For lack of being social...
I woke up today. Hated the world. Went out, paid a bill, got a haircut, went to Target. Really hated the world.
Came home, talked to my mom, and then everything was peachy keen. ^_^ I love my mom. Then I got a Christmas card from Stardance! (Heehee, Penguin love!) *hearts*
And guntar? You're a doll! *snuggles you happily* Thank you so much! That totally made my afternoon. ^_______^ You rock. Seriously. *tackle glomps*
New Years Resolutions:
1) Giving up pop. No more soda for me. No more caffiene. No more empty (yet deliciously appealing *whimper*) calories. Or something. I need to give up my dependency on caffiene. It also wouldn't hurt if I learned how to spell it properly.
2) Writing for at least twenty minutes a day. Cause this wonky writing thing I have going on is driving me nuts. Three days of nothing than three hours than a day and then maybe half an hour a week and then four hours. I want to be more consistent. (In life, in writing, in *insert and activity here*)
3) To not give up on the resolutions.
Today I still have to 1) go to the post office 2) Finish the laundry 3) do the dishes 4) work on SMP story. At least I know which story I'm writing on now. The gremlin had me batting around three different stories on Monday.
So!
I got about three thousand words in before realizing that the rest of the story would require about 15,000 to 30,000 more words than I currently have the time or patience to write.
The beginnings are easy. Finishing it is always the tricky part. >_>;;
Thierry looked at his pitiful fire and sighed. Honestly, he’d been hunting for how many years now? And he still couldn’t manage a decent enough fire to make coffee on, the fact that he had half a cup of grainy sludge that tasted like the bottom of his boot seemed to attest to the fact.
Pulling a face, he stretched out and dumped the cup over in the snow next to him. Night had come annoyingly early as it always did this time of year, and Thierry had decided to camp out instead of pressing on. The snow would cover new tracks and new clues, but his prey wasn’t the brightest of creatures. Plus, the weather was bound to slow him down as well.
Besides, searching in the dark would get him nowhere, and most likely would result in frostbitten somethings. The fingers that he had frostbitten the tips of last year about this time, ached slightly from the cold as he stretched them out over the pitiful flames. Best to try and stay in one place and burrow in for the night. There was an evergreen behind him with low lying branches that had managed to keep out the snow. He could probably curl under and stay relatively warm enough for the night.
“Wow.” Blinking, Thierry jerked and looked up at the source of the voice. Some punk kid in a winter jacket that looked a thousand times warmer than anything Thierry had ever owned in his life smiled down at him inanely. “What is that?”
Obviously neither threat nor prey. Pity, Thierry might have welcomed a little excitement if just to get his blood pumping and the feeling back in his toes.
“It’s a fire,” he deadpanned, working rusty vocal cords as the kid nudged the snow next to a few of the embers. The fire sputtered and threatened to go out.
“When it grows up?”
“Look, is there any particular reason that you’re here, pestering me?” he growled, digging deeper into his threadbare coat. The forest was supposed to be an isolated one. His prey knew that Thierry was on to him, and he’d tracked the bastard this far, herding him as well as he could to get him isolated before he went in for the kill.
So what the hell was the kid doing here? Frowning, he just watched as the punk fidgeted slightly. Thierry was freezing. The wind was picking up, and flurries were beginning to swirl around them. There was no way that this kid was camping out or unfamiliar with the terrain.
“Well, you see that clearing over there?” The punk kid pointed, and Thierry strained to look with his good eye. The other had a patch over it. Mostly because the other did not exist, so the patch was well placed. Prevented lots of panicked screams.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, that’s where my grandmother lives. Usually, about this time of night, I come down this path here cause it leads to her house. My mom makes enough to feed a small nation or a really big army, so I’m always bringing over dinner. She always packs more than we’ll ever eat, so we always have leftovers. And I’ve never seen you in these woods before, let alone around town or in the area. I’m assuming you’re either a new arrival or just passing through.” The punk looked at him expectantly. Well, what the hell did the kid want, a gold star for his miraculous powers of deduction?
“Okay,” he grumbled, tucking his hands under his armpits.
“So, it has to be pretty cold out here,” the kid returned with a frown. Thierry could see the pity in the kid’s eyes, and it pissed him off. Who the hell was this brat to pity him? The kid had straight black hair cut in a credible fashion, his bangs barely hanging in his innocent blue eyes. His cheeks were rosy from the cold and slightly rounded from a cushy life of three square meals a day.
He looked a year or two younger than Thierry, but he was eons away from being as world weary and wary. From the grin that revealed a chipped tooth, to the warm woolen gloves on his hands, the punk was a complete babe in the woods. He’d be lucky if the prey Thierry was hunting didn’t gobble him up for breakfast.
It was amazing, really, that something hadn’t eaten him long before now.
“Maybe I like the cold.”
“Yeah, it’s obvious from your blue lips and chattering teeth,” the kid shot back with a laugh. “Look, we have more than the two of us will ever eat. Why don’t you come in for a while and warm up?”
“You terminally stupid or something?” Hey, the question begged to be asked. The sun had set an hour ago, the quarter moon in the sky casting eerie shadows on everything and making the rustling of the wind through the barren trees and the occasional hoot of a great horned owl seem even more sinister than they might have. Clouds were starting to gather in clumps, blocking out the stars. “Who in their right mind asks complete strangers into their houses late at night?”
“Zev,” the kid stuck out a hand. Thierry eyed it with a mixture of disbelief and consternation.
Grabbing it, he yanked, sending the kid stumbling forward until they were almost nose to nose. He could see the apprehension in Zev’s eyes as Zev took in the ragged scars that reached across Thierry’s face from the corner of his jaw on one side, through the eye socket hidden by the patch and ending just below his hairline at his temple. “Thierry,” he growled before smiling coldly. “Still wanna invite me in?”
“Of course,” Zev surprised him, grinning confidently as he tugged back, pulling Thierry to his feet. “You don’t scare me.”
Why the hell not? Thierry scowled even as he followed the punk.
~*~
Zev nervously carded his fingers through his hair as he shut the front door behind Thierry. His grandmother was going to have kittens. She’d understand, of course, because she always understood him when he brought home strays, but she was still going to have kittens.
“You have no idea what to do right now, do you,” Thierry told him bluntly.
“Course I do,” he bluffed, smiling to cover the nervousness. “You can’t be comfortable in those wet clothes, so let’s find you some new ones. You can change while I put out dinner.” And explain what was going on to his grandmother.
Thierry merely looked at him, starting from Zev’s toes to the top of Zev’s head, which barely reached the bottom of Thierry’s chin. “And you think you’ll have something that’ll fit me?”
“Yes,” Zev said calmly, taking off his boots and hanging his coat as he gestured Thierry to do the same. Reluctantly, as if he were before a firing squad, Thierry peeled off old worn boots that were more sandals than boots given the number of holes. The threadbare wool socks he had on underneath weren’t much better.
The coat revealed a shirt that had no holes or patches, but it was the world’s ugliest flannel as it managed to actually clash with itself. It looked warm, though, which was more than Zev could say for the socks or the raggedy jeans hanging on Thierry’s thin hips.
Yeah, inviting him for dinner was a good idea. Thierry could stand to gain a couple or twenty pounds.
“I’m not wearing anything of your grandmother’s,” Thierry told him darkly. Zev stared at him blankly for a moment before the image of him in Gran’s nightgown popped into his mind and then he had to swallow a snicker. Which he obviously did not do very well, given Thierry’s scowl.
“I’ve got six older, bigger brothers. They’ve got some stuff upstairs that’ll fit you.” Zev fidgeted. For only having the one eyebrow, Thierry could look pretty intimidating raising it. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Gran and then you can get changed. Gran!” Zev hollered ducking around Thierry and into the kitchen. He was sure that Thierry was following after him somewhat reluctantly with a hangdog look on his scarred features, which was the only reason Zev was smiling and not chewing nervously on his lower lip when Gran popped her head in from the living room.
“Zev? I didn’t hear you come in,” she turned down the Christmas music that Zev could now tell was blaring from the living room.
“Hi, Gran. I brought a friend with me. This is Thierry.”
“A friend,” she said cautiously, eyeing Thierry suspiciously. And the other shoe was dropping. His clue to beat a hasty retreat.
“Yup, and I’m going to go get him some of Rolf’s old clothes.” And Zev all but ran for the stairs. He knew what his grandmother was thinking. After all, he was good at bringing home the strays.
The feral cats no one wanted, the dogs that tried to attack everyone that came near them; he took them all home, reformed them and in the end, they always went off to live happily ever after with someone else.
Rolf’s room was the same as always. There were little bits and pieces of computer strewn all over the place, and Zev winced more than once as he stepped on the stray screw or bolt on his way to the closet.
The closet itself yielded a mixture of cartoon t-shirts, flannel and waffle knit shirts. Grabbing a dark green waffle and an old looking gray flannel, Zev chose to ignore the ragged bits of clothing that he knew Baxter had shown up in last summer. He could understand why Rolf kept it, but it was best not to dwell on those sorts of things.
Slamming the closet door shut, he rummaged in the dresser by the window, pulling out a pair of old jeans, some clean underwear and a couple pairs of the warmest socks Rolf probably owned.
Hey, if he was going to take in a stray, he saw no reason to half ass it. That had never been his style. Although, he doubted that Thierry would see it that way.
Clomping back down the stairs, he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Thierry standing awkwardly next to the sink, shirtless. But that all could wait until his brain had managed to process the fact that his grandmother was gently probing Thierry’s chest and poking at his ribs while humming under her breath.
“Brought clothes.” Zev finally managed to unglue his tongue from the rest of his mouth as he forced a cheerful smile. “Most people like having them before striping in the kitchen.” Thierry muttered something unrepeatable under his breath, even as his face turned red.
“These are infected,” Gran pronounced, and scooting closer, Zev could see that she was right.
“What on earth did that?” There were a couple of ideas floating in his head, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions had gotten him in worlds of trouble with Baxter and later with Rolf.
“Wild dog,” Thierry muttered under his breath before looking away and awkwardly tucking his hands back up under his armpits.
Zev shared a significant look with Gran. Wild dogs, eh? They might have another potential problem in the area. Wouldn’t be the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Sighing, he shoved the clothes at Thierry. “There’s a bathroom just down the hall, why don’t you take a hot shower, warm up and change.”
“There’s some antibacterial crème under the sink. Don’t be shy with it,” Gran added as she padded back over to the table. “I’m gonna want to take a good look at those again tomorrow, too, so I’ll know if you skimp.”
Thierry looked torn between biting their heads off and beating a strategic retreat. The retreat won out in the end, and grumbling under his breath, he made his way out of the kitchen and towards the bathroom.
That, of course, left Zev all by himself with Gran. His favorite place to be in these situations. “Gran,” he gave her his biggest smile.
“Boy, you just do not learn, do you?” She sighed wearily, giving him a frustrated look.
“He needed a place to stay for the night, Gran.” Zev pulled on the cuff of his hooded sweatshirt as he shuffled over to the table.
“He’s a human being, Zev,” Gran told him gently. “You can’t bring them home the same way that you bring home a wounded bird or an injured dog.”
“I know that.” Boy, did he know that. He’d always known that on some level. Baxter had just hammered it home in spades.
“Do you? Because I thought you would have learned your lesson with Baxter.” And while no one else in the family would bring it up, Gran would. Because that was just the way Gran was. To her, he was just another bratty grandson that needed to be put to rights.
Most of the time he appreciated the sentiment, but there were certainly times, much like this one, where he wished that she didn’t know him as well as she did. Not looking at her, he chose instead to fiddle with the loose string on the end of his cuff.
“Baxter needed help. And we helped him. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he finally said quietly, sneaking a glance up at her.
“He fell in love with your brother and broke your heart, Zev. I’m old, but I’m not blind.” She snorted. Count on her not to mince words. He winced.
“You’re exaggerating. He didn’t break my heart.” Only shattered it a little. “Please, let’s not be melodramatic about it. Maybe I had a tiny little crush on him, but that was it. He loves Rolf. They’re good together. They’re happy together.” You couldn’t make someone love you. Baxter had taught him that, too. And Baxter did love Rolf, wholeheartedly. He’d be an ass to stand in the way of their happiness.
“Only because you took the brunt of the shock when he learned what we were,” Gran snapped, jerking him out of his thoughts. “How are you going to explain that to our new guest? I doubt he’ll be as docile about it as Baxter was.” Docile? Baxter had chased after him with a shotgun.
People just didn’t take well to learning that there such a thing as werewolves. And they certainly did not like finding it out by waking up to a full-fledged wolf sleeping on their bed. And given Baxter’s previous life, it was understandable that he’d been scared witless. In retrospect, Zev had made a couple of bad moves in dealing with Baxter. Rolf had been the one to see it all and fix it.
“I’m not in love with Thierry,” he scoffed, abruptly sliding back his chair and moving to the fridge to grab some milk. “I barely know him. There’s no reason he has to know.” See, he was perfectly capable of being reasonable in these situations. He didn’t lose his head every time a new person entered their lives.
“Zev,” she cautioned.
“Gran, try to understand,” he finally burst out, slamming the milk down on the table, startling both her and himself with the force of it. “I’m not allowed to leave these woods. I only get to go into town when there are at least three of my brothers to escort me. I’m a grown man, but I have to have babysitters with me at all times.” He took a deep, calming breath. “My strays keep me happy. As long as I don’t get too attached, it’s fine,” he sighed sullenly, plopping back down into his chair.
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? You get way too attached each time. And every time you have to set them free,” she told him sympathetically, reaching out across the table to grab his hand and stop him from destroying what was left of his cuff. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself, Zev.”
He just looked at her for a moment. She was trying her best, he knew. Everyone in his family tried their best, but they just couldn’t understand. And that wasn’t any fault of theirs. He didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know how to change it. He wasn’t like them. His birth had been an aberration, a throw back to earlier generations.
When he was three, he’d accidentally infected Rolf. By five, he’d also added his mother, Gran and Ardolf to the list. And after that, the family had banded together to find a way to take care of it. They’d kept tabs on him. On the full moon, they’d penned him up, and during other more stressful times, they trailed after him, both keeping him safe from everyone else and keeping everyone else safe from him.
They were his safety net. One that he was mature enough to admit that he desperately needed.
He just also knew that they wouldn’t understand how he could feel so smothered and desperately lonely at the same time, too.
“Okay, toning down the drama,” he resolved, snorting softly to himself. “It’s nothing that big, Gran. He’ll stay a night or two and then he’ll be off. I mean, you saw him. He’s not the kind to stay, is he? It just seemed cruel and heartless to ignore him when it’s this close to Christmas. Let him stay at least until then. I doubt he’ll want to stay much longer than that anyway.”
Few strays did, after all.
~*~
Thierry plucked uncomfortably at the new clothes Zev had given him. He supposed they looked all right, but he felt strange accepting them. They did, however, feel wonderful on a clean body. His hair was actually blond again instead of a dusty, grimy gray.
He’d rubbed about the entire tube of antibacterial crème on the cuts he’d gotten from the last werewolf he’d hunted down, but Gran had still insisted on inspecting them. She’d dug up another tube of the shit sometime in between the shower and the dinner Zev had all but tried to shove down his throat.
There was something wrong with these people.
Or, possibly, it had just been so long since he’d been around people that he no longer knew how to act around them or what to expect from them.
~*~
I'm obsessed with writing about werewolves. I very rarely finish the story, but I heart werewolves. And characters that are missing an eye.
I need to find new things to obsess over. >_>;;
Came home, talked to my mom, and then everything was peachy keen. ^_^ I love my mom. Then I got a Christmas card from Stardance! (Heehee, Penguin love!) *hearts*
And guntar? You're a doll! *snuggles you happily* Thank you so much! That totally made my afternoon. ^_______^ You rock. Seriously. *tackle glomps*
New Years Resolutions:
1) Giving up pop. No more soda for me. No more caffiene. No more empty (yet deliciously appealing *whimper*) calories. Or something. I need to give up my dependency on caffiene. It also wouldn't hurt if I learned how to spell it properly.
2) Writing for at least twenty minutes a day. Cause this wonky writing thing I have going on is driving me nuts. Three days of nothing than three hours than a day and then maybe half an hour a week and then four hours. I want to be more consistent. (In life, in writing, in *insert and activity here*)
3) To not give up on the resolutions.
Today I still have to 1) go to the post office 2) Finish the laundry 3) do the dishes 4) work on SMP story. At least I know which story I'm writing on now. The gremlin had me batting around three different stories on Monday.
So!
I got about three thousand words in before realizing that the rest of the story would require about 15,000 to 30,000 more words than I currently have the time or patience to write.
The beginnings are easy. Finishing it is always the tricky part. >_>;;
Thierry looked at his pitiful fire and sighed. Honestly, he’d been hunting for how many years now? And he still couldn’t manage a decent enough fire to make coffee on, the fact that he had half a cup of grainy sludge that tasted like the bottom of his boot seemed to attest to the fact.
Pulling a face, he stretched out and dumped the cup over in the snow next to him. Night had come annoyingly early as it always did this time of year, and Thierry had decided to camp out instead of pressing on. The snow would cover new tracks and new clues, but his prey wasn’t the brightest of creatures. Plus, the weather was bound to slow him down as well.
Besides, searching in the dark would get him nowhere, and most likely would result in frostbitten somethings. The fingers that he had frostbitten the tips of last year about this time, ached slightly from the cold as he stretched them out over the pitiful flames. Best to try and stay in one place and burrow in for the night. There was an evergreen behind him with low lying branches that had managed to keep out the snow. He could probably curl under and stay relatively warm enough for the night.
“Wow.” Blinking, Thierry jerked and looked up at the source of the voice. Some punk kid in a winter jacket that looked a thousand times warmer than anything Thierry had ever owned in his life smiled down at him inanely. “What is that?”
Obviously neither threat nor prey. Pity, Thierry might have welcomed a little excitement if just to get his blood pumping and the feeling back in his toes.
“It’s a fire,” he deadpanned, working rusty vocal cords as the kid nudged the snow next to a few of the embers. The fire sputtered and threatened to go out.
“When it grows up?”
“Look, is there any particular reason that you’re here, pestering me?” he growled, digging deeper into his threadbare coat. The forest was supposed to be an isolated one. His prey knew that Thierry was on to him, and he’d tracked the bastard this far, herding him as well as he could to get him isolated before he went in for the kill.
So what the hell was the kid doing here? Frowning, he just watched as the punk fidgeted slightly. Thierry was freezing. The wind was picking up, and flurries were beginning to swirl around them. There was no way that this kid was camping out or unfamiliar with the terrain.
“Well, you see that clearing over there?” The punk kid pointed, and Thierry strained to look with his good eye. The other had a patch over it. Mostly because the other did not exist, so the patch was well placed. Prevented lots of panicked screams.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, that’s where my grandmother lives. Usually, about this time of night, I come down this path here cause it leads to her house. My mom makes enough to feed a small nation or a really big army, so I’m always bringing over dinner. She always packs more than we’ll ever eat, so we always have leftovers. And I’ve never seen you in these woods before, let alone around town or in the area. I’m assuming you’re either a new arrival or just passing through.” The punk looked at him expectantly. Well, what the hell did the kid want, a gold star for his miraculous powers of deduction?
“Okay,” he grumbled, tucking his hands under his armpits.
“So, it has to be pretty cold out here,” the kid returned with a frown. Thierry could see the pity in the kid’s eyes, and it pissed him off. Who the hell was this brat to pity him? The kid had straight black hair cut in a credible fashion, his bangs barely hanging in his innocent blue eyes. His cheeks were rosy from the cold and slightly rounded from a cushy life of three square meals a day.
He looked a year or two younger than Thierry, but he was eons away from being as world weary and wary. From the grin that revealed a chipped tooth, to the warm woolen gloves on his hands, the punk was a complete babe in the woods. He’d be lucky if the prey Thierry was hunting didn’t gobble him up for breakfast.
It was amazing, really, that something hadn’t eaten him long before now.
“Maybe I like the cold.”
“Yeah, it’s obvious from your blue lips and chattering teeth,” the kid shot back with a laugh. “Look, we have more than the two of us will ever eat. Why don’t you come in for a while and warm up?”
“You terminally stupid or something?” Hey, the question begged to be asked. The sun had set an hour ago, the quarter moon in the sky casting eerie shadows on everything and making the rustling of the wind through the barren trees and the occasional hoot of a great horned owl seem even more sinister than they might have. Clouds were starting to gather in clumps, blocking out the stars. “Who in their right mind asks complete strangers into their houses late at night?”
“Zev,” the kid stuck out a hand. Thierry eyed it with a mixture of disbelief and consternation.
Grabbing it, he yanked, sending the kid stumbling forward until they were almost nose to nose. He could see the apprehension in Zev’s eyes as Zev took in the ragged scars that reached across Thierry’s face from the corner of his jaw on one side, through the eye socket hidden by the patch and ending just below his hairline at his temple. “Thierry,” he growled before smiling coldly. “Still wanna invite me in?”
“Of course,” Zev surprised him, grinning confidently as he tugged back, pulling Thierry to his feet. “You don’t scare me.”
Why the hell not? Thierry scowled even as he followed the punk.
~*~
Zev nervously carded his fingers through his hair as he shut the front door behind Thierry. His grandmother was going to have kittens. She’d understand, of course, because she always understood him when he brought home strays, but she was still going to have kittens.
“You have no idea what to do right now, do you,” Thierry told him bluntly.
“Course I do,” he bluffed, smiling to cover the nervousness. “You can’t be comfortable in those wet clothes, so let’s find you some new ones. You can change while I put out dinner.” And explain what was going on to his grandmother.
Thierry merely looked at him, starting from Zev’s toes to the top of Zev’s head, which barely reached the bottom of Thierry’s chin. “And you think you’ll have something that’ll fit me?”
“Yes,” Zev said calmly, taking off his boots and hanging his coat as he gestured Thierry to do the same. Reluctantly, as if he were before a firing squad, Thierry peeled off old worn boots that were more sandals than boots given the number of holes. The threadbare wool socks he had on underneath weren’t much better.
The coat revealed a shirt that had no holes or patches, but it was the world’s ugliest flannel as it managed to actually clash with itself. It looked warm, though, which was more than Zev could say for the socks or the raggedy jeans hanging on Thierry’s thin hips.
Yeah, inviting him for dinner was a good idea. Thierry could stand to gain a couple or twenty pounds.
“I’m not wearing anything of your grandmother’s,” Thierry told him darkly. Zev stared at him blankly for a moment before the image of him in Gran’s nightgown popped into his mind and then he had to swallow a snicker. Which he obviously did not do very well, given Thierry’s scowl.
“I’ve got six older, bigger brothers. They’ve got some stuff upstairs that’ll fit you.” Zev fidgeted. For only having the one eyebrow, Thierry could look pretty intimidating raising it. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Gran and then you can get changed. Gran!” Zev hollered ducking around Thierry and into the kitchen. He was sure that Thierry was following after him somewhat reluctantly with a hangdog look on his scarred features, which was the only reason Zev was smiling and not chewing nervously on his lower lip when Gran popped her head in from the living room.
“Zev? I didn’t hear you come in,” she turned down the Christmas music that Zev could now tell was blaring from the living room.
“Hi, Gran. I brought a friend with me. This is Thierry.”
“A friend,” she said cautiously, eyeing Thierry suspiciously. And the other shoe was dropping. His clue to beat a hasty retreat.
“Yup, and I’m going to go get him some of Rolf’s old clothes.” And Zev all but ran for the stairs. He knew what his grandmother was thinking. After all, he was good at bringing home the strays.
The feral cats no one wanted, the dogs that tried to attack everyone that came near them; he took them all home, reformed them and in the end, they always went off to live happily ever after with someone else.
Rolf’s room was the same as always. There were little bits and pieces of computer strewn all over the place, and Zev winced more than once as he stepped on the stray screw or bolt on his way to the closet.
The closet itself yielded a mixture of cartoon t-shirts, flannel and waffle knit shirts. Grabbing a dark green waffle and an old looking gray flannel, Zev chose to ignore the ragged bits of clothing that he knew Baxter had shown up in last summer. He could understand why Rolf kept it, but it was best not to dwell on those sorts of things.
Slamming the closet door shut, he rummaged in the dresser by the window, pulling out a pair of old jeans, some clean underwear and a couple pairs of the warmest socks Rolf probably owned.
Hey, if he was going to take in a stray, he saw no reason to half ass it. That had never been his style. Although, he doubted that Thierry would see it that way.
Clomping back down the stairs, he came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Thierry standing awkwardly next to the sink, shirtless. But that all could wait until his brain had managed to process the fact that his grandmother was gently probing Thierry’s chest and poking at his ribs while humming under her breath.
“Brought clothes.” Zev finally managed to unglue his tongue from the rest of his mouth as he forced a cheerful smile. “Most people like having them before striping in the kitchen.” Thierry muttered something unrepeatable under his breath, even as his face turned red.
“These are infected,” Gran pronounced, and scooting closer, Zev could see that she was right.
“What on earth did that?” There were a couple of ideas floating in his head, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions had gotten him in worlds of trouble with Baxter and later with Rolf.
“Wild dog,” Thierry muttered under his breath before looking away and awkwardly tucking his hands back up under his armpits.
Zev shared a significant look with Gran. Wild dogs, eh? They might have another potential problem in the area. Wouldn’t be the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Sighing, he shoved the clothes at Thierry. “There’s a bathroom just down the hall, why don’t you take a hot shower, warm up and change.”
“There’s some antibacterial crème under the sink. Don’t be shy with it,” Gran added as she padded back over to the table. “I’m gonna want to take a good look at those again tomorrow, too, so I’ll know if you skimp.”
Thierry looked torn between biting their heads off and beating a strategic retreat. The retreat won out in the end, and grumbling under his breath, he made his way out of the kitchen and towards the bathroom.
That, of course, left Zev all by himself with Gran. His favorite place to be in these situations. “Gran,” he gave her his biggest smile.
“Boy, you just do not learn, do you?” She sighed wearily, giving him a frustrated look.
“He needed a place to stay for the night, Gran.” Zev pulled on the cuff of his hooded sweatshirt as he shuffled over to the table.
“He’s a human being, Zev,” Gran told him gently. “You can’t bring them home the same way that you bring home a wounded bird or an injured dog.”
“I know that.” Boy, did he know that. He’d always known that on some level. Baxter had just hammered it home in spades.
“Do you? Because I thought you would have learned your lesson with Baxter.” And while no one else in the family would bring it up, Gran would. Because that was just the way Gran was. To her, he was just another bratty grandson that needed to be put to rights.
Most of the time he appreciated the sentiment, but there were certainly times, much like this one, where he wished that she didn’t know him as well as she did. Not looking at her, he chose instead to fiddle with the loose string on the end of his cuff.
“Baxter needed help. And we helped him. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he finally said quietly, sneaking a glance up at her.
“He fell in love with your brother and broke your heart, Zev. I’m old, but I’m not blind.” She snorted. Count on her not to mince words. He winced.
“You’re exaggerating. He didn’t break my heart.” Only shattered it a little. “Please, let’s not be melodramatic about it. Maybe I had a tiny little crush on him, but that was it. He loves Rolf. They’re good together. They’re happy together.” You couldn’t make someone love you. Baxter had taught him that, too. And Baxter did love Rolf, wholeheartedly. He’d be an ass to stand in the way of their happiness.
“Only because you took the brunt of the shock when he learned what we were,” Gran snapped, jerking him out of his thoughts. “How are you going to explain that to our new guest? I doubt he’ll be as docile about it as Baxter was.” Docile? Baxter had chased after him with a shotgun.
People just didn’t take well to learning that there such a thing as werewolves. And they certainly did not like finding it out by waking up to a full-fledged wolf sleeping on their bed. And given Baxter’s previous life, it was understandable that he’d been scared witless. In retrospect, Zev had made a couple of bad moves in dealing with Baxter. Rolf had been the one to see it all and fix it.
“I’m not in love with Thierry,” he scoffed, abruptly sliding back his chair and moving to the fridge to grab some milk. “I barely know him. There’s no reason he has to know.” See, he was perfectly capable of being reasonable in these situations. He didn’t lose his head every time a new person entered their lives.
“Zev,” she cautioned.
“Gran, try to understand,” he finally burst out, slamming the milk down on the table, startling both her and himself with the force of it. “I’m not allowed to leave these woods. I only get to go into town when there are at least three of my brothers to escort me. I’m a grown man, but I have to have babysitters with me at all times.” He took a deep, calming breath. “My strays keep me happy. As long as I don’t get too attached, it’s fine,” he sighed sullenly, plopping back down into his chair.
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? You get way too attached each time. And every time you have to set them free,” she told him sympathetically, reaching out across the table to grab his hand and stop him from destroying what was left of his cuff. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself, Zev.”
He just looked at her for a moment. She was trying her best, he knew. Everyone in his family tried their best, but they just couldn’t understand. And that wasn’t any fault of theirs. He didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know how to change it. He wasn’t like them. His birth had been an aberration, a throw back to earlier generations.
When he was three, he’d accidentally infected Rolf. By five, he’d also added his mother, Gran and Ardolf to the list. And after that, the family had banded together to find a way to take care of it. They’d kept tabs on him. On the full moon, they’d penned him up, and during other more stressful times, they trailed after him, both keeping him safe from everyone else and keeping everyone else safe from him.
They were his safety net. One that he was mature enough to admit that he desperately needed.
He just also knew that they wouldn’t understand how he could feel so smothered and desperately lonely at the same time, too.
“Okay, toning down the drama,” he resolved, snorting softly to himself. “It’s nothing that big, Gran. He’ll stay a night or two and then he’ll be off. I mean, you saw him. He’s not the kind to stay, is he? It just seemed cruel and heartless to ignore him when it’s this close to Christmas. Let him stay at least until then. I doubt he’ll want to stay much longer than that anyway.”
Few strays did, after all.
~*~
Thierry plucked uncomfortably at the new clothes Zev had given him. He supposed they looked all right, but he felt strange accepting them. They did, however, feel wonderful on a clean body. His hair was actually blond again instead of a dusty, grimy gray.
He’d rubbed about the entire tube of antibacterial crème on the cuts he’d gotten from the last werewolf he’d hunted down, but Gran had still insisted on inspecting them. She’d dug up another tube of the shit sometime in between the shower and the dinner Zev had all but tried to shove down his throat.
There was something wrong with these people.
Or, possibly, it had just been so long since he’d been around people that he no longer knew how to act around them or what to expect from them.
~*~
I'm obsessed with writing about werewolves. I very rarely finish the story, but I heart werewolves. And characters that are missing an eye.
I need to find new things to obsess over. >_>;;