Chapter Text
Chihiro’s next meals consisted of deep red meat interspersed with streaks of white fat. He was down to three meals a day, though the portions were quite substantial. Compared to when his transformation had been ongoing it was considerably less, and his energy level didn’t fluctuate as much as it had then. The sense of steadiness Chihiro felt now was reassuring. Control over his appetite was within reach. As autumn went on and the weather got cooler Haruka went on fewer hunts, and hardly ever brought Chihiro along.
“I really think I’ll be able to control myself the next time,” he told the older amazon, hoping to be given a chance to prove it. They were together in one of the house’s many tatami rooms. Haruka didn’t quite meet his eyes.
“I’m tracking prey for the last hunt of the season. Just be patient a little while longer.” Chihiro growled, frustrated.
“So now that it’s getting cold you just want to laze around?” Now Haruka looked him in the eyes, crimson irises dark.
“You know better than to believe I’m not busy.” Chihiro did. There had been peace between them lately, the training practically boring in its restrained one-sidedness. They were spending idle evenings chatting after dinner, like friends. Having caught a glimpse of Haruka’s darker side made Chihiro want to draw his blood again, or at least feel like the other amazon was really trying. He knew his strength was growing, and he wanted to push it.
“A fatass like you can’t be working that hard-“ Chihiro didn’t even get to finish the insult before Haruka’s claws met his chest and pushed him down with such force that his shirt tore.
“You really want to get a rise out of me, huh?” Haruka snarled. He flicked the bits of torn fabric off his fingers. Though he’d riled him up, Chihiro felt real fear of Haruka within himself. He tried to get away but was caught, a firm grip holding him by the tail. It hurt, and Chihiro had no doubt he could lose the appendage before Haruka let him get away. “Let’s take this outside.” He began to drag him toward the nearest door. Chihiro struggled for a few seconds but went still as Haruka’s claws only held him tighter. He opened the door with his free hand and unceremoniously tossed him onto the lawn. “Last chance to back out.” Chihiro rose to his feet, trying to look ready to fight. Haruka was unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his shoulders to reveal a white tank top. “Alright, since you clearly need to learn about respect, I’ll oblige you.” He took his usual low stance, the light from the house behind him glinting off the sharp-looking spines on his forearms. Chihiro had those too.
“Come on, if that thick tail of yours isn’t weighing you down.” Haruka seemed more annoyed than genuinely angry, but there was agression enough behind his charge to make it wilder and less restrained than his moves tended to be in training. Rather than trying to dodge, Chihiro grabbed onto Haruka as he closed in and dug in his claws. They tumbled together until Haruka managed to push him off with a two-footed kick that sent the younger amazon flying. He hit the ground and scrambled on all fours for a moment before regaining his footing. Haruka was ready for him. Chihiro leapt at his throat but he was caught, held at arm’s length with his hands clasped in Haruka’s. He pressed him down with tremendous strength.
“If you had a bit more body mass you’d be able to resist this,” he said flatly. Chihiro snarled. His tentacles emerged to wrap themselves around Haruka’s arms, but they couldn’t exert much force. “Seems like you don’t get it.” He let go and swung his arms to pull Chihiro off-balance before kicking him again. The ground came up much quicker this time. “Stay down,” Haruka was telling him. “You’ve already lost. I could kill you.” Chihiro stood, not totally steady.
“Then kill me!” He ran at him once more. He’d aimed to provoke Haruka but Chihiro was just getting frustrated like always. He slashed at him with his claws while Haruka simply stepped back, out of the way. “You didn’t kill me back then and you won’t now, because you’re soft, you’ll only kill a person if it fits with your bullshit morals!” Chihiro cried, getting close enough to grab Haruka and on impulse bite into the thick flesh of his upper arm. Haruka quickly shook off his look of astonishment and pushed at the boy.
“Get off.” Chihiro let go and simply fell to the ground, tired. Amazon blood tastes awful. It was dark and the night was growing cold, but Chihiro didn’t want to get up. Haruka looked down at him, the mark of the younger boy’s fangs already fading, leaving only streaks of blood. His expression was unreadable.
“You’re too weak to actually hurt me,” Chihiro said, barely more than a mumble. “You’re domesticated, you’re like a fat housecat hunting birds in the yard.” Now Haruka just looked disappointed.
“Shut up,” he said.
“Make me, you overweight b-“ Haruka’s clawed hand closed around Chihiro’s mouth. He was leaning over him, eyes utterly cold.
“I’d break your jaw, but you’d heal in a few minutes,” he told Chihiro, his fingers exerting painful pressure on the sides of his head. “So I am asking you to stop pushing me, please.” Despite his taunting, Chihiro was once again quite scared of Haruka in the moment. He lay still and waited for the older amazon to let go, and watched silently as he did so, then laid down in the grass next to him. They were far enough from the city out here that the stars were bright above. The insects sang in the woods.
“Why does it bother you so much that I called you fat?” Chihiro had done it knowing it would tick Haruka off, but that didn’t mean he understood why.
“You calling me a lazy fatass is a bit different from just ‘fat’. It bothers me that you seem like you actually believe my size means anything.” He lay there looking up, totally placid with his folded hands resting on his chest. “It’s no good for us amazons to have hang-ups about eating, well it’s not good for anyone but it’s especially bad for us.” Suddenly the atmosphere was not unlike times Chihiro had slept on the floor of the bar with Hiroki and the other Team X boys. Before falling asleep they would talk about whatever odd thing crossed their minds. Chihiro had never participated much in those conversations.
“Hang-ups?”
“Yeah. You don’t want to look like me, right?” Neither of them could comfortably lie on their backs so Haruka was on his left side, facing Chihiro. He hadn’t been looking at him but he did so now, taking in the wide shoulders and muscular curves, all softened and rounded with fat. It wasn’t that he looked ugly to Chihiro, but the softness was unimpressive somehow.
“You look uncool, so no.” Haruka’s smile came back.
“Uncool, huh… I guess it’s better than thinking that I look like this ‘cause I eat people.” Chihiro remembered when he’d first seen Haruka and thought exactly that. “It’s not your fault,” he assured him. “We were both told certain things about each other. Really, we have a lot in common.” It seemed almost too obvious to say aloud. Chihiro considered what he might mean by it.
“You’re saying I should get over that because I’ll get fat too?” Haruka looked totally baffled for a second before he started laughing.
“Not necessarily but,” he paused and laughed some more. He took a deep breath. “If you did, it would be better if you didn’t feel bad about it.” There was a bit of tension in his voice that spurred Chihiro’s curiosity.
“You’re speaking from experience?” Haruka had never been thin while Chihiro had known him, but that didn’t mean much. A few years was a long time for people as young as them.
“I am. I had a few good role models, but it wasn’t easy to shake off what I believed about my body. Dr. Mizusawa kept me underfed while I lived in her home, and then after I awakened I thought there was no way I could eat enough to feel satisfied. I grew a little anyway, but then when Mizuki would see me she’d say I wasn’t the Haruka she remembered.” He smiled a little as he said it. “I was still really skinny then. Me and an amazon I was close with could manage by eating a little bit whenever we felt too hungry, but it was never really enough. His appetite finally got the better of him, and we had to live away from humans.” Some of what Haruka said rang true to Chihiro as well. His own stomach had been chronically empty for most of his life. “Not eating was risky in the long term, but when I did eat my strength grew and I started to fear losing control. But staying weak left my companions unprotected. Eventually I got so stressed out that I ran away.” As he listened, Chihiro attempted to put together pieces from what he’d already learned about Haruka’s past.
“Mizuki said you disappeared for five years.” Haruka nodded.
“From when I first left the city until the day we met. When I ran I went as far as I could, so far south that the weather changed. Even among amazons we ate like humans, and my hunger never went away. It was down south that I met my mentor, but by then I was already on the brink of going out of my mind. I thought that was it, that I was finally going to become a monster and have to be exterminated. But my instincts kicked in, I hunted for the first time, and I ate my fill. After that I went through what you’ve been going through, and in a few months I looked more or less the way I do now.” He gestured to his body, but particularly to his belly. Chihiro’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Before that you were thin.”
“Thinner than you are now, yes. And significantly weaker.” Chihiro tried to envision it, growth like what he’d already experienced but more, greater muscle mass and fat to go with it.
“That’s kind of crazy.”
“And now you’re going through something similar. If you consider how fast we grow from infancy to adolescence, it’s really not that shocking.” Maybe it wasn’t, but it was still something. Just a few years ago the most powerful amazon he knew had been skinny, weak and anxiety-ridden. Chihiro’s prospects weren’t too bad.
“Your mentor helped you through it? This guy you call Amazon?”
“He helped train me afterwards, taught me to pass as human again, let me feel normal. But while I was growing he just gave me a lot of space. I had to fend for myself, which was fine for me. It didn’t work out so well for you.” Chihiro had been able to recollect enough from his time alone to know how true that was. “Amazon had it easy with me. I don’t mind the challenges you’ve brought me, though.” Haruka said it like he really meant it.
“I bit you just a little while ago.”
“Yup. You’ve bitten me twice now. I still don’t regret saving you.” Chihiro was too tired to get angry at his relentless positivity. He lay there and looked at the stars, glancing at Haruka as he tried to imagine his slim figure from years ago. Failing that, he thought of how he himself might look if he turned out like Haruka. Two chubby amazons… It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposed. At least he’d be able to use the weight against Haruka when they fought. “Your mom called me ‘domesticated’ once,” The older amazon spoke again, as if thinking out loud. “Well, she called me a ‘tame amazon’.”
“My mother did?” It gave Chihiro an odd feeling to hear of what his mother had said and done before he was born.
“When we first met, she told me that if Jin was wild, I was tame. I’ve wondered what she would think of me living in the woods, eating what I could catch.” Haruka’s smile had turned wistful. “Your parents were a very odd couple.” Chihiro was getting that impression. Haruka seemed to have plenty of good memories about Chihiro’ parents, more than Chihiro himself did. Yet, he hadn’t saved either of them.
“How did you decide when it was too late for my father?” Haruka sighed.
“You’re terrible at small talk.” His tail thumped heavily against the ground behind him. “I took too long to decide. Jin tried to kill you even when you were a baby; I thought I could reason with him, when I should have ended it there. No, it took someone else to convince me he needed to be put down. As you’ve learned, I don’t tend to give up on people.” He met Chihiro’s eyes as he spoke the last few words. Chihiro didn’t care to be reminded of his dependancy.
“Do you always rely on others to make decisions for you?”
“No, just the important ones,” Haruka answered, not missing a beat, then quickly stood up and began walking back to the house. Chihiro considered staying out for all of two seconds before a cold breeze blew and he followed Haruka.
Chihiro hid in the low brush on the forest floor, trying to ignore the growls of his empty stomach. Haruka always insisted that he hunt hungry, as if to maximize the difficulty of keeping his appetite under control. The trees were almost bare now, and their spare branches rattled in the cold wind. Chihiro ran hot, but he would be more than happy to stay inside once the temperatures fell lower. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d barely been able to stay warm in summer, but he’d come to be almost comfortable when the thermometer displayed low double-digits. Staying still like this made the chill a bit more difficult to bear. Haruka was close by and out of sight, lying in wait just as Chihiro was. He trusted the younger boy to judge things like which animal to go after and when to strike for himself after more than two months of hunting together. Chihiro was still impatient but it had all come to feel easier, more natural. Hungry as he was, he felt like he’d stay in control this time. The prey weren’t far off now, their scent strong on the wind. Wild boars smelled rank, though the odour wasn’t without the appetizing undertone of warm flesh. As soon as the sounder settled into foraging the amazons would make their move. The animals approached slowly, rooting at the ground with their snouts, entering the grove heedless of the predators that waited nearby. The largest of the pigs were as big as Chihiro, but he’d be aiming for something smaller to avoid wasting too much of the prey. Minutes passed slowly as the boars ate, becoming slightly less wary as there were no signs of danger. This was the most difficult part, when it was all Chihiro could do to wait, to keep from springing on the prey too soon when it was within reach. He was so hungry, he only wanted to eat… There was a hint of a rustle and Haruka had pounced, almost too fast to see, on his prey before the animal knew what was happening. Chihiro had only an instant to make his own move now. He focused on his own target and leapt headlong at it, closing in and pushing it down with his hands before impulsively biting the boar’s throat. This was when he typically lost control, the adrenaline of the kill meeting his irrepressible appetite to push him into a feeding frenzy the moment he tasted blood. But now Chihiro simply let go of his prey and sat down on the leaf-covered forest floor. The other boars had fled, leaving the amazons alone with their meal. Haruka was already eating, his hands and lips dyed red, but he took notice of Chihiro.
“Still lucid over there?” he asked. Chihiro took a deep breath, trying to slow down and stay focused.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
“Congratulations. You’re officially in control.” Haruka almost sounded proud of him. Chihiro certainly felt some pride in himself. However, with his stomach still empty and enough meat to send him into a food coma right in front of him, he was sure he’d be totally stuffed soon anyway. Chihiro put his scaly hands together in silent gratitude and dug in.
As it was their last hunt before winter, both amazons overdid it. Haruka and Chihiro sat side by side against a large tree, too drowsy to move, bellies full and swollen. The boar carcasses had been stripped, only bones and other inedible bits left. Haruka rested a claw on his stuffed abdomen, the uncomfortable tightness reminding him of his first hunts. He was fully grown now and didn’t need to eat this much, but a little more fat would do him no harm. It might well be necessary, if their stores proved insufficient over the winter. Haruka would get by on less rather than let Chihiro go hungry. The boy was through the worst of his transformation, but his growth spurt wasn’t over yet. He looked peaceful in his half-asleep post-meal state, even with blood staining his hands and mouth. He’d changed so much in the months since Haruka had found him, it was hard to believe he was the same creature. Chihiro hadn’t just recovered, he was thriving, stronger than ever. With time and training he would grow stronger still, maybe even come to rival Haruka someday. It was an oddly exciting thought. The boy was already as tall as Haruka and likely to get taller, and though he was still lean his body was broader, more muscular than even a month ago. By this point in his own development Haruka had already been chubby. As much as they had in common, they were still different.
“What are you looking at?” Chihiro’s tone was sharp despite his sleepiness. He gazed pointedly at Haruka through his messy hair that was just long enough to cover his eyes.
“You,” Haruka answered. “Your tail’s gotten almost as thick as mine.”
“Ew, don’t say that.” The younger boy sounded like any normal teenager. The tail in question twitched irritably and Haruka laughed softly.
“It’s good, it means you’re healthy. Your body has resources to spare.” He sat for a few more moments, breaking through the drowsiness, then rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms. One by one he extended his legs, bending forward to touch his toes.
“What’s with the workout routine?” Chihiro hadn’t moved, only watching Haruka out of the corner of his eye.
“Just warming up.” The weather was turning, the air getting cooler and clouds rolling in to cast a shadow over the land. Haruka stood up and offered a hand to Chihiro. “We should get moving before it rains.” The younger amazon looked at him incredulously and sniffed the air. He frowned.
“Alright.” Chihiro ignored Haruka’s hand and stood, stumbling a little before finding his footing. Haruka smiled but didn’t laugh.
“Leg asleep?”
“Shut up.”