You whisk your tail in salute and trot off to do just that. If your method is to jump up and down on the bed all around Bel, while yapping at a terrifically shrill pitch, it's only because you are the very model of obedience.
First, you try to shove him off the bed. He just bounces back up. Then you try to hide under the covers. He bounces on top of you, covers and all. Finally, 80% awake, you bundle him up in the blankets, shove the blanket lump off the bed, and stand up for a nice long stretch and yawn. You're human and naked; you're only now noticing this. You wonder when that happened -- in your sleep? While you were waking up, when you wanted hands to blanket-roll your extremely loud boyfriend? "Some people bring orange juice and open the curtains," you point out.
"Well, you wouldn't be a burrito if you'd brought me orange juice instead of jumping on me," you point out as you step into a clean pair of boxers. You turn away to select a pair of jeans -- and then turn back, blinking. "Oh. Huh. Looks like I can understand you just fine when I'm half asleep. How frustrating is that."
"Ha! What use is your big smart cleverpants brain meat now, Mr. Man!" you say, wriggling out of the burrito because he is putting on jeans and it's very important to snap hold of one leg and pull. "Call of the wild! Have at you!"
"No! No call of the wild! Call of the coffee! Call of the breakfast!" You deliberately fall over on top of him and blow obnoxiously in his ear.
You laugh, squirming and swatting at his face. "See how well you do on the stairs, tough guy! I'm going to break your neck, see if I don't! Only the strongest survive!"
"What was that about the stairs?" You hurriedly squiggle the rest of the way into your jeans despite his interference, and then pick him up around the middle and dash off with him. "Try to trip me like this, ha!"
You go NoooooOOOOooOOOOooooOOOOO all down the stairs, and by the time Bel strolls into the kitchen you are a ragdoll of defeat and despair, all limbs plus nose and tail dangling from his arms. You give his father an accusative stare without raising your head. You are a corpse reanimated only by sorrow. "You have raised a monster, sir," you tell him. "Shame. Shame upon you."
"He offered to trip me on the stairs," you explain to your father's raised eyebrows. "You're not on the stairs now," he points out. "No, but he's cute when he sulks," you smirk, and let Erskin down. "Oh no, are those your lamb-sausage omelets? I need ten thousand calories' worth. Please make me fat immediately." Chuckling, he continues making the single omelet he was already working on. You don't guess you can really eat more than two at a sitting, but you wish you could. "Erskin, did you already eat?"
"No," you say promptly, scrambling up out of your limp sprawl to go put your chin on his knee. "I'm so hungry," you tell him plaintively, and shiver your tailtip.
"Me too, bro," you comisserate. "Dad, let him have the first one, he's been up longer." "He did. Have the first one." "When?" "Half an hour ago." You narrow your eyes at Erskin. "You," you scold, almost completely successful at not smiling.
You laugh at him, lick his cheeks, and go bouncing off to let yourself outside. It's time to be up and about, and if you stay in the kitchen much longer you're going to break something. You content yourself with several good, hard laps around the house at top speed, then settle down for a more leisurely sniff patrol. Oh, hello there, mail. You get it out of the box and come back inside with it. "Look!" you say. When Bel reaches for it you whip your head away just before he can get hold. "Haha, fight me."
While he was gone, you had two delicious omelets, a cup of decaf with sugar, and an embarrassing-yet-heartwarming conversation with your father in which you did not admit to being head-over-heels for Erskin but he knew anyway. He brought up the babysitter incident, which you consider extremely unfair. You'd love to put it all behind you and go romping around with Erskin, but the mail doesn't seem like a very good bone to contend over. "Don't get toothmarks in that, it's Dad's," you point out. It's a little harder to understand him now than it was earlier, unfortunately. Dad holds out his hand for the mail, and Erskin smugly gives it to him, as if he's one-upped you somehow by fetching it in. Either oblivious to this or ignoring it, Dad says lightly, "It turns out I know Erskin's father. We worked together once, way back."
"It's a small world, apparently," you comment. "Does your dad have ties to weird America? Is that why he didn't bat an ear at your new condition?"
"Not that I know of. Uh -- Dad? Did you already know about, you know... weird stuff?" Your gesture includes yourself and Erskin. "A bit, yes," he says apologetically. "You understand why I couldn't tell you." You shrug uncomfortably.
"It's sort of cute you were keeping the same damn secret from each other for the same damn reason," you observe. "Or nearly, anyway. Ask him what bits he knew about, I'm curious. Was it just the curse-breakers and prognosticators? Every military's got those."
"There were some words in that I didn't get," you admit, but you have enough of it to turn to your dad and convey the gist. "Well, some of it is still classified, but I did know the Russians have werewolf commandos." He shakes his head. "It sounds absurd, saying it out loud." "Why don't we have werewolf commandos?" you demand. "I'm an asset! I'm a resource!" Dad shakes his head. "According to the Great Military Minds of the West," he says with wry gentleness, "you're a liability. The wolf instincts are too strong." "What, like I'm going to go off and bite my squaddies? Newsflash, chimps bite too!" "No, the instincts to value a pack bond with other werewolves over abstract things like orders and procedures. And also to breed, apparently. Erskin was just joking around about having sixteen kids -- I hope -- but I heard rumors... well, anyway, the thinking is that if you send werewolves anywhere, they go native in six months and stop reporting back in nine." You huff. You could've continued to follow orders. Unless they separated you from Erskin. Oh. Wait.
"See, I told you you're a great big squashy romantic," you tell him fondly, and put your chin on his knee again. He scratches your ears, which is not actually a valid counterargument, but does make your tail thump. "The Chernobyl family's about the only Russian military pack with their own land," you contribute. "And that's probably because no one can quite figure out how to get them out. I think the other families in service are kept to human-run military bases and installations, so they don't forget who's bringing their food and marking their borders." You give an expressive shudder. "Might as well go live in a fucking kennel. You won't catch me setting a single toe in those places. I think dad and mum and auntie and maman are signed on as defense contractors with interpol. No one gets to take your pups away and make you live on concrete after that."
"Take your kids away? Jesus!" Your hand tightens in his scruff slightly as if someone's about to separate you then and there. You translate for Dad, as much as you can -- Erskin has to rephrase a couple things -- and then add, "okay, I admit it's unprofessional of me and -- yeah -- a liability that I balk hard at the thought of orders separating me from my friend. But you can't go taking people's kids away." "Of course you can, if you're the Russian government," Dad says blandly. "They did it to humans too, not so long ago."
