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"—ou poor thing. Can't breathe?"
"Let go of me, you son of a—"
What feels like a rope is tight around his neck, intangible synthetic plastic a thick weight on his shoulders. There's something like a crash, and he staggers, choking as his back is being pressed into the edge of a saw, an ache wrapping around the back of his skull. He leans against a locker, bracing his arms onto iron, and he grinds his jaw as he feels the contents of his stomach roil. Somebody shrieks, raw and desperate, their voice broken with what sounds like pain.
Aphmau?
"What? You told me to let go of you!" Someone else says, rough and grating, like a fork against a ceramic plate. "Don't give me that. The Alpha isn't here to save you anymore."
"Go fuck yourself!" She shouts, and he winces at her volume against the loud pulse woven straight through his temples.
Aphmau.
Initially, this Balto guy seemed alright. Even if he had said some pretty rude shit to both her and Aaron, he seemed to have gotten over it after the circulation of some rumor had begun. She can't really remember what the rumor was, but she knows it was centered around her and her academic rival, so something must have changed— enough for him to ask for her alone.
He'd asked under the diligent eye of Aaron himself, something about the look of his gaze predatory, stark ruby mean and narrow. He didn't outright say anything about his obvious protests, so Aphmau agreed. What was the worst that could happen?
Apparently, the worst that could happen is getting her ass beat during the middle of seventh period. She could've avoided the first hit, but for some reason, he'd gotten a lot better at offense compared to the last time they fought—"think fast, move faster"—and had his hands firmly bunched in her collar. The breath she takes is trembling and slow— a death rattle it'd been called once, she thinks— as his fingers close around her throat.
"D'aww, you poor thing," he falsely coos. "Can't breathe?"
Aphmau tries to wrench his wrists away, squeezing her eyes shut. "Let go of me, you son of a—"
He sends her body across the room, her back slamming hard against the surface of what she vaguely remembers to be filing cabinets, her head even harder. The lights briefly flicker, what feels like pinpricks stuck right into her eyes, the ugly face of Balto fresh in her mind throughout.
He seems to relish in her agonized features, a grin stretching across his own. "What? You told me to let go of you!" He bristles, rolling his eyes. "Don't give me that. Your Alpha isn't here to save you anymore."
"Go fuck yourself!"
Ringing fast and heartbeat faster, she shakily stands, bracing a bandaged palm on the very edge of a nearby chair. Her bare hand reaches up to the side of her head, two fingers against the side of her skull, before she readjusts, spine completely upright.
"Some resilience you have," he taunts, pointed teeth pricking at his lips, "bitch."
She bolts as he lunges for where she stood, clutching a desk as she refocuses, still. When he races for her, she turns the opposite direction, ducking, knuckles meeting shoulder rather than cheek. She rounds up, her heel pointed right into his gut. His fingers tighten around her arm as she tries to move, his breath stuttering, and she sneers, shoving her elbow into his chest and ripping away.
The door to the classroom swings open, the darkened expression of Aaron withering in the entryway. Alarm flashes on Balto's face, if for only a second, before he scoffs. He takes her second of surprise to reach for her again, hands pulling her hair from her scalp. She bites back a frustrated scream.
"Here to fight for your silly little mate, huh?" He turns away from her, tutting. He presses a knee into her back, anticipating her struggle. "You're too late."
Aphmau's completely forgotten as she's dropped onto the floor, elbows flat against tile, blood loud in her ears. Her jaw begins to burn, her dressed fist sore, and she almost audibly groans. Now is not the time.
Balto yelps, glass shattering as his voice falls away. Something thuds in the distance, presumably him, and the clang of metal sounds as everything quiets down.
"Stand down."
Aaron's footsteps are muted as he approaches her, his hands gently pressed to her torso and her legs, and her whole world flips sideways. A flood of protective warmth follows, grass and charcoal curling from his skin like dull smoke, the beat of his heart faint against her temple.
"Stay awake," a low murmur, close, meant only for her. "Just in case."
"Fuck,"—Mom is going to whoop my ass harder than he did—"please don't take me to the nurse. Not right now. I don't care where we go, just— just not there."
"...okay," he says finally, pulling her the slightest bit closer. "I can do that."
The music room was ridden with age, a thick coat of dust sprawled over each and every corner. The lack of any real instruments was detrimental to its validity as a music room, the only real one being the guitar he'd brought from home that stays within the middle practice room, but no one really cared enough to rename it. Band had moved from here to a newly constructed room within the west wing, leaving nothing to prove of its previous inhabitants, and it showed.
The beaten body of the Alpha female was so still within Aaron's arms that, if he couldn't hear it, he'd say that she was dead. Her face was buried in his neck, breath soft against his skin, her cloying scent of lavender and cinnamon a gentle and steady cotton around his head. He slowly crouches into a kneel, gingerly placing her onto the floor. He shrugs her discarded backpack off of his shoulder, digging through her bottomless pit of medical supplies to fish out a heating pad.
"Where do you want this?" He strains to make her features out in the dark. Aphmau doesn't verbally reply, only weakly raising her head and squeezing her eyes shut.
"Stay awake," he reminds her. "Can't be too careful about a possible concussion."
Titian rings take the place of her closed eyelids, and she extends her reddened arm as he hovers the roll of gauze in his hands above it. He can't gauge how tight it needs to be, hard-pressed to discern the layers of her expression through her silence.
"Anywhere else you want me to bandage?" Aaron casts a wary glance to her right hand, something in him itching to point the peeling binding out. He doesn't. "Or is that— is that good?"
"I'm fine," Aphmau whines, cussing under her breath and grunting as she sits up. He pushes it closer as she reaches towards her bag. "Come closer for a sec. No, don't move your whole body, idiot, lean."
Oops.
He dutifully leans forward, steeling himself as she reaches up to him, careful fingers tracing a faint scar snaking up from his chin. Tongue flicking out of her mouth, she tilts his head up, and the naked skin of his throat warms under her touch. She thumbs at the line of raised tissue beneath his jaw, trailing onto a sore spot spread directly over his carotid pulse.
"How does this even happen? When did you get this?" She hisses to herself, digging into the front pouch of her backpack, none the wiser to the shudder of his heart. He weakly swallows, face hot, and bites his tongue as she carefully presses an adhesive patch to his neck.
"Dunno," he croaks, small.
"Hm."
She unwraps from him a few seconds after, seemingly scrutinizing the wound further. "It looks really nasty though."
"It's just a bruise."
She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, bruise on your neck. Take better care of yourself."
"...yes ma'am."
The bell shrills, the dull ache of his temples intensifying tenfold. Aphmau cries out, her face twisting in a grimace and her hands shooting up to her head, before lowly growling, guttural, even if not completely canine.
"Good riddance," she massages her brows with an exasperated sigh. "What did you say?"
"I, um, I said that you weren't my mother," Aaron stammers. "I don't need your pity."
"Yeah, well, too bad. You're getting it anyway," she rolls her wrist, easily rising from a kneel in one clean motion. "Tired of seeing you get pummeled every other hour. C'mon, you have class too, you know."
He dumbly stares at the hand she extends towards him. She kicks harmlessly at his shin with a snort. "Hurry up, dumbo."
Aaron shakes his head, pointedly ignoring the delicious heat of her palm against his own. "Oh. Oh, right, sorry."
"That's what I thought," she remarks as she hauls him from the floor, throwing her arms up, up, up and dropping them as her wrists meet satisfiedly. Aphmau swipes at her bag by the strap, then slings it over her shoulder.
"Charming." She chuckles, eyes sweeping over the room. Her hand thoughtlessly latches onto his elbow. "Alright, let's go. Mister Gavin isn't nice about tardies."
"Tell me about it."