Excentryke's Musings

Title: Fruit Offerings
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Fandoms: Twilight Saga / Harry Potter Series
Pairings: Harry Potter/Seth Clearwater
Word Count: 1.3k
Rating: PG
Warnings: wolves, transformations, slash, age discrepancy (35/15)
Prompt: for Emily Peacock who wanted Harry/Seth and wolves

Fruit Offerings

A fire was cooking.

Seth slowly opened his eyes and looked around the hut.  He didn’t recognize it.  He slowly tried to get up, but found that there was a pain in his side.  He hissed.  Reaching for the injury, he found a paste had been put on the wound.

Someone had brought him here and given him medical aid.

The only problem is he wasn’t sure where here was.

He lay back down onto what appeared to be animal skins.

The light flickered upon the walls, creating strange shapes.

The last thing Seth remembered was the battle with the newborns.  There had been growling and blood and a vampire Seth hadn’t recognized had slashed his side with its claws.  He had gone down and howled for help, but no one had come.

That was the last thing Seth remembered.

He fell back into a fevered sleep, and when he woke up, someone was trying to help him drink.

“Wha’ happen’?” Seth asked drunkenly, high on the pain.

“Shh,” a soft voice whispered.  “You’re healing.  Sleep now.”

Seth could only listen.  He fell back into sleep.

When Seth once again woke up, it was morning and the fire had gone out.  There was still pain in his side but he found he could sit up.  He looked around the hut and found that it was barely furnished and there were shadows against the walls.

He was all alone.

He was also completely naked.

Blushing, he looked down at himself.

His wound went all the way down his side and onto his hip.  The green paste was carefully smeared across the scratch marks.  Whoever was treating him seemed to be doing so expertly.  Looking around for his pants, Seth found a pair of sweatpants and he reached for them, carefully easing them on.

He poked around and then peeked his head outside the hut.  No one was in sight and Seth could smell only wet dog.  He thought it might be himself, but he wasn’t sure.  Whoever was his benefactor, they had disappeared.

Feeling better, Seth decided he had stayed long enough.  There was no paper to leave a note, so he just ran into the woods, hoping his healer would know his gratitude and hopefully think he just hadn’t abandoned him.

When he arrived back, Jake was sullen.

“Did we lose?”

“Nah, nah,” Jake assured him.  “We won.  The Volturi came and dealt with the problem.  Where have you been?”  He looked up at Seth with large Quileute eyes.  It seemed he was still holding a torch for Bella.  It was never going to end until he found his imprint.

Seth was still waiting for his.

“Nowhere,” he lied.  He didn’t explain the scratches down his side.

The next day, when Jake was off somewhere, Seth collected berries from the forest and brought them to the little hut.  He sniffed about with his human nose and smelled no one nearby.  Going inside the hut, he saw a small smoldering fire, but no one was there.  He placed the fruits inside the door and waited.  He waited so long, he fell asleep.

When he woke up the next morning, the fire had gone out and the bowl was empty.

Shaking himself, Seth looked around but found nothing else disturbed.

The next evening, Seth gathered fruit again and brought it to the little hut.  It seemed like the hut was on the other side of Cullen property, away from Quileute land.  Interesting.  Sometime Seth thought he smelled dog, but he wasn’t quite sure.

Again, he fell asleep by the small fire.

When he woke up, the green paste was spread across his wound, his sweatpants pulled down over his hip.  The fruit offering had been eaten, the bowl left empty.  He was all alone.

He went to visit the Cullens.  Bella was there, looking as pretty and as clueless as ever.

“Who owns the hut on the far side of the woods?” he asked the coven leader, Carlisle.

Carlisle looked at Seth carefully.  “Do not bother him,” he warned.  “He is under my protection.”

Seth looked up at him questioningly.  “He’s not another vampire.”  He was certain of that much.  The hut did not smell sickeningly sweet.  He would have noticed that.

“No, not a vampire.”  Carlisle let out an uncharacteristic sigh and sat down on an outside step, inviting Seth to sit beside him.  “I tell you this because you and Jake have formed your own pack, but I would keep this to yourself.”  He paused, considering.  “He’s an outcast from your tribe.  Billy Black kicked him out when he was only fifteen.  He challenged him for the position of chief, you see.”  He chuckled.  “Harry was only impetuous.”

“Harry?” Seth repeated.  He had never heard of him.

“This was when you were young and before we got here,” Carlisle told him.  “Harry has got to be,” he shrugged, “thirty, thirty-five now.  Well before your time.”

Seth’s throat went dry.  He was barely fifteen years old.  Still, he had this feeling that whoever had rescued him was somehow important—

He went back to the hut that night with another offering of fruit.  He lay down by the fire and forced himself to stay awake.  He had had five cups of coffee at the Cullens’ (Esme had been happy to make them for him, she loved cooking) and kept one eye trained by the door.

Sometime in the darkness, a white wolf, shining in the moonlight, entered the hut, its nose to the ground.  As it walked, it transformed into a man with shaggy black hair and the greenest eyes Seth had ever seen.  A ragged scar tore across his forehead, looking fresh.  Perhaps it was from the fight with the newborns.

Then everything changed.  It was as if the world shifted and centered on this man, as if the axis of the planet turned on him and him alone.

Screwing his eyes shut, Seth waited.

Harry—for it must be Harry—came in and crept up to Seth, just looking down at him.

Then he just carefully pushed a strand of hair behind Seth’s ear before he made busy and changed the dressing on Seth’s wound.  When he pulled away to retreat to the other side of the fire, Seth reached out and grabbed his wrist.  His eyes now wide open, he stared at Harry.

“Why do you hide from me, white wolf?” he whispered, carefully sitting up and releasing Harry so he wouldn’t feel trapped.

Harry looked down at his hands and then looked lovingly into Seth’s eyes.  “You’re just a child—but you feel it, too.  You always come back.”

“I will always come back,” Seth promised, taking Harry fully in.  “Why did you save me?”

“Your howl centered me,” Harry confessed.  “It was as if the world shifted.”

Seth nodded.  It was only the truth of the imprint.  Harry, it seemed, didn’t have to see Seth to imprint on him, he only had to hear Seth’s anguished cry.  “May I stay?” he whispered into the quiet.

Harry’s face softened.  “Always,” he promised, and so their future began.

The End.