Work Text:
"Have you ever wondered what it tastes like?"
"Wonder what what tastes like?" Hayden asks, continuing to scrub away at a spot of blood on the edge of the bathtub.
"You know what I mean," Tracy replies. When Hayden glances up at her with a raised eyebrow, Tracy rolls her eyes and waves at the crimson smeared sink. "Blood. Don't you ever wonder?"
"No," Hayden snaps, scrubbing harder at the porcelain. It's their first cleaning job of the morning and they have two more lined up for this afternoon; if Tracy doesn't start actually cleaning anytime soon, they're going to be late, which means Hayden is going to be short on rent this month.
"I don't believe you," Tracy says firmly, wiping down the cracked mirror above the sink. "I think you're just as curious as I am."
"Seriously, what is with you today?" Hayden replies, tossing her sponge into the tub and turning to face Tracy. It's certainly not the first time Tracy has said something weird and on some level, Hayden isn't that surprised by this latest outburst. After all, as she's learned over the last few months, if you're going to clean up crime scenes for a living, it helps to be a little strange. But Tracy goes beyond the normal, acceptable levels of weird. She seems to relish in knowing every little detail about whatever crime was committed in the places they clean. Sometimes when they enter the spot of a particularly gruesome crime, Hayden can hear Tracy's heart speed up, until it's so loud it's all Hayden can do not to wince.
(She always manages to keep her face flat, like she can't hear anything at all. It wouldn't do for her coworker to find out that she's a werewolf.)
Still, even after accounting for all of Tracy's eccentricities, Hayden thinks this question knocks them all out of the park.
"Nothing's 'with me,'" Tracy says, adjusting her hair under the mesh net covering it. "I'm just sick of you pretending that you aren't tempted."
"I seriously have no idea what you're talking about," Hayden mutters, turning back to the task at hand, hoping that she moved fast enough for Tracy to miss the blush that she's certain is spreading across her face.
"Your heart rate just sped up."
Hayden whips back around. Tracy is leaning against the wall now, arms crossed over her chest, smiling in a way that makes warning bells go off in Hayden's head.
"That's ridiculous," she scoffs, although Tracy isn't wrong; the more she talks about blood, the more Hayden's gums ache and the more her head pounds. "There's no way you could hear that. What are you, a werewolf or something?"
"Not quite," Tracy laughs. Immediately, like flipping a switch, her smell changes to something richer and stronger that drowns out the hints of her perfume. It makes Hayden think of the small aquarium in her apartment where she keeps her pet lizard and after only a few moments, she realizes why.
Half of Tracy's face slowly grows darker, like a spreading bruise. It quickly segments out into what Hayden realizes are scales, separated by thin lines of pale green skin. Fangs peek through her slightly parted lips and there's a ripping sound as the back of her white jumpsuit splits, revealing a long, tapered tail, which flicks up to just drape over her shoulder.
A single drop of clear fluid drops from one of Tracy's claws and Hayden pushes herself well away from it. She's never met a kanima before, but she's very familiar with the lore about them and being paralyzed for the next few hours isn't really how she wants to spend her day.
"You can stop pretending now," Tracy says, voice slightly roughened by the presence of her fangs.
"How long have you known?" Hayden asks, getting to her feet. Her claws drop, shredding through the tips of her thick gloves.
"Since I first met you. I was hoping you'd properly notice me after awhile, but I got tired of waiting."
"You're good at disguising yourself?" Hayden suggests, internally kicking herself for somehow missing this. "Besides, I've never met a kanima before." For a few moments, Tracy doesn't say anything; she just tilts her head, giving Hayden the feeling of being studied like a specimen under a microscope.
"You don't have an alpha, do you?" she finally asks, words accented by the plink of more venom dropping to the floor.
"Not anymore," Hayden answers, refusing to let her mind delve into any of the memories from the night her alpha was killed. "He barely taught me anything. I learned more from books than I did from him." Tracy smiles, lips curling around her fangs, and pulls off her hairnet, allowing her dark brown locks to tumble free over her shoulders.
"What are you doing?" Hayden asks as Tracy reaches for the zipper on her jumpsuit.
"I don't think we need to play this charade of normalcy anymore," Tracy replies, yanking off her gloves and tossing them into the sink. Her jumpsuit pools around her feet and she nimbly steps out of it in bare feet, kicking it into a corner of the small room. "Are you looking for an alpha?"
"Yes." Hayden doesn't bother lying about it; while her last alpha had been nearly useless, had just used her and the others for his own means, she still desperately missed the feeling of belonging, of waking up in the middle of the night and knowing there was someone out there you were connected to, on a level even deeper than familial blood. She'd spent months trying to deny herself that longing, but the thought of being part of something that deep again almost makes her whine.
Besides, there's safety in numbers and she's sick of looking over her shoulder every day, waiting for another wolf or hunter to tear her to shreds.
"I think you'll like our alpha," Tracy says, her face slowly smoothing out as her scales vanish. "She's clawed her way to where she is. She knows more than any werewolf I've ever met."
"What if she doesn't want another beta?" Hayden asks, slowly peeling off her own shredded gloves and throwing them on top of Tracy's.
"I told her about you awhile ago. She's looking forward to meeting you. Besides, she accepted a kanima into her pack. She's pretty open minded." She crosses the space between them and settles her fingers on the zipper of Hayden's jumpsuit, right at the base of her throat. She's so close that Hayden can feel Tracy's breath on her cheek, can see every yellow fleck in her eyes.
"I just have one question first," Tracy murmurs, tugging the zipper down just an inch. "And you need to tell me the truth."
"Okay," Hayden says. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest, but she can't make it slow down.
"I asked if you were curious about the taste of blood. You said no." She leans even closer, until their noses are a mere hairsbreadth from each other. "Was that the truth?"
"No," Hayden says firmly, sagging a little as the weight of the lie, of the whole normal act, falls from her shoulders. "I want to know what it tastes like."
"Well," Tracy grins, finally tugging down Hayden's zipper and pulling off her hair net, "I think you're going to fit right in."