Two Legs Too Many

[Avery Palmer]

[ Tagged for @Raz's Savas ]

"Fucking... fuck!"

It was a hissed curse, though the quiet tone didn't stop the vehemence from being blatantly obvious.

"This is the dumbest... ugh. 'Go off into the woods,' they said, 'before you forget how to shift at all' they said."

Avery was so very bitter about the whole affair. It was no secret to the very few who knew that Avery did not like being a werewolf, and would in fact be quite happy to forget all about his supernatural lineage if it was in his power to. But alas, here he was under the full moon, having been shoved out his own god damn home and told to go socialise with somebody of his own kin so that maybe he could be more responsible for himself and his abilities. And he just hated it.

He must have looked a hoot. A well-groomed man dressed a little too well to be out in the woods, with a backpack next to him that contained equally nice clothes, staring into the sky with a face like thunder. Certainly, it could have been called suspicious. Thankfully for all his many faults, Avery was quite thorough if nothing else and he had made sure to find a secluded area on the outskirts of Hazelton where he wasn't likely to be disturbed by anybody - including others like him - so that he could just get the charade over with and then go home with an excuse. "Aw shoot darn, didn't see any other furries. Uuuunlucky. Maybe next time, eh?" Oh, his receptionist would be furious with such a snide remark like that. Maybe they'd need a raise if he was to get that sarcastic with them.

Avery let that thought entertain him as he stripped off his hooded jacket and his shirt, his shoes and his socks. He paid very little attention to the surroundings as he chuckled to himself, except quickly he discovered it was incredibly cold. "Jesus. I could take somebody's eye out with these things," he muttered to himself as he glanced at his own nipples, eyebrows furrowing. "I don't know how women deal with it."

And then, like that, he shifted. Which was... something.

See, it was hard to be bad at the act of shifting, itself. It just sort of happened. But it was very easy to be bad at preparing to shift. Like, for example, only getting half undressed and still wearing trousers of any form. Rookie mistake. A rookie mistake that Avery had still never outgrown. A rookie mistake that, in this instance, lead to a stupidly huge wolf sprawling on the floor with a feeble grunt, fighting his way out of a pair of trousers by any means necessary - which then lead to a stupidly huge wolf staring morosely at a pair of trousers ripped beyond all repair while laying still sprawled on the floor like a mockery of a fur rug.

Every fucking time.

[Savas Oakley]

Sniff. Sniff.

Somebody new in the area. Savas' ears immediately flew up and he stopped what he was doing, nose half buried in the green underbrush. Somebody new, that he didn't recognize. That immediately sent his hackles up and his back arched slightly, legs apart, tail low and eyes alert. Scent went from human to animal. Another shifter.

That didn't pardon them. Savas crept through the underbrush quietly, staying alert as he moved slowly forward. Through the tall grass, he could see clothing and what appeared to be a canine shifter. Canine. Not shifter, though. Werewolf. Immediately, Savas growled, not intending to give away his position but too surprised and angry at seeing a werewolf in the area. It wasn't the great white wolf that had taken out half his family, there was that. But it could be part of their pack.

Or.

Or...

It could be an idiot.

Savas lifted his head as he regarded the idiotic looking wolf on the ground. Must be new. Continuing out of the grass with a haughty stance, Savas stared at the wolf in disdain, then let out a sound that could have been a laugh to fellow coyote ears.

[Avery Palmer]

He hadn't been expecting anybody else. Why would he have been? The entire point of coming into the ass-end middle of nowhere was to, very specifically, avoid being seen! The huge wolf's head turned slowly to stare at the other, and Avery was more than aware that it had to be a... a...

He didn't know. Wasn't a werewolf, unless they were the scrawniest looking wolf he'd ever seen, and Avery was fairly sure it was not a wolf at all. So a... shifter, then? They were a thing, right? Fuck if Avery actually knew; his parents hadn't exactly taught him supernatural species identification 101 and it wasn't something you could just take in university for studies. Pushing himself to his feet, the werewolf of the two turned his nose up, and tried very hard to regain some shred of dignity as he ignored the very pants he had been whining about destroying like he had never really cared to begin with.

How long was it he had to be in this form before he could go back to being not a walking rug? Sooner instead of later, right? Jeez, why did his receptionist know more about this than him, anyway? Avery let out a huff of his own, indignant and fake-haughty, and levelled the stranger with a stare that spoke volumes of how little Avery appreciated being laughed at. He thought hard in his head, too, as if perhaps somehow the other would understand him if he thought 'loud' enough. 'What do you want, you nosey prick? Can't let a man mourn trousers in peace, huh?'

[Savas Oakley]

Savas let out another coyote laugh.

'You're mourning those stupid things?' he mocked. Savas had never been a big fan of human clothes. Even in his human form, he tended to walk the forests naked. He only wore clothes when he had to--absolutely had to, or the people started shouting and throwing things and there was that one time he'd been taken down to the station for something. Heck if Savas remembered the "charge." Being human confused him because the shifter community he grew up had a society of their own and it was nothing like the Man's.

'Why are you walking like that, fool? Are you a newborn werewolf? Just bitten?'

[Avery Palmer]

Oh boy, this was going to be one of those encounters, wasn't it?

Avery's glare did not improve, wolf form or not. He took a step away from the trousers - he'd go back and mourn them later when he didn't feel so personally attacked by some feral fleabag - and then promptly sat down so he couldn't make himself look like more of an arse. 'Those "things" probably cost more than your total life savings, so yes. Yes I am.' His tail curled around his right side, and he couldn't quite help the way his nose wrinkled and he flashed a little bit of fang in obvious increasing levels of distaste.

'And for your information, you walking poor man's floor rug, I'm just out here for like half an hour before going back to an actual proper home with proper food and some godsent central heating. Also, can you... can you, like, stay over there, please. I don't think they offer flea treatment for humans and I have no desire to pick up whatever other parasites you might have. I have work to attend tomorrow.'

[Savas Oakley]

"Life savings? What's that?" Savas snorted, lifting his head and turning it away. Whatever it was, it didn't sound that important to him anyway, if human clothes cost more. Probably had something to do with that damn money humans were always throwing around and fighting about. Savas had seen enough of human greed to get they were greatly inspired by the idea of money. Personally, Savas didn't care about commerce or anything like that. All he cared about was family and hunting and playing.

None of those things were important to this shifter, seemed to him.

Savas also had no idea what a walking poor man's floor rug was but he could tell by the way the shifter intoned it that it was meant to be an insult. Because of that, Savas immediately disobeyed the other shifter and immediately lowered his head and then skulked closer before he leapt straight for him to tumble him to the ground. Didn't want him to get close because of fleas? WELL! TOO BAD. Savas was going to give him ALL THE FLEAS NOW.

(LMAO, I love Avery. JS!)

[Avery Palmer]

Avery stared at the other supernatural with a brief air of disbelief. What did he mean 'what's that'? Surely even the most feral of the werewolves - or whatever this one was, given he looked a little scrawny - had to know what life savings were. "... You know, money. Maybe a bank account? A piggy bank? A... a glass jar? You have to have something!"

How could he not? This other creature was clearly not just some wild animal, given they knew what trousers were and could hold a conversation. So how, then, could he not understand the notion of life savings? Unless...

Oh no. Oh no. Did this man just live like this?

Avery was horrified by the very notion. It made his skin crawl to the point he had to shake his body a little, trying to shake away the stab of fear such a notion brought with it. "Oh my god, I am so sorry for you."

And those were about the only words Avery could manage before he realised, in a horror equivalent to if not slightly worse than the idea of just living as an animal, that the opposing supernatural was coming towards him. Pretty quickly. He was going to stop, ri-wrong. "Oof!" Down went the considerably larger of the two, easily felled by the smaller despite having an advantage of size and weight. With a mixed, strangled yelp-growl it was all Avery could do to wiggle with fury, kicking out to try and push the other man off of him in a manner that, actually, closely resembled the same way he tried to kick out of his trousers. "Don't you do it! Get off me, you flea-addled reprobate, go eat somebody's sheep or whatever it is you do! C'mon man you're gonna get me so dirty and gross, that is beyond uncool, guy!" It started as snarled name calling, but it ended in little more than whiny pleas. Fairly typical of Avery really, when things weren't going his way. What had he done to deserve this? What atrocity must he have committed for karma to hate him so - and Avery was very quick to intentionally not consider a few perhaps slightly slimy corporate things he had done if only because he hadn't actually hurt people in the process. Except rich people's feelings. But rich people didn't really have feelings, so he considered that fine and he didn't think karma needed to get involved and furthermore if karma did, karma surely should have been blessing him with good luck.

Again he kicked out at the other, another whiny sound escaping him as he tried to crawl away and put some distance between the two. "Off. Off! Down, sit. Leave! Don't make me call animal control cause I'll do it, man. I'll do it and they'll put you in a ratty little cage all on your own and it'll suck and it'll all be your own fault and you'll sit there all cold and sad while I get to have a nice warm bath and a great meal and all that shit."

[Savas Oakley]

"Uh, no. I despise your human money!" Savas communicated this with a flick of his tail and a flash of his unusually light eyes. Although he liked the term piggy bank. It sounded like a new insult he might be using in the future. Affronted by the pity he saw in the other creature's eyes, Savas immediately lowered his head and let out an irritated growl.

"Don't be."

There was no reason to be pitied by this... this... nearly human creature. He lived so far in the human realm, look at him! He couldn't even control his limbs in his animal form. Now that was pitiful!

And even more so was the way the human wolf fought him when he was pounced upon. Any other wolf his size would surely have either dodged the coyote or taken the opportunity to put him in his place by giving the back of his neck a nice warning bite and maybe a head shake. Not this one. This one went down in a tangle of limbs and took Savas with him. Savas let out a coyote laughing sound at the wildly moving limbs and then the crawling. Fine, fine. Let him crawl. Savas backed off and watched him for a moment but he most certainly did not sit on command. Or leave, for that matter.

Now he was grinning outright, tail moving in a playful manner.

"Will you now? With what? How're you going to call anybody with paws you can barely control? And if you did manage that part, what are you going to tell them? Bark bark bark?" Savas leaned his head back for another amused coyote laugh.

[Avery Palmer]

Despise money?

... Well that was fair, really. Avery liked money for the fact it did most definitely buy happiness, but he had always been a level headed man in many regards and he had always understood why some might despite money. Normally because the rich got richer and the poor ate dirt, and very few rich people ever wanted to change that. However... Avery did not think that this man despised money for the same reason a poor person would.

Free from the smaller canine for now, he sat himself back up and was quick to shake a little, as if maybe that would shake off fleas he had caught (as if fleas worked like that in the first place.) And when he finally looked at the coyote, it was with a very clearly disgruntled frown, with the hackles on his neck naturally raised in the intense displeasure at his situation.

"Hey man, if you want to live your life taking shits in the wood and shagging your family or whatever it is you fucking people do, I'm going to judge you for it but at least I'll have the decency to judge you for it at a fucking distance," he near snarled. "I'm out here for one night because I have to be, with this shitty form I never asked for and do not want, and if I could give this shit all away I'd do it in a heartbeat. Maybe you like being a savage, good for you, maybe it doesn't bother you to walk on all fours and to not be able to talk worth a shit to anything that isn't exactly like you, maybe your parents actually taught you worthwhile lessons about all this horseshit, maybe you're just a retard! I don't know!"

Standing up, and ignoring the still slightly shaky wobble to his legs, Avery turned his back on the other. It... had actually gotten a little emotional there. Shit. He hadn't really meant for it to, but then again Avery was shit at dealing with his own emotions and especially when it came to the one part of his life he genuinely, actually hated. "I don't know and I don't care, but keep it to your fucking self. Cause I didn't get taught shit, and I don't ask for this, yet I still have to fucking deal with it and the last thing I need is you riding my ass or acting like cocking your leg on a tree is the secret to enlightenment. Which it's not, by the way, and people can piss on trees just as easily as long as nobody's around to see you, so."

(I enjoy Savas' rightfully smug attitude a little too much. What a Good Boy.)

[Savas Oakley]

Oh damn. He'd managed to unleash this guy's inner demons. There was a slew of irritation slung his way and Savas merely listened with that same cocky head tilt. Humans that had just been bitten were so damn superior but it sounded an awful lot like this guy thought it was Savas acting all high and mighty. (Which he just might have been, seeing as he thought humans were silly and ridiculous and at times even hateful.) This guy probably had nothing to do with the people that killed Savas' parents but whomever they were, they were likely human and definitely hunters.

So yeah, he hated human hunters. Maybe not all humans, per se. But most of them were untrustworthy at best. This guy wasn't human--anymore--but he had definitely been human for a long time. That or he was born this way and managed to spend seriously just one night in this form.

Either way, kinda pathetic.

"All right, all right. I'll take pity on your pathetic ass," Savas conceded. "You might not've asked for it but it's happened so you can stop throwing a fit about it and embrace it. You might find you like it when you're not stumbling around like a whelp."

[Avery Palmer]

He remained with his back to the other shifter, weird little ratty dog thing that he was because he certainly wasn't Avery's size and Avery felt he looked far too shabby to be a wolf at the very least, and he kept his nose pointed skywards. There was a bitter loathing towards his situation that kept burning away in the pit of his stomach, and Avery couldn't quite work out how he was supposed to kill the feeling. He'd been born like this after all, and his parents had just... never taught him a singular thing.

And now here he was, years later, an incredibly successful human... but an absolutely abysmal werewolf. To the point he was still bullied like some kid at school, and it was both a little funny and a little sad at how much that kind of bullying still hurt.

"Oh, the same way you might find being a human isn't so bad if you bothered to try it? Hypocrite," Avery scolded, curling his tail around his left side and turning his head just enough to look at the coyote over his shoulder. "I'll do you a deal, the day you try embracing your humanity is the day I'll try embracing this furry mess." Because the other guy was, definitely, not going to agree to terms like that. Avery couldn't quite help it, he even managed a slightly wolfish smirk at the fact he'd obviously made a deal the other guy would never accept. That ought to get him off his ass.

[Savas Oakley]

Savas only snorted in response to the offered deal. Why should he need to embrace the human side of his life when he'd gone just fine all these years loving the wild, free life of a coyote? Sure, coyotes were unpopular and people didn't think of them nearly as nicely as they thought of wolves but they were still left alone for the most part. At least, they were in their part of the forest. All up until that shit with the white wolf went down.

Just the memory of that made Savas shake his entire body out, as if to shake the tension off. Fuck all that. He looked over the haughty werewolf again. He wanted to lunge and snap at his toes a bit to get him really moving but he was doing that whole thing with his tail and his head.

"Okay, you realize you're being submissive as fuck right now, right?"

(As much as I love this thread, this character has been in a multitude of other threads since this and he's going in different directions. It makes it hard for me to follow his story. So I'm closing this. Girl, just PM me when you want to do something and I'll list out some characters not doing shit at the moment.)