#also a bean broke my glasses this week and these are my backups BUT I ordered more and I’m so excited it’s been so long

[howdoyousleep3]

the true definition of “felt cute might delete later” but…🥺🙈

[mercy-thompson-fanfiction]

Beans

“I would imagine she didn’t actually intend to work there.”  I soothed.  Adam was livid enough to have just punched another hole in the wall.  Once upon a time I had suggested he learn to just go outside and scream, but apparently that wasn’t going to express his feelings today.  “You know how she is, she’s just trying to rub you the wrong way.”

“Jesse dyed her hair.”  He growled.  “She didn’t pull something like this.”

Porsche was our youngest daughter, though she was my only biological daughter.  She was more wayward than her older sister, a little pushier.  She didn’t handle rules well and I sometimes wondered if I would have turned out the same way in a home raised by someone like Adam.  She didn’t like being told she couldn’t do something, something I couldn’t blame her for, but she also frequently would deliberately do something to upset her father.  This time, I think it was her ploy to get back at him for something she considered an injustice—not letting her fight for a rank in the pack.

I was on her side until she plotted her revenge.

I considered my revenges most typically harmless.  Some of my plots in my youth may have killed someone with a peanut allergy, but other than that couldn’t harm a fly.  

Porsche decided she was going to find part-time employment at a relatively local coffee shop called Bare Beans.  The premise was that the baristas were topless—men and women both.  

It proved her point, if she was old enough to work there legally, she was also old enough to petition to Change and she was old enough to hold a pack rank.  Adam’s pack was fairly forward-thinking and we had several females who took their own place.

Adam’s argument was the argument of an over-protective father who didn’t want his daughter to be hurt.

“Jesse didn’t have to be of any particular legal age to dye her hair.”  I said thoughtfully.  He shot me a look and I held my hands up.  “You know I don’t defend this.  I’m just as upset as you are.  I’m trying to see her side, is all.”

“She couldn’t just get a tattoo?”  I wasn’t going to tell him she and Jesse both had tattoos he didn’t know about.  Instead I just shrugged.  “You really think this is because I won’t let her…why is this her natural inclination?  There is no rationality here.”

“She’s proving to you she’s old enough.”  I said again, spelling it out this time.  “Adam, she can legally work in a strip club if she wanted.”  His hand tightened on my wrist and I gently pulled out of his grasp.  He was hurt now, more than angry.  “I didn’t say she was going to.  I don’t think that’s very much Porsche’s style.  We can take the car away for the week if it makes you feel better.”  

“I understand you said I have to respect women and their career decisions.”  Adam was usually an impressive speaker.  This sounded a little stiff and broken, like he was trying too hard.  “She’s my daughter.”

“She’s mine, too.”  I nodded.  “You know what she isn’t, though?”  I waited for a moment.  “She isn’t making decisions like that.  She wants to be a doctor, you know that.”

I almost added in a joke that she was just saving for medical school, but didn’t.  Adam wouldn’t appreciate it, nor would he find the struggle of paying for education funny when he was able to pay her college tuition in full from where he was standing.  

“I said ‘applied.’”  Porsche had apparently heard our conversation.  She was speaking the moment she came through the door.  “I never said I was working there for real.  I did apply.  I also am not going to work there.”  

She entered the room, hands on her hips.  She didn’t sit down, which was brave of her because her father was seated and fuming.  It didn’t surprise me when he stood to meet her, but it impressed me when she didn’t back down.

“I’m old enough to actually take a place in a pack.  I can’t just be your daughter anymore.”  She had grown up with werewolves all her life.  When she was thirteen, she had mentored under Charles in Aspen Creek to learn how to best control what she was.  Wolves weren’t typically born and she had struggled.  Handling her wolf at age five was much different than it was for a twenty year-old who successfully completed the Change.  

Charles was the only one who could help her see that.

It hadn’t done any good for teaching her to even pretend to be obedient for long enough to keep herself safe in a pack, part of the original reason Adam and I had given in and agreed to let her go to Montana to begin with.  Bran had said if she had learned anything, it was how to better use what she was to her advantage.

She was female, she was dominant, and she was half-Coyote.  That last bit is what made things all the more difficult for alphas and all the better for herself.  She was almost like an Omega, sitting in the pack but not quite in the right way.

She hadn’t broken eye contact and for the first time since we had agreed to her mentoring under Charles, I was more than a little worried for her safety.

Adam wouldn’t hurt her, but wolves were sometimes unpredictable and her father was already in a bad place.  

I tried to keep myself calm, fear would only make the situation worse for both of them in the end and someone would possibly need to call for backup.  It wasn’t going to be either of them, obviously. 
“Charles changed you.”  My husband wasn’t wrong.  It hadn’t been obvious at first.  Mostly, she was still herself—like when she tells her father she is going to work at a topless coffee shop—but in issues of werewolves she wasn’t the same girl we had begun to raise.  Adam had taught her control first.  His own was great, except when he was emotional.  That’s how it was for most wolves.  Two natures meant finding balance and sometimes balance meant keeping the wolf in a bit of a mental cage.

Adam wasn’t wrong, but it was the first time anyone had voiced it.  

Porsche had her father’s temper.  Her wolf used to lash out when she was upset, especially in instances where she was arguing with her dad (as girls with overprotective fathers sometimes come to do, I had learned).  She didn’t do that anymore.  You could see it behind her eyes, her wolf was always there.

“He taught me how to take care of myself.”  More like Charles, or Ben, I added the second name for my own record.  She was happy to let her wolf lurk so long as she could control it.  Charles used it for his job, Ben wouldn’t tell you but he probably used it for protection.  Porsche had use for neither.  “Dad, please.  You can’t keep protecting me from nothing.”

Immediate and painless changes means she was more dangerous that Ben, maybe not than Charles.  If she wanted to, or if she lost it for a moment, she wouldn’t be human.  I had to hand it to her, she probably had better control than the entire pack.  

“You need to learn to listen to my concerns—��

“I’m listening.”  She cut him off, risky for more reasons than one.  As a parent, this is a fight I should be involved in.  As a coyote, I wasn’t sure how much my involvement actually mattered.  “Are you?  You’re not the Marrok, dad.  I understood when I was thirteen, sixteen even.  People are Changed as an adult by their own choice and all rules follow suit.”

Suddenly it dawned on me why this was an argument.  It wasn’t just about her safety should she try, it was because of what could happen if she won.

“Women are allowed to hold rank.”  She said finally.  “And Charles holds second under his father.”

I had also been around wolves all my life and hadn’t seen the signs this entire time.  Maybe it was disguised for me by their constant bickering in recent years.

“I can’t have someone who doesn’t listen to me hold a rank like that.”  His tone was final, the decibel was near silent.  “Charles listens.”

“Charles takes orders.”  She smiled wryly.  “I’m not going to bribe you and say I’ll listen, dad.  You still do some stupid shit.”  Her language was about to be another topic of discussion, but probably for another day.

She finally broke eye contact, glancing at me and then at the floor.  She nodded her head, though I wasn’t sure it was entirely respectful, and left.  The front door closed after her again and Adam turned to look at me.

“She’s going to Ben’s or she’s going to Bran’s.”  I told him gently.  “We’ll get a phone call or a text.”  If we didn’t get it anytime within the hour, giving her time to cool off, she was going to Bran’s.  

“Did I see that coming?”  He asked me seriously.  He was still upset, but it was dissipating now.  He seemed more stressed than anything.

“Is it because of who she is?”  My counter didn’t entirely deflect his question, which I didn’t rightfully know the answer to.  “Or is it because of what she is.”

“Both.”  He admitted.  I patted the seat next to me, inviting him to sit again.  “She said it, I’m not the Marrok.  I don’t know if I can keep my daughter as my second and I definitely don’t know if I can have her there if she’s going to argue every step of the way.”

In recent years, women had made leaps and bounds in werewolf society.  Adam’s pack, our pack, was still more forward-thinking.  Women could hold down their own, but for the most part were still barred from taking higher ranking positions, places where they’d be in line for alpha. 
Naturally, that stemmed from the glass ceiling that kept them from being an alpha.

“You know it’s because you don’t want to let go of her.”  It was a dumb thing to shove him a little playfully.  “You’re scared she’ll leave if Bran makes her an experiment.”  He raised an eyebrow at me.  “She wouldn’t want to be alpha, remember that, too many rules for her.  Porsche doesn’t play politics, she plays to win.”  And you had to play politics to lead in this society.  “We also all might be over-estimating her.”  

Outside of her father, she had clean-cut lines.  She messed with Bran, but not out of disrespect.  Our daughter knew who in the pack she could push buttons on, but I wondered if she’d actually be able to bring herself to stand above one of them.  

“I don’t think we are.”  He sighed.  

Footsteps above us meant the youngest had been awoken in the heated discussion.  I inwardly groaned at the thought of having to make him go to bed again.  Adam patted my shoulder.

“I have him.”  He made his way towards the stairs.  I nodded.

“Don’t eat him.”  I quipped and received a snort in response.  Roy’s footsteps stopped creaking and all at once ran back down the hall.  “Don’t run away from a werewolf!”  I called a little louder and laughter reached my ears.  

Adam continued upstairs, but I stopped listening to whatever he was telling his son.  Instead, I focused on the phone that had begun to buzz on the counter.  

“What happened?”  Ben asked as soon as I answered.  “She’s not talking.”

“She’s with you.”  It wasn’t a question. I was just happy to know she was safe, even if it did mean she had been speeding.  

“Yeah, she ran here.”  He didn’t live far, but it was distant enough to make sense she had run instead of driven.  Red lights would have held her up, even speeding.  There was silence.  “She’s upset.”

“I am, too.”

“They’re going to be the deaths of each other.”  I made a noise of agreement and hear him chuckle.  “You agree?”

“I didn’t say Adam would win.”  I smiled a little.  “Make sure she sleeps.  I think she’s proven her point.  She’ll need a sound mind for what he’s got to say to her tomorrow.”

“She wants to fight.”  Ben paused.  The sound the other end of the line made seemed like he had turned away from the phone.  Porsche must have moved because I hadn’t heard her say anything.  “She’s more dominant than me, Mercy.”

“For a long while, most people were.”  He wasn’t there to see my eye roll, but it happened.  

“Thank you for noticing.”  It dripped with sarcasm and I smiled.  “You think he’s going to let her.”

“I think she drove a hard bargain tonight.”  I didn’t want to say I thought she’d leave if he didn’t, but I had my sneaking suspicions.  It was why I had been relieved to know she was with Ben and not driving to Bran’s instead.  “Tell her I’ll come by in the morning and we can grab breakfast.”  I wasn’t going to try talking to her with Adam there to get her excited again.

“She heard you.”   He said.  “Goodnight.”  I heard her make some lighthearted complaint about how we’re friends before he hung up.  When I turned around, I was startled to see Adam standing at the bottom of the stairs again.

“She’s with Ben.”  I told him.  He nodded stiffly.  Ben and Porsche’s friendship was another contention point in their father-daughter relationship, but it wasn’t something he was going to argue tonight.  

“You’re going to talk to her?”

“I’m going to talk to her.”  I agreed, walking past him to the stairs.  “And you’re not coming.”

“Will you explain—“

“I’m going to hear her out.”  I told him, pausing.  “And I’m going to tell her how best not to rile you up like this so I can stop dealing with it.”