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Ochako was being watched.
There were two beady eyes peeking from behind a rose bush. Attempts to shoo him had proven ineffectual - well, they were effective in earning low growls from the beast, but that wasn’t exactly her preferred outcome. She made the decision to ignore him. Instead, her stained fingers continued to search through the brambles of the berry bushes. Thorns were pushed aside with delicate hands to grab the blackberries, filling up her basket.
She’d lined it with some leaves, to keep them from bleeding into the weaved basket. A low growl sounded from behind her. “Hush,” she grumbled in return. A louder growl as a paw pressed down on the rose bushes, ignoring the thorns that stuck into his gentle padding. “Are you quite done throwing your tantrum yet, Bakugou?”
His body sat on its haunches, before he was leaping across the rose bush, prowling closer to her. Beneath the twitching moonlight, the wolf’s fangs glowed, specks of red still fixed upon them. Blood, no doubt about it, perhaps from where he had stalked and ripped apart a deer. His head stays low to the ground as he approaches his new prey, dark fur reflecting the starlight.
“Puppy,” Ochako cooed, without turning to face him. She could hear his rising growl start at the name, a whip-crack of his jaw as he snapped at her. He prowled closer, wet snout pressing against her arm. “Give me a moment,” she huffed, snipping at some of the bramble roots that were crawling over a flowerbed. Wilderness; it had no choice but to grow. She tamed it only as much as she could.
Hot breath ghosted across her arm, a little damp from where he had pressed himself against her. She gathered the roots into the basket. “There we go. Oh, don’t be pouty.”
Bakugou resented her tone. That didn’t stop him from flopping onto his back, paw twitching at her. “You ruined my herb garden last week. You won’t attack these bushes,” Ochako orders, fingers reaching out to absently scratch at his belly. He swipes at her, without claws, and she ignored it. She counted the roots, smoothing off the dirt with her free hand. “Was your transformation painful? I’m using blueberry roots now, Tsuyu-chan said they’d help.”
Bakugou snapped at her, which was incredibly unhelpful. She pulled her hand back from her stomach, watching him twitch to his side. His snout nudged against her basket, so she moved it out of his way. A growl touched at him as he rested his head against her thigh. “Perhaps oak root would work better. You look tired, though. It must be sunrise soon.”
Nostrils flare in some kind of response to the question - Ochako imagined it would be a cuss, or an insult, if he was in his human form. She reaches out and wraps her hand around his nuzzle, because danger is only what you make it (she lays her hand against the wolf’s snout and assured herself that he does not have the power to hurt her, not truly).
This snout had ripped open bunnies in front of her. In particularly foul moods, he was fond of leaving entrails at her doorstep, smearing red against her world. Ochako dealt with it efficiently (she had put wolfsbane around the perimeter, keeping the wolf away).
Absence made the heart yield.
“You’ll be back to yourself, soon, won’t you?” Ochako asked, twisting her head towards the blueish moon. It sat, full and fat, behind her chimney, watching Bakugou with its bleeding glare. The puppy snapped its jaw again, a confirmation dressed up in brutality. She ran a hand up his snout, pressing a soft finger between his eyes. They drooped shut, tongue lolling out for a moment (peace was roughly earned by Bakugou, a disease more than a promise). “I’ll be taking that as a yes. Do you want to come inside? Or will you be going back to your shack?”
Bakgou’s understanding was always limited in this form; he spoke in grunts, he heard in whistles. Ochako’s voice was particularly annoying for this (high pitched and a little too quick, as if she was chasing the end of his sentence).
Still, far preferable to Denki in the woods, a little faerie who insisted on screeching every second word. But he had learned her well enough to know her patterns - first, she would reprimand him for whatever he had gotten up to in his worst states (when the moon was high, he was far more prone to violent outbursts). Then, she would offer food and drink, with shelter following soon afterwards.
It was a pleasant cycle. Though, usually, he denied her help.
The loneliness of waking up after a transformation was good for him: it reminded him of what he was.
But today, he felt a weakness draw its way across his paws, a tiredness bulging beneath his eyes. He didn’t think he had it in him to make it to the shack - his own fault, perhaps, for being so foolhardy as to wander so far away. But he felt a tug towards this house, towards these moments he could steal away from the witch, where everything in the world was quiet. Even her nagging voice was more peaceful than most of what he endured.
He circled her in a flash of fur and snarls, consideration slowly tugging through his mind. Everything was harder to do in this body (except killing - killing was remarkably easier). Thinking became another horrible little taboo, squeezing memories and patterns from his mind with an overeager grip.
“Am I taking this as a yes or a no?” Ochako asked, far too patiently, holding her basket in her hand. Bakugou snarled in response.
Entirely unhelpful. She placed a hand in front of his snout to stop him from running around her, which he sniffed with newfound curiosity. She smelled like dirt and beetroot, the faint seed of blueberry dripping from her skin. He nuzzled closer, and gently, slowly, nodded his head.
Ochako was making broth from the leftover chicken bones she’d eaten last night. She made everything in bulk to take to her parents, a little gift for all they have given her (for this world was large and scary, stretching far behind the strawberry patch that Bakugou had destroyed, and they had taught her how to protect herself). She twirled around the spoon, mouth growing dry at the scent.
Delicious and abundant, far from the starving childhood she had known. Here, she allowed herself to indulge, because she only had herself to look after. She was leaning over the big pot when footsteps sounded from upstairs.
Human footsteps. Nothing like the harsh, uncoordinated steps of a wolf’s gait.
A man appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. His hair was sandy-fresh, his face set into a harsh growl. He was shirtless, all thick bones and a stern cut to his shoulders. This is what Bakugou looked like when he wasn’t a wolf? There was still something animalistic about him, overgrown and badly made for walking on his hind legs.
He stood there, a wolf, a nervous wolf, a nervous wolf waiting for Ochako. To tell him to do something?
“Stir the pot,” Ochako instructed, walking away from the stove. She wiped her hands against her apron and sat at the table. There was a small amount of sewing to be done, old skirts made from old curtains, curtains made from old skirts; everything could be transformed. Bakugou stood in the doorway, hesitation looking like the faint grumbling of anger across his features. “Hurry up,” Ochako rushed, pointing a finger towards the spoon.
“I shouldn’t be touching your potions,” he mumbled.
“Oh, yes, the soup might jump up and attack you.” The side of Ochako’s mouth twisted into a small smile, laughter falling from her. Bakugou glanced over his shoulder, watching her. She was pink-cheeked and round-faced, glowing eyes focused entirely on the sewing. “And then what would we do?”
“You’d have to find some other werewolf to do your bidding,” Bakugou shot back. Ochako let free another giggle that wrapped its way around his heart, clenching at every single chamber one by one (that’s how intimate it felt, like she was right inside of his body, able to exercise such pointed control).
“You poor thing,” Ochako hummed. “Having to make dinner.”
“I usually just cook whatever raw meat I’ve caught.” These words were said just to disgust Ochako - to repel her from the beast that ripped him apart every full mouth. When he looked over his shoulder for her reaction, she had a needle slipping between her lips, intently focused on her work. Bakugou went back to slowly boiling the soup.
Soon enough, he was scooping soup into two bowls, one for him and one for her. He was sat at a table with a girl whose hair had been sculptured into a bob, whose smile twinkled a little bit whenever she spoke. They were eating soup they had both made, him and her, letting the warm fire dance across their knees.
“Do you need to be home soon?” she asked, dropping the completed skirt over one of the chairs. There were four chairs at the table and only two of them, but there still didn’t feel like enough space between them.
“No,” he responded, licking his spoon dry.