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How Daisy found herself sitting on the steps of the Institute and glaring at passersby, she isn’t entirely sure. She knows the events that led her here, of course. It’s simply a matter of figuring out why she isn’t curled up on her bed, trying to push away the anger that shakes her bones.
There are footsteps behind her. The only reason she doesn’t jump up and snarl is that she recognises that weary tread and the strange, slow heartbeat that accompanies it.
“Daisy?” Jon’s voice is hesitant, all arrogance stripped away until all that’s left is stilted concern. “Are— are you alright?”
“Just fine,” she mutters, turning to watch as his brow furrows. He opens his mouth to ask, and she cuts him off. “It’s nothing. I just had an argument with Basira, that’s all.”
“Do you— If you want to talk about it, I can…”
Daisy finds herself snorting; Jon fidgets with such a characteristic brand of unease.
“Don’t fuss, Jon, it doesn’t suit you.” That gets a tired smile out of him, and he nods, conceding her point. “It was about you,” Daisy continues, just to see what he does.
“Me?” His brows raise to his hairline, as though he can’t conceptualise the idea that people would argue about him. All his unthinking arrogance, and yet he can’t fathom other people acknowledging that he exists. Jon is an odd one sometimes.
“She knew what you were doing, didn’t she? ‘The one on the boat’.”
Jon stares at Daisy for long moments, caught like a deer in headlights. Then he seats himself next to her with a sigh, folding all his lankiness in on itself as though anything else would somehow threaten her.
“She knew about Floyd,” Jon says quietly. “But she found out about the others when you did.”
“Were you planning on telling us?”
Jon shakes his head.
“I never thought—” He pauses, staring out at the streets as he collects his thoughts. “I always promised myself that it would be the last time. Stupid, really.”
“Yeah,” Daisy agrees, watching the way he winces.
“Do you want me to make that promise again?” Jon meets her eyes. There’s something defiant glinting in the depths of his dark gaze. A wave of anger courses through Daisy’s blood, and she struggles to breathe through the surging adrenaline.
“No,” Daisy finds herself saying, the word drawn across her tongue with the taste of blood. She presses too-sharp nails through the fabric of her jeans; better to bury them in her flesh than his.
Jon’s eyebrows raise, surprised but unworried. Or rather— unconcerned. For a man who keeps making the choice to survive, his life means so little to him.
“You— you don’t?”
Oh, Daisy is going to regret this.
“I want to see the way you hunt,” Daisy says. “So I can stop you.”
Daisy doesn’t miss the open flash of want across Jon’s face, though it vanishes behind an exhausted guilt almost as quickly as it appears.
“Daisy, I— I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Probably not,” she says, faintly aware of the rolling edge her voice has gained.
“Right, so— so let’s go back inside and— I’ll record a statement, and then I can put on the radio, if you like.” Daisy just stares at him, implacable, and his voice goes desperate. “I can’t, Daisy.”
“Can’t what?”
“My intellectual morality is perfectly intact, even if— My point is, I’m well aware of what I should and shouldn’t be doing to people.” Jon is fidgeting again, not out of anxiety but with a familiar restlessness Daisy remembers from the wait between cases. Jon isn’t a hunter in the esoteric sense of the word, but she can still see herself in the predatory slash of his mouth.
“I want to be able to stop you,” she reminds him.
"You want an excuse."
“Go to hell, yes. I want an excuse. It’s been a year of nothing, no blood, no chase, and if I go back inside, Basira is just going to be disappointed with me.”
“In the coffin,” Jon starts, voice quiet, “you said—”
His resolve is failing, she can tell. It should feel like a victory, but there’s a nausea rising in the space behind her canines. Is it the morality of her actions that makes her feel sick, or just the manipulation? With blood rushing in her ears, she can’t quite tell.
“I know what I said,” Daisy scoffs, and perhaps her own resolve is beginning to fade too. “The Archives are too quiet. If I’m cooped up in there any longer— … it’s just going to become another coffin.”
Jon turns to face the street, pressing his palms to his eyes like the temporary deprivation of sight will be enough to stop his hunger. It won’t, just like the lack of prey has never stopped Daisy’s.
“Besides, you want an excuse too,” she reminds him, as gently as she can.
“Yes,” Jon sighs. “Yes, I really rather do.”
He runs a hand through his hair, then stands up. His back is straight with purpose, and there’s a particular calm to his face that she’s only seen when he’s reading a statement. And yet…
“The Archers is on in a few hours,” Jon says. “Let’s— let’s go back downstairs for now, and then… after that, we can talk?” After the urge has faded and both our hungers have been subsumed into the white-noise quiet of the Archives.
His pitch turns high and hesitant at the end, but it’s not a question, not really. It’s a choice.
Daisy stares at him for long moments, waiting until his fidgeting turns from something predatory to something anxious. Then she exhales, annoyed, and nods.
“I wouldn’t want to miss the Archers,” she says, almost wistful.
It’s a foggy day in London, all shadows and unhappiness, and the feral remnants of Daisy Tonner are watching Jon hunt. It’s a kind of fascination that she rarely feels, her pupils fixed on his form but with no desire to tear or ravage. Watching for watching’s sake.
When she hunts, it is chase and hurt, too quick for any human to follow with ease. She likes the taste of fear, but not enough that she lingers too long on matters of pursuit. The hunger is too strong, and her teeth are blood-sharp.
The point is, Jon doesn’t hunt like that.
Every step he takes is measured, too brisk to be leisurely and too slow to be hurried. He doesn’t blink, a wide-eyed gaze roaming across everyone he passes — deeming each of them important, and moving on to the next. It’s systematic in a way she might have enjoyed once. Now, it’s just boring, but the beast knows not everyone can catch a scent so easily.
To her eyes, there is no rhyme or reason to the moment where things change. Jon inhales sharply, his pupils dilating.
“There we go,” he murmurs. A predatory self-satisfaction passes across his face.
Gone is any trace of uncertainty to his movements. He strides ahead — for a skinny librarian-sort she’d often categorise as prey, he has quite the pace on him.
(There is no way he doesn’t know she’s there. Even lost to instinct, she recognises that. Yet he allows her to pursue him. Curious.)
They end up in one of London’s parks, too manicured to be truly wild.
When Jon steps forward, his movements are steady and his breathing is laboured. As Jon sits down on a bench, she follows close enough to stay in earshot. His eyes are locked on a man a few benches over, staring so intensely that he looks honestly inhuman. He is tense with anticipation, muscles coiled in stillness.
The man is bulky, the kind of physique associated with body-building for aesthetics rather than practicalities. He leers at the people passing by, shouting occasional catcalls, and it’s almost enough to cover up the nervous back-and-forth of his eyes. This too, is the type of man she would categorise as prey.
It takes a few agonising minutes for the man to spot Jon, and his expression contorts with fear and fury when Jon doesn’t so much as blink. The man stands up, striding over to Jon with curses on his lips. Jon doesn’t react, not even when the man punches him, leaving his nose crooked and bleeding. All Jon does is stare and stare, lips parted on ragged breaths.
“Tell me what happened,” he says, utterly calm. He licks at his lips absently, barely seeming to notice the trail of crimson running down to his mouth.
Daisy watches the man reel back for another hit. The scent of terror is thick in the air.
“Tell me,” Jon says again, and the man flinches, hand dropping to his side. Jon smiles, eager and anticipatory. “Take as long as you need.”
With a fine-boned gesture that demands obedience, Jon directs the man to sit beside him. It’s an impressive parody of caring. Daisy’s fur bristles with it, but she continues to watch.
The man sits down, and words flow from his mouth like blood.
There is still enough of Daisy connected to the Beholding that she can feel the statement in the air, and she immediately knows what power lays claim to this man’s life. He’s prey to be hunted, and she itches for the chase. But there will be no chase while this man sits under Jon’s spell, so she redirects her attention to the slow drip of blood from Jon’s already-healing nose.
She loses track of the words, in all honesty. She is not a simple creature, but the only words she has heard for months are pleas for mercy, and those fell on deaf ears by their very nature.
“Thank you,” she hears Jon say, when the statement is over. He sounds so sated.
He leaves the man on the bench, and walks over to Daisy, hands buried in the pockets of his slacks. Casual. Neither asserting dominance nor yielding in submission. Equals. The concept is laughable, and she growls a warning.
Jon smiles, almost fond. Pointedly, he turns to look back at the man on the bench, whose face has gone pale with terror, and whose hands shake in the cold afternoon air.
“Practically gift-wrapped, isn’t he?” Jon murmurs.
Daisy bares her teeth. It is both a friendly smile and a show of force. She has so many sharp edges, and it would be a shame if he didn’t understand exactly how much she could hurt him.
The man on the bench wavers as he stands, and— well, Daisy hasn’t eaten in several days.
Jon watches, dark-eyed and unblinking and fascinated, as she gives chase.