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Nesting Season — Description

Okay, helluva lot of stuff to talk about here. Lola's fur is not final, for the life of me I couldn't get it to work. That's just me needing to keep working on my skills though.
Fox to the left is Ethan: Lola's older brother, the kit on Red is Logan: the younger brother, red hawk is Bella, then skipping Red and Violet: Sable: Violet's eldest sibling and sister, Lola, and Ruby the youngest sister to Lola. For a bit of background, Ethan is in college, Sable is graduating college and is already engaged. I intended to include her fiancee in the story, a golden Jackal called Jacek (hilariously not because he's a Jackal, that's an actual Polish name and I like keeping names similar to the geographical areas of their real world counterparts, sans Reggie I guess).
Now Jacek is funny because he's sort of similar to Red humor-wise, almost dry-humor. Although he's simultaneously keen like gramps where he can sense something's unusual about Red, but he doesn't have the same experience to point it out and figures it's not his business.
Regardless, at this point in the story it's winter and I'd been wanting to draw something like this, because it's one of the parts of the story that adds a lot from my perspective. Plus, Red around kids is always something as he's got such a protective instinct. Being honest a lot of things are interesting to me because I try to be specific in a lot of ways, and I'm also writing it so I understand it. Unfortunately writing isn't as simple as removing the complex ideas and narratives from my head to the internet, and if I could I'd be afraid of the brainfog typos lol.
Anyway, point is that when I'm adding these descriptions I'm usually supplying half or less-than-half of the full context unless I explicitly state spoilers and such, and even then don't take it as a guarantee. Despite being a figurative motormouth, I still try to avoid major spoilers unless I have to for a specific explanation (or just want to) and even then I try to add warning.
Best get back to what I was saying, though. Red experiences a lot at this point because he can't go home, and not to Richmond, I mean his apartment. Violet's parents are always out of the state/country, however, so gramps decides he'd come home to stay with them and spend time with his grandkids and their friends. Because of this, he's seeing a genuine family, and he reflects a lot on himself and not only him and Amanda, but him and his parents, his uncle and cousin, etc. Not to mention, he also has a gimped wrist and fractured shin from an encounter with Pit Vipers, he's sort of on "house arrest" as Violet jokes with him, that way he doesn't make his injuries worse.
Red gets antsy from being couped up, and after some talks with Gramps, self reflection when he's alone and conditioning/exercising, the old tod eventually ransacks his son's liquor cabinet and hands Red a bottle of whiskey, telling him to pour some in his coffee and calm down. You can see the bottle beside him.
Violet also has some changes, with Red teaching her how to start fires, ride his motorcycle, and overall becoming a more fully-formed person as she spends time with her extended family and her friends in the band. Hilariously, she also winds up sharing a guest bed with Red, continuing their status quo as she admits she can't get comfortable without him near her.
To a regular person this is cute flirting, to Red this is her avoiding something. Even better is that the stubborn bastard is fucking right: her room is falling apart, the walls are mildewed and rotted out and her father just kept having it painted over, refusing to put money into actually fixing it since he was going to tear it apart and renovate it after kicking her out anyways. The guy is right for the wrong reasons. He's pissed, but given that her parents aren't even on the continent he is forced to cool off and just leave it be.
Spoilers from here.
Besides that, him figuring it out is part of his pragmaticism due to his beliefs. He refuses to look at their relationship romantically because of her situation - at best she has a complex because he keeps saving and protecting her, she feels like she owes him. Besides being avoidant of intimacy, this is his hidden intelligence from being a leader: he knows people for who they are. He may not be able to verbalize it or explain the small details perfectly, but it's almost a sixth sense.
He only begins to see her in a more intimate way once she starts being independant and understands him for who he is, and this is because he thinks people have no meaning, they have total control over themselves and their actions and nobody can take that from them. Her understanding him is more than being close friends or something like that, it means she knows him and what he's done, but is willing to accept it. There is nothing hidden. And it's an extension of how he doesn't tolerate incompetency.
If he has to hide something serious like his past, that means he doesn't trust whoever he's hiding it from. Flat out, you can not sustain a relationship like that, much less a romantic one. And it keeps going to how he views situations. Why be somewhere doing something if you don't understand it? Why work somewhere you hate? Why would you get a partner who doesn't meld with you? All of that is incompetency to some degree. It's the idea that you stay where you fit and do what you can, if something happens outside of your control then suck it up and keep doing. Incompetency isn't an excuse. This isn't saying live below your means or aim realistically, either. It's more the opposite.
Red looks at life as a matter of finding of finding what you do best and enjoy and cultivating skills around that, or doing things to support the goals you set. He looks at the future with the idea of helping protect children from gang life because children are innocents, they don't deserve bearing the shortcomings of their elders who fucked up. Of course he became jaded overtime, realizing how horrific life is, but in Enfield, accompanying Violet and her family, he begins to accept that everything is difficult, but knows that it can be better.
They're in an honest to god mansion, they are living life, warm and cozy despite the blizzard outside, a farcry from life in the Richmond ghettos, sleeping in an abandoned parking garage, covered in sweat, soot, grime, and blood. He doesn't decide on what to do just yet, he wants to wait, but he realizes aggression is his best play and when he returns to Richmond during the remainder of the year, he torches warehouse after hideout, and shows Violet who he really is, because she needs to understand everything and figure out whether she just has a small infatuation with the idea she made of him in her head, or whether she really is attracted to him.
He makes his decision that when he goes back to Enfield, he is gonna torch the red light district whether she likes him or not, and that he'll go after the Pit Vipers and finally finish everything with the satisfaction that her life wasn't ruined and she grew to a point she can separate and protect herself from her parents without him.
Of course, after the trip, she does accept him. Hilariously she already did, but Red is stubborn and wanted to make sure. He torches the district with Reggie's help, and when they get back to the apartment Red gets cleaned and collapses on his bed, and Violet feels his body for a moment. If I was to point out when they started to be openly romantic it would unofficially be at this point. She's hesitant and feels the sheer tension in his back, his body is actively strangling his frame and bones, and he's stuck silently enduring after over exerting himself during the night. He asks her to just press on different points, talking her through a massage crash course as she tries to help him.
It's not the usual romanticism you'd probably expect, but it's a turn of character for Red where he's trusting her with helping him pass through the cramps caused by his disproportionate muscle density/birth defect. He could've easily beared through it and eased it himself, but lets her do it, instead. Afterward, she starts silently practicing her guitar near the edge of the bed, almost hoping to lull him to sleep, and instead he places an arm around her and lifts her alongside her guitar until she was sat near him towards the head of the bed, shooting a joke that he struggles to sleep without her. He uses her tail as a pillow, and for the first time ever Violet sees his tail bristled outside of a fight. Promptly, he passes out.