InsaneJournal

Shopping was Jason's least favourite activity of all time. There were countless other things he would much rather be doing, not all of them legal, but after stepping up as the pack's leader there were certain things he could no longer get out of doing. Devon had always been much better at this. Actually there were countless things in that list too, things Devon had been much better at.

Thinking about their former Alpha, their late Alpha, the closest thing Jason had ever had to a brother, filled his head with all sorts of negativity and frustration and he huffed out a heavy sigh, raking his fingers through his hair. Back to the list. A few of the others had scribbled their requests on the top sheet of a pad of paper which he'd ripped off and folded up roughly to carry in his pocket for when they reached the shop. A couple of the others had come with him and as he stood considering the list, the trolley just to his left, they were busying themselves digging around for interesting things that most certainly were not essentials.

"Hey," he snapped when their giggling frayed his nerves. Not all that difficult to do. "Come on, we don't need that shit." Couldn't afford it, either. After the flights, budget though they had been, they didn't exactly have money to throw around. "You want to keep yourselves busy you can find the girly stuff." They blanched, opening their mouths to begin protesting but Jason just raised his brows. "What?" he asked, tilting his head just enough to ask them, without words, if they really felt like challenging him right now. One of them, Harry, the shorter of the two, shuffled his feet awkwardly. Tom, the taller, shook his head and averted his gaze. "That's what I thought. Go on." Jason handed them the list and waved them off. He'd committed a few things to memory. Now he just had to find the right aisles. This place wasn't that big, it couldn't be that hard to--

That was when it skidded up close to his right foot. A tiny thing, really, no bigger than a house cat, and not a particularly big one either, but it was no cat. It was-- was that a fox? "The fuck?" He heard the voice then and lifted his head, looking up at someone he took to be the owner of the strange animal staring up at him. "That's way too small to be a seeing eye dog," he said to her, pointing down at the creature close to his foot. Ironic, though, that he was questioning the legality of the animal's presence in the shop when he had probably performed more illegal acts than everyone else in this place combined.

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This was a new experience on Jason's part as well. It wasn't really something he was all that familiar with for an unusual animal to come running up to him in the supermarket, of all places, and for it to act interested in him was something else entirely. There was a part of him that wanted to growl at the fox but he managed to hold back, if only because it was a confined space and it was a new town and it really wouldn't do to attract that much attention to himself that soon into the pack's arrival. They were trying to keep a low profile, dammit.

The way the girl talked to the fox was odd as well. Jason felt his brow furrow, his eyes narrowing just enough to communicate just how strange he found this whole-- whatever the hell it was that they had going on here. "Right," he said to her, looking from the fox in the trolley to the girl who had deposited it there. "Just for the record," he went on, "you saying it's a familiar doesn't really mean shit to me." He wasn't using that language to be rude, it was just how he spoke, even in a public place. Jason had had something of a foul mouth for years, thanks in no small part to his own father and the kind of language that had been thrown around their house on a daily basis. "And I think you using words like 'supernatural outing' is probably a bit more telling than anything the fox was doing. You know?" Thankfully there weren't many people around to hear words like that and start putting two and two together. Christ. They'd only been here five fucking minutes.

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Witches and elementals. Right. That was it. The world was even more fucked up and complicated than they'd first thought. Jason regularly forgot that fact, not that he would be admitting to that any time soon and so his expression didn't change in the least, giving nothing away. Becoming a werewolf, and a dominant one at that, had taught him how to school his expressions a little better, if nothing else. You couldn't very well lead a pack if you wore everything on your sleeve and let everyone around you know how you felt every second of every goddamn day, could you?

"Yeah, well, no taking it back now, is there?" he said, unconsciously turning the list over in his hand, folding it in half and keeping the items written upon it from being seen by this girl or the animal with her. Familiars. Christ. Why couldn't things just be fucking simple for once? "Only fair I know what you are though, don't you think?" Jason took any opportunity he could get to seize the upper hand in any situation, not because it amused him or made him feel big or clever, but because it was what dominant wolves did. They didn't let anyone else get the better of them and they needed that higher ground, whether it be literally or figuratively. He did offer her a small smile though, just a shadow of one, a promise that he wouldn't be letting this one go easily if she decided to be evasive.

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Jason could recognise another dominant type when he saw one and this girl in front of him definitely fit the bill. It was almost amusing, or at least it would have been if she wasn't standing her ground again him. Everyone in the pack knew he never backed down, even against non-werewolves. It just wasn't in his nature, it hadn't been even before he'd been bitten. So he would stand his ground as well, hold this girl's gaze, and make sure she gave up first, one way or another.

"Fire elemental?" Harry or Tom would have had a field day with that, what with her being attractive and a redhead and all, they would have tripped over their own tongues to try and make all the jokes before she got fed up and walked away. Maybe that would come in handy if things went on too long. "Sounds exciting," he said, though he felt the dissatisfied shift of his wolf inside. Wolves and other wild animals avoided fire, yes, but that didn't mean he was going to turn tail and run from this girl. "I'm guessing you don't make any more of a habit of broadcasting you are than I do, right?" he asked her after he heard the squeak of a trolley wheel being turned against where it naturally wanted to go, and quickly at that, telling him all he needed to know.

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Okay, that was just plain weird. Either he was going crazy or that little fox thing had somehow just talked to him. In his head. Projected its voice somehow. Jason wasn't sure he liked it, either, and he suspected his facial expression betrayed as much. After the redhead had glanced down the aisle behind him at the shopper who'd changed their mind Jason didn't feel any kind of regret taking his gaze from her face, regardless of how he'd won the small fight that was the question of who would look away first, and his eyes were now fixed firmly on the animal in her trolley.

"So because you can play with fire you get a spirit animal or whatever?" Jason looked back up at the young woman, one brow raised now in a disbelieving kind of way. Familiars, that was what she had said. That didn't make it any less strange to him. Really, if he looked at it logically, a magical animal that helped strengthen abilities and could telepathically project its voice was no stranger than a man who could become an animal but Jason wasn't known for looking at things logically. "And they're psychic?" With that he gestured towards the animal in question for emphasis he didn't really need, going on to gesture just as vaguely towards his own head, just in case she didn't know her familiar -- or whatever she wanted to call it -- had talked to him too. She probably did but he wasn't leaving anything to chance.

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Familiars had always struck Jason as strange, ever since he'd heard of them. What made witches and elementals so different that they got magical animals to be their companions? Or was it that they didn't have the kind of bonds with others of their kind that werewolves -- and other sorts of weres, within reason, he supposed -- did that they had to make up for it somehow? Who knew. Not Jason, that was for certain, and as he stood there he realised he didn't care enough to waste time and energy trying to figure it out.

Besides, he could hear Harry and Tom making their way back and he would need to concentrate on keeping those two in check on top of everything else now.

"Yeah, that's kind of what I meant by psychic," he said, as if she should have known that from the start. "Telepathy's a kind of psychic, isn't it?" At that moment the two younger males reappeared, Tom pursuing Harry around the corner of the aisle, though they practically skidded to a halt when they saw Jason had company. This was either going to be entertaining or disastrous and Jason wasn't entirely sure which.

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