Chapter Text
Andrew was despairing over the tasteless, textureless, and - most disappointingly - meatless porridge in front of him when Robin let out a very un-Robin-like squeak just before something messy and wet catapulted into her arms, and eventually organized into something that looked vaguely like Dane - although it was a Dane covered in blood and exhaustion, snow melting into their clothing as the warm air of the oversized library-turned-bunker made quick work of the liberal dusting of white on their enormous parka. Robin was babbling into Dane’s stark white hair now, chafing warm hands up and down their arms, and Andrew turned to survey the soaring room behind him because Dane’s arrival meant that someone else was here too, someone who - like Dane - had been gone on a mission for almost two months.
Andrew’s searching gaze found him in a moment, facing off with Kevin by the heavy, fortified double doors of the Library, still flung open to the hard packed snow tunnel that led to the surface. If Dane was covered in blood, Neil was positively drenched in it - his red fur matted almost black with it across most of his little body, a trail of snow and blood mingling in the paw prints he’d left behind him. It took every ounce of self control Andrew possessed not to leap across the room, to run his hands along Neil’s fur, to check for cuts and gushing wounds. But Dane would still be at Neil’s side if he was actually hurt, and Kevin wouldn’t be calmly debriefing him, his fingers buried in the fur on top of Jeremy’s head, the coyote also covered in snow and blood and pressed against Kevin’s leg.
Andrew held himself still, ignoring the kerfuffle that was Robin dragging Dane off somewhere, and waited for Kevin to get done listening to himself speak - considering Neil and Jeremy couldn’t respond in their shifter forms anyway. Eventually the blood splattered red fox nodded and he and the coyote paced off in the direction of the steam baths cobbled together in the private nook of the library that used to house children’s books.
Just before he turned the corner, Neil stopped and looked over his shoulder, catching Andrew’s gaze. He grinned through his pointed pearly teeth, and Andrew threw him his two fingered salute before turning to go wheedle something more edible out of Bee in the kitchens and find a set of dry clothes that might be roughly fox-sized.
Andrew’s den was walled off with three towering bookshelves that still housed sci-fi and fantasy novels, rearranged to his liking: the Piers Anthony tucked close to his pile of blankets and pillows and pilfered sofa cushions, within easy reach for sleepless nights, and the Asimov and Tolkien next to his leather armchair and the one good lamp. With the Great Shifter War finally grinding to a sloppy halt, combat corps like Andrew spent more days biding their time in the bunkers their kind had carved out of monuments from the old world - the world that had been swiftly and devastatingly blanketed in many feet of snow and ice, the climate shifting brutally in three days of terror and death for the humans that turned into three years of territory war for the shifters.
Andrew sat his armful down on the low table in the middle of his space - a canister of hot cocoa, a fresh batch of tasteless porridge, and some previously frozen blueberries that he had sweet talked Bee out of by glaring at her until she had given in with a soft smile and an admonishment not to tell anyone. He had already pulled out one of his threadbare, soft black hoodies and a set of plaid flannel pajama pants with the thought that the drawstring would pull tight enough to keep them up on Neil, and was considering unearthing one of the half empty bottles of brown liquor from his jealously guarded stash when a soft, “Hey,” came from behind him.
Neil was clean and human-shaped now, the damp hair curling around his ears the same russet shade as his fox fur: his most obvious Trait, but not his only one. All shifters had at least one Trait that followed them into human form, some small manifestation - a whisper - of their shifter form. Some were easily hidden, amalgamated. Some were not. It didn’t matter anymore, now. Not in this New World.
“I wonder if you will ever show up here not covered in blood,” Andrew said.
Neil pulled the wool blanket around his shoulders tightly, and let a small chagrined look pass briefly over his face. “It’s unlikely,” he said.
“You were laying communication lines.”
“We were followed. We took care of it.”
“By we you mean you.”
“Maybe,” Neil agreed. Andrew rolled his eyes and threw the hoodie at him. He didn’t look away when Neil dropped the blanket, when he stood unashamed and naked as shifters were wont to do. Andrew drank in the wiry, scarred body that had been absent from him for two months, clocked the narrower cut of his waist, the deeper hollows below his cheekbones.
“Eat,” Andrew said when Neil had tied a double knot in the pajama pants drawstring.
The obedience with which Neil settled to the low table was a testament to how tired he really was. He sat, legs folded underneath him on an old chair cushion, and Andrew settled cross-legged at least a foot away. It always took them time to edge closer in these stolen moments when they overlapped in the Library. Their exception to this rule happened only when stoked by the fire of the battlefield, when they would tuck themselves away pressed with hands and heat, fueled by the adrenaline of a fight they had barely walked away from. It was less frenzied, now, a quieter desperation, and yet somehow no less intense.
Andrew nudged the blueberries closer to Neil and was gratified when his little fox picked one and then a second to savor slowly before dumping them into the porridge and licking his bowl clean. “I could probably manage another. Bee’s on kitchen duty,” he said when Neil put the bowl down.
“No. I’m good I’m just-” he interrupted himself with a yawn, human teeth that were only a touch too pointy on full display.
“Sleep?”
“Not yet.” Neil poked at the canister and Andrew scrounged up mugs, poured some chocolate out, added a little bourbon to each - just a drop.
Neil grinned a sleepy wicked grin into the rim of his mug as he sipped carefully. “You missed me,” he said quietly after he set the mug down, making circles on the edge of the table with one finger tip. Andrew trapped his hand, capturing those restless fingers and pulling them between both of his hands, tamping down that first thrill of Neil’s warm skin against his own after so many weeks.
Neil’s fingers and palms were inky black like his fox paws, another of his Traits and secretly Andrew’s favorite; he could get lost in the stark, intoxicating contrast of those hands pressing feverishly into his own snow-pale skin.
“Let me,” Neil said, fingers pushing forward to tuck under Andrew’s armbands.
Andrew held his hands palm up and watched Neil’s arctic blue eyes, ringed in the permanent kohl of a fox - his third Trait - as he pulled one, two, four, six knives out of Andrew’s armbands, declawing him before sliding the thick vambraces off to reveal Andrew’s one and only trait besides his pale coloring. He’d been passing, in the old world; the black leopard spots - perfectly detailed from his wrists to his forearms, curling around his biceps and fading out on his shoulders - looked just like tattoos, like ink bought and paid for.
Well, as an adult, he’d been passing. As a child in the foster care system he’d been an unwanted abomination.
Neil swirled his clever fingers around Andrew’s spots, the whorls and half circles, the black fading into grey against his pale skin like fur, and goosebumps shivered along his skin at the touch. This close Andrew could smell Neil’s shifter scent, something like gingerbread and fire and wholly Neil.
“Yes,” Andrew said, the word tumbling out his mouth on a small growl that was not a purr.
“Yes?” Neil asked, clearly having lost track of his own question.
“Yes, I missed you,” Andrew said.
Neil blinked up at him and Andrew was impatient to close the distance between them, distance that could take days sometimes, depending on the time they’d been apart; depending on the things that had happened in the interim, the blood that had been spilled.
There was an easier way to get there though, even if it wasn’t exactly what Andrew was wanting in this moment. “The lights are out tonight,” he said.
“Yes,” Neil agreed, and Andrew realized Neil would have seen them on his way into the Library.
“The roof?” he offered.
Neil smiled gratefully and stood in agreement.
They swooped past the kitchen, returning Bee’s dishes, and then climbed the curled iron spiral staircase carefully, one floor, then two, the second story passing through a claustrophobic vertical tunnel before pushing past the tempered glass hatch that opened up to the fortified roof of the Library.
Andrew kicked off his sweats, and shrugged carefully out of his hoodie before draping them both on the railing of the ladder, and Neil did the same. They’d be there for them in the morning so they didn’t have to sneak past the rest of Wymack’s army naked and yawning before they’d even had their chicory coffee.
Andrew stepped into the snow barefoot and stretched and morphed and just like that he was snow leopard: covered in spots head to toe now, settling into the balance of his tail, the weight on all four paws, the shift in his vision that clarified and sharpened the dark corners tucked into the snow around them.
Neil was at his side in a moment, the air still shimmering around him from his own shift, his red fur thick and fluffy without the blanket of blood. The aurora borealis danced above them in greens and purples, a beautiful bruise flung across the sky fighting for dominance with the stars and it was breathtaking.
Neil pressed closer against his foreleg and yawned, his whiskers trembling. In this form Andrew dwarfed him, and it settled something in him to be like this with Neil. He padded over to the platform he’d built for nights when he couldn’t stand to sleep buried under tens of feet of packed snow, and curled up, keeping his body loose and tail open as he waited for Neil. His fox didn’t hesitate, hopping up the short distance to burrow under Andrew’s chin, tucking both front paws under one of Andrew’s and pressing his spine and tail into Andrew’s ribs with a welcome heat. Andrew curled around Neil, body and tail, and blinked at the dancing lights in the sky. He was content and relaxed for the first time in months, his purr rumbling out softly as he fell into a light, protective sleep.
They both snapped awake when the glass hatch pushed open, the wan arctic light barely bright enough to call it day. Robin’s head popped up, Dane wrapped around her shoulders, a fluffy, white Siberian cat, tail twitching back and forth as they grinned a little feline grin at them. Neil barked lightly in reprimand and Dane shut their mouth, but their whiskers twitched with amusement.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” Robin said. Andrew was still wrapped around Neil, and neither of them moved. Andrew twitched an ear forward in inquiry. “Wymack called a meeting,” she said “Also, when did this happen?” She flicked a few gloved fingers at them.
Andrew glared at her but Neil stood up and stretched, shaking off the snow that had accumulated on his back while they slept, and shimmered to human form. Andrew sighed and stood, getting in one good feline stretch before shifting too. “There is no this ,” he said a bit grumpily to Robin, but he slid a hand along Neil’s back as he passed him to grab their clothes from her hand.
Robin raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Yeah okay, sure. Meeting in five, there’s coffee.”
Dane meowed and Neil flipped them off, and after Robin and Dane were gone the two of them got dressed quickly in the snow.
The coffee was lukewarm, and there was no creamer, but there was sugar at least. Andrew dumped a few heaping spoonfuls in and took the resulting sugary mess to plop down between Aaron and Nicky. Wymack was already speaking, and everyone had shifted human - Dane sprawled in Robin’s lap, Kevin with his arm slung around Jeremy, and Neil way too far away, on the other side of the circle, cross-legged next to Renee.
“Dan and Matt reported in early this morning and are already back on the trail,” Wymack said. “The rogue Raven that Neil took down yesterday was a scout from a larger group that’s travelled a little too close for comfort to our Library.”
Andrew knew what was coming before Wymack even said it. He flicked his gaze to Neil, and then away again.
“Andrew, take your team, track them, evaluate the threat. Pick them off one by one if you have to, but don’t engage the whole group. Dan and Matt will fly reconnaissance. If the situation isn’t sorted in two weeks, report back and we’ll send out a larger force to take care of it. Be ready to leave in one hour.”
Andrew nodded, sipped his gross coffee, and didn’t look at Neil. He saw Robin pull Dane tighter in her arms, saw Jeremy tuck his face into Kevin’s neck. All of Wymack’s teams were groups of three, and Andrew’s included Kevin and Robin. No family allowed, no partners allowed. It was a hindrance, to be too emotionally involved with your team. Andrew’s team worked well together. They were stealthy but they were also dangerous: a snow leopard, a lynx, and an arctic wolf. It made sense to send them, and Andrew would go without complaint.
This was war. This was what they did.
Neil came to him in his den, walking on silent feet until he was right in front of Andrew, blue eyes clear and calm and bright in their ring of black.
“I’ll be back,” Andrew said quietly.
“I know,” Neil said. Andrew slid a hand into his messy auburn hair, pulled him forward slowly until Neil’s forehead rested against his. Neil’s hands came up to his elbows, grabbing hold and staying there. They breathed, Andrew’s eyes closed tightly, not a hug, but together, in each other’s space.
“Snickerdoodle,” Neil said quietly after a few moments.
Andrew huffed a quiet laugh against his cheek and ran his fingers slowly through Neil’s hair. Andrew was well aware of what his shifter scent smelled like - Nicky and Aaron had been making fun of him for it for most of his life. It was a very specific scent, unmistakable to most, except that Neil had a rather fucked up and sheltered childhood before the War, and he’d never come across it. “Do you even know what a snickerdoodle is?”
“A cookie,” Neil said.
Andrew hummed softly. “It’s not a snickerdoodle.”
They’d had less than twenty-four hours this time.
It wasn’t until Andrew was running out of the Library snow tunnel on four large paws, Robin as lynx on one side and Kevin as wolf on the other, that he realized he hadn’t even gotten a kiss from his fox.