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To say the least, Wemmbu was rough.
He sat perched at the edge of the bed, clinging to the bedsheets that held a lingering scent of his mate. He craved it like a dinner he'd never hesitate to devour.
And that's exactly how he felt every time his slit gaze fell onto his man. A greedy pig, solely driven by the promise of something he loves.
Wemmbu fell backwards with a soft thunk, melting into soft, silken sheets, which weren't bunched in his tight grip anymore. He lay
motionless, revelling in the sensation of being wholly devoured by his partner's essence.
Wemmbu woke to silence.
Not the empty kind.
The apartment was still full of Flamefrags.
It lingered in the blankets cocooned around him, in the pillow tucked beneath his cheek, in the oversized hoodie abandoned over the back of the chair across the room. Even with the bedroom window cracked open enough to let the cool breeze drift inside, Flame's scent refused to leave. Warm cedar. Smoke from countless campfires. Faint spice. Something distinctly, unmistakably tiger that always settled deep into Wemmbu's chest until he couldn't tell where his own breathing ended and the comfort began.
He buried his face deeper into the pillow.
"Come home already..." The words disappeared into the fabric.
His long purple hair had become an absolute disaster overnight, strands fanning across the mattress in every direction, some caught beneath his spotted cheetah ears while others draped over his shoulders. One ear twitched lazily as he inhaled again, greedily soaking in every trace of his mate that remained.
Flame had left before sunrise.
He always tried not to wake him.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it didn't.
Today, Wemmbu had only stirred long enough to feel a large, warm hand smoothing his hair away from his face and gentle lips pressing against his forehead before sleep had dragged him back under again. It had felt like a dream at the time.
Now all he had was the lingering warmth that had long since disappeared from Flame's side of the bed.
His hazel eyes slowly wandered toward the empty space beside him.
The blankets there remained mostly untouched, save for the slight indentation where Flame had slept during the night. It was already beginning to disappear.
Wemmbu frowned. "...Rude." His tail gave one irritated flick beneath the duvet.
He understood why Flame had gone.
King Parrot's scouts had reported bandits lurking near the kingdom's borders over the past week, growing bolder with each passing day. Flame had been asked to quell them before the situation escalated into something worse. It wasn't unusual.
Flame had always been dependable.
Strong.
The sort of person people naturally looked toward whenever something needed protecting.
Wemmbu loved that about him.
He just... didn't particularly enjoy the parts where protecting people required leaving the house before dawn.
He rolled across the bed until he occupied Flame's side completely.
"...Mine now."
Silence. Not even the magpies perched on the outside flowerpots attempted to answer.
Another dramatic sigh escaped him.
The pillow smelled stronger over here. More like Flame.
He hugged it. His arms wrapped firmly around the base, dragging it against his chest in a protective gesture that could probably be mistaken as delusion; thinking that Wemmbu was hallucinating the pillow as his mate!
His spotted tail wrapped around one leg as though attempting to substitute for the warmth that normally came from another body sharing the mattress.
Minutes passed.
Or maybe half an hour.
Time became strange whenever he was alone.
Outside, birds chirped somewhere beyond the open window. Wind stirred the leaves of nearby trees, their soft rustling blending with the occasional distant voices from people already going about their day.
The base itself remained peacefully quiet.
Usually Flame would already be humming something in the kitchen. Usually breakfast smells would drift underneath the bedroom door. Usually there would be the gentle clatter of pans accompanied by Flame's habit of talking to himself while he cooked.
Today...
Nothing.
The silence only made Wemmbu miss him more.
He reached over to the bedside table, picked up his communicator and checked the time. The glow of the screen caused a wince out of him, eyes blinking slowly and squinting to accustom to the sudden burst of light, despite the Sun peeking through the drawn curtains.
Late morning.
No new messages. Not that he expected any. Flame rarely reached for his device during missions unless absolutely necessary.
"...Mm." Wemmbu set it back down. He flopped onto his back dramatically, one arm thrown over his face.
"I miss you."
The ceiling offered no response.
Eventually, after exhausting his ability to mope without actually accomplishing anything, he forced himself upright.
His hair immediately slid over his face.
"...Bleh."
He puffed at the strands unsuccessfully before stumbling toward the bathroom with all the grace of someone who was still only halfway awake.
The shower became pleasantly hot within moments.
Steam quickly fogged the mirrors while warm water cascaded over his hair, washing away the sleepy heaviness still clinging to him.
His cheetah ears flattened automatically as he worked shampoo through the long purple strands.
Flame always joked that washing Wemmbu's hair probably took longer than washing the rest of him combined.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
The thought made him smile despite himself. Flame was the one who patiently untangled the worst knots whenever they appeared.
Flame was the one who remembered which conditioner smelled nicest.
Flame was the one who insisted on drying his hair properly because, according to him, "You'll complain about catching a cold later."
"...You sound like an old man sometimes," Wemmbu muttered to himself with a tiny laugh. His own voice echoed softly around the bathroom. Holy shit—was he starting to imagine his mate out of desperation?
When he finished, he wrapped a towel around his shoulders before spending several minutes attempting to tame his damp hair into something vaguely presentable.
It refused.
As always.
Accepting defeat, he wandered into the kitchen.
"...Okay. I can totally do this."
Lunch.
He could do lunch. Couldn't be too hard.
Probably.
Opening the refrigerator, he stared inside:
Vegetables.
Eggs.
Rice.
Chicken.
Various sauces whose purposes blurred together.
Everything looked perfectly normal.
Entirely edible. Utterly incomprehensible.
He blinked. "Right."
Flame cooked. Always. Not because Wemmbu demanded it. Not because he'd asked. Flame simply enjoyed cooking. He liked experimenting with recipes. He liked watching Wemmbu's face light up after the first bite. He liked making enough for leftovers because he knew Wemmbu inevitably forgot to eat whenever left alone.
Which led to today's rather unfortunate discovery.
"I... don't know how to make anything." His ears slowly swivelled back.
Surely...
Eggs? People cooked eggs all the time. How difficult could—
He picked up a frying pan. Paused. "...Do I put oil first?"
Silence.
"...Or butter?"
More silence.
"How hot does it get? How hot should it be?" He stared suspiciously at the stove, as though expecting it to answer. Instead, it simply remained a stove. Wemmbu sighed.
"...This is tragic."
He carefully returned the pan exactly where he'd found it, reducing the metal clash of pots against pans to a soft thud against the wooden cabinet.
Perhaps bread would be easier. Bread required no cooking.
He found half a loaf. In his case, jackpot.
He also found jam. Even better. Five minutes later, he was sitting at the kitchen table with two rather uneven slices of jam-covered bread.
"...Lunch."
It felt deeply unimpressive.
He ate anyway.
It wasn't bad. It just wasn't Flame's cooking. Nothing ever quite was, unless Flame made it with his little flair Wemmbu could never recreate; he'd never attempt to even try.
After cleaning his plate, Wemmbu wandered aimlessly around the base.
Bedroom to living room.
Living room to kitchen.
Bedroom again.
He watered the small plants lining the windowsill because Flame had asked him to remember. He folded the blanket that had slipped off the couch. He reorganized absolutely nothing before deciding everything already looked organized enough.
Then he checked the time again.
Barely any had passed.
"Impossible. Is this thing broken?" He waved the communicator around aimlessly, hoping for an affirmation in his accusations.
His tail dragged lazily behind him. The house suddenly felt much larger than usual. Without Flame's steady presence filling every room, it became strangely easy to notice how quiet everything truly was.
Eventually he surrendered.
The couch looked inviting enough. He curled into one corner beneath the soft throw blanket that permanently lived there, hugging one of the decorative cushions against his chest. The cushion also smelled faintly like Flame.
Not as strongly.
But enough.
"Mmm..." His eyelids drifted shut.
Outside, sunlight filtered through the windows in warm golden stripes that stretched slowly across the wooden floorboards. Dust floated lazily through the overhead beams. A gentle breeze occasionally stirred the curtains.
Somewhere beyond the settlement walls, life continued as usual.
Inside, everything remained peaceful. Quiet in the worst way possible: the way it agonisingly simmered around you, eating away at your thoughts until nothing was left.
Wemmbu listened to the distant ticking of the wall clock.
To the rustling curtains.
To the memory of Flame's voice that lingered so vividly in his thoughts, he could almost imagine hearing it.
Just rest your eyes for a minute.
He smiled faintly. "Okay. Good idea.."
Within minutes, his breathing deepened.
His purple tail gradually relaxed from its loose curl around the blanket.
–—
The front door eased shut behind Flame with barely a sound.
The familiar weight of home settled over him almost immediately, muffling the lingering echoes of steel against steel and desperate shouts that still clung stubbornly to the back of his mind. Outside, dusk had begun painting the world in muted blues and amber, but inside the house everything glowed with the soft warmth of lamplight left on in anticipation of someone's return. The air carried traces of cedar from the furniture, fresh linen, and something distinctly familiar that made the exhaustion in his broad shoulders loosen ever so slightly.
Wemmbu.
Flame slipped off his boots one careful movement at a time, setting them neatly beside the door rather than letting them thump onto the floor. His striped ears rotated instinctively, listening.
Silence.
Not the empty silence of an abandoned house. A breathing silence. A living one.
He rounded the corner toward the living room and immediately spotted the source.
Curled into the corner of the couch, beneath a thick knitted blanket, lay Wemmbu. The cheetah hybrid had somehow folded himself into an impossibly compact shape despite his long limbs. One arm disappeared beneath the blanket while the other rested loosely beside his face, claws tucked safely away even in sleep. His spotted tail draped lazily over the edge of the cushions, twitching once every few moments as dreams drifted quietly behind closed eyes.
The television had long since gone dark. A forgotten book rested open on the coffee table.
Judging by the untouched mug beside it, he'd probably intended to wait. Instead, sleep had claimed him first.
Flame's expression softened so completely that the stern warrior who had spent the afternoon dismantling a bandit camp seemed to disappear.
He approached with measured steps, careful not to disturb the floorboards.
Even asleep, Wemmbu looked exhausted.
There were faint shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of spotted fur could disguise. Flame knew them well. Nights without him rarely translated into real rest. Wemmbu would drift in and out of sleep until exhaustion finally won, often only after sunrise if Flame had been away too long.
It wasn't fear.
It wasn't dependency.
It was simply that silence felt different when Flame wasn't in it.
Flame crouched beside the couch. One large hand gently brushed several loose curls away from Wemmbu's forehead.
The cheetah gave a tiny unconscious hum, leaning almost imperceptibly into the touch.
A smile tugged at Flame's mouth.
"So you waited..."
His voice was barely above a whisper.
Carefully, almost reverently, he leaned down and pressed a gentle, feather-light kiss against Wemmbu's forehead. The skin there was pleasantly warm beneath his lips.
Wemmbu sighed in his sleep.
Nothing more.
Flame lingered for only a heartbeat before standing again. "You need this more than dinner."
With one final glance, he quietly disappeared down the hallway.
Steam rolled through the bathroom in thick clouds.
The hot water washed away dried sweat, dust, and the lingering scent of smoke from burning wagons outside the abandoned camp. Scratches that had gone unnoticed beneath adrenaline stung beneath the heat before gradually settling into dull aches.
He stayed beneath the water longer than usual. Long enough for the tension locked between his shoulders to melt into something manageable.
When he finally emerged, his damp hair hung heavily around his face, and he'd traded battered armor for a loose charcoal shirt and comfortable trousers.
The tiger hybrid felt lighter.
More himself.
He padded back toward the living room.
Nothing had changed.
Wemmbu remained asleep exactly where he'd left him. The blanket had slipped from one shoulder.
Flame crossed the room and gently pulled it back into place, tucking it securely between his arm and the armrest.
One spotted ear flicked.
No more.
A faint smile crossed Flame's face. "You finally fell asleep properly."
He wasn't about to ruin that.
Instead, he dimmed one of the lamps before quietly making his way into the kitchen.
Cooking had always been strangely calming. There were no ambushes. No strategies. No impossible decisions.
Just ingredients.
The rhythmic tap of a knife against the cutting board filled the room as vegetables became neat slices beneath practiced hands. Oil hissed softly in the pan before garlic and onions filled the house with rich aromas. Soon meat joined them, followed by herbs and spices that slowly chased away every lingering trace of smoke from Flame's earlier battle.
The scent drifted lazily through every hallway.
Warm.
Comforting.
Home.
Flame worked without rushing.
Rice simmered.
Vegetables softened.
Sauce thickened.
The quiet routine grounded him more effectively than any meditation ever had.
By the time dinner was finished, he portioned everything carefully into bowls before covering them to keep warm.
Only then did he begin cleaning.
Water splashed quietly into the sink.
His sleeves were rolled halfway to his elbows while soap bubbles gathered around his wrists. Plates disappeared one after another beneath steady hands.
The house remained peaceful.
Until—
A sleepy inhale.
Barely audible. Flame's ears twitched.
Soft footsteps padded across hardwood flooring.
Light. Quick. Dragging just enough to betray someone who hadn't fully woken up yet.
He smiled before turning.
"You finally—" He didn't get to finish.
Something fast collided squarely into his back.
Two lean arms wrapped tightly around his waist, squeezing with surprising strength as spotted fur pressed warmly against him.
"Mmm..." Wemmbu buried his face between Flame's shoulder blades. "There you are..."
His voice came out rough with sleep.
Still half dreaming.
Still clinging.
Flame laughed—a quiet, genuine sound that hadn't escaped him all day.
"Here I am."
The familiar smoky scent still lingered faintly in his hair despite the shower, mingled now with clean soap and fresh cotton.
Apparently, it had been enough. Wemmbu had followed it straight to him.
Flame turned carefully within the embrace before wrapping his own arms around his mate.
Unfortunately...
His hands were still wet.
Chilled droplets landed against Wemmbu's sides.
"...Mrrp."
The cheetah froze. Another drop rolled across his shirt. His ears flattened dramatically.
Flame blinked once. "Oh,"
Wemmbu narrowed sleepy golden eyes at him. "You..." He looked down at the damp patches now decorating his clothes. "..are soaking wet."
"I forgot."
"You forgot your hands were attached to you?"
"...Yes?"
Wemmbu let out the tiniest offended hiss imaginable before immediately releasing him and hopping backward with exaggerated caution.
"No." Another playful hiss.
"You've committed moisture."
Flame couldn't help chuckling.
"It was water."
"It was cold."
"It was barely—"
"Cold."
Flame raised both hands in surrender, water still dripping from his fingertips. "My deepest apologies."
"Hm."
Wemmbu folded his arms.
"I'll consider forgiveness."
"When?"
"When you've dried off."
Flame grabbed the nearby dish towel and thoroughly dried his hands before offering them again. "This acceptable?"
Wemmbu inspected them with theatrical seriousness.
"...Marginally."
Flame stepped forward. This time, when he wrapped his arms around Wemmbu, no cold water interrupted the embrace. The cheetah melted against him almost immediately.
"There," Flame murmured. "Better."
"...Much."
For a long moment they simply stood there.
No words. Just steady breathing. The quiet certainty that they were both home.
Eventually Wemmbu's stomach gave a very audible growl.
Flame looked down. Wemmbu looked away.
"...That wasn't me."
"No?"
"...The house."
"The house is hungry?"
"Very."
Flame laughed again. "I made dinner."
"I knew I smelled something besides you."
"Oh?"
"You smell like campfire."
"I showered."
"You still smell like campfire."
"I suppose that's permanent."
"It suits you."
After dinner, the dishes were left to soak while the evening settled comfortably around them.
The living room felt even cozier now.
Rain had begun tapping softly against the windows, and the blanket that had served as Wemmbu's cocoon earlier was now spread across both of their laps as they settled shoulder to shoulder on the couch. Flame sat back with one arm resting comfortably along the backrest.
Without even thinking about it, Wemmbu leaned sideways until he was tucked securely against his side, one hand absentmindedly tracing slow circles over Flame's forearm.
The television flickered to life. Bright colors flooded the room. The familiar opening theme of Jujutsu Kaisen filled the comfortable silence.
"I still think Gojo cheats," Wemmbu declared with complete seriousness. Flame tilted his head.
"...By being Gojo?"
"Exactly."
"I don't think that's cheating."
"It feels unfair. I like it."
Flame considered that—with all the intent of agreeing anyhow, to please his lover.
"Fair."
Wemmbu grinned triumphantly.
As the episode unfolded, conversation gradually faded into comfortable reactions—quiet laughs, playful commentary, the occasional dramatic complaint whenever a favorite character made a questionable decision. At some point, Wemmbu's tail lazily draped across Flame's legs while Flame absentmindedly stroked the spotted fur in slow, rhythmic motions without taking his eyes off the screen.
Outside, the rain continued its gentle song against the windows. Inside, the warmth of the house, a shared blanket, good food, and each other's steady presence made the world beyond those walls feel impossibly far away.
For one evening, there were no battles waiting at dawn.
No roads to travel.
No enemies to chase.
Only two hearts finally sharing the same quiet night once more.