⎝ César  Lazkano. ⎠ - Blog Posts

She doesn’t flinch when his shoulder clips hers — just rocks with it, weight shifting like she’d braced for it long before he made the choice to move. Sharp pain blooms across her collarbone, a jolt, but not unfamiliar. Pain never is. Not anymore.

She doesn’t draw. Doesn’t reach. The blade never so much as twitches in its place beneath the coat. It’s not mercy. It’s not fear.

It’s calculation.

He walks, and she lets him. Watches the shape of him disappear into the storm, the space he leaves behind already closing like he was never there.

He doesn’t look back. He shouldn’t.

The scent of him lingers —blood, rain, something older—and she lets it fill her lungs once before letting it go. The kind of monster who chooses to walk away doesn’t need her knife in his back.

Not yet.

She’s still there long after he’s gone, the storm curling tighter around her. Hair wet, face unreadable, and something sharper coiled behind her eyes now. Not rage. Not even fear.

Resolve.

It’s not that he didn’t scare her.

END.

        the sound of caperucita’s voice becomes a monotonous, boring buzz that rails into his skull, falling in time with the rain, becoming the background music to his restlessness. hunter or not, she keeps fucking talking him in circles. fuck fairytales, fuck barking, fuck judgy eyed little knife-wielders who can’t stay off of his fucking nerves. a chase in a hurricane sounds thrilling, but it feels too much like baiting into a trap, like she’s trying to call his bluff by denying him. that’s the human part of him speaking sense, far off and distant like the water he has his back turned to. even if it’s the wolf that delivers the violence, there’s nothing more he hates than that truth, buried deep, and pulsing. he’s alive, making conscious choices, he isn’t a slave to the feral nature, the curse. not yet, anyways. he won’t make it to be matteo, but now, he has choices, no matter that he doesn’t fucking want them.

        still, it’s only partially his choice not to listen to her. all he hears are little pathetic stabs at him, trying to provoke the monster that she claims isn’t on her list. it doesn’t matter, of course, he’s done enough to deserve it, could do more right now to make it worth bringing his skin back home with her. she might not be scared, he might want to give her a reason to be, but he doesn’t care. if she’s so eager to threaten him, he’ll come back later, if the rest of the world fails to kill him after all the blood he’s thirsting for is spilled. the long kind of chase, fueled by spite. and he’s fine with messes, just loves ‘em, never once been clean. césar gives her one last dry chuckle, one last look.

        control steers him away from chiquita and her steel, her stupid wolfsbane perfume, her list. but it doesn’t quite aim right. he moves forward, blowing past her with a sharp check of her shoulder. it’s a sharp kind of pain that wakes him up with a smile, but he keeps going. if she stabs him, it’ll be in the meat of his back, because he’s walking away now, bidding her goodbye without saying anything at all, and retreating into the dark of the storm.

Irene doesn’t move.

Not when he steps closer. Not when his voice drips that low, jagged warning. Not even when the storm seems to lean in with him, like it, too, wants to see what happens when something snaps.

She just stands there — still and utterly unshaken, like the world’s spun meaner things at her and she’s long since stopped ducking.

Her gaze tracks his approach with the kind of measured calm that doesn’t come from arrogance, but experience — the cruel, quiet kind that’s buried friends and enemies both, and didn’t much flinch at either. Her fingers twitch once at her side, maybe muscle memory, maybe restraint. No visible weapon. No posturing. Just that look. Sharp and old and wholly unimpressed.

At his caperucita, her brow ticks up.

“Cute,” she murmurs. “You practice that one, or just bark it at anyone in red?”

The wind shifts again — hard this time — and her coat flares at the hem like it wants to fly, the scent of iron and wolfsbane rising faint in the air between them. Not fresh-cut. Older. Embedded. She doesn’t need to show him where it’s hidden. That’s the point.

Her voice stays low. Calm. But it cuts cleaner now.

“Funny thing about wolfsbane —” she says, tone drifting like smoke from a slow-burning fire, “— it comes in different forms. Tinctures, powders. Oils that don’t even smell like anything until your lungs start to collapse.”

She steps once, not toward him, not away. Just enough that the gap between them feels sharper. Like it means something more now.

“So I’d be careful.”

Her baby blues narrow, not cruel — just real. Tired in the way only people who’ve survived monsters are tired. “Like I said. You’re not on my list. Yet. But don’t mistake that for mercy.”

Her chin tilts slightly, just enough to read the shape of him again. Rage, hunger, grief all coiled together in a too-tight skin. She’s seen it before. Worn a version of it once. But she’s not about to be the one who breaks first.

“So be a good boy,” Irene says, almost gently. “Back away. Because yeah — maybe I end up with a bite. But you?”

She leans in just a breath, enough that her voice can flatten into something harder beneath the calm.

“You’ll end up dead. No matter the scenario. Odds aren’t in your favor.”

Then, softer again — a shrug of her coat, eyes already turning past him. Dismissal, deliberate and cold.

“And like I said. I don’t make messes I’m not ready to clean up.”

         her whole holier than-wiser than-better than act makes him want to fucking kill her. he supposes coming back home was supposed to mean he was on his best behavior- or at least better than before. before, when he had killed just for the crime of daring to exist, his own bloodlust all-consuming. but this time, he had a reason. she’s provoking him, he’d provoked her. she’s a hunter. that’s reason enough. and it’s not like being on his better behavior had stopped him before. the curse doesn’t care about promises, the wolf even less. the wolf takes his anger, the rage that burns and curls in his chest, spreading to his limbs. his mind had never mattered, logical thinking and inhibitory control skipped right over in favor of emotion, of passion. pride, too. the wolf doesn’t want him walking away, not when he could taste blood beneath his teeth. 

         he can smell the metal she’s got stuffed somewhere on her, wonders how long it could take her to whip out whatever hunter trickery makes her think she can take on a wolf, before he’s got his teeth in her. even somewhat human, dark eyed and feral, he could make the bite lethal. césar doesn’t care about listening anymore, he doesn’t care about nightmares, what she has to say. whatever glimmer of interest, the herb that had glanced through his senses, familiar. he doesn’t give a fuck. all it takes is one relax, pup for his nerves to flare and now, now he’s dangerous. he wants to hold life in his jaw and be the one to take it away, he doesn’t care who it is.

         rough from the growl, his voice reaches a low, raspy tone as it crawls from his throat. dying, vibrating with rage.  “ yeah, i’m done fucking barking. ”  it chokes out with a dry laugh, the thing stifling his words is not hesitation, is not fear, but it doesn’t take any mind reading bullshit to figure that out. his demeanor tells that story, hulking and predatory. that’s his threat, that she couldn’t stop him. she could hurt him, she could kill him, punish him for ruining her pretty fair skin, for making tears spur in judgy blue eyes from the pain. but she couldn’t stop him, not really.

         he walks closer, stalking, doesn’t reach her entirely, and keeps enough space between them that his teeth are kept at bay. for now, for now, for now. just put to the side enough that he’s thinking of blowing right past her, going to bury his teeth into some bunny. to stay alive for avi, to stay alive for teo. maybe it’s the storm that brings out that heart in him.  “ i’m a lot bigger than you, caperucita. what you got that’s so bad? ”  césar doesn’t know why, but he can smell something deeper than the knife.

She turns.

Not fast. Not like a threat—though it wouldn’t take much for it to become one. Irene moves like a knife being unsheathed; deliberate, clean, sharp in all the places that matter. Her coat, still damp from the earlier downpour, clings to her like a second shadow, dark and unbothered by the chill. Wind tugs the hem sideways, wraps it round her calves like a whisper with teeth. Her gaze, when it settles on him fully, is calm. Heavy.

She could say a hundred things. Could speak in old names that burn when uttered, pull threads of his mind until they fray at the edges. Could reach through the smoke-thick parts of him and make him believe he never had a mother, never had bones, never had a name at all.

But she doesn’t.

Instead, she watches him with the kind of patience you only earn by standing still in rooms you were never meant to survive.

“Relax, pup,” she says, voice even. Low. Almost soft, if it weren’t for the iron underneath. “I’m off the clock.”

She lets that settle. Lets it dig its own little trench between them, full of unspoken meanings and unshed blood. She’s not reaching for anything —not a blade, not a curse, not even her temper— but her presence sharpens anyway. Like the weather around her is just waiting for an excuse.

“I don’t make messes unless I’m ready to clean them up.” A small tilt of her head. “And you’re not on my list.”

Her eyes don’t blink. Not right away. She studies him like she’s reading between the cracks of his ribs —finding the rot, weighing the ruin. The growl still hums in his throat like a taut string, but she doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t feed it either. Just stands there, steady as an altar stone, watching the storm behind his eyes with the kind of practiced detachment that only comes after watching men turn into monsters and monsters turn into corpses.

And then, finally, her mouth ticks up. Just a little. Not a smile. Something colder. Wiser.

“How’s it going?” she echoes, answering his dig with a shrug that carries far more weight than the gesture suggests. “Pretty well, actually.”

She nods toward him, slow and deliberate, like he’s a metaphor made real. “I’m not the one laughing at the thunder like it’s a god worth worshipping. So yeah. Guess I’m doing better than that.”

The air between them thickens, not with magic —though it’s always there, threading through her like smoke in a closed room— but with intent. Something that doesn’t need words. Irene could kill him. He’s fast, sure. Dangerous. But she’s lived through worse. She’s built worse. A hunter, yes —but a different breed than most. Not a zealot. Not a sadist.

She doesn’t want to skin him. Doesn’t want to watch him bleed.

But if he made her, she’d do it clean. Efficient. Kind, in its own quiet way.

Instead, she looks past him, back toward the distant rooftops where real nightmares fester, the ones with names she does keep on a list. A place where her attention should be.

And then back to him.

“You done barking?” she asks, voice quiet again. “Or are we still playing the big bad wolf routine?”

         césar’s saintly, for his teeth don’t feel the purchase of her neck beneath them, a bite to snap bone. still, he salivates for it. he displays a manner of control he, honestly, hadn’t thought possible. look at that, chiquita, you’re bringing out the best in him. his nose tells him human, but his eyes and ears tell him something more. humans don’t make threats like that, they don’t say your kind. it’s a gamble between a random, overly aware human and a hunter, weighing heavy on the hunter side. césar, for once, comes to the most reasonable conclusion. a low, deep growl rises in his throat, building underneath his jaw. he’s not a good enough dog to not respond to violence. her’s had come in words, so césar follows.

         “ watch it, chiquita. your pretty knives can’t stop a bite, and all it takes is once … ” she could kill him, sure, but césar’s always been a huge fan of mutually assured destruction. now, he’s not sure just what they teach in hunter school, but the curse brings a violence that tends to sneak up on you. it’s cocky, but he’s seen it time and time again. that, too, only takes once.

         there’s probably another world in which he takes her words in their finality, ignores her and leaves everything else unspoken and lost to the wind. and that world, césar’s not cursed, his father’s not dead, and warwick doesn’t send knives through their own skin. instead, when she speaks, all he hears is a child. all he hears is him. it makes him laugh, again, and he turns back towards the sea. i don’t smell like nightmares. you do. no matter how cold she is, how ice-firm her tone, césar hears the passion, how badly she wants to be believed. boo fucking hoo.  “ oh, yeah? and how’s that going? handling them? ”

Irene stops. Not all the way — not like someone caught — just enough that the wind tugs her coat sideways as she turns her head, just slightly, enough to look back over her shoulder. Not enough to give him the satisfaction of her full attention. Just enough to remind him she heard.

Her voice is quieter now, but it carries. A low current in the air, sharp as salt on an open wound.

“Funny thing,” she says, slow, measured. “You always think you’re doing the hunting until the ground gives out under you.”

She doesn’t give him a smile — wouldn’t waste one — but there’s a shift at the corner of her mouth. Not amusement. Something older. Worn. Closer to warning.

“Your kind shouldn’t be out in the rain.”

Her gaze flicks to the sky, where stormclouds roll like smoke on the edge of something worse. Then back to him, steady.

“Not when people would love nothing more than to see what you look like flayed open and nailed to someone’s cellar wall. Wet fur’s easier to skin.”

There’s no venom in it. Just fact, spoken like a woman who’s seen it done and didn’t bother looking away. Maybe even held the knife once.

Then she turns fully, shoulders settling back like a door swinging closed. No dramatic exit, no theatrics — just the kind of silence that comes after a line is drawn in chalk and left for the rain to erase.

“I don’t smell like nightmares. You do. I just know how to handle them.”

         now, she’s the one full of bullshit. césar rolls his eyes. now, they’re sick of each other.  “ for someone who’s tired of me talking, you sure like putting words in my mouth. ”  he’s a monster that doesn’t respect much. the sea, the natural chaos, they might be the only things in all the world that he does. and vengeance, he loves that shit.

         you’d better know how to swim when it pulls you under.  “ wanna’ bet? dare me. ”  he’s not a domesticated thing, hasn’t lost the pure, natural instinct to stay alive, but- he’s always been easily beckoned to a wine-dark sea, being dragged under the waves sounds better than whatever the fuck he’s doing now. whether or not he survives that is none of his business. his instincts will kick in, or they won’t.

          césar watches her turn around. despite the wolf that tingles under his skin, that wild nature threatens to turn skin to fur under stolen clothes, he doesn’t enjoy this chase. it’s a battle of pride, he’s a stubborn thing, and, truly, he just doesn’t care enough. there is nothing here to stoke the saliva from behind canines, to make him thirst and hunger for this. he’ll find another rat to play with, if the boredom persists. the man inside him refuses to be reduced to an animal, trailing along pathetically for a morsel of attention. but the wolf … catches a whiff of something familiar. a herb of the magical variety, one he knows from trial and error. the herb worked, but it wasn’t enough for what césar needed. once he focuses in on the smell, it’s impossible to ignore. it only grows stronger, and the storm, the sound of her turning feet, it all turns to background noise. it’s so strong, the smell of the herb, he believes he could follow it through, wherever she goes home to. wherever she’s hiding from. still, he comments bluntly, like he isn't sure, like he's too sure, like it's another part to this game. " you smell funny, who're you hiding from nightmares? "

She doesn't roll her eyes, doesn’t sigh, doesn’t flinch — doesn’t give him what he wants, and that’s a kind of answer all its own. Irene just watches him for a breath too long, like she’s measuring something invisible in the space between them. Not his strength. Not his bite. But the shape of the wall he’s built and how high he plans to throw rocks from it.

“Spare me the theatrics,” she says, voice low, even. “You’re not the storm, and this isn’t your stage.”

She doesn’t say it unkindly. That would take more energy than she’s willing to give him. Just the plain truth, laid out between them like salt lines on wet stone.

“Cirque du soleil: hurricane,” she repeats, tone dry enough to blister. “Cute.”

She glanced over at him, then back to the dark waters.

“I’ve seen better shows from driftwood and ghost light,” she adds, and there’s something bone-dry in the way she says it — not quite a joke, not quite mockery, but something with teeth behind it. “You burn loud. Doesn’t mean you burn long.”

She shifts the bag again, not because it’s heavy now, but because she’s starting to feel the distance she’ll have to walk. Doesn’t make a move to leave yet. Maybe because something in him still smells like salt and loss, and she’s not done parsing the difference between danger and damage.

“If you want the sea to clap for you,” she says, eyes narrowing just slightly, “— you’d better know how to swim when it pulls you under.”

Then she turns. Not quick — nothing dramatic — but with the slow certainty of someone who already knows if he follows, he’ll talk again. And if he doesn’t, the wind will say enough.

         he rolls his eyes, “ yeah, alright, chiquita. saw that in those judgy lil’ eyes of yours, don’t need to tell me. ”  you talk to much, just you fuckin’ wait. if she’s not walking away by the end of this, he hadn’t succeeded in pissing her off enough. césar’s goal jumps from entertainment to making her ears bleed. it’s likely she’ll turn on her heel, stick that ski slope nose in the air and stomp off. but he’s more interested in what she’ll do if she stays. if he’s earned himself a taste of ice, or if she burns, like he does. césar waves her off, like he’s heard her, like he’s listening. he hasn’t, he isn’t. spite burns instead of understanding, but it’s fierce enough to keep his interest, his attention.

         sure, she doesn’t care about being liked. césar imagined he did, once. knows he did, once, but it’s a time that’s so far away that he hadn’t dare touch it, let alone reach for the memory. eventually, when you’re pushed out, enough, caring fizzles into fury. but it doesn’t mean that anyone else’s opinion matters, only that they should suffer for it. “ what’s earning it look like to you, huh? you want a show? ”  he could give her a show. there’s a thousand dangerous, incredible things someone can do in the water. drowning takes the tippy top of the list for césar, but, well, he’s always been told he has terrible taste. he doesn’t really care, though. the air tastes of magic, the ports to be ruined, that’s enough show for him.  “ cirque du soleil: hurricane? ”

She almost smiles at that — almost. It doesn’t quite make it past her mouth, gets caught in the corner like it’s not sure it belongs there. The bag still digs into her palm, but she doesn’t shift, doesn’t ease the pressure. Let it bite.

"You talk too much," she says, quiet and without heat. Like she’s telling him something he should already know.

Her gaze flicks away just once — toward the ocean — not because she’s afraid to look at him, but because the sea says more with silence than he does with all those cheap words. She listens for a beat. The crash and pull. A rhythm she’s known longer than she’s known her own name. It doesn't scare her. Not really.

“The water doesn’t ask for your permission,” she says after a moment, still watching the waves. “It just takes. That’s the difference.”

She finally shifts the bag to her other side, fingers tingling from the weight. She doesn’t mind the pins and needles. They make sense. Pain usually does.

Her eyes cut back to him then, flat and sharp like a blade that’s been sitting too long in salt air. “And I’m not looking to be liked. Least of all by a storm.”

A pause, long enough to be intentional.

“But if it wants to take me, it’s gonna have to earn it.”

         the wind starts lashing out at him, sharp and cutting. it whistles, even more piercing, it might just make his ears bleed. a punishment for sticking this out, pain to make a smarter man turn back, to make the animal fear the lash. césar doesn’t give a fuck. he likes it, the way it curls around him, seethes, the way it’s fury wrapped into something natural. he likes the taste of it on his tongue, the smell. he likes it. he’s sick, and he’s twisted, and he’s cursed. but in the middle of danger, with adrenaline begging its way back into his system, at least he feels alive.

         “ storm doesn’t like me. ”  césar ignores his choice of her words. of course she’s here, he’s here. everyone’s fucking crazy. whoop de doo. she knows it, he knows it. so what the hell are they still doing here? he keeps talking to fill the time. his boredom, at the center stage of concern. primarily.  “ the sea never does, ‘s not a … reciprocal thing. ”  damn, chiquita’s got him breaking out the 50 cent words, or whatever. the water’s where he’s been for two years, that same water has held him times when there weren’t hands to do so, and, besides, that when there was a brother who did. who always did. but césar’s got nothing to do with that.  “ silly lil’ sea bitches always end up dead, anyways. ‘s prolly no good, to be liked by the storm. ”  before, it had been just aimless, bored musing. now, he looks at her, judgy eyes and all.  “ you don’t seem to be the biggest fan of it though, the water? ”

She doesn’t flinch under the weight of his stare. Don’t look away either. Just watches him, steady, like maybe if she looked long enough, the shape of him might make more sense. It doesn’t.

His laugh isn’t funny. But neither is the fact that she hasn’t really breathed in weeks. Not properly. Not without it catching somewhere just beneath her ribs, like her own lungs are playing tricks.

The grocery bag shifts against her leg again. The handles are digging in now. She doesn’t move to fix it.

“I know I’m here,” she says finally, low and even. “You think I don’t?”

That’s all he gets. That’s all she owes.

The truth isn’t something she’s ready to let out in the open —not in the salt-slick dark, not under the eye of a storm that already feels like it knows too much. Home hasn’t felt like home in a long time. Her father's face doesn’t sit right in her memory anymore. Like someone rearranged the pieces when she wasn’t looking. Her mother is not the person she once knew. Even the air inside that house feels secondhand, like it's already been used up.

But she doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, she stays where she is, soaked and cold and choosing, for some reason, not to walk away. Maybe because there’s nowhere else to go. Maybe because the sea isn’t the only thing with pull.

“You’re not the only one the storm likes,” she adds after a beat, voice quieter now. Not a challenge. Not quite a confession either.

Just a fact. One of many they don’t have names for yet.

        césar does like the sea, he does find solace in its violence. though, he’s far from it. peace, solace, safety, calm. he has no use for them, the effort of reaching them isn’t worth the stretch because this war-torn wild body is all he knows. the sea, at least, has her moments. césar does not. his waves never find a gentle lapping at the bay, they never curl delicately. his beauty is a furious chaos. and today, through this storm, so is the sea’s. he hopes she swallows him whole. he doesn’t want to swim, he wants to go straight down. 

        in the storm, everything blurs together into rough crevices of water and madness. the pockets of light don’t mean much underneath the clouds, illuminating scarcely anything. with his nose stuffed full with the smell of rain- wet dog -and magic, his senses gather next to nothing. césar doesn’t see, or smell, or hear the woman until she speaks, and it produces another dry laugh from him.  “ can’t it be both? ”  insane, and looking to get dragged into the harbor. yeah, it sums up césar pretty neatly, and it almost draws another laugh from him.  “ ‘cause, well, it’s both, chiquita. ”  ever his father’s son, his pride roars inside his chest. but the wrath is louder, greedier, hungrier, and so it always wins out. besides, he’s standing here, dark curls strung down in his eyes by the rain. pathetic, perhaps, but terrifying, ravenous. césar meets her eyes from across the street, through the storm, tearing away from the sight of the drowning docks.  “ it is funny, you’re just not in on the joke. ”  at first, it’s like a stubborn instance, piercing into the blue of her eyes like, eventually, she’s just going to get it. but he’s not avi. he doesn’t care. avi’s playing leader to his group of mutts and teo’s off the grid and so here he is, alone, bone-cold, seeking vengeance from the sea for an act he wanted to do him-fucking-self.  “ big fuckass storm’s the best thing’s to happen here since i got back, hardee-har-har. ”

        dark gaze had migrated back to the water, though it finds its way back to miss judgy blue eyes.  “ and, anyways, ”  césar makes a point, something he’s sure she’s already realized.  “ you’re here too. ” 

She shouldn’t be out. She knows she shouldn’t be out.

The wind was picking up by the time she stepped off the curb with her bag of essentials —a few candles, batteries, water purification tabs, and a box of matches she’d definitely pretend she didn’t already have four of. Enough to make her look responsible, not enough to make her feel less like she was just pretending at being calm.

The spell at the house would hold. It had to. The wards were layered, written sharp and tight into the corners with salt, red thread, and sweat she hadn’t meant to cry. It was good work. She rarely admitted to being proud of anything lately, but that spell… it would hold. Long enough for her mother to sleep through the worst of it, anyway.

And Irene? Irene needed air.

The streets weren’t empty yet, but they would be soon. Most windows had already been boarded, the sharp metallic tang of storm-braced magic riding the breeze. Her boots left muddy half-prints on the uneven pavement as she walked, head down, the plastic bag swinging at her side. She didn’t have a destination. That was the point.

Anywhere but home. Anywhere but there.

The docks called to her—not because she liked the sea (she didn’t) or found solace in its violence (she absolutely didn’t)—but because it was the last place anyone with sense would linger. She could pretend for a few minutes that she didn’t belong anywhere else either.

And that’s when she saw him.

At first, just a shape in the distance, upright and dark and laughing in the rain like something pulled too fast from a dream or a warning.

Her steps slowed.

It wasn’t the figure that stopped her—it was the feeling. The storm recognized him. That’s what it felt like. The wind didn’t whip around him, it curled. Familiar. Like he belonged to it, or it to him. She didn’t know which was worse.

“You’re either insane,” she called out over the howl of the wind, voice even but thin from disuse, “or looking to get dragged straight into the harbor.”

Irene stopped a few feet off, the grocery bag bumping lightly against her knee. Her hair was soaked, curling around her jaw, her coat clinging heavy to her arms.

“And you’re laughing like it’s funny,” she added, quieter now, more to herself than him. “God. What the hell is wrong with you.” What the hell was wrong with her?

But she didn’t leave. Not yet. Let the wind scream. Let the sea rise. She wasn’t ready to go home either.

who: open to anyone wandering about ! ♡ where: Outside . / when: Day One, Hurricane Jac .

         thing is, césar knows the smell of a storm. 

         it’s fiercer, now, when he’s far more wolf than man, so much so that dark fur covers every inch of him, deep sharp canines lie behind a curled lip. giving way to the monster of his body is supposed to let him feel free, feel wild, but all it’s managed to do since coming home is make him paranoid. a wary, feral animal, nobody likes him at all. it doesn’t make him useful, only dangerous. césar likes it this way, keeping everyone out without even having to touch them at all. just the threat of him is easy enough.

         thing is, césar should know the smell of the storm, should know better than sticking around as the clouds start to darken and churn, how the air begins to taste of ferocity and the water grows vengeful. but, honestly, he just doesn’t fucking care.

         he cares just enough to force his body back into human shape. dark curls, and dark eyes, and the same kind of wild imbued in him as there was moments before, as a wolf. he walks through the city, watching as the weather just begins to worsen. some unfortunate soul has left their laundry out in the pouring rain, césar plucks it from the line. even cold and wet, it suits him just fine. now clothed, he watches the sky, the water, lets his eyes trace over port leiry, even hurricane ridden. the storm is beautiful, the ocean wild, he feels right at home. the boats are sure to be dust by dark, similarly to any person sticking around, and the docks …

         the docks.

          huh, how about that. yuisa’s pride and joy, soon to be swallowed by waves. césar laughs. he laughs, and laughs, and laughs. as he wipes both an amused tear and a sweep of rain from across his face, he finds that his own hurricane plan doesn’t matter as much. he’ll figure it out along the way, wonders if his previous indiscretions at that college party two years ago would bar him from entry of the stadium. césar tips his chin up to the sky, and breathes it in.