Thaw - Chapter 2
He hasn’t lived in Britain his entire life. He moved here when he was twenty-six, and met Marie soon after. It was puppy love, he knows that now, but at the time he thought it was the real thing. That’s why they got married.
Barely any time passed before the fights started. Thinking that every couple quarreled, and knowing many who did, they stayed together and just made everything so much worse between themselves. Marie liked to tell him that he wasn’t affectionate enough-that they never made love; they just had sex and went through the motions. They tried couples’ counseling, and separate therapy, but nothing ever worked for them. Divorce was inevitable, and when it finally came, he surrendered to it with something he realizes now was relief.
Christian’s tried to be a good man. He’s tried very hard all his life to be a good man. Okay, not all his life, but part of the reason he moved halfway around the world was to get a new start and get his life on track.
Now he’s dying in a stranger’s house, burning from infection with no help or hint of proper medical care.
“Wake up.”
That’s Dante’s voice. He doesn’t want to wake up, though, so he just burrows himself further under the covers and mumbles something that may, vaguely, sound like five more minutes. Because being sick has always turned him into a prepubescent teenager, of course.
“You need to wake up.”
Doesn’t the crazy man who jumps through windows realize that he doesn’t want to get up? Getting up takes far too much energy and effort, and he feels like death warmed over and then killed again. The sheets are sticking to his clammy skin, and his hair feels soaked; clinging to his temples and the nape of his neck. It’s disgusting.
A hot, hot hand settles on his shoulder and shakes him. Dante burns as hot as the sun, it feels like, and it’s horrible. Christian whines and tries to twist away, but the other man has a good hold on him and refuses to let go.
“I have something that will help ease your discomfort. I need you to wake up.”
That’s enough to rouse him, but he doesn’t move except for opening his eyes. He belatedly notices that he’s in a different room. Dante must have moved him while he was unconscious. He’s not sure if he should be upset about that or not. Then he realizes that he’s naked and yeah, no, that is just not cool.
“Naked,” he complains to Dante as the man helps him to sit up. He leans back against the wall, which is blessedly cool and wonderful against his feverish skin. For maybe two seconds, that is. Then it just makes him tremble from the chills that wrack his body. He’s too weak and exhausted to move, though, so he just closes his eyes again and groans.
“Would you have rather stayed in clothes and had them become sticky and sweaty?” Dante asks, and hey, he hadn’t thought of that before. Still, that does not excuse the fact that he is naked and another man is putting his hands on him. He’s not gay-though to be fair, he doesn’t think that his host is either. Then again, he’s not sure of anything right now but the fact that he hurts and he doesn’t feel well.
“Don’t wanna be naked,” Christian complains, because he really doesn’t, even if he understands the reason for why he must be. “’S cold in here. Don’t feel well. Gonna puke.”
And vomit he does, right into a bucket that suddenly materializes beneath his nose. Something brushes against his cheek; rough knuckles and thick, long fingers that are curled around the atrociously red bucket and holding it. Another hand settles on the back of his neck. A calloused palm rubs his sweaty skin soothingly, and he can’t help but settle back into the contact even as he brings up burning bile and acid. There’s been nothing in his stomach for him to really throw up, so all he really does is gag and choke as tears run down his face like little rivers.
“Easy there, buddy,” Dante soothes him. He wants to tell the other man to shut up, because he’s really not helping-even though he is-but he’s too preoccupied. “Don’t fight it, just let it happen.”
The door opens, or at least he thinks it does-no, it does, because someone else is in the room with them now. A smaller, slender hand settles on his burning shoulder, and fingers comb through his hair. Somewhere above his head, he hears a stern feminine voice saying, “Dante, let him go. He’s not going to die if you don’t touch him for two seconds.”
“Don’t let me die,” he whines, and someone makes a soft shushing sound. It’s probably the woman.
“You’re not going to die, sweetheart. Just let me get you some water and you can sleep again.” She sounds nice, and as soon as he feels like nothing more is going to travel up from his heaving stomach, he lets himself be slowly lowered back into a laying position by her cool, soft hands. He looks up at her, but his vision is still swimming with tears, and blurry on top of that, so he just gets a vague impression of large eyes and light brown hair. He bets she’s really pretty.
“I bet you’re pretty,” he slurs, and he hears a soft, warm laugh and something that sounds like a deeper rumble. Then there’s the sound of what sounds like someone being slapped.
“Stop it, Dante. The poor man’s hallucinating. Go and get him some water.”
“Don’t hit me, Rowan.”
“I’ll hit you if I want. Get the water, Dante, before he dies of dehydration. Have you even been keeping him hydrated at all?”
“I’ve been trying,” Dante snaps, his voice laced with something that sounds like anger. Christian hears him leave, though, and not two seconds after the door closes with a quiet thunk, he’s spiraling back down into the blackness of oblivion.
There’s a cat on his bed. At least, he thinks it’s a cat. It’s a really big cat, is the only thing. Like, tiger-sized, if not bigger. Maybe even polar bear sized. It’s laying down, so it’s hard for him to tell, but that doesn’t matter, because he has to be hallucinating. There’s no way there’s an enormous cat on his bed, watching him with eerily familiar blue eyes. Dante wouldn’t let a huge cat in to eat him, which is probably what he’s going to hallucinate it doing.
Its coat looks really soft, and it’s close to what he’d imagine burnished gold would look like. They lock eyes, or at least he thinks they do, because he’s staring at the giant cat and it’s staring right back at him. He makes some kind of strangled whining noise, and it rumbles back at him, and then his eyes close and he’s lost in darkness again.
When he wakes up again, if he was even sleeping to begin with, he sees the cat again. It’s in the corner this time, its long tail twitching across the carpet. He’s never really been a big animal person, despite how much he loves nature, so he just mumbles something vague at the beast and closes his eyes again.
He dreams of enormous creatures lunging out of the shadows of the night and ripping out his throat.
“We have to tell him.”
“Not now, Dante. Not yet. It’s still too early. We’re not even sure if he’ll make it through the change.”
A snarl builds in the room, echoing off the walls, and he opens his eyes in time to see one of the forms start to shift and shrink and elongate. The other one does too, and then there are two enormous cat-like beasts facing off. They’re showing off their enormous, thick teeth, and he thinks he screams, because apparently being sick is turning him into a damsel in distress. He tries to back away, even though he knows it’s a hallucination, and as soon as he moves his leg he knows he screams, because holy fuck that hurts like all get out.
The cats turn to face him, their eyes glowing in the darkness; intense blue and pale yellow, and it’s just like the eyes of the thing that attacked him. He’s so scared that he might make another pathetic whimpering sound, and then he’s passing out again and succumbing to the glorious darkness of a dreamless sleep.
“I can’t believe you, Dante. How could you be so stupid?”
“Just fix it, Rowan. I’m not a goddamn medic, okay?”
Cool, gentle fingers are prodding at his wound, and he knew it. He knew it was infected. He remembers those fingers, though, and he thinks her name must be Rowan, but everything else escapes him.
“I know you’re not a goddamn medic, Dante. Don’t you raise your voice at me. Still, you should have known better. A wound this deep has a good chance of getting infected, especially when we’re turned. Jaseph was probably hoping he would die.”
He has no idea what they’re talking about, but he also thinks that he doesn’t want to know. Cracking one eye open, he looks at where he thinks Dante is and sees glowing, severe blue eyes. Immediately, he shuts his eye again and tries to pretend that he’s back home with Marie, and nothing ever went wrong between them.
“Just fix it, Rowan. Please. Do whatever you have to; whatever it takes.”
“I’ll fix it, Dante.”
He just wants to go home.
It’s an unusual feeling for him to wake up and not be in pain. He feels groggy, which means he was probably sedated, but he’s not in pain. At least, not really. There’s a slight twinge in his thigh when he shifts in bed, but the sheets are blessedly cool and dry against his skin for the first time in what feels like far, far too long.
No one’s in the room when he sits up, which leaves him with a sense of relief. The thin sheet slides down his abdomen and pools in his lap. Curious, and feeling slightly apprehensive, Christian pushes it down his legs and stares at the perfectly bare, hairy skin on his thigh where he knows there was a bloody, swollen, infected bite. Now there’s nothing. Not even a scar.
“What the fu-”
“Oh, you’re awake.” The door opens and a woman walks in. Yelping, he quickly drags the sheet back up to cover himself-he’s still naked, after all-and clutches the bunched-up fabric to his chest like a lifeline. She just laughs at him; a warm, soft sound that makes him think of how Marie used to laugh. He looks down.
Warm, gentle fingers touch his forehead, brushing away his chestnut-colored hair before the woman presses her wrist to his skin. He’s never had anyone check his temperature this way, but he says nothing. A horrible sense of homesickness overcomes him and he wants to cry. He’s hardly ever cried in his life. God, he’s still acting like a hormonal teenager trapped in a man’s body.
“Well, your fever’s broken. That’s good.” She gives him his personal space back and sits on the edge of the bed, still smiling at him. Wow, she’s really pretty. Her hair is a light shade of blonde, tumbling in slight waves around her face and making her green eyes even more striking. She looks so small-much shorter than him-but her presence fills the entire room and makes him somewhat wary. When he inhales to remind himself that yes, breathing is really good, he smells vanilla.
“Who are you?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out sounding so small and defenseless. He wants to demand that answers are given to him. The bite being gone has thrown him off, though-has frightened him. Horrible gaping wounds don’t just vanish as though they were never there. They heal slowly, and they always leave a scar.
“My name is June,” she says calmly, watching him with those startlingly bright eyes of hers. She seems unaffected by his naked and somewhat-uncovered state. Her own clothes are elegant, and fit her well to accentuate her small, curvy frame, but they don’t look expensive. Just beautiful, like her.
Swallowing thickly, Christian looks down at his cloth-covered lap and closes his eyes. For several long, agonizing minutes, silence falls between them. He wants to go home. He wonders if anyone is even looking for him. The thought hadn’t crossed his mind until now. At least, not really. He doubts Marie will care if he’s dead or not, the cold-hearted bitch. Still, he thinks he has at least a few friends, and his work will probably be wondering where he is. Or they’ll just fire him and move on with their lives. That’s probably what they did, actually.
“Are you okay?”
June’s softly-spoken question makes him jump. He’d forgotten she was there. She looks concerned, the smile gone from her face. Without it, she looks older, more severe.
“No,” he replies honestly, looking at the wall beside his bed. “Where’s Dante?”
“My brother had something he needed to attend to. I came to make sure you were still with us. You were fighting the infection for nearly two weeks, you know. We were afraid you weren’t going to make it. Congratulations.”
Something about her tone makes the hair on his arms raise, and his shoulders hunch up protectively. “It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment,” he mutters sourly. “It feels like a new kind of failure. What do I have to go back to? My wife divorced me, I’m probably fired, and my friends probably all think I’m dead.”
“Which will make them all the happier, knowing that you aren’t.”
That’s true, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to tell them. He wants to let them think he’s dead, so he can just escape the life he had and try and start somewhere new. Maybe he’ll go back to the States. It’s a horrible thought, and it turns his stomach into several uncomfortable, flipping knots, but he thinks that maybe he’s earned the right to be a little selfish. Just not too selfish.
“You don’t have much of an accent,” he says out of the blue, looking at June and narrowing his eyes. He’s changing the subject. Deflection has always served him well. If they don’t like it, then they can fuck right off and leave him alone forever.
She smiles and it looks almost proud. Like she was just waiting for him to notice and say something about it. “We’re relatively new to the area. You have a bit of one, but it’s not as strong as someone who’s lived here their whole live. How long have you lived in Britain?”
“Six years.”
The door opens again then, and he groans internally. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone today, despite the fact that he’s been talking to June. He just wants to be left alone forever, to wallow in his misery and sneak out the first window he can find so he can run away. There are no windows in his room, just bare, white walls, and it’s making him feel caged and uncomfortable.
It’s Dante that enters, his dark, intense blue eyes searching out Christian right away and staying firmly and unblinkingly fixed on him. It’s creepy as all get out. He shrinks back against the wall slightly, wanting to tilt his head to bare the side of his throat like a wolf might in front of an alpha. And that’s a crazy thought right there. One he has no idea as to the origin of.
“You’re awake. Do you hunger?” And wow, what a weird way to word that statement. As soon as it’s in the air between the three of them, though, his stomach rumbles. Loudly. Flushing slightly in embarrassment, he ducks his head and lets his bangs fall to cover his face.
“A bit,” he mutters, flinching away from the hand he sees reach for him from the periphery of his vision. He doesn’t want to be touched right now. Being touched will be the thing that finally breaks him, he just knows it. Dante doesn’t stop, though. He’s still reaching forward. Slowly, carefully, as if he’s a wild animal that’s going to lash out at the slightest contact. And the thing is, he kind of feels like one, which just confuses and upsets him more.
Something incredibly close to a growl rumbles up from his chest, vibrating in his abdomen and vocal chords. It startles him so much that he jerks and knocks his head against the wall, the sound dying almost as quickly as it came. It made the hand retreat, though; falling back at the other man’s side and resting there as if it had never moved in the first place. Dante’s facial muscles don’t so much as twitch. He perpetually looks like someone just told him that a beloved family member just died, just without the tears. It’s scary.
“I am hungry,” Christian mumbles, ducking his head and flushing a darker shade. What’s wrong with him? Yeah, these people didn’t take him to a hospital when he clearly needed it, but they still brought him into their home and took care of him, rather than leaving him for dead. Dante didn’t have to jump through a window and possibly injure himself in order to save his life. The man did it, though. And now he feels like an incredible cockbite for actually growling at him. Even if he has no idea where the growl came from, because he’s never fucking done that before, and it was kind of freaky and creepy.
“We’ll start you out with something light and bland,” June says calmly, as though nothing at all had happened to cause alarm. She even has a small, secret smile on her face, and that’s just strange to him. He doesn’t comment on it, though, too busy staring at his lap again and feeling somewhat like a chastised child. Even if he hadn’t actually been reprimanded. It still feels like it, for some reason, and that’s enough to warrant his silence.
When the door closes quietly behind the small but intimidating woman, the bed sinks beneath Dante’s weight and fingers find his ankle beneath the sheets. They curl around it, warm and solid and real, and something fizzles up his tendons and travels all the way to his chest where it curls, warm and comforting, around his heart. It’s an odd feeling, but he’s too tired to analyze it fully. He imagines it’s what gratitude would feel like.
“Where did the bite go?” And wow, is that really his voice? He sounds like he’s been gargling gravel for the last two weeks. Trying to clear his throat fails epically, because when he speaks again he sounds even worse than before. “There should at least be a scar.”
“There won’t be,” Dante says. His quiet, baritone voice is no less intense than usual. “It’s not something any of us can explain, really. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“Well, that’s incredibly cryptic.” Christian doesn’t bother trying to pry an answer out of the other man, though. Something tells him, quite strongly, that he’s not going to get one no matter how much he tries.
They’re still connected by the fingers wrapped around his ankle. They’re thick, strong fingers, calloused and speaking of a life of hard work. His own fingers are soft and slim by comparison. Pianist fingers, his mother always said, even though he’s never once touched a piano. Slowly, almost before he notices it happening, Dante’s rough thumb starts to stroke over the delicate bone bump of his ankle. It feels good and his eyelids drop slightly, a soft sigh curling into the air between them. Something follows after that, something he might relate to a purr, but he’s too relaxed and content to be bothered at the moment. Later, he knows, he’s going to panic over it. He’s going to panic over everything later, and make a dozen frantic phone calls to let his friends and family know that he isn’t dead. In this room, though, he feels safe and protected from the harshness of the outside world. He feels like he has nothing to worry about for once, and it’s... it’s nice.
Eventually, Dante pulls his hand away, leaving nothing but lingering warmth behind that makes him shiver slightly. Maybe it’s because he’s such a contact-heavy person, and he’s gone for too long without any real kind of contact. People touching him while he was sick and hallucinating do not count, in his mind.
“I never got your name.”
Startled, he looks up and stares at the other man. Their gazes meet and lock, and time seems to freeze between them. He doesn’t even think either of them is breathing. He isn’t, that’s for sure. His name is private, the only thing he has left of himself. Saying his name will shatter the last walls between him and this man, and then what does he have? He doesn’t even have his pride anymore. That was stripped from him when they took his clothes and left him bare to their searching eyes as they treated his wounds. Sure, he knows Dante’s name, but that’s only because he heard someone else say it.
“Uhh…” It’s a weak sound, nervous and flighty, but it’s all he can come up with. He finally breaks eye contact, unable to stare at Dante anymore, and looks down at where he has unconsciously twisted his hands up into the sheets until a long stretch of pale thigh is visible. Swallowing thickly, he readjusts the sheet and covers himself again. When he looks up, those blue eyes are lowered, staring at where his skin had just been revealed. It makes him flush, the hair on his arms rising, and he lets out a soft growl.
“My eyes are up here, pal,” he rumbles. He doesn’t want to think that his host is a pervert, but he’d rather not have the man staring at his lower half. He’s not gay, and he doesn’t think Dante is, either, but then again, he hardly knows the man. All he knows is that he sometimes likes to jump through windows, like some kind of superhero or vigilante.
“What is your name?” There’s a slight edge to Dante’s voice, like his patience is wearing thin. He looks right at Christian’s face, though, which is an improvement, but his eyes feel more like a physical caress and it makes him uncomfortable. They stare at one another again, silence stretching between them until it’s too tense and too intimate.
“I’m not gay,” he blurts out, slapping a hand over his mouth as soon as he says it and staring with eyes that feel impossibly wide. Those dark eyes darken even further, lips twitching as though Dante is about to bare his teeth. Pressing back against the wall, he shivers at the cold press along his back but doesn’t move.
“Christian,” he whispers. “My name is Christian. Please don’t kill me.”
At once, the tense line of the other man’s shoulders relaxes and his eyes lighten again, the flat anger leaving them and making them almost sparkle. Something close to a smile twitches at his lips, but it’s a fleeting thing; a split second and it’s gone, like it had never been there.
“It’s nice to meet you, Christian,” he says, and then he’s standing and walking towards the door. He stops, one hand on the doorjamb, and looks over his broad shoulders. “June will be back soon with food and clothes. I request that you stay here until then. I’d rather not have the children see you naked, if that’s okay.”
That’s it, and then he’s leaving, the door closing behind him with a quiet thump. Mouth open, Christian stares at the faded, peeling paint on the door and wonders when his life became this. Whatever this is, that is, because he’ s sure as hell not going to try and explain something that’s completely and utterly beyond his comprehension.
Dante’s a dick, though, and that he does know for sure.