# HNTBL 59: Clean Up

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

How Not To Become Lunch: 59 - Clean Up

“Is anyone else home?” Jack asked as they approached the door to Fiona’s house. He didn’t really want to answer questions as to why he was covered head to toe in stomach acid.

“Yeah, my mom’s probably back with my sister by now,” Fiona replied with mild displeasure. She didn’t want to answer any questions either, especially not once one of their keen noses recognized that it was her scent Jack was drenched in. “Don’t worry, we’ll slip in quiet and head to my room.”

She reached for the familiar handle and turned it softly. Treading with the stealth of a prowling wolf, she pushed the door open and led Jack inside, but they’d hardly even closed the door behind them before a voice called from the next room over.

“Fiona, is that you?”

She winced. What did she really expect, trying to sneak past a predator and a mother?

“Yeah, mom,” she called back.

“You’re already back? Come say hi, tell me about the party,” Mrs. Lupella requested cheerfully. She didn’t seem to notice the second scent yet, probably on account of all the wet goop covering it up.

“Um, in a minute mom, I-” she looked down at her slime-stained dress and thought fast “-I wanna change first.”

“Okay dear,” came the reply.

“Come on,” Fiona whispered to Jack, “before anyone smells you.”

He nodded in agreement, and they quickly and quietly navigated the halls and the stairs until they came to her door, which she opened and then shut behind them in a quick little flurry. There was a moment of silence as the werewolf pressed her back to the door before sighing in relief.

Then Jack started to laugh.

Fiona was confused at first, but catching the smile on his face she started to understand, and she couldn’t help starting to laugh along as well. The lingering adrenaline had been enough to make just sneaking up there feel like a high-stakes mission, when really, compared to where they’d just been and what they’d just done, the stakes were so low that it was, well, laughable. And now there they were, in her room again, laughing together just like old times, even after everything they’d just gone through. It was almost hard to believe.

They only stopped when after a moment one of Jack’s chuckles was interrupted by a mild wince, as he closed one eye and half-raised a hand to his face out of reflex. Fiona took a sharp breath of concern, but seeing Jack continue to giggle kept a hint of the smile on her muzzle.

“It’s okay, just some goop in my eye,” he said dismissively. She relaxed a bit.

“Guess we should clean up,” she remarked, her smile growing a touch awkward.

“You can shower first if you want.” He gestured to one of several big blotches of slime that had gotten into her fur during their extended embrace. “It’s your bathroom after all.”

“No-no-no-no-no, you go first,” she insisted. She knew he wasn’t in any real danger anymore, but she still very much disliked the idea that her stomach acids were continuing to work on him even now.

“Okay,” he replied, smiling back at her with that same awkward, stupidly happy grin that she could feel painted across her own muzzle.

He turned and headed for her bathroom, and before he left her view, Fiona almost found herself chuckling again. It really was good to have him here with her again. The door closed between them with a click, and Fiona listened for a moment to his footsteps inside before turning her mind away. She hadn’t been lying to her mom, she really did want to change out of that smelly dress.

So she walked over to her wardrobe and began to peruse as she heard the water kick on. She picked something out, a light outfit she could throw on for a moment that hopefully wouldn’t get much stomach slop on it when she changed. Ideally she’d put on fresh clothes after she’d washed, but with Jack taking up her shower, she really didn’t want to stew in that dress any longer than she had to.

Hearing the shower door close, she decided she was safe for a while. She began pulling herself out of her fouled clothes, using the sliding fabric to help wipe as much of the sharp-smelling slime from her fur as possible- it’s not like the dress could get much worse. When she finally got it off, she looked down at it and wrinkled her snout. She considered just tossing it in the garbage, but… it had been such a nice dress, and it was one of Mrs. Eten’s. Maybe a few good washes could save it? With that hopeful thought, she stuck it in her laundry bin, but she made a mental note to wash it tonight. She didn’t need the smell of barf filling up her room, or her stomach acid eating holes in it.

With that out of the way, she took a moment to look over her fur. Despite how soggy the discarded dress had felt in places, to her relief she found that not much had managed to soak through. She was fairly clean and dry underneath. Pleased, she reached down to pick up her clean shirt, only to be distracted by a quiet *thunk* from inside the bathroom, her ears flicking in that direction. She smiled, mildly amused, as she quickly disregarded the sound of Jack dropping his soap.

She proceeded to dress herself, slipping on her shirt and fitting her tail through her shorts, and then just as she had finished, she heard another sound.

*click*

Her heart jumped as she looked to the bathroom door, thinking she’d somehow been mistaken in her senses and had only narrowly avoided exposing herself to Jack, but she realized a moment later that the sound had come from the other door, the one at her room’s entrance.

“Fiona?” came a high-pitched voice.

Fiona let out her breath. She’d simply had her ears so focused on keeping tabs on Jack that she hadn’t bothered to listen for tiny-pawed siblings approaching from the hall. For a moment, as she turned to face her opening door, she felt a hint of unpleasantness. She knew if the little pup hadn’t caught his scent already, the second she realized Jack was in the house, Fiona would have to be on guard duty again. But then she heard a new, very distinctive sound.

*bluurble*

The door swung open to reveal the pint-sized little werewolf pup, sporting a gallon-sized belly, swaying and throwing off her balance as she stepped inside.

“Sissy-” Fiona was going to say one of a number of things, anywhere from ‘you should really knock first’ to ‘no, you can’t eat Jack’, but seeing her comically-sized gut, she ended up saying something else. “Did you catch a human?”

“Uh-huh!” Sissy declared proudly, her belly jiggling as she attempted to strike a proud pose. “I did it like you showed me at the park, and I caught her all by myself!”

“Wow, nice going, Sis!” Fiona replied genuinely. Despite the context of recent events, she had to acknowledge that that was still something to be proud of, her little sister was actually starting to shape up into a real predator. Of course, the downside was she’d also get better and better at hunting-

“Wait…” The little pup cocked her head in confusion. “If you’re over here, then who is…?”

Sissy looked to the bathroom, and Fiona saw her little nose give a single twitch, before-

“Jack!” the pup exclaimed, eyes widening in excitement, tail springing to life in an enthusiastic wag. And then suddenly. “No!!” her expression shattered, ears drooping just as quickly as they’d perked up. “I’m already full! I don’t have any room for him!” She pouted down at her big, gurgling gut, which only a moment ago had been her biggest joy.

Fiona rolled her eyes, but smirked. If Sissy’s belly was always full, maybe there wasn’t much of a downside after all. Deciding the pup’s profound disappointment was punishment enough for wanting to go after Jack again, she turned away from her little sister and stepped back to her wardrobe.

She needed to pick out what she’d be wearing the rest of the night, after her turn washing. Maybe a skirt for a change? She didn’t usually wear them since they weren’t the most practical hunting-wear, but she certainly wouldn’t be doing any hunting tonight.

This time, as she flicked through her outfits, she found her mind drifting back to just a couple hours ago, when she’d been doing much the same thing; she’d been excitedly rummaging through her collection, trying to decide what would look best for the party, for Arthur… Her mind lingered on him, on all of them, as she continued to browse absentmindedly.

She thought of those few words she’d heard just after she’d… just before she’d run out. They’d been trying to get her to do it all along; encouraging her. She should be furious, she should hate them now that she knew that, and she would have hated them at one point, but… but not anymore. For the same reason, she realized, that she didn’t feel that way about herself anymore.

She laid an outfit out on her bed as her eyes followed her hands distantly.

They all knew she’d… wanted it, on a physical, raw-emotional, instinctual level. They knew the instinct, they shared it with her, they knew how much she’d been holding it back, probably more than she’d dared to admit to herself until finally admitting it to Jack. She was not happy with them, not even close, but… she couldn’t hate them. Somehow, she understood them. If the only thing they understood about her and Jack was the relationship between predator and prey, she could see how ‘helping things along’ might seem like the right thing to do. She could see how they- at least some of them- might have actually thought they were… helping her, as twisted as the idea seemed. The insidious nature of the thought got under her fur.

“Um, Fi?”

Fiona’s ears perked up. The voice was Jack’s, slightly muffled. She realized she’d been so lost in thought for a moment that she’d missed the water turning off inside, but as she turned to the bathroom door, she found it was still closed.

“Yeah?” she called back.

“I, um- We didn’t really think through what I would wear. My clothes are still…”

“Oh, yeah. Right,” she realized. He was clean, but his clothes were- well, probably beyond saving.

“Do you have something I could put on?” he asked awkwardly.

“Uh, sure, let me see.”

She returned to her wardrobe yet again as Sissy muttered quietly to herself:

“No one would see him in my belly. Stupid human girl, taking up Jack’s spot.”

Fiona decided to ignore the comment and focus on the task, flicking through hangers once more, she sought something to replace the pants and shirt her stomach had ruined. Normally, she considered how an outfit would look on her, but she found it a bit awkward to consider the same for Jack, better just to remain objective.

She started with a shirt. Almost all of hers were cropped or had cutouts, designed to leave room for a growing pred’s lunch. And, of course, they were shaped to fit her… female physique. Deciding Jack would probably prefer a full-length shirt, she picked out the least-sculpted one she had. Eyeing it, she wasn’t entirely sure it would fit him comfortably. Then again, it was pred-wear, so it would stretch. Come to think of it, she’d had an entire human curled up inside that shirt once, so fitting just the human without her shouldn’t be a problem.

As for the pants, nearly all of them were designed with a tail-hole, something she was sure Jack wouldn’t appreciate, but she did have a pair of uni-species shorts where the hole could be buttoned shut.

She laid both items out on the bed, next to the outfit she’d picked out for herself. That would have to do. With that, she turned to Sissy, who seemed busy poking and prodding and pressing her hands into her soft gut, as if trying to convince her belly to somehow speed up digestion enough to quickly make room for the meal that got away.

“Come on,” Fiona instructed quietly, heading for the door and taking Sissy’s hand as she went.

“Okay…” replied the solemn, defeated pup as she turned to follow, her belly once again jiggling with her steps.

Once outside, Fiona took hold of the doorhandle and called:

“I put something out on the bed for you; I’ll wait in the hall.” Then she pulled the door shut with a click to give him some privacy.

Visual privacy, anyway. Her ears, naturally, tracked each of his movements, from the second click as he opened the bathroom, to the gentle thuds of his bare feet against the floor. And then a moment later his words, as he threw her a question through the door.

“Um… a skirt?” he asked, confused and still more than a little flustered. He was naked in Fiona’s room, after all, about to put on her clothes.

“No, that’s mine,” she replied with an amused smirk. “Yours is next to it.”

“Oh,” Jack replied, sounding as if he’d just noticed the second outfit, “Duh. That makes sense.”

There were a couple more footsteps, followed by the faint sounds of fabric slipping against furless skin, and then more footsteps still. He stayed quiet for a while, a bit longer than she would have expected him to take just getting dressed, but she waited patiently. Finally, she heard his gentle thudding approach the door, and it clicked open between them, but Jack opened it very slowly, noticeably hesitant to reveal himself.

The first thing Fiona noticed was the towel, still wrapped around Jack’s waist and covering him down to his knees. A poignant thought flashed through her mind, and she stole a quick glance past him toward her bed and confirmed the shorts she’d laid out for him were not there any longer. With that thought put to rest, she quickly composed herself and decided to address his clear discomfort. It seemed a bit more than just being embarrassed to wear girls’ clothes.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Do you…” he fought visibly over his awkwardness. “Do you maybe have a skirt I could put on?… over the shorts?”

For a moment, she was more confused (and vaguely entertained) by the question than she was uncomfortable.

“You wanna wear one of my skirts?”

“It’s just the shorts are kinda… tight, and…”

Fiona remained confused for a moment, until a look of realization suddenly hit her, and then she quickly became just as awkward and uncomfortable as Jack.

Jack felt equal parts embarrassed and relieved, considering she had at least gotten the message without him having to go into any more detail. They were girls’ pred shorts, stretchy and not designed with a lot of extra room, they didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“Oh, sure, um, let me grab something for you.” She rushed by him, if only to get the moment over with, leaving Sissy behind as she did.

Jack noticed the pup for the first time, taking quick note of her bulging belly. She, of course, had been staring up at him with hungry, longing eyes as soon as he’d shown himself, something which she continued to do even as her muzzle grew into a smirk and then parted in a giggle.

“Heh-heh, you look funny,” she said.

Great, Jack thought, so it is that obvious. Still, it was better than the alternatives.

“Here,” quickly came Fiona’s call, as she pulled out a skirt somewhat at random and extended it toward him. He turned his back on Sissy, with some instinctive reluctance, and walked over to take it from her.

“Thanks,” he replied, hardly meeting her gaze. Instead, he hastily looked down at the bit of fabric he’d just been handed, but after turning it over silently a couple of times, he was forced to look up at Fiona with a clueless, half-apologetic expression.

“It zips together in the back, just wrap it around yourself.”

“Oh- of course- right,” he replied. He quickly did as she said, wrapping the waistband just above the towel, but he fumbled for a moment, and then another, as his hands twisted awkwardly behind his back in an attempt to work the zipper.

“Um, here, let me…” Fiona braced herself against the awkward as she stepped around back and helped fit the zipper together and pull it up with a claw. “There.”

“Um, thanks. Again.”

“Sure thing…” she replied. And then, feeling a moment of silence about to set in, she quickly interrupted it. “Anyway, I’m gonna use the shower now,” she said, snatching the clothes she’d laid out for herself before heading for the bathroom door. “Um, don’t worry about Sissy,” she added on her way. “She looks stuffed, couldn’t swallow you if she wanted to.”

“Right, um, okay.”

And then the door closed.

Fiona let out a relieved breath, much like when she’d first gotten the two of them into her room. And then, almost repeating that moment, she nearly laughed again too. That had been so painfully awkward that it was comical even to her. How had that possibly been even more awkward than talking to him after she’d just thrown him up? More awkward than hugging him and saying “I love you” while he was covered in her stomach gunk?

She dwelled on that last thought for a moment, actually, the idea mixing with the moment just past. She had actually said “I love you”, hadn’t she? And she’d meant it too. That… that was the kind of thing couples said to each other. Couples that tended to share intimate experiences like- Oh! H-had she meant it that way? It was definitely true, she did love him, with all her heart, but, did she love him like-?

The rising flurry of emotions and the lack of any definitive yes or no answer pushed her to drive the question from her head entirely. She took another breath, recomposed herself, and finally started undressing.

It was better, she decided, to focus on what she did know, and know for certain. And that was that she wanted Jack to be around, to be her friend, to talk and laugh and survive life together. As long as she kept to that, she knew- or at least she felt she knew- that everything else would be fine.

She’d be there for him. She’d keep him safe. She wouldn’t let anyone drive them apart again.

As that last thought lingered in her fresh solitude, her mind couldn’t help but wander back to her pack, the friends she’d left behind, though she wasn’t sure if she could really call them that now. She heard Jack sit down on her bed outside and smiled lightly, but as she turned on the water, she found thoughts of her pack continued to linger…

…

She’d taken a bit longer than he had. Shampooing her fur always took a while, not to mention drying it. But it had been time well spent, she’d felt almost like she was washing away more than just the physical remnants of recent events.

When she finally opened the bathroom door and stepped back out into her room, she scanned the familiar surroundings and found Jack sitting on the edge of her bed, along with Sissy sitting next to him, his hand in her-

“Wha- Sissy!” she scolded.

The pup immediately gave an innocent frown, but the expression was a bit distorted on account of her lips wrapping around Jack’s wrist. She continued to suck greedily on the marked human’s hand even as she shrank back under her big sister’s gaze.

“Fi, wait, I…” Jack paused, realizing how weird this would sound, “I told her it was okay.”

“You what!?”

“It’s just, I know she can’t eat me like this-” he gestured to her bloated belly “-and I didn’t want her to get all riled up cause I knew you’d rush out to stop her so…”

“So you just let her suck on your hand like candy?”

“…She looked so sad when I said no,” he admitted.

Fiona sighed. “Sissy, spit out his hand.”

The little pup looked reluctant for a moment, but she’d learned by now that she didn’t really have a choice. Slowly, she parted her muzzle and let Jack’s hand slip out, stealing as many little licks as she could on the way as her belly gurgled in apparent frustration. He looked his appendage over, completely unharmed, but totally soaked in puppy slobber. He held it up awkwardly, unsure where to put it, not wanting to get drool on Fiona’s bed or the clothes that she’d lent him.

“Go get him a towel from the closet,” Fiona instructed her little sister.

“Okay,” she replied meekly, clearly saddened to leave her Jack-sicle, though it was also clear she was happy to have gotten away with what she had. She slipped off the bed and walked toward the door into the hall, stepping slowly to keep her belly steady. “Don’t worry, belly,” she muttered as she walked out. “I’ll get him back for you one day, you’ll see.”

“…I probably shouldn’t encourage her,” Jack remarked as the pup left their view.

“Yeah, you really shouldn’t,” Fiona agreed with a mildly concerned tone and a semi-nervous chuckle.

She sat down casually next to him on the edge of her mattress, and after not more than a second or two of eye contact they both started smiling.

“You know, pink’s not actually the worst color on you,” she half-teased. He chuckled and rolled his eyes.

“You just had to pick the pink shirt, didn’t you?”

“It was the best fit I could find,” she defended honestly.

“You swear comedy had nothing to do with it?” he asked jokingly.

“I swear,” she replied in much the same manner, putting up her right hand in faux solemnity.

The moment passed, but Jack continued to stare smiling at Fiona’s face for a short while longer, until she was finally forced to ask:

“What?”

“Sorry, it’s just-” he looked away for a moment before meeting her eyes again, “-I’m happy they were wrong about you, those other preds.”

Despite her lingering thoughts, the look on his face couldn’t help but broaden her smile and give a gentle wag to her tail.

“Me too,” she replied. She felt so happy just sitting there with him in that moment that the idea she’d ever try something as crazy as swallowing him seemed ridiculous. “I can’t believe they’d think I would ever…” She trailed off; she didn’t need to finish that sentence; they both knew what she meant.

In the short silence, each realized that they hadn’t been the only one with Arthur and his pack on their mind.

“…Wonder what they’d say if they could see me now,” Jack remarked, his smirk turning mildly spiteful. She gave the idea a moment of honest thought.

“…I don’t know,” she muttered. “…I thought they were my friends, Jack, but…” she looked down and away, “if all they can see in you is food, then they’re just a bunch of idiots and jerks. I just… I wish I could just shove you in their faces- you know, figuratively- make them see they were wrong, make them see that I’ll never turn my back on you again, and that I-”

She stopped herself when she realized how worked-up she was getting, and how deep those feelings she was about to voice actually ran. Jack’s eyes widened a bit as he stared, he’d felt her passion for a moment in those words, her… her love for him. And he could tell it wasn’t so much about what Arthur and his pack of preds might think, but about what he- what Jack- thought.

“I just… don’t like the idea of them sitting there thinking I’ve gone home happily to let you gurgle or something,” she added in a quieter, somewhat bitter voice. “…I want everyone to know that we’re friends, period, and nothing is ever going to change that. And that if they can’t accept that, I’m done with them.”

Fiona’s muzzle was still pointed away, but Jack stared on with a hint of awe and a warmth in his chest. He knew the part she wasn’t saying, the part she didn’t need to say, that she wanted to prove to him that she wouldn’t let anything like the past week happen again. And he couldn’t say she was alone in those feelings either. She wasn’t the only one they’d tainted, sowing his mind with seeds of doubt. He’d wanted to stick it to that smug werewolf boy the moment they’d met, even more so now after everything they’d been through.

“…You want to?” Jack finally asked.

Fiona looked back to him, mild embarrassment at her impassioned rant shaping the otherwise puzzled look on her muzzle.

“We haven’t been gone that long,” he elaborated. “Everyone’s probably still there. We could go back.”

She blinked for a moment as she took in the idea.

“We… we could, couldn’t we? Oh, but- I wouldn’t want to drag you over there again after- With everything that’s happened-” But her worry was interrupted by the look in his eye, and after stumbling for a moment, she found herself asking, “Do you want to?”

He smirked, and then she smirked, and then they both began to grin, and then they both began to laugh. They were on the same page alright. She wanted to tell them off almost as much as Jack wanted to see her telling them off.

“Come on, then,” Fiona said, taking Jack’s hand, “let’s go- Ugh!” She felt a warm liquid soaking into the freshly cleaned fur around her fingers and looked down to see the hand she’d grabbed was the one covered in her little sister’s drool.

Speaking of Sissy, she rounded the corner not a moment later.

“Here’s the towel,” she announced innocently. Fiona growled quietly under her breath.

“Thanks,” the older werewolf said less than sincerely, but the pup just smiled on in ignorance. She took the cloth and wiped her hand before passing it to Jack.

“Wanna try that again?” he asked teasingly as he wiped his own hand before offering it to her again.

“Just come on,” she replied with a chuckle, taking hold.

Together, they walked from the room and down the stairs. On the way out, Fiona called to her mom:

“Left something at the party, be back in a bit.”

“Okay dear, take care of Jack,” Mrs. Lupella called back, having evidently noticed the boy’s scent.

“I will, mom.” I will.

Originally Published: 18-May-2022