as she pleases, especially if this means the Changeling will no longer be obligated to interrupt its flow to unlock or lock the door for her. Although, she really should just take the key instead of having to routinely retrieve it from a hiding place, which would make itself fairly obvious to neighbors and passersby after a while. It makes a mental note to put the key on her carabiner as soon as possible.)

"Fine," it says stiffly, shifting back up a little. Augustus does not respond, not even to move. She just lays there, face tucked against one of the Changeling's pillows, her breaths big and sighing in the quiet. Changeling grits its teeth, reaching up to rub the corner of an ear between its knuckles, fingers smoothing over the fur, considering. The silence is atypical; its chest feels taut and heavy (frustrated?) and it is not certain why. "What is wrong with you?" it blurts out, dropping its hand to yank on one of its human earlobes instead.

"Gimme ten," is Augustus' nonsensical reply.

Changeling blinks down at the back of her head. Yusei rattles off the name of a card in its phone speakers.

"Minutes?" it clarifies confusedly, and Augustus grunts. Which is only probably a yes, but it is annoyed enough that the onus to re-clarify should that not be the case is now on her shoulders, not its own. So Changeling skips back a few minutes to the beginning of the race where it had stopped paying attention, occasionally tapping the screen to show the time purely to satisfy its own curiosity.

Throughout, Augustus remains disengaged dead weight at its side, her presence marked solely by the slow leech of her body heat into the Changeling's hip where her arm presses against it. The Changeling considers moving to distance itself from the touch, as it typically would, but finds itself refraining for now — the discomfort that usually drives the impulse does not seem to be settling in. It wonders if perhaps it is just too distracted to be bothered, for once.

"What is wrong with you?" it repeats, precisely ten minutes later, actually pausing the show this time so it will not have to rewind again.

This time, Augustus turns her face out of the pillow to squint up at Changeling directly. She is not wearing her glasses, and it makes her face look strange and unfamiliar. Changeling glances away. "You know how the bookstore had those two lights by the register that have been burned out for forever?" Even free from the confines of the pillow, her words come out slow and tense — as if she is concentrating harder than usual to get them out of her mouth. She is more likely to sound like this during or after long shifts than she is before them.

"Yes," Changeling replies, abruptly annoyed by her second nonsensical response to its relatively straightforward question, but restraining itself from saying so valiantly. Augustus is more loquacious than Changeling is; she will almost always use more words than less, even when she could save time and effort by simply answering questions directly rather than always proliferating and clarifying things.

"Well," she says. "Rosemary finally got someone to replace them, which was an awful surprise. They even went so far as to replace them with flor-four," she huffs. "Fluorescents," she manages, forcing each syllable out individually. "This in combination with the windows there, it has become far too bright. And loud. I can hear them even over the dumb music. And they are not even the same color as the other lights on the floor. It looks dumb, and I have suffered the last several hours with a terrible ache in the backs of my eyes for it."

This is why Changeling never leaves the house without sunglasses on. It does not point this out this time. "Frick," it swears sympathetically instead. Then idly adds, "Just like the Ark of the Covenant," when the image of the bright, face-melting light flashes in the back of its head for a heartbeat.

Augustus squints her eyes back open just to glare sullenly up at it. The sight inexplicably makes the Changeling's hands clench around its phone hard enough to inadvertently turn off the screen entirely. "I don't watch movies," she reminds it petulantly.

"You understood the reference fine, idiot," Changeling replies tartly, deliberately stretching out its fingers and attempting to rub away a sudden tightness in its chest.

"I did not," Augustus argues back.

Before the Changeling can counter that she had clearly recognized it enough to know it was a reference to a movie specifically, Augustus abruptly hauls herself up onto her elbows. Changeling freezes, unsure if she will need it to move so that she can get off the bed, and is instead pinned in place when Augustus moves only to lay back down with her head placed squarely in the center of the Changeling's chest.

Beneath her, the Changeling goes stiff.

"You're warm," Augustus mumbles, half to herself, shuffling the rest of her body in closer to pin her arms down under the weight of her own chest, body pressed up against Changeling's side. It freezes, hands hovering uncertainly above her shoulders, unsure of what to do with itself. Usually, it would have shoved her off immediately. Usually, she would have asked before she touched it at all. She used to forget to do this frequently, but has not done so in a while. Do I hate this? Changeling wonders anxiously, and has no answer for itself.

Oblivious, Augustus finishes curling her body around the Changeling's side and sniffs pathetically. Instead of asking for either forgiveness or permission for the breach in etiquette, she says, "Cover my eyes, man — your lamp is too bright."

The words 'Do it yourself' rise up on impulse and lock uncomfortably in the Changeling's throat. The light is one of the dimmest bulbs available — all of Changeling's lights are — but perhaps Augustus' headache is worse than she let on. This thought is enough to halt its urge to extricate itself as quickly as possible in its metaphorical tracks. It deliberates on its own memories of past migraines — white hot railroad spikes of pain radiating all the way down its neck. Does it hate this? If it pushed her away, the probability is high that Augustus would not react in anger, but in passive acceptance of the Changeling's boundaries as she has always done in the past, but does it need her to stop touching it? Does it want her to get off?

For once, it is not so sure of the answer.

Cautiously, the Changeling lowers its arms to touch her, bracing itself to recoil from the contact the instant it sours, but finding the action surprisingly unnecessary. Its arms settle lightly over her shoulders, and the only thing that happens is the weight settles in more firmly. Is this comfortable? Augustus does not seem to be complaining, either. It stares intently at the curve of her cheekbone, and then deliberately adjusts so that the crook of its elbow wraps neatly over the bridge of her nose, blocking the light from her eyes completely. It continues to wait for the moment the touch overreaches into something intolerable, and finds that this moment does not seem to be arriving.

Do I like this? it wonders, baffled. It cannot determine this either. The weight of Augustus' body on its own feels overwhelming and mildly claustrophobic, but not quite smothering. It decides it feels mostly confused, and that it is not panicking. She usually asks, it thinks again. Had she just forgotten? Does her head hurt her that badly?

Changeling's brain provides it with an image of a wolf cub curled up, asleep, on the back of a beleaguered looking adult. It does not clarify much.

Augustus takes the opportunity to shuffle closer, tucking her face more efficiently into the bend of Changeling's arm, letting out a sigh that makes it shiver. It grits its teeth — that sensation was decidedly more unpleasant, air ghosting too lightly over the hairs on its arm, raising irritated goosebumps; but at least it has a baseline now. It decides that this touching is indeed tolerable, but the tolerance is limited. For now, it resolves mainly not to think about it, and turns its head to clumsily turn its show back on with its one free hand to distract itself before it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Despite its fixed attention on the duel race, Changeling can feel it when Augustus goes from listening along to the show to sleeping — her weight on its chest growing warmer and more dense. Something hot suffuses Changeling's chest at the realization, flooding its mouth with saliva. It focuses doggedly on Yusei's next turn instead of dwelling on this, refusing to give into the impulse to turn its head to stare. Once again, it debates the merits of extricating itself from under her, and once again finds itself refraining.

Do I like this? It glances sidelong at the back of her head. It cannot see her face for how she has it hidden, and thinks it finds this disappointing for a reason it cannot decipher.

Something in its jaw aches fiercely with an impulse it does not understand. When it realizes belatedly that its phone has gone silent, it attempts to refocus itself once again — picking the device back up and turning it on to start the next episode.

The arms of its headband digs uncomfortably against the shell of its human ears, splitting its attention once again from the episode recap. The thought of taking the headband off now feels like a concession of some sort, an inexplicable hot flash of embarrassment in some admission. The Changeling pointedly leaves the dog ears exactly where they are, merely readjusting them instead. Privately, it wishes it understood whatever unspoken thing its body seems to know that it does not.

Typically, it might deign to ask Augustus for clarity on the matter. Somehow, it understands enough to know that it will not do so this time.

Atop its chest, Augustus sleeps on, oblivious to it all.

The Changeling makes it through several episodes in this manner: welding its thoughts to the dialogue of the show in order to avoid thinking about the way it has begun to sweat, how this discomfort is stabilized by the rhythmic pattern of Augustus' breath beneath the noise of the show, the way the shifting of their rib-cages has fallen into a comfortable synchronicity, the way her unconscious presence continues to conjure images of wolves baring their throats in its mind. Sunk in to the moment deeply enough that it does not notice the new noises intruding on the environment until its door has already been opened.

"Did Augustus leave her glasses here or something?" Tiffany asks loudly as she struts in, shrugging her bag off of her shoulder as she kicks the door shut. She flicks the arm of the thin black frames open a few times before she actually bothers to look up. Changeling bares its teeth at her over the top of Augustus' head, its phone abandoned in favor of a defensive arm thrown over her shoulders. There is a pause wherein Tiffany seems as though she may speak, but does not.

"Does no one knock anymore?" the Changeling asks lowly, the words catching in its throat like a snarl. It feels strange, all of a sudden. Heart racing; like it cannot catch its breath anymore, like someone is about to yell at it.

Like a prey animal, perhaps.

Tiffany steps forward, and Changeling feels itself tense further. "So Augustus didn't knock either for once, is what you're saying?" she asks, unrepentant as she kicks her shoes off and tucks them under Changeling's bed.

The Changeling scowls at her. Her presence is grating worse than usual, and it does not know if there is a reason why. Is it simply startled? Is it because it has allowed Augustus to touch it? Is it overstimulated? Or is there something else? Things had been fine, until Tiffany had arrived, had they not? "She had a migraine," it informs her, failing to articulate anything else.

"Oh," Tiffany says, shoulders dropping. "That sucks."

She leans to put Augustus' glasses down on the Changeling's side table. It thinks to ask where they were, but decides it must have been the table in the entryway, where Augustus usually removes her shoes. She is polite about that, where Tiffany is not.

Tiffany, meanwhile, has taken it upon herself to clamber clumsily into the bed on Augustus' opposite side. The Changeling bites back the bewildering impulse to growl at her for the imposition. It does not successfully refrain from baring its teeth at her again, but Tiffany does not seem to notice this, instead curling herself unhesitatingly around Augustus' back and tucking her arms around her waist. "Auggie's got the right idea, though," she says as she does so. "Today was exhausting, bro. I used too much sealant spray."

Changeling is well aware of this because she reeks of it quite thoroughly — it follows her like a cloud. It is searching for the words to tell Tiffany to buzz off about it when Augustus lets out a sleepy hum, and rapidly rearranges Changeling's internal priorities to favor going very still in order to avoid disturbing her. This allows Tiffany enough leeway to settle down firmly enough that kicking her out now would necessitate disturbing Augustus, leaving Changeling to fumingly struggle to piece together a new appropriate course of action.

The way its shirt has begun to cling to its skin only complicates matters.

Beneath its increasingly conflicted discomfort, though, some part of Changeling is able to acknowledge that there is something satisfying in the overall atmosphere. There is something significant in having both Augustus and Tiffany here, in its inner sanctum, where Changeling can keep an eye on them and ensure their safety from the many threats of the outside world. The feeling solidifies and strengthens as it adjusts to Tiffany's unexpected presence. In some ineffable way, the moment was, in a word, better before she arrived, but it struggles to pin down whether it was bothered more by Tiffany's presence in general, or if it was merely her unannounced disruption that it found grating.

It does not come to a precise conclusion on this issue before it decides instead that it would prefer to no longer be pinned underneath anyone as it watches over them.

"Everyone move," it growls out finally, when its ability to distract itself with the confusing intricacies of its own opinions and emotions runs dry. The damp folds of its shirt, creased awkwardly beneath Augustus' cheek, is no longer passively tolerable and instead teeters on the uncomfortable edge of panic-inducing. There is a part of Changeling that would like to remain in place until Augustus wakes up on her own, but it knows itself well enough to know that if it allows things to progress much further, it will lose whatever ability it still has to be chivalrous in the way it extricates itself. "Off," it emphasizes louder, pushing itself party up onto its elbows to jostle Augustus just slightly.

"Sorry," she slurs out, finally rousing enough to pick herself up off of the Changeling so that it can slip out from under her. It does so swiftly, shedding its shirt as it goes and discarding the fabric on the floor on its retreat to the corner, shaking the lingering ghosts of the sensations off of itself. It readjusts its headband and tries to catch its breath.

"My turn to little spoon," Tiffany demands from Augustus' other side, and Changeling watches from the corner of its eyes as Augustus shifts her gaze off of it in favor of blinking blearily down at Tiffany, as if trying to determine where she had come from.

Changeling takes advantage of their distraction to leave the room entirely. Its heart is fluttering in its chest, stomach twisting, and the cause does not feel entirely physical at all, but Changeling has little desire to puzzle it out with the eyes of an audience on its back. It readjusts its ears with clumsy hands, smoothing the fur back into place, and makes a hasty retreat to the kitchen where it can be certain its pacing will not disturb anyone. 

"Hey, Spencer," its mother says softly when it stumbles into her instead. It hovers unhappily in the doorway — the constant unexpected encounters have grown tiresome by now — but then it pushes through to meet her properly. "I saw Tiffany and Augustus' cars on the curb — are they spending the night?"

Changeling is too busy reviewing a mental note to hear the question. "Is there a spare key hidden on our porch?" it asks, squinting pointedly at the wall. "That is not very secure."

"Augustus is the only one who knows where it is," its mother says. "I thought we trusted her."

"I do," the Changeling affirms. "She should have the key. It should not be on the porch — someone else could find it. She should have the key."

It is quiet a moment. "Alright," mom says. "Are Tiffany and Augustus spending the night?" she asks again.

Changeling shifts its gaze to the clock on the oven and blinks in surprise. It is much later than it had thought or realized; it had not noticed so much time had passed. "Yes," it decides. Tiffany might leave, but Augustus will not — her father's house is not far, but she has an aversion to driving at night, regardless of the distance. She will stay until the morning at least.

"Okay," mom says, an odd lilt to her voice. It glances at her suspiciously, but if she has another thought, she does not voice it. "Let me know if y'all need anything. I'm about to head back to work, but I'll have my phone," she adds instead, leaning in to bump her head lightly against the Changeling's as a minimal-contact goodbye.

Changeling sways into the touch, and then pulls back. "The key," it requests. "Augustus keeps them on her belt. It will not be lost."

"Well, I wasn't worried about that," its mother says, but she heads to the door anyway. "Not without a shirt or bra," she says firmly, holding up a flat hand to halt the Changeling when it makes to follow her.

It huffs. It was not going to go outside, but it stays put where she indicated and waits for her to return anyway. She presses the key into its hand and steals another head bump for her trouble.

"Goodbye," it bids her, waving after her as she departs for real. It waits until the door shuts and locks properly before returning to the kitchen proper, crossing its arms tightly over its chest and squeezing firmly. The pressure is reassuring, but it does not feel as warm as it had felt underneath Augustus. The comparison makes it feel so overwhelmed that it bites down hard on its lower lip to push the emotion back.

It resolves not to think about it.

(This is becoming a pattern.)

Instead, it digs a couple of protein bars out of the pantry, because it can no longer remember what times Augustus and Tiffany had arrived, and neither of them had mentioned if they had eaten dinner before arriving. It is important that they eat something, particularly with Augustus' headache. Hunger will make the nausea worse, even if she does not realize it — she often fails to notice these things, after all. The Changeling gets a flash image from a documentary in its head — a wolf dragging a deer back to its den. It is good to be a provider.

When it returns to its room, it is to find that Augustus has turned over onto her other side, curled tightly around Tiffany, her face tucked into the mess of Tiffany's hair, apparently asleep again. Tiffany is still awake, scrolling idly through her phone with one hand, while the other pets idly at the hair on the arm Augustus has slung over her middle.

"She drools, you know," Changeling informs her, feeling spiteful and not quite knowing why. It does not want to be touched again, but simultaneously wants to shove Tiffany off the bed just to take her place under Augustus' arm.

Frustrating.

"Not the worst thing I've had crusting up my hair," Tiffany croons back, unaffected.

Changeling grunts, dropping the snack bars onto the table next to Augustus' glasses. It stoops to pick up a discarded sleeveless hoodie from the floor, and eyes the amount of space left in the bed calculatingly as it pulls it on. Despite the inexplicable desire for more in its stomach, in its Brain it knows that it does not want to wind up pinned underneath someone again if it were to lay back down. It also does not feel inclined to sleep on the floor instead.

It ponders this quandary briefly, reluctantly reaching up to remove its headband and hide its ears away in its drawer. It pauses to double check that it is not wearing its tail on its belt loop today, and then climbs decisively into the bed. It does not lie down, but props its pillows into the corner made between its headboard and Augustus' shoulders, so that it can relax but remain mostly sitting. A compromise — to be close without being pinned, standing guard over them both to ensure their safety even at their most vulnerable, entrusted with watching their backs.

It remembers the key, and leans over Augustus' side to find her carabiner. It is always on her right side, which means Changeling can access it without having to reach under her, and it presses the little bar down to slide the new keyring on with little fanfare.

This is a kind of trust too, it thinks, and then must carefully regulate its breathing when all of its limbs go stiff with some overwhelming emotion it cannot quite name.

Changeling settles back against the pillows, feeling the fabric shift just slightly with the rhythmic rise and fall of Augustus' chest. It is not altogether unpleasant.

It gets another flash image in the back of its head — a pack of wolves, piled on top of one another as they sleep. Augustus and Tiffany are, of course, not wolves, but like this, Changeling supposes that they are close enough.