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“Everyone inside!” Willow’s command is punctuated by the crash of thunder, and the Emerald Entrails all instantly charge for the school. Hunter pulls Flapjack’s staff to turn sharply, the first drops of boiling rain hitting his face, and dives to follow his teammates.
The rain starts to drum on his back as he dives. The heat soaks into his jersey, steam curling up from his skin. Far below him, the plants hiss and shrivel as their leaves are scalded. A few of the hardier ones curl tight to protect their leaves and flowers.
According to his textbooks, some kinds of bugs and small rodents will take shelter in the larger coils of burn-resistant plants.
His teammates aren’t lucky enough to have that ability, and the rain hits them with a vengeance. They shriek as they fly for shelter, bright red burns rising on their exposed skin. They could get really hurt if they’re out here for too long.
He warps ahead, throwing himself at the door to the sports entrance before he’s even fully rematerialized. “C’mon, come on!” He grumbles, jimmying the handle until the rusted latch clicks and he can throw it open for his teammates to get inside.
They all flash by him on their staffs, fleeing into the shelter of the locker room. Hunter slams the door shut as soon as everyone is inside.
Flapjack hops off his staff as soon the door shuts, perching on Hunter’s shoulder instead. “Good flying, Flapjack,” he mutters, gently petting their crest. Flapjack chirps happily, shaking water out of their feathers.
“Is everyone alright?” Willow asks, even as she cradles her own scalded arms close to herself. Ever the team captain, looking out for everyone else first. He’ll have to make sure she takes care of those burns.
“We’ll be fine in a moment,” Viney says, already drawing a spell circle, “I’ll get everyone healed up.”
“And we should change into dry clothes,” Hunter says. It was part of basic training when he was a coven scout: always change into dry clothes if you get caught in a boiling rainstorm. “The water will leech away your heat as it cools and you could get hypothermia or go into shock.”
His teammates mumble faint agreements and start drying off with the soft towels in the locker room’s boiling rain emergency kit.
He crosses the room to the lockers and pulls everyone’s practice bags out. Flapjack adorably tries to help, hopping off Hunter's shoulder to attempt to carry Gus’ hoodie to him. The weight of it pulls Flapjack down, but ever the stubborn little bird, they start dragging it across the locker room floor.
Viney’s done healing Skara, so he tosses Skara her bag first, shooing her toward the changing stalls. He drops off Gus, Viney, and Willow’s bags near the benches—taking the hoodie from Flapjack along the way and handing it to Gus, much to Flapjack’s annoyance—and then grabs his first aid kit from his own bag.
“Willow, let me see your arms.” He demands, holding out his hand.
“I’m fine, Hunter. You should get checked out by Viney.” She protests.
Hunter waves her off. “I’m not even burned, Captain. Let me take a look at your arms while Viney’s busy.”
“Hunter.”
“I’m serious, Captain! I warped the whole time. The rain barely even hit me!” Hunter holds his own arms out and turns them over for her to inspect. His skin is smooth and free of burns, just as he knew it would be. Even if he’s not telling the whole truth, that’s not the important part.
Flapjack chirps and tugs his hair. He huffs at them.
Willow scrunches up her nose and inspects Hunter’s arms thoroughly. She makes a frustrated noise when she doesn’t seem to find whatever she’s looking for, but relents nonetheless.
“Fine.” She holds out her own arms to Hunter and he immediately launches into treating her burns.
He’s still got a whole tub of burn cream from the healing coven that he never used, and he scoops a bit of it out and spread it over the worst of Willow’s burns. Her arms don’t look too bad, really. Sure, they’re bright red and Willow winces away from his touch – he’s trying to be gentle, he swears – but there are no blisters forming yet, and certainly no cracked skin.
All in all, Hunter’s seen worse from scouts who weren’t so lucky with the weather.
Skara emerges from the changing stall and Gus is quick to take her place. Hunter pushes Willow over to Viney and starts digging through his bag for his own dry clothes: a hoodie from Luz, a pair of sweatpants from Darius, and a spare pair of gloves. He sets them neatly on the bench and sits gingerly next to them to wait his turn for the stall. His practice clothes cling to his skin, warm and damp, and the moisture in his gloves makes him wish he could pull his hands off like Eda does.
Finally, Willow is healed and changed, and while Viney heals herself and goes to change in the locker room, Willow reminds them all to let their parents know they’ll be home late due to the rain.
Hunter heaves a sigh and digs into his bag to find his scroll. Titan, he hates this thing. He likes that it lets him communicate with Darius and his friends when they’re not together, but the whole typing thing is a nightmare. Especially with gloves on.
“Man, that rain came out of nowhere, huh?” Gus laughs.
Hunter manages to unlock his scroll and tap Darius’ contact.
“Yeah! I swear the forecast said the weather was supposed to be clear today.”
“I would’ve rescheduled practice if I’d known.” Willow laments.
3:23
RULERZREACHF4N: team.stuck att prsxtice.due.to.raiin
RULERZREACHF4N: will prnably.stay.with.thenm
RULERZREACHF4N: too.make surw.they get home.safe
Hunter frowns at his messages. The typos look awful and unprofessional but it's really hard to clean them up with gloves on, let alone wet gloves. His fingers already feel clammy.
3:25
Abominarius: text me when youre on your way home
Abominarius: stay safe
Hunter hovers his thumbs over the keyboard again, trying to plan his message in advance this time. Darius has been giving him typing lessons but he hasn’t really been getting much better at it. His friends swear he’ll get the hang of it over time, but he’s not so sure. He starts to type again, his tongue poking out through his teeth.
“Oh no!” Skara groans, startling Hunter. He accidentally clicks send without meaning to.
3:31
RULERZREACHF4N: will upda
“Oh, no no no no!” Skara starts digging through her bag frantically, then patting each of her pockets a few times, before returning to turning her bag over.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter asks, scowling at his half-baked message. Is there a way to delete messages on this thing? He wasn’t done typing!
Whatever.
New message.
3:35
RULERZREACHF4N: sry hit send.too earkt
RULERZREACHF4N: *early
“I think I dropped my scroll on the field!” Skara sets her bag down on the bench, anxiety and defeat weighing on her shoulders. “My dad just bought that for me and now it’s gonna be fried in the rain. He’s gonna ki-” She pauses, glances quickly at Hunter with an apologetic grimace. “He’s gonna be so upset with me.” She amends.
“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll go get it for you.” Hunter scowls at his scroll. Really, these typos are starting to get on his nerves. He’ll demand another typing lesson when he gets back to the house.
He jabs at the power button—the only button he can really trust the consistency of—and marches toward the door.
“Wait, Hunter, what-?”
And he walks right out into the boiling rain.
-
The door slams shut behind Hunter.
The Entrails immediately crowd the windows.
“Oh my Titan!”
“What the hell is he thinking?”
“There’s gotta be some way we can grab him, right?”
Viney nearly trips in her hurry to get out of the changing stall. “What? What’s going on?”
Willow points out the window. “Hunter just walked out into the rain!”
“Hunter did what?!” Viney rushes to the window, standing on her toes to see over her teammates’ heads. “Why in the Titan’s name would he do that?”
“I said I dropped my scroll in the field and that my dad would be upset and then he just- just- he said ‘I’ll get it’ and then he just walked out!” Skara wails.
“Guys.”
“I shouldn’t have said my dad would be upset! Oh, he told us that kind of stuff gets to him!”
“Guys!”
“It’s not your fault, Skara. I’m sure that wasn’t it.” Willow tries to soothe. “He seemed distracted, and you know how he gets when he’s distracted.”
“GUYS!” Gus shouts, pulling everyone’s attention back together. “Look!”
Their breaths fog up the window, but the Emerald Entrails can see through it well enough to see Hunter outside, scowling up at the clouds, but not burning alive. Instead, he just jogs leisurely out to the Flyer Derby pitch as if he’s not being drenched in boiling water, Flapjack following close behind.
“What is he doing?” Viney breathes, momentarily obscuring the glass with condensation. It clears again to show Hunter shuffling around the field, methodically sweeping his head back and forth as he searches for Skara’s scroll.
“He’s gotta be in shock, right?” Skara offers.
“No, no, we’ve seen him in shock.” Gus shakes his head, not taking his eyes off of Hunter, who has moved on to another spot on the field. “He shuts down and freezes up.”
“What the hell else could it be, Gus? He’s literally standing in the rain!” Willow waves her hands at Hunter, emphasizing the obvious.
“No, Gus has a point,” Viney interjects. “Not feeling pain is a symptom of shock, but he wouldn’t still be moving around and acting normally.”
“Oh my Titan, we have to tell Eda. We have to tell Luz!” Willow whips out her own scroll and frantically searches through her contacts. “Is their account BADGIRLCOVEN or THEOWLLADY?”
“Either one works,” Gus answers, pressing his nose up to the glass.
“Guys, we have to tell Darius!” Skara snaps, and everyone immediately blanches.
Darius, the ex-coven head, is terrifying.
He’s also extremely protective of Hunter.
“Not it!” Viney says instantly, touching the side of her nose with a finger.
“Guys, Hunter could be dying out there – is this really the time?”
“Gus, would you like to be the one to tell Darius we let his son get himself killed?”
“I would like it if he didn’t die, Skara!”
“I mean, he doesn’t look like he’s dying?” Viney observes.
Through the window, Flapjack jumps down to peck at a spot on the field. Hunter bends down and scoops something up from the withered grass. He holds up the item – Skara’s scroll – with a gap-toothed grin and waves it around before jogging back toward the door.
“What the fuck?”
“WILLOW!”
-
Hunter tucks Skara’s scroll safely into his pocket and wipes water out of his eyes. The rain is a little more than pleasantly warm and hisses when it hits his skin, but it doesn’t burn. It’s always been more of an annoyance than a danger to him.
He’s forgotten things in the rain before – gotten distracted during training a few times and left a sweatshirt, or a spare towel, or, on one memorable occasion, his staff – and had to go retrieve them. A few times, he even offered to get things for scouts who forgot things.
Of course, they only asked him to do that after they threw him in the sea and realized he didn’t burn.
Jealousy’s a bitch.
Flapjack chirps and jumps back up to sit on his shoulder while he jogs inside. The damp grass squishes under his feet, mud coating his boots. Darius would lose his mind if Hunter tried to bring these boots into the house. He smirks. Maybe he’ll make a big show of almost-but-not-quite stepping out of the mud room with his boots on.
Later, though. Right now, he’d really like to get into dry clothes. His gloves are now thoroughly soaked and cling to his fingers more uncomfortably than before. He can feel his hands start to tremble, little pinpricks of pain dancing across his skin. It’d be best if he intercepts that before the pain gets worse.
He reaches out for the handle into the locker room-
The door flies open and a fist snatches the front of his shirt. He barely has time to shout before he’s being hauled inside. Flapjack screeches in offense, having been knocked off Hunter’s shoulder by the movement, flying inside the nestle in Hunter’s hair.
“Titan, Hunter! What the hell were you thinking?” Willow snaps. The front of his shirt is still balled up in her trembling fist and – oh, shit – she looks furious.
Hunter snaps to attention. He stands up straight and stiffens his hands at his sides, curling his fingers into the fabric of his pants to keep them still. The steam rising from his skin fogs up her glasses, but he forces himself to hold eye contact with her fiery gaze even as every inch of his body screams to run, be smaller, hide away-
“I was retrieving Skara’s scroll, Captain.” He says evenly. He ignores the way his legs are shaking.
Willow pauses a moment, eyes searching his face. He tries to keep his expression completely neutral, even as Flapjack tugs at his hair sharply.
Willow suddenly releases his shirt and takes a big step back, hands up where he can see them. When she speaks again, her voice doesn’t hold any anger, but it’s no less intense. “In the rain, Hunter?”
With Willow’s face no longer taking up his vision, Hunter suddenly notices the rest of the team. Viney’s circling him, a healing spell circle already drawn and at the ready. She grabs his wrist and shoulder – the only places that fabric covers his skin in his practice uniform – to pull his arm close and Hunter holds himself very still so he doesn’t wince when she puts pressure a bit too close to the pinpricks spreading across his hands.
Skara has a collection of towels and his first-aid kit in her arms and Gus is already running toward them with Hunter’s dry clothes.
All of them look… scared.
Oh.
Oh shit.
Most witches, Hunter somehow forgot, are not made of palistrom wood and selkidomus scales, and are therefore not immune to boiling rain.
He literally just rushed all of them inside so they wouldn’t get burned. How the ever-loving Titan did he forget that?
“He’s… not burned,” Viney says slowly.
“What?” Everyone freezes in their tracks. Hunter tenses. Shit.
“That much exposure to the rain would leave anyone with third-degree burns at least, but he’s not even scalded!” Viney steps back, eyes wide with wonder. Hunter pulls his arm in closer to himself and flashes a nervous half-smile at his teammates.
“I got lucky?” He tries weakly.
“Hunter, you’re soaked.” Willow puts her hands on her hips, unimpressed.
“There’s literally steam coming off of you, man!” Gus exclaims, gesturing as best he can with a pile of clothes in his arms.
Hunter inhales deeply, grimacing. New tactic. He digs into his pocket and pulls out Skara’s scroll. “Right, anyway, I got your scroll back, you’re welcome, I’m gonna go change-”
He tries to swap Skara’s scroll for the towels in her arms but she takes a step back, holding the towels hostage. Hunter’s left weakly holding her scroll in his outstretched hand. “Uh-uh, not yet.”
Hunter groans, the pinpricks needling his fingers growing more insistent with each second he has his wet gloves on. “Guys, come on!” He definitely doesn’t whine.
“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Skara insists. “At all?”
“Yes!” He doesn’t mean to snap, really, but his clothes are clinging to his body uncomfortably and the heat from the boiling rain is rapidly dissipating so now he’s wet and cold, and he really just wants to drop this conversation entirely. “I’ve been out in the rain, like, a hundred times! I’m fine!”
“What?!”
Curse his titan-forsaken fumbling tongue because that was apparently the wrong thing to say.
“What do you mean you’ve been out in the rain?!”
“How are you even still walking?!”
“How aren’t you burned?!”
Hunter groans, burying his face in his hands. “Look!” He backs up and throws the door open so that he’s standing in the middle of the downpour. Flapjack gives an offended chirp and flutters back inside to land on the windowsill where they shake the water out of their feathers. Hunter envies them. He’s still uncomfortably wet. But, hey! At least he’s not cold anymore! “It doesn’t burn me! Can I please get changed now?”
His teammates all just stare at him, wide-eyed. Hunter steps back inside and closes the door again. This time, when he takes the towels from Skara she silently hands them over, still staring.
All of them are staring.
Hunter bristles.
“Thank you.” He growls, snatching his clothes out of Gus’ hands and marching into the changing stall.
He locks the door behind him.
“Titan.” He slumps against the door, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and clutching at his dripping hair. He can hear them muttering outside, their voices just barely audible over the heavy thud, thud, thud of his galdorstone heart.
His heart is literally a rock and yet it still beats in his ears when he panics.
Go figure.
They’re gonna ask. He knows they’re gonna ask. They’re gonna want to know why he doesn’t burn in the rain that would kill them and it’s all because he got distracted and forgot. Titan, he’s so stupid sometimes!
He’s not ready to tell them. He’s still processing everything – has only just stopped throwing himself into research to cope and actually started to connect grimwalker with himself. If he thinks about it too hard – tries to process too much too fast – it still kicks him into an attack. If he thinks of his breathing as the stonesleeper lungs in the diagrams, expanding and contracting with stolen breaths – if he thinks of the pounding rhythm in his chest as a galdorstone, an amplifier, a rock – if he thinks of his hair and nails as the wood of an endangered tree and his skin as the scales of an endangered creature, endangered most likely because of him-
1, 2, 3, 4.
4, 3, 2, 1.
Not the point. Not right now.
Robotically Hunter stands and strips his gloves, flexing his hands even as his fingers dissolve into static. He doesn’t look at the scars lacing his hands like wood grain and scales as he wipes his hands on the towel. Looks anywhere else as he slides dry gloves on. His hands feel minutely better, but he still avoids putting too much pressure on them.
Viney might be able to do something to help, he thinks dimly.
But that would require showing her evidence of exactly what he’s hiding.
He changes into dry clothes, tugging on his hoodie to chase away the chill from the rain. He changes his socks, too – an old habit from his days as a coven scout. Always change your socks whenever you can. It solves more problems than you’d think.
He dries his hair and runs his fingers through it to push it back, but the effort is hopeless and it falls in his face again anyway.
So he just hugs the towel to his chest and takes a deep breath and opens the door.
His teammates freeze where they’re huddled together, clearly whispering about him, all eyes on him again. He nearly closes the door again to hide.
But he’s gotta face them.
Gus opens his mouth to say something, but Hunter beats him to it.
“Yes, I’m sure I’m fine. No, I won’t tell you how.” He crosses the room quickly and tucks his wet clothes into his practice bag. Flapjack flies over to nestle in his hair again, chirping comfortingly. Hunter awkwardly pets Flapjack’s crest feathers. He takes another steadying breath, not making eye contact with his friends. “Not yet, anyway. I- I will! It’s just-”
“It’s a Belos thing, isn’t it?” Willow asks gently.
Hunter sighs and turns to face his teammates. All of them look worried and something about that makes his chest squeeze tight. “Something like that, yeah. I’m just not ready.”
“That’s okay!” Viney smiles at him. “There’s no pressure to tell us. We really just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt!”
Hunter smiles. “Yeah, I’m alright, I promise.”
“Thanks for getting my scroll for me, Hunter.” Skara gestures with it. “But, like, a warning, next time!”
“Yeah! You scared us, man!” Gus chimes in.
“We were worried, but I’m glad you’re okay,” Willow says with a soft smile.
Heat rushes to Hunter’s face. “Sorry.” He hadn’t meant to worry them. Honestly, he still forgets people even do worry about him.
“It’s alright, Hunter. Don’t worry about it.” Willow claps her hands together with a grin. “Right! Now that that’s settled, do we want to move to the library to wait out the rain? I think we’re gonna be here a while.”
The team cheers and everyone grabs their things. Hunter scoops up his bag and his scroll – still open to his messages to Darius – and follows his teammates into the school proper.
3:40
Abominarius: I’m giving you more typing lessons when you get home
3:52
Abominarius: everything okay over there?
Abominarius: you never fixed your message
3:55
Abominarius: you all have shelter in the school correct?
3:58
Abominarius: Hunter I stt if you don’t answer me youre grounded
4:02
RULERZREACHF4N: my.ap9logies
RULERZREACHF4N: gott distra.ted
RULERZREACHF4N: team.now knows I dontt.burn in raiin
4:03
Abominarius: WHAT
Abominarius: are you alright?
Abominarius: do I need to come get you?
RULERZREACHF4N: no itts.finee
RULERZREACHF4N: ill.be home whennthe.storm ends
RULERZREACHF4N: I trust them:)
“Hunter! You coming?” Gus calls from up ahead. He’d lagged behind a bit in his focus on messaging Darius, but his teammates don’t even look annoyed.
“Yeah, sorry, just messaging Darius!” He says, pocketing the scroll.
They all wave at him to catch up.
And he does.