bakerstreet | the werewolf pack (au) romance meme

the werewolf pack (au) romance meme

☽✩ the werewolf pack (au) romance meme ✩☾

There are many supernatural beings that congregate in groups for survival or protection or just for companionship, not unlike humans. Witches have covens. Vampires have nests. But none of those have connections that can compare to the bond of a werewolf pack.

You should know. You're part of one, either born a werewolf or turned. For humans, blood is thicker than water; for wolves, the pack is to the bone. Of course, with humans, romantic relationships can complicate closeness of other sorts. That's not the case with werewolf pairings, as they tend to grow out of natural pack dynamics and are viewed as just another facet of life. The only difference is that werewolves tend to treat relationships, even potential would-be-mates, with extreme seriousness.

After all, you'll fight for your pack, so you'll fight for your mate, won't you?

✩ how to play ✩

☾ Comment with your character, preference, and information!
☽ Reply to others.
☾ RNG. Also, please note that while the words "alpha" et al. are used, this isn't a meme for that AU.

✩ prompts ✩

☽ Born: Your parents were werewolves. Any children you have will be wolves, too.
☾ The Turning Process: Like any transformation, the after effects of the bite are painful. Luckily
☽ With Who Turned You: You're romantically or sexually linked to your "creator," so to speak, probably because you have nowhere else to go. They seem to treasure you, though, no matter how much they hide it.
☾ Alphas: Both of you are top of the pack.
☽ Alpha and Beta: It's a classic case of the leader and the second in command: a perfect team up.
☾ Omegas: You two find solace in each other even when you're
☽ Closer Than Family: The romantic and platonic lines are blurred. You honestly can't
☾ Outside Threat: Your pack and your loved one is threatened. What won't you do?
☽ Reluctant: You don't want to be with anyone, but it's expected and they're the closest in the pack to you...
☾ All I've Ever Known: All you've ever known is the werewolf existence, the pack, and them. Of course you would never want to lose that.
☽ Can't be Together: You two should not be considering a potential pairing, either due to your status difference or because your alpha has proclaimed there will be no inter-pack mingling.
☾ Everyone Else Was Taken: You had no other option; everyone else was paired.
☽ Protector: Every pack has an instinctive protector or nurturer. You've lucked out and ended up with them.
☾ A Natural Closeness: It doesn't matter to you what you're defined as. You've always been close and you'll stay that way.
☽ Affection: Werewolves show their love in different ways that humans. Nuzzling and licking aren't considered odd at all.
☾ Fall into Step: The two of you have your pack positions and proclivities and they're the same in your relationship.
☽ Reverse: The submissive in the pack becomes a dominant in the relationship and vice versa.
☾ Two-Man Pack: The rest of your pack is gone, and you two have to stick it out.
☽ Rogue: You were once a lone wolf, but a special person brought you into the fold. Understandably, you're attached to them.
☾ Kin but Not: "Family" doesn't mean exactly the same thing in werewolf society as it does in human. There are fewer taboos between "siblings."
☽ Disciplined: You're a rule breaker, and your partner has to reel you in.
☾ Living Straight: Neither of you wants to hurt humans...yet there's always that urge.
☽ Bad Duo: Killing people and raising hell are your specialties. You're a real supernatural Bonnie and Clyde.
☾ Unrequited: Even werewolves can have feelings that aren't returned. However, it's an even more fragile scenario, given that you must still be pack after this.
☽ Got Your Back: Together, you hunt and fight. Always together.
☾ Love Outside the Pack: You've found love outside the pack, which is the ultimate sin. Everyone who isn't pack should be your enemy! The other person in this thread can be a human, vampire, etc.
☽ Life Mates: Wolves mate for life. Needless to say, this is not something you should go into lightly.
☾ Heat: The obligatory smut option.
☽ Fight for the One: Someone wants to challenge you for your mate. There's no question as to whether or not you'll fight for them - but will you kill?
☾ Leave: One of you wants to leave the pack. Will the other come along, or are ties too strong?
☽ A Brutal End: The life of a werewolf, especially those who let sentiment cloud their judgement, can be painfully brief.
☾ WILDCARD

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[ He maaay have worked for vampires before being werewolf'd. ]

[Old vampire...acquaintance?]

"Sinjir?" Erskine takes a another step close, apparently trying to get a better look. "It is you. How have you been? It's been too long." The smile looks completely genuine, but then, so does the surprise and it's hard to believe that he had actually run into Sinjir by accident. He hands are in his pockets, his expression nonthreatening - Sinjir might know better but no stranger would.

Sinjir never was a vampire.

Alas, alack. It wasn't through lack of trying. Being sired, dying in the bloody, undead embrace of one of the elite of the Empire -- that was all most anyone wanted. Including Sinjir. They all had the blood in them. Most of the officers had a patron, had a few drops a week. Enough to make their eyes and ears sharper, their reactions faster, their loyalties fanatic. Sinjir'd had a bit more than that.

Not enough.

The world always had felt so bold and bright after he got blood, he remembers. But now, his whole body twanging like a plucked string with every shivering breeze, every whispered word, every taste, every touch, he thinks maybe the world only felt bold because the blood made Sinjir himself fade. This is bold. This is alive.

So he's drinking. A lot. To make all of that bold aliveness go away.

He feels some animal within perk up its ears at the words. He grimaces. "Imagine, running into an old friend." Just a slight sprinkling of sarcasm. "Why, I'm positively boggled."

It's been a long time since Erskine was killed and reborn. Long enough, someone would think, to forget what the world had been like before. He's never forgotten, never stopped revealing (in a spark in the center of his chest) in what he's become.

These days, he likes to call himself a freelancer because he has a slightly odd sense of humor and is good enough for it to be mostly excused.

He sits down next to Sinjir - all casual grace and unnatural natural good looks - offering up a radiant smile. "The world is a strange and wonderful place. You can never guess what might happen next."

There's that vampire magnetism, the subtle shimmer of charisma. It makes Sinjir feel gangly and awkward, too loud, too messy, too alive. He consciously relaxes his grip on his glass, because with his newfound strength, with the moon waxing, he could break it all too easily.

Erskine is not trustworthy. And Sinjir was already on edge.

He grits his teeth. "Ah, yes, the world," he says. "Random chance with a dose of bitter irony." He tosses back the rest of the glass. "But, then, there's also people. People, who can be quite... unpredictable." It's something close kin to a threat. A sort of don't provoke me. -- Or, maybe, do provoke me, because all the power leashed up in Sinjir is just begging for release.

Erskine is still smiling - without the slightest flash of teeth. Every inch suggests complete relaxation (and more than a trace of smugness but, as he likes to say, that was a vampire's curse - being better than you, left implied because who would need to have it spelled out?). That he doesn't consider Sinjir a threat.

"My, my, aren't you dramatic. The world is made up of people, my friend. That's the element of chance. A lucky chance, in this case. For you."

He salutes Sinjir with a glass, drinking down liquid that tastes like nothing to him with the appearance of enjoyment.

All that, and Sinjir's throat is dry as bone. His eyes flicker closed; he remembers, for a moment, light glinting off a sharp needle (some of them liked needles better than knives), puncture at the pad of a finger. The slow, dark, precious vampire blood, as it came from the wound. Erskine had fed Sinjir once, and the pathetic thing is that Sinjir doesn't even know what Erskine thought about it. He was too busy curling his shaking human fingers around the proffered wrist and licking it off of Erskine's fingers.

Some things about his former life are difficult to remember. He thinks this was... for lack of a better word, freelance work, when the Imperial vampires would lend out particularly skilled humans for jobs benefiting someone's interest. Sinjir didn't care much, in those days. He would torture or maim for whoever told him. But it had taken him away from the ordinary sources of blood, the Imperial banks, where they mixed it, to ensure that no one fell too loyal to any one vampire.

And Erskine was there.

"For me." He signals the bartender; another one of that. "Is this where I jump at the chance? Beg you to elaborate? Tell me what script we're following."

The Imperial banks are by far the more sensible system, Erskine's never denied that. The old ways were so...messy. The powerful - or those who wanted to be powerful - vampires were always setting up their own power bases made up of shifting alliances and their unthinkingly loyal human followers. Just turned, he'd spent quite few decades fighting for the expansion of the Empire and the destruction of the old ways.

Still, he also won't deny having enjoyed feeding from Deuce alone. To enjoy having that connection, even now, especially as it's not a connection that can be pulled on. To keeping an eye on those who had fed from his...hand. And not just because they tend to be humans with particularly honed talents.

Everyone needs a little hobby or two.

"If you would like. I hear that's your...thing these days. Jumping when called. Begging at the table. Have they taught you how to play well with others?"

Sinjir feels his lips drawing back, into something like a snarl. The response of a wild animal to a surge of fear, and that's what he is, and that's what he's feeling. He fixes his eyes on the drink being poured, some pathetic effort to control himself.

Who knew? Who knows that Sinjir is a werewolf? Werewolves are supposed to be able to remember, to transform at will, to keep control of themselves in the full moon. Sinjir can't do any of that. He wishes he knew why. Something to do with the vampire blood? Or has he just not learned enough control yet?

Either way: there's no telling who's seen him transform, or how the rumors might have traveled. Or who might have just smelled him.

"I'm afraid I'm unteachable," he says. "All on my own. A Lone W-- hmmph. Well, you know."

Erskine examines his nails in mock sorrow.

"Really? What a shame. That can be quite dangerous. A threat to stability. No one likes that; best to keep things as they are. Well, you know how...people are."

He sighs, stirring his drink idly.

"They accuse us of control issues but I've noticed that Lone Wolves don't tend to last long. I suppose a case could be made that it's more about the psychology of the outsider than others putting down a potential danger but one notices patterns."

He flinches at the word wolves. It's stupid; he shouldn't. And yet.

It's true. Vampires are solitary, by nature; they need many humans to feed on. More, if they don't care about leaving the humans alive afterward. Werewolves do better in groups. Maybe that's why Sinjir is so bad at the whole 'wolf' thing.

"I might be killed?" he says, with a fake-gasp. "Why, I'm simply shocked. I'd never even considered it! Why, even more than that, one might even imagine werewolves wouldn't like a former thrall being one of them." So many reasons to kill Sinjir! So few, to keep him alive. From either side.

"I know, it's shocking. You'd think that your charming personality would be enough to outweigh that."

He tilts his glass a little, the reflection of the light of liquid is far more interesting than the actual contents.

"Now, in other circumstances this is probably where I'd make my pitch. You know, it's a dangerous world out there but I have certain reasons to keep you alive so you should do what I want and be grateful for it. Well, with far more subtlety and polish but I'm sure you get the gist. But I feel that we can just take that as said, complete with you seeing through and the whole back and forth. Time may always be on my side but you, my friend, have acquired hunters and I don't want to hang around if things are going to get tedious. So, what's your price?"

He's still not sure whether he trusts Sinjir Rath Velus.

Or, no. It's more that he's pretty sure he shouldn't, that common sense as well as the general political situation is such that he should be wary of the new pack member, given his association with the Empire, with the vampires who had killed his aunt and uncle, who had orphaned him, who had come to believe that they were not only different, but superior.

But that was before Luke had learned of his strange ties to that race, and of the accident of birth that made him a strange bridge between the two. Something about Luke himself having been born a werewolf, and his father becoming a vampire later, made him important in a way he still didn't really understand and didn't quite see in himself. All he knew was that while he was intensely loyal to his pack, to their cause, he saw the conflict as something more than werewolves and vampires. He saw it in shades of grey, and opportunity which did not begin or end with a bite or a birth. He saw possibilities.

And so he does not mistrust Sinjir as much as he thinks he should. And it doesn't hurt that the pack bond has taken strongly, and further, that Luke is no alpha, and not in a position of control. It might be, too, that he's drawn to the answers Sinjir might hold for him, about his past, about these shades he sees but can't quite articulate. So he doesn't shun the new member, and in fact goes out of his way to see that Velus has what he needs as a new member, a new wolf, unfamiliar with the world that Luke has only recently discovered himself.

If anyone had tried to educate Sinjir Rath Velus on the ins and outs of werewolves three months ago, he would have laughed in their face.

Because he knew about werewolves. Furry around the full moon, violent all the rest of the time, sensitive nose, not-so-great everything else. Done. What else could there possibly be?

He hadn't known. How it aches, from bones to skin to brain, as the full moon approaches. How every bit of his skin is alive with some jagged-edged sensitivity to the entire world. How his emotions crash through him like those tall waves, the huge surf on the beaches on the continent where he spent years of his childhood. Those could clap down on the sand like thunder. He never went swimming there. He stayed fastidiously dry, barely sandy.

Sinjir had thought that vampire blood made him more sensitive to the world as it was. And, maybe so; or maybe it just made his heart slow and his veins so full of ice that the world seemed hotter in comparison. That's all he knows, though, anymore: the compulsory loyalty of what the werewolves call a ghoul, a blood-addicted human servant of the vampire Empire. The Empire that, until recently, until the destruction of their fortress in the Endor mountains, had ruled the entire planet, from the glittering spires of Coruscant to the broad Tatooine desert.

Now he knows so much more about werewolves than he ever meant to.

Two months he's transformed, so far. Once, just days after Endor, in a fugitive frenzy, still pretending to be a Rebel. (In retrospect, his newly-bitten status, accidental as it was, probably got him past several checkpoints.) The pain had started slowly, prickling like little electric shocks, and escalated, until it felt like someone was wrenching his joints apart, breaking his bones, twisting muscle into rope. He'd awakened with the dawn, naked, every scratch on his skin healed, and he had cried for hours before even trying to find his possessions.

Once, again, from a pub at the outskirts of some Rebel-leaning city. That time, he'd awakened with a teenage boy and the boy's mother shaking him, asking him what's your pack, where do you belong.

And now:

Here.

Here, where he walks straight into a cage with Luke Skywalker and the door clangs shut behind him.

Sinjir can't control himself in the transformation. He's told it's common in the first month or two after being bitten, especially with people who've had vampire blood. It numbs you, said Wedge Antilles -- an ally, more or less. All your feelings are back, and that would be overwhelming even without the connection to the wolf.

But Skywalker -- Skywalker is special, isn't he? Born a wolf, but with extra powers, like some sort of subtle psychic bond with the rest of his pack, a pack that apparently includes Sinjir, at least by wolf-blood. Some hypnotic calming effect, potentially, with concentration. The gift of bringing the sentient mind to the forefront even when in a wolf's form. And some other things that Sinjir doesn't understand, having to do with energy, healing?, prophesy. Whatever.

He's supposed to try and make sure Sinjir doesn't go insane this third month. Because if he goes insane from all he's feeling, apparently it'll be about now.

He slumps down in the corner as they latch the cage. Two wolves, working in tandem, could grip the two handles, and unlatch the door. If they both are thinking, if they both are calm enough, they'll be able to leave. If not...

Sinjir's wolf-form is scrawny and canny, fierce and scrappy, but he doesn't give himself good odds against the mystical hero of ages.

"So how does this work?" he asks Luke, playing like every atom of his body isn't tugging him towards the other man, the other werewolf. Like his nerves aren't whispering power, power, and nudging him to act, roll over, show his belly, yip and play and nuzzle like a puppy. Luke isn't in charge of the pack, but he's like a damned magnet, apparently.

Luke doesn't want the other man's submission. What he wants is understanding, though he's not entirely sure whether he means for Sinjir to understand himself or for them to understand one another. Perhaps both. He can feel Sinjir's pull towards him, and feels it, too. He's just had more practice. At all of it.

He's sitting with his back to the bars, legs crossed, and when Sinjir speaks he tilts his head. He's not conscious of the echo of his wolf self though he wouldn't be surprised to have it mentioned.

"How do you want it to work?" he asks calmly. But once the words come out of his mouth, his brow furrows and he huffs a laugh at himself. "That sounds way more arrogant than I meant it to. What I mean is, what are you hoping to get out of this?"

Luke never asked for this power, and it's probably no accident that it lies in compassion and connection, though it is slightly ironic. It is, however, something he can't deny that he has, and must use to the best of his ability.

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the werewolf pack (au) romance meme

Sinjir Rath Velus / Star Wars: Aftermath / ota for gen, m/m for shipping

Re: Sinjir Rath Velus / Star Wars: Aftermath / ota for gen, m/m for shipping

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makin stuff upppp

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