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The wolf stalked into the snowy woods, looked around anxiously, and sniffed the air. They knew that they were out there among the trees even if they couldn’t see them, ears pricking at the occasional crunch of snow on the ground and nose twitching at faint scent trails. They silently padded towards a fallen tree in a clearing, and after listening intently for twigs breaking or their prey breathing, climbed onto the log and stood on it, looking around into the thick foliage for any sign of them.
Suddenly a snowball whizzed past their ear and smashed into a tree behind them and they leapt into action, leaping off the tree, rolling under it, and quickly making as many snowballs as they could while muttering to themself in frustration about not having picked up whoever it was lurking behind them and staying under cover away from the barrage of snowballs that followed the first one.
~
The wolf’s, or rather wolf pup’s, name was Riley. Back during the summer, however, they were known as Loupesque – secret agent and ‘international problem solver’. Riley had joined in on a James Bond marathon with their dad and their uncle one day, and decided that’s what they wanted to be when they grew up; a secret agent, going around the world in a suit and doing away with bad guys, saying funny things afterwards, and making friends with beautiful women. Or, at least, that’s what their dad said he was doing…nonetheless, Riley thought it was a great idea, and took up the idea with their best friend from school, an armadillo pup called James.
Together they decided that they would become secret agents; James becoming J, Riley’s shady boss who sent them out on shady missions and occasionally joined them on said missions, and Riley becoming Loupesque, the secret agent who takes down baddies with their water pistol, comes up with hilarious one-liners after drenching them, and walks off into the sunset with their friends. For a while, all was well as the two pups went around pretending to be secret agents and squirting other kids and teenagers with their water pistols...until James made the mistake of pulling in Riley’s younger cousin Robin into the game as a baddie on one of his family’s visits to see them.
Robin Moonflower was nothing if not dedicated despite being a few years younger than Riley, and immediately decided that he was going to not only be a baddie but be a werewolf as well. Riley had tried to explain gently to the kit that it felt a little weird, being that Riley was a wolf and Robin was a fox and it’d be like if Riley was a big vile scary fox monster, but the kit had already started growling and barking and attempted to sink his little – but sharp – fangs into his cousin’s arm.
After a frantic half-an-hour of running away from Robin more than running after him as was intended, the wolf and the armadillo had called for a truce by both desperately yelling at the fox to stop and also waving some ‘silver coins’ at him...which had made for a total of fifty-nine pence, which Robin had happily pocketed and later spent on pick ‘n’ mix that he had shared with the two older kids as thanks for letting him play with them.
What Riley hadn’t realised, however, is that when they made their “gentlethem’s agreement” with the baddie to call it a day was that the fox had been crossing his claws behind his back.
And now nearly six months later, at a family gathering up in the hills at Robin’s side of the family’s lodge and with James on the other side of the country from them, the wolf pup found themself facing down a fox kit who had gone from totally normal and calm to snarling and howling the instant the adults had left the room and left the two of them to play outside in the snow. Worse yet, Robin had clearly told some of the adults about the game that he had played with his cousin and their friend too since Jay – their own uncle – had stepped out from behind the door where he had been hiding when it closed with a snowball in his hand and a wicked look in his eyes.
~
Riley waited for the onslaught of snowballs to stop, and quietly crawled out from under the tree on their belly and into a nearby bush, carrying their snowballs in their coat. I’m not falling for that again, they thought to themself, and waited for whoever it was to come over to where they were before getting into a crouching position as heavy footsteps started moving towards them. A pair of camo-clad legs and a slightly bushy, dark furred tail stopped in front of the bush they were hiding under, and they slowly took out a snowball and began to stand up and move out. Uncle Jay. Don’t turn around, don’t turn around…
Jay scratched his head slowly and dramatically, knowing full well that his brother’s kid was hiding nearby by having heard them dive into the bush, and waited. He slowly turned around, turned his gaze down at the foliage behind him, and nearly dropped the snowball he was holding on seeing that they’d disappeared completely.
“Wait, what in the fu-?!” he managed before Riley bouldered into him from behind, a vicious growl ripping out from their throat and tackling the two of them down into the bush where they immediately began wrestling. A flash of genuine fury went across Jay’s face for an instant before the shock wore off and he realised it was just Riley, at which point the older wolf’s snarl died down into a smirk and he started trying to shove his snowball into the pup’s face.
Riley yelped and tried to get away from the freezing cold pawful of ice that was coming closer and closer to their snout, before an idea came to mind and they lunged forward to grab it in their teeth. “What?!” Jay gasped, clinging on to the snowball tighter and now trying to wrench it back out of their younger relative’s mouth. Riley began growling and wagging their tail as their uncle tried to dislodge the ball of icy snow from their fangs, the snowball fight descending into a tug-of-war in an instant.
“Let go, you little shit!” The pup wagged harder at their uncle’s irritation and flashed him a sunny smile through the mouthful of snow, before their eyebrows dropped and the smile took an evil turn as they raised the arm with which they had been holding a snowball – which they had been secretly balling up with one paw while Jay was distracted – and roughly slammed their paw down into the older wolf’s open mouth.
Jay coughed and spluttered at the sudden mouthful of snow, and waved Riley away from him as he clawed at it to try and get it back out. “Okay, time out, that’s way too far!” “You were gonna do it to meeeee!” retorted the pup, getting back to their feet and crossing their arms incredulously.
“Yeah, well that’s different,” came the response. “You could’ve knocked my teeth out with that! I might be like four times your age but that doesn’t mean you can be extra rough with me, you shouldn’t roughhouse that hard with anyone.”
Riley rolled their eyes at the lecture from their uncle. Jay had a lot of nerve to talk about roughhousing too hard, given how passionate he got about wrestling and MMA and any kind of sport that involved full physical contact, but they weren’t going to talk back to him any more than they needed to. They had a fox to find, and being given a patented Uncle Jay Life Lesson was only slowing things down and making them a target for the kit.
“Anyway, I was only going to splat it on the side of your muzzle and gently, you might be seven and I know that makes you a ‘big pup’ and all that but it doesn’t mean I can or should do something that’s going to make you hu-”
~
Jay’s head suddenly jerked forward as a burst of snow exploded from behind it, having been caught effortlessly from behind by a snowball thrown way harder than either of the kids could have done it. The wolf staggered and fell forward, managing to stop himself from going over entirely by grabbing on to the fallen tree, and with a yelp of fright Riley vaulted over the log and behind it to avoid getting hit themself.
From the treeline a familiar infectious giggle got met by a much more mature and feminine laugh as a pair of foxes, one small and covered in twigs and branches and the other tall, elegant, and feminine, watched the two wolves scramble to get their bearings and figure out what had happened. “Robin!” cried Riley, poking their head back over the log to see who was there. “Tessa…” growled Jay, reaching up behind his head to scrape a couple of chunks of snow out of his hair and rub the sore patch where her projectile had hit him.
“It didn’t seem very fair to let you bully a pair of kits by yourself like this, Jay,” the vixen said, a sly smile wrapping across her muzzle and twirling another snowball around in her paw already. Robin simply barked at Riley, tail wagging hard enough to brush snow off the bushes nearby him and the spark of mischief very much in his eyes. The kit looked up at his mother expectantly, dropping the werewolf act for a moment to talk to her normally. “And now we run?” Tessa looked down at her son and smiled warmly. “After this next round, darling.”
The two foxes turned their gaze back up to the two wolves, raised their paws to throw another volley of snowballs, and Jay and Riley took off sprinting into the trees in the opposite direction as the snow flew past and into them while they made their escape. “Split up, I’ll distract her!” hissed Jay, stopping briefly and turning around to dramatically point towards the older of the two foxes and deliver a ‘bring it’ gesture at her before dashing off away from Riley.
~
The pup panted as they ran straight into a thicket of shrubs and dived through it, launching themself into the snow on the other side and rolling about briefly to try and disguise their scent before getting up and scrambling away from the scene before Robin caught a glimpse of them. The fox kit was clearly still taking the whole ‘unstoppable werewolf supervillain’ thing seriously, and as such Riley wasn’t expecting a fair snowball fight where people just threw snow at each other instead of tracking them down like they were both wild.
This required heavy-duty tactics; paying him off clearly wasn’t going to work this time and both Riley and their sister had told Robin they didn’t want to play hide and seek with him any more in the past because he was too good at finding them, so they had to try and outsmart the younger canine.
A soft growl and a much louder sniffing sound came from the other side of the bushes from where Riley had burst through. The dive into the snow clearly had worked to some extent, since Robin hadn’t burst through and charged at the wolf just yet, but it was getting dangerously close to him sticking his snout through and spotting them. The pup looked around desperately for a hiding spot, but most of the trees around them were either too skinny or too far away to reach without crunching down the snow and alerting the fox to their presence. Their eyes scanned up the trunk of the closest tree to them, and lit up as they saw a branch low and thick enough for them to climb on to and to take their weight.
Going on to tiptoes, and being as careful as possible as to not make too much noise, Riley crept over to the tree before hugging the trunk on the side facing away from the bushes and slowly climbing up it, heels precariously digging into the bark and claws straining under the weight of carrying an entire wolf pup up towards the branch. “I know you’re heeeeere,” said Robin in a sing-song voice. There was a pause for a moment as the fox realised that he had broken character. “...oh, um, I mean, grraawwwllll…”
Riley silently sighed and rolled their eyes at the wolf impression, feeling slightly offended. At the very least they could tell that the kit was trying to sound like Jay and not them, but it was still something that they probably had to give them a life lesson in the style of Uncle Jay about.
As the pup slowly and carefully stepped out on to the branch, crouching down next to a heavily snowed-on clump of leaves to try and blend in, the fox burst through the undergrowth with a loud bark and landed on all fours, looking around dramatically and prowling about to try and find where their cousin had gotten to. Please don’t look up, please don’t look up… thought Riley, reaching for a handful of powdery snow from the tops of the leaves and balling it up as quietly as they could.
They had an opportunity here to do something that Loupesque totally would, and it’d make for a great story to take back to James once school was back in too. All they had to do now was wait, and hope that Robin would pass under the branch without seeing them...or scenting them...or hearing them.
~
This had gotten seriously overdramatic for what had originally meant to be “chase the kids around with snow for a bit, everyone laughs but especially me, then back inside to get warm and have a smoke with my girlfriend”. Jay hadn’t expected his his stepsister to make an appearance as well, given that not ten minutes before he had slipped outside to lay in wait for the two kids she had still been in full ‘hostess with the mostest’ mode and not remotely dressed for running around the snowy woods, but between her alarmingly feral kit and her two witchy girlfriends he should have realised that the Moonflower side of the family was an entire clan full of unexpected surprises.
As the older wolf reached a clearing, he ran halfway into it before pressing his foot down into the snow and attempting to skid to a halt, eyes locking on the treeline where he had come from to watch for Tessa coming into sight. The snow, however, was deeper than he was expecting, and as his foot got stuck briefly he staggered forward with arms flailing before managing to right himself just as the vixen made her presence known at the edge of the trees.
“Very graceful, Jay~” she laughed, leaning against the side of a tall pine that was heavily laden down with snow above her. “Piss off…” he growled back in response, face warming up underneath his fur in embarrassment as he tried to look dignified again. “So...what now?”
“What do you mean?” asked Tessa innocently, paw slipping behind her back in a way that made Jay’s hackles rise slightly. That one movement answered his question for him; she fully intended on continuing the snowball fight. Out of the corner of his peripheral vision he noticed how much snow was on the tree above her, and an idea started to formulate in his mind that would very much put an end to this and let him get back to what he wanted to be doing instead. He just had to make sure that she didn’t move, or realise what he was planning.
“I’d prefer it if we just called it a draw, or that you won, and we can go back and get warm because it is way too fuckin’ cold out here.” “Jealous you don’t have the same kind of winter pelt as me, mmm?” Tessa replied, giving her tail a flick off to her side to both show off her dense her fur was and to try and distract Jay’s eyes away from what her paw was doing. The wolf began to lope forward through the snow, shaking out some snow that had gotten lodged in the tops of his boots after his failed slide. “I’d look like a storm cloud with an angry face drawn on it if I was that fluffy, haha,” he laughed breezily, making an attempt at coming off oblivious to what she was up to and looking everywhere but the tree or where her arm was.
Amazingly enough, it seemed to be working. Tessa’s fur began to flatten a little, and as her shoulders went down he heard the faint muffled thud of the snowball behind her back dropping from her paw and into the snow. She brought her arm back around and sat her palm on her hip, proving wordlessly that she wasn’t going to ambush him again. “You’ve got a point. Let’s go round up the kits and we’ll head back, Phoebe said she’ll have hot tea waiting for us once we’re in…” the vixen said, and slowly turned her back to head off towards where Riley and Robin had sprinted in the other direction.
Jay’s eyes widened as he saw his chance, and his muscles sprang into life as he quickened his pace rapidly. This was his moment to pounce; he was going to wait until her guard was fully down and then shake the tree by ramming into it, causing it to unload the full weight of the snow piled up on top of it down on the pair of them. It would hit him as well, and he’d be shaking cold melted water out of his fur later just the same as her, but he’d have the last laugh by making sure that she got snowed under as well.
The wolf bounded towards the trunk of the tall pine as fast as he could, barely noticing Tessa glancing over her shoulder with what looked like a flash of a smirk on her muzzle, and just as he came within touching distance of the tree the vixen suddenly dashed out from underneath it with a burst of speed that he didn’t think she was capable of.
Time seemed to run in slow-motion as he realised that she had known all along what he was about to do, or heard his footsteps speed up and guessed at it, and that he was now going too fast to stop. The wolf collided with the bark at ramming speed and let a pained one out in response, before stumbling back and tilting his head upwards just in time to watch a heavy flurry of white rapidly approaching his face. “Oh, shi-”
~
In the distance, there was a loud whumpf that made both kids’ ears prick up and look in the direction it had come from. Riley held their breath as Robin got back on two legs again to try and work out what it was, until a laugh that was somewhere between a witch’s cackle and a hoarse series of yelps rang out. The kit’s tail began wagging fast, stirring up the snow behind him, and he let out a triumphant lupine howl in response. Guess Uncle Jay’s out of the game now… thought Riley, recognising their aunt’s laugh immediately. All that was left in that case was just them and Robin now, since Tessa wasn’t as ruthless as Jay when it came to teaming up to chase after someone young enough to be her pup in a snowball fight...or at least they hoped not.
“Gotta give up nowwww, Loop Esk!” taunted Robin, coming closer to standing below the wolf’s hiding spot. Riley bit their tongue at hearing their cousin mispronounce their secret agent name yet again, having forgotten just how much it annoyed them, and clutched the snowball tighter. “Mama’s gonna come for youuuuu! An’ then you’re gonna be in TROUBLE, aurw!...I mean WROUF!” The wolf suppressed a snarl. First it was getting their name wrong, now it was barking like a wolf too? When they landed on him and hit him with the snowball, they were gonna bite him too since Jay wasn’t there to tell them off.
The pup shifted position slightly to get ready to jump down, causing a few flakes to come loose from the branch and drift down underneath it, and the kit’s ears tilted in their direction. “Whassat…?” he said, prowling directly underneath where Riley was hiding and dropping down to all fours again.
This was it. Their prey was in position, the moment was right, and the wolf pup was about to get revenge for having spent the last however long it had been running around being chased with snowballs. Riley began gently bouncing up and down on the branch to build up momentum, standing up slightly while gripping the snowball in their hand, and leapt from the branch with their arms and legs outstretched to land directly on top of their younger cousin…
...and then the kit scampered forward just as they jumped. The wolf’s eyes widened in horror as they realised the mistake they had made, and what was about to happen, and barely had time to flail about or cry out before they slammed into the deep, and thankfully somewhat soft, snow beneath them.
Robin yipped in shock at the loud noise directly behind him, and spun around on a heel to discover Riley laying face down and looking as though they had fallen asleep making a snow angel. “GOTCHUUUU!” the kit squealed happily, lobbing his snowball at the back of the wolf’s head at point blank range and dancing about on the spot in joy. “I wiiiiiin! You got BEAT by a werewolf, Loop Esk!”
A low, muffled moan began to emanate from where his cousin’s head lay, their head shaking slowly to get the snow out from behind their ears. The kit’s ears flattened, now suddenly worried about the wolf who was still lying in the snow and making weird noises. “...Riley? The game’s over now, Riley…” he whimpered, getting the feeling that his cousin had gotten hurt from falling over or having fallen down.
Slowly, and with another low groan, the pup’s head lifted off from the ground and stared off into the middle distance with a thick frosty crust covering their muzzle, the only things fully visible on their face being the pained frown on their mouth and their nearly frozen shut eyes peeking out from an inch of snow. Their beady canine eyes locked on the nervous looking fox kit, soreness from falling out of a tree and coldness from having every inch of clothing being infiltrated by snow now fully replaced with embarrassment at having messed up their genius plan so badly, and as their mouth opened to speak they felt a lump of snow that had found its way inside when they had hit the ground, causing them to cough violently. Robin gasped in horror at the sight, and ran back towards the bush he had came through at full speed. “MAMAAAAAAA!”
Some time later...
The fire crackled gently as the two wolves huddled in front of it, swaddled in heavy blankets that smelt vaguely of airing cupboards and last winter, and with their ears flat to their heads and their tails curled downwards. Riley shuffled in closer to their uncle, pressing against his side for more warmth, and the older wolf put an arm around their shoulder as he clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering.
“So...wh-what h-happened to you…?” shivered Riley. “Shut it,” came the response, bluntly but not unkindly. The part that really got to Jay about what had happened, aside from the vulpine cackle Tessa had let loose with when he had gotten buried under by a tree’s worth of snow at once, was the way she hadn’t even hesitated to run off after the kids when Robin called for her instead of trying to dig him out first.
No, that’s unfair, the kit sounded scared and his nibling was in trouble too so it’s good she sprang into action. Under the blanket, the wolf’s ear twitched in irritation. ...and I could have helped too, and I could have frozen while she was off helping by herself, and then she’d have me doing an impression of the guy at the end of The Shining to come back to and traumatise the pups with… He looked down at the pup next to him, who despite the mug of tea in their paws warming them up was still trembling from how much the cold had got to them, and opened his blanket a little to wrap it around them too.
~
The younger wolf wagged a little in grateful response, and sipped their drink slowly. It had been a really, really dumb idea to climb a tree and try and pounce on Robin, and despite not having given Tessa the full details of what happened they had told Jay everything and prepared themselves for even more of a lecture than the one they had gotten from him out in the woods.
Their uncle had gotten mad, although that was a given since Jay’s general state of being could be described as ‘simmering with anger at something or the other’, but once the “you could have seriously hurt both him and yourself” part of it had died down they could tell he was trying not to show that he was a little proud of how Riley had managed to outsmart him, beat him in a fight despite being twice their height and more than twice their age, and then come up with a plan like that to win the fight with Robin.
“Good job, pup,” he had murmured while ruffling the fur between their ears affectionately, before taking the mugs of tea from an unimpressed looking Phoebe and leading his nibling over to where they sat now. “Don’t ever fuckin’ do that again or Tessa will kill me, and then your dad will, and then they’ll both kill you!” That had gotten the pup to smile for the first time since they had jumped off of the branch, and snuggling up under the blankets together like this had helped to banish the embarrassment that both wolves had about somehow ending up in the same situation of being entirely buried in snow.
~
“Rileyyyyy!” cried Robin, the fox kit dashing into the room having changed out of his outdoor clothes and into something warmer and comfier and launching straight into his cousin with a tight hug. “You feelin’ warm now? You looked really scary with all that snow on you…” “I’m okay,” said the pup, hugging him back and enjoying the extra warmth from the fox’s fluffy winter coat.
“...no-one’s gonna ask how I’m doing after having run into a tree shoulder-first and then getting buried alive? Okay, suit yourself then,” muttered Jay with a spark of mischief in his eyes. The kit turned to face the wolf and stuck his paws on his hips. “You shouldn’t have been runnin’ from Mama!” he said, followed by a loud yip to drive the point home. “You cheeky little shit!” Jay laughed, setting the tea down and reaching towards the fox’s muzzle with both paws, which were still in the process of warming up. “ICE PAWS!”
Robin yelped in delight and scampered away giggling, diving behind the sofa the two wolves were sitting on and screeching with excitement as the older wolf got up and began slowly coming after him with arms outstretched and the same wicked look in his eyes that he had when he had ambushed Riley earlier on. Riley quickly joined in with the game as well, putting their drink down too and leaning over the back of the furniture to yell encouragement to the kit as he ran about trying to dodge being grabbed by Jay’s cold pawpads.
~
On the other side of the room, having managed to stay out of all of the action outside, Riley’s father and Jay’s brother John was nursing a drink himself while speaking with Tessa. “Well, the plan was to leave a little early because we’ve got a long drive back down again...but I’m sure we can pull an all-nighter instead, what with-” The wolf turned his head towards the action over by the sofa and raised his voice so that he could be heard clearly over the giggling and chaos. “-THESE IDIOTS…”
The shout seemingly had no response from the two wolves and the fox, up until Jay turned his back to his brother and revealed an upright middle finger hidden out of sight of the two kids. John laughed at the sight, leading Jay to turn back around with a cheeky grin aimed at him just as the two kids pounced on him and pushed him down back against the sofa, where the three immediately descended into a cacophony of yips and growls as they play-fought.
Tessa smiled warmly as she watched them, and turned back to look at John. “We’re more than happy to have you all here as long as you’d like, we weren’t planning on heading home ourselves until much later as well.” “Thanks, Tess,” replied the wolf. He hoped that Jay wouldn’t be too tired to drive, given that it’d be a long and slow trip back home again through the snow and they’d probably need to switch drivers at some point, but if all else failed they could probably work something out with the Moonflowers since they’d be taking the same route home as they were. For now, though, he could just sit back and enjoy watching the mayhem at a safe distance while his family got themselves dried off and warmed up again.
Good thing I sent Jay out to join in with the snowball fight instead of me, he thought as he brought his drink to his lips again, giving Tessa a glance out of the corner of his eye and thinking about how he’d encouraged her to go out and join in with them as well. Would suck to be driving with wet fur and a sore shoulder right about now...