Howl

Title: Howl
Author: akavertigo
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's not so bad, he figures. One side of it is the side he has in common with everyone else here. Lucky to have made it, lucky to be alive. And human. Lucky to be Immune, which is about equal to a raincoat in a shark tank.
Warnings: Mild profanity, werewolves, gardening.
Disclaimer: Mine, not.
Author's Note: Started and (mostly) written for the January challenge over at Kradamadness; posted in celebration of kradamadcakes's Lupercalia. In addition, this fic had a trio of caretakers: an indulgent online "wife" [untamedfilly], a kindly wolf petter [trueroyalty], and a roommate (who doesn't give a damn about Kradam but would like her car keys back now.) Ladies, you are lovely.


zxZxXxZxz

They call Kris lucky.

It's not so bad, he figures. One side of it is the side he has in common with everyone else here. Lucky to have made it, lucky to be alive. And human. Lucky to be Immune, which is about equal to a raincoat in a shark tank.

The other half of it is what makes people a bit nervous, looking at him funny when they think he won't notice. Lucky as in unusual. It's damn unusual for anyone to make it to the Center alone. Survivors tend to straggle through in groups, some as small as four. Two months before Kris, there's a bunch that makes it in with ten. (They started out with twenty-three.) They arrive ragged and scared, but mostly whole. The few, very few, solo acts that make it—well, they don't look like Kris. They're torn and desperate, worn to the bone.

Kris' worst damage? Sunburn. He wasn't even notably dehydrated, let alone malnourished to the point the others could be. His pack was battered, but good. Heavy, too, which made the guard think better of him. It was something in their eyes, for the scruffy short dude to have carried that many supplies by himself. Kris didn't bother correcting them. He didn't bother correcting anyone, not even after he finally started talking.

There's something else that set Kris apart from the regulars. None of them have to be brought in unconscious, knocked out to keep from shouting and struggling.

They don't hold it against him, much. Times being what they are, there's no point in fretting about a little madness. It's a good time for it. After the first two weeks nobody mentions it. They do their best to accept him.

Solidarity ranks high when you're an endangered species.

zxZxzxZxz

Kris likes Mike. He's a good guy, a little rough but kind, and he never tries to huff-and-puff up to twice his size when talking to the "civilians". (Probably because Mike has size to spare.) He was in Iraq when Change hit and was among the last troops to get ferried back in before the quarantines shut down all borders.

Mike worries about the walls.

Kris spent his first week learning them, walking every inch he could to see if there was any weakness, any possible gap. There isn't. They're high, festooned with barbed wire and sloppy spikes. Mike says they're the Center's second line of defense.

"There's an electric barrier a little bit before that. That's the first line," Mike says. Kris vaguely remembers something from what little he saw when they brought him in: poles and wires knitted together, a lattice of barbs. Most of the juice from the generators goes to keeping the stuff hot.

Lately there's been problems.

"The poles, right? Something digging under and trying to, I don't know, loosen them. It's making the power flow unsteady," Mike says. He sucks his teeth, worried. "It's weird, though. Most of them wouldn't try that. They wouldn't know enough to understand how the fence works. The standard mutt, h—it just tackles the wires, right?" He rubs his face. The guards have been doing double shifts and everyone helps however they can. Nobody asks Kris to volunteer, though." Anoop thinks it's a new pack in the area and they've got a smarter leader. One with more, whatever, human left in the head. But I don't know. I mean, how the hell does anything human survive being... How do you find a person in that?"

You talk to them, Kris doesn't say. You help them if they're hurt, if they're lying bleeding and torn near a sewer, because you can see how bitterly it hurts and when you go to look closer, you don't get bitten; you get watched. You leave a little food, because you're going to be dead soon anyway and because it's not the worst thing you could do even when things are at their worst. You wake up two days later and you don't scream, not even when the fur is close enough to touch, when the damp nose touches your cheek. You check the wound, you clean it again. You fall asleep. You skin the rabbit in the morning and you make a mess of it, and you try to smoke some of the meat for later. You follow. You sleep in abandoned homes, in sturdy basements or attics. Eventually you sleep during the day, because you've got someone else's eyes to read the night.

And when the full moon comes, he tells you his name.

zxZxzxZxz

The Center used to be a rehab clinic. Kris wonders if he's the only one who honestly finds that funny or simply the only one who dares to laugh about it. Out loud.

Kris figures it must have been an expensive son of a bitch, too, nothing halfway about it. One of the lounges (there are three) has a royal fireplace and there's a marble inlay of what probably used to be a very pretty fountain in the courtyard. Some of the furniture still in residence looks like real mahogany. There are Jacuzzi tubs. Plural.

California, Kris thinks. Only in California.

Anoop says it wasn't among the first properties seized for shelter purposes, but it was among the last to be handled with something more workable than sheer desperation in mind. It's why the generators are upgraded and (mostly) reliable, why the fence shows some planning, why the irrigation holds. Kris doesn't doubt the telling; Anoop is reliable. He's also the closest, and only, thing they have to a doctor, a first-year intern or, in his own words: once-a-time pediatrician wannabe. There was an army doctor with the unit originally. Kris doesn't ask too many details about what happened to him.

Anoop doesn't talk much usually, but when he does it pours in a sober, haunted analysis of What's Happening. He talks a lot about evolution and hypermutation, and something called anergy that Kris doesn't really understand. He doesn't mind listening, though; Anoop needs an audience and nobody else wants to volunteer.

“Guess even the Doc sounds good after being out there alone,” Mike says, clapping Kris' back. Kris shrugs with one shoulder and goes back to weeding the sprouts. Mike's all right; he just doesn't understand.

None of them does.

Kris did his share of talking “out there” but it was never spitting words into nothing. He spoke to ask, to warn, to comfort. Sometimes it was even to sing a little, on the bare nights that begged a little more sweetness. His field guide didn't mind. There's something about music, Kris believes, that survives the worst and weirdest of any latitude.

(They talked when the moon came, too. It was jarring and unavoidable at first, and then it turned giving and comradely, and then it turned easy. After a while, the difference between those conversations and the more common exchanges became—minimal. It was plainly simple in the end; sometimes the words were out loud and sometime they weren't. Kris didn't need to analyze it.)

They met a pack once, small but strong: quiet. The quiet usually meant there was a sprig of rationality somewhere in the pot; the mad ones were typically rage and froth with a dollop of bloodlust. Even if Kris hadn't learned that by that point, he'd have recognized the glint of actual intelligence in the leader's eye. It let Kris' fist unclench the fur it'd closed on, an unconscious reflex at being suddenly blocked by half a ton of muscle and tension.

Mr. Leader was a big wolf or at least he was big enough. But he had back up and, well, Kris didn't think of himself as useless but that didn't make delusional either; he knew where he ranked on danger scale. Still, he could take out an eye or a jaw with a rock granted half a chance (and, admittedly, a heap of luck.) Either way, the attempt would buy the formidable half of their duo a little time if it came down to it.

Kris sure as hell wasn't going to leave him.

It never came down to it. The little wolf, the one Kris noticed best because he was so much smaller than the rest, probably only a teenager, slowly edged out from behind the leader. It took some maneuvering to do so. (The subsequent dialogue of nudge and shove looked familiar. Kris tried to take comfort in the fact that he wasn't the only short dude getting overprotected by mountains of fur and good intentions.) The bigger wolf finally let him creep closer, but there was plenty of preemptive growling. Kris didn't need fuzzy ears to translate: you bite, we bite. He only had to loop an arm around the thick neck to feel the same warning vibrate through.

Three paces from the fire the young wolf stopped. And stared.

At Kris' guitar.

After a moment, Kris unwound his arm—ignoring his own share of protective rumbling—and picked the instrument back up. A couple of cliff-hanging heartbeats after that, he went back to Imagine.

Nobody bit.

zxZxzxZxz

His second week at the center, Kris wakes up in the middle of the night.

He's not sure what it is at first. The cold maybe, what with autumn sinking in and the generators too busy feeding the fences to spare anything extra for heating. There's plenty of blankets, but Kris is used to something warmer and softer. Besides it could be the noise instead. Or, more specifically, the lack of it. Even when people gathered in one room here, to eat or assign duties, their voices never rose high. Nobody laughed for very long, if they did at all. Kris looked up to catch people staring at him, sometimes, when he was working in the gardens.

Stretched out in the dark, chilled and hushed, Kris tries to steer his mind into order. He tries to avoid curling on his side, skin looking for a source of warmth that isn't there. He tries not to think.

Then he hears the howling.

zxZxzxZxz

In the morning, nobody wants to start on the subject everyone is thinking about. Kris considers opening his mouth, making himself a little weirder and odder, but he spoons in some porridge instead. It tastes like horse oats, but the salal berries help. They should try growing more of the sort. Kris wonder who he can talk to about borrowing a patch of garden dirt for experimenting. He's got some ideas about squash.

Amidst the mental romp of pumpkins and pollination, someone kicks his ankle. Kris doesn't look up. "Hi, Ally."

"Morning." She scoops some porridge on her thumb, sucking it off with a grimace. "Tastes like donkey butt. Stale donkey butt."

"Weren't you on kitchen duty this morning?"

She pulls a face. It's probably meant to be grotesque, but all it really hammers home is how young Allison is. A teenager. A kid. She shouldn't be sleeping in a closet during the day because she's too scared of her bed at night, or crying behind the water tank like the first time Kris met her. Even if the world has gone mad and feral, there should be something better for eyes like that.

Kris' fingers trace loops on the tablecloth, one running into another, infinite, while Ally finishes his Tang.

"Wanna help me out with the mud and grubs today?" He forces his hand to quit. "We can make pies."

"Mud pies," she says, grinning. "You're, like, the cheapest date ever. Hey, maybe we can...oh."

"What?" But Kris is already turning around, looking at the doorway with the rest of the breakfast club. He picks out Mike immediately in the batch of fatigues and denim, Anoop beside him. They look—tense. Wound up.

Scared.

Anoop says, "There's a wolf."

zxZxzxZxz

There is a wolf, and it—he's dead.

He's also nobody Kris recognizes. The matted fur is a pallid gray mixed with clumps of grubby white. He's got a squat muzzle and a skinny tail, but he's a big boy: solid. He looks like trouble. Mike says he was hell and murder: stalking the walls, attacking the fence. He got one of the scouts last month, too.

It's a little hard to believe it now, looking at torn neck. A clean kill, Kris thinks. There's rips and blood all over his coat, but it's obvious those are the fighting wounds only. The final blow itself was true and sober. It would've been over fast.

Kris knows that for fact.

"We need to get rid of it," Anoop says. "Of the body. We need to—" He pushes both hands in his hair. His upper lip is shiny with sweat.

"Burn it."

Everyone looks at Kris. The focus of the moment wraps around his neck. But. "We can burn it outside the inner wall, before the fence's limit. None of the ashes will get inside."

"What if they smell it?" Someone asks: thin, nervous, anonymous. "What if they come back?"

"Whomever who left him wouldn't bother doing so if they were planning to return," Kris says. Even to his own ears he sounds blatantly calm. "Burn or bury him. Either way, don't leave him out here." Kris looks up, catching the eye of anyone who dares to let him. "That's a dead person. Someone who got sick and did horrible things, but none of that was his choice. No more than being immune was ours." He finds Mike's eye and holds it. "We aren't leaving him to rot."

Mike looks away first. "Get the kerosene."

zxZxzxZxz

The next night Kris doesn't sleep.

He sits for a while in his small, priceless (worthless) cold room with the blanket ruched over his shoulders and fingers twitching over his knee. The Center's rooms can muffle a lot—mustn't spoil the patients' beauty sleep—but he has a window open, night noise leaking in. Finally, Kris shoves off the blanket and goes out.

It's quiet: empty. Whomever isn't sleeping is probably pretending to, or hiding in their own thoughts. Kris remembers being like that before, remembers how easy it is to sink under the line and concentrate on nothing. There's nothing peaceful about that option; it's about as healthy as digging your own grave.

Outside, the walls are tall and dumb. Above the moon is more than half bare: gibbous. It makes the pretty tiles of the path a colorless ribbon; the fountain arms are frozen limbs. Behind him, none of the windows are lit. There are guards on duty, somewhere, but Kris doesn't bother looking. Most of them think he's crazy, anyway.

A thin wind curls around Kris' bare neck. It's a nice night.

He finds a patch near the garden, a homely spot in sight of the struggling squash. The bit of wall here is as unlovely and rough as anywhere else, but Kris' back doesn't have that big of an opinion. He stretches his legs out and crosses his arms, ass wiggling for a nonexistent softer seat in the dirt. It's cool out, but nothing he hasn't weathered before.

When the howling starts, Kris closes his eyes.

zxZxzxZxz

"I want to show you something."

Kris looks up from his digging, squinting. Back lit by the afternoon sun Anoop's expression is hard to translate.

"All right," Kris says. "Ally, you mind finishing the row on your own? I'll be back in a little while."

The last is pitched to Anoop for confirmation; he nods. "This will be fast. I have—there's something you should see."

"All right," Kris says again and follows the man back inside. He tries not to carry Allison's worried expression with him.

They pass through a handful of corridors until they run out of those familiar to Kris. His initial tour of the building was curt, if civil, and he hasn't felt much curiosity to explore on his own. That's not how Kris' curiosity is wired, not anymore. The room they finally end up in is small and heavily ventilated. It smells like a clean fridge. There's a dense mess of cables of on the floor and, Kris blinks, monitors stacked obediently against a wall.

There are only four screens, but the very sight of them—bright and moving and on—is enough to wake up a feeling of genuine surprise in Kris. He turns to Anoop, eyebrows raised in question.

"We use them to monitor the general vicinity. There used to be some out further away from the walls, but we lost the last a few months ago." From the tight seam of Anoop's mouth, Kris doesn't need to ask how. "Mainly they help us get a read on how many actually try to approach the fences. A bit of a warning, right?"

Kris nods.

"Here's footage from a while back, about a week before you—arrived." Anoop sits down in the rolling chair and fiddles with the console. The screen second from left breaks into a blizzard then settles into black and white clarity.

Black and white or not, Kris recognizes the dead wolf easily. He watches the beast stalk around the fence, testing it, snapping. There's no sound, but the aggression is evident. Anoop speeds up the footage. Kris watches the wolf leave and return repeatedly. Watches him dig at the poles.

"There used to be a few others living near," Anoop says. "They were really wild, completely gone. We're pretty sure he killed them to..."

"To secure his hunting ground," Kris says.

Anoop nods, grim. "Yeah. It was messy. He didn't go after the weaker ones, but it didn't seem to be a pack mentality."

"Guess some kids don't play well with others." Kris watches the night run fast on the electric glass. "Why are we watching this?"

Anoop's knuckles tense on the control knob. Kris watches the strain rise in his shoulder and he watches it sink back under controlled breathing. After a moment, Anoop turns the knob again. The screen speeds up, stops.

Kris stares.

"This," Anoop says, "is from last night."

The wolf on screen is big, with long limbs and heavy shoulders. His fur is so dark it's barely readable in the monitor's resolution. He's not alone; Kris reads five, maybe more, bodies visible on the scope of the view. One of them, slim and female, edges in closer to the fence. She lowers head head as if to dig at the pole.

The black head turns, sudden and harsh, the warning growl unheard by the camera; the she-wolf retreats. The black wolf sits back on his haunches. He tilts his head back. Kris imagines the strong throat working, the others joining in.

"Five hours."

Kris looks at Anoop. "What?"

"That's how long his furry ass parked there." A lean, brown finger taps the screen: 12:16. "All the way until four AM. Yelling. None of them tried for the fence, either. Mike says there haven't been any new upsets in the past couple of days. We figured the new guy—" Again a tap on the screen—"was causing trouble. It seems like he's been fighting it off instead. We're pretty sure he was the one who took care of the other one, too." For a moment, the acerbic tone warms into something like admiration. "Seems like one fierce son of a bitch."

"He is," Kris says. He looks away from the screen back to Anoop. There's no shock or disgust in the other man's expression, though it is wary. The lack of hostility is something worth wondering at. "Is that what you wanted me here to confirm?"

"Maybe," Anoop says. "It was more a guess than anything concrete. I didn't—damn it." He runs a hand through his hair. Kris wonders if it's an old habit or a newborn one. "Damn it, Kris. Like you weren't weird enough?"

The sheer exasperation pops something in Kris' belly; he laughs. What's even stranger is Anoop joining in. They laugh like two drunks, loud and pointless, until Anoop calms down enough to turn off the monitors.

"Freakin' hell," he says finally.

"Yeah," Kris agrees. "That."

Anoop leans back in the chair, shoulders melting. "So."

Kris leans one hip against the door frame. "So."

"Got any other revelations to rock the status quo?"

"Yeah," Kris says. "His name is Adam."

zxZxzxZxz

"We had a fight."

Anoop blinks at him, suds streaking his elbows. There's a lot of paranoia about having the resident doctor do anything potentially threatening with his hands (even though, Anoop states pointedly, emphatically, and pretty damn glaringly that he's not a fucking surgeon) but laundry seems to be judged an acceptable risk. Plus Anoop tends to get a somewhat edgy when too many people tell him what to do and worse when people tell him what not to do. Kris simply likes rediscovering the pleasure of hot water.

"When you say fight..." Anoop says. "I'm guessing we're not talking about a kiss with a fist."

Kris doesn't bother dignifying that with a reply. The fact that Adam could tear Kris, or anyone and anything else, into a wet pile of dog food is completely eclipsed by the fact that Adam would bite off his own arm before giving Kris a half decent bruise.

Well, none of non-recreational sort that is.

"Ok," Anoop says. "I'll bite, man. What kind of fight?"

Kris dumps a wad of spiffy linen into the steaming vat, water sloshing onto his jeans. The jeans are (relatively) new, since the majority of Kris' disposable gear was abandoned...somewhere. Specifically somewhere a week away from where Mike and the rest found him.

"Same old crap as anything before," Kris says. "The romance died, the spark got lost. We started talking about needing space. He wanted us to see other people."

Anoop isn't an idiot. "He wanted you to be with the rest of the Immune."

Safe was the word Adam used. Sitting pretty out of danger, inside some imaginary set of walls. Except Kris had underestimated the powers of Adam's imagination and the ghostly stream of communication howled across the roads at night. The first time Adam disappeared, staying away for more than two nights' worth, Kris thought that was the worst of it. When Adam started straying more carefully, becoming a lukewarm path of tracks across the dirt and empty streets, Kris figured he was simply sulking. Good God, Kris had thought Adam was coming around, that Kris was winning. He never even considered that he was being led. Not until he woke up to the sound of human feet, human hands on him, human voices telling him to calm down, to relax, he was safe, everything was okay. It wasn't until he realized what they were asking—are you alone, is there anybody else here?—that he realized he'd been shouting Adam's name.

...and Adam wasn't coming.

And now here Kris is, safe and pretty within a square of walls and soldiers, and there's Adam howling outside. It figures, really.

"It's kind of nice to know, though," Anoop says. Kris raises his brows: know what? Anoop smacks his palm on the soapy water, splashing and grinning a rare little grin. "I meant it's nice to know that no matter how fucked up the world gets relationships will still be the hardest bitch."

Kris laughs. It rattles a little oddly in his chest, but feels genuine. Why not? Anoop is right, relationships are hard, Kris is still safe, and Adam is here. Thing will work out, somehow.

Two nights later Kris is locked up in a basement, handcuffed, and seriously rethinking his prognosis.

zxZxzxZxz

"Did you bring the wolves?"

Kris doesn't twitch, doesn't lift his forearm off his eyes, doesn't rise off the bed. "Morning, Allison."

"It's noon." Dishes clatter. "Lunchtime. Did you? Kris, did you do it?"

"The only thing I brought in," Kris says, calmly so as to avoid hollering, "is the pack of junk you saw me drag in here when I got dragged in here. If there was a wolf hiding behind the toothbrush then I'm as embarrassed as the rest of you."

The mattress dips, new warmth nudging his hip. Kris lifts his arm and opens his eyes to find Allison watching him squarely, knees tucked under her chin. Her socks are mismatched and there's dirt under one thumbnail. She looks all of twelve years old.

"No," Kris says. "I didn't bring the wolves, but I was traveling with a wolf before. He was the one who led me here. I thought he left afterward. Apparently he...I don't know. Stuck around. Or came back. I swear to God I have no idea how or why he decided to adopt the local wolf pack."

"Huh," Allison says, thoughtfully.

"His name is Adam," Kris offers.

"Huh," Allison says.

"I think we're dating," Kris adds. "Or possibly we broke up. The details are a little muddled at the moment."

"Huh," Allison says. Then, "Your life is pretty damn weird, dude."

"You are not wrong," Kris says. He nods at the covered tray. "Biscuits?"

zxZxzxZxz

“I am so sorry,” Anoop says. Again.

Kris shrugs. It's relatively easier since they've moved the cuff to his ankle. The handcuffs are thin and kind of silly looking, but the room is bare of anything to smash them with. They're almost flattering, really; Kris didn't think his struggling was that impressive.

“Kris,” Anoop says, “I'm sorry. I never should have showed you that damn tape.”

“You couldn't have exactly hidden it,” Kris says reasonably. “What, you were accidentally going to spill grape juice over the keyboard? Forget about it, man. Someone would have seen and someone would have talked; secrets don't last long here.”

“But I could've—”

“Thank you.”

Anoop startles. Kris files the moment away for future reference. “What?”

“Thank you,” Kris repeats. “For showing me the recording. I never would have known he was still out there if you hadn't.”

“Yeah,” Anoop says, “you would have.”

Point. “Okay, but I would've still been pissed at him.”

“Pissed, but free.”

“Eh.” Kris shrugs again, and tugs at his foot; the handcuff's shiny links jiggle. “Mike's overreacting.”

“Mike thinks you're going to get yourself killed.”

“Do you?” Kris asks.

“I...” Anoop fidgets. Kris files away that, too. “Honestly, I don't know. This is kind of—you know.”

“Crazy?”

“Unconventional,” Anoop frowns.

zxZxzxZxz

Ultimately, Kris thinks, there were two choices: to watch and not to watch. He could have stayed away from the surveillance room after the first sneak peek. He could have simply taken the image of the wolf waiting at the gate, and he could have sat with the possibility what it might mean, and he could have let the anger simmer in his dark room and nursed his temper. He could have.

Instead Kris takes the path that leads to Anoop leaning in towards the screen, brows scrunched, to ask, “Is that a leash?”

It isn't.

It is a piece of fabric, thin and long and worn, and it swings like a dead snake from the black wolf's mouth. The monitor leaches it into a dingy, scrubby gray. Kris knows the real color, stone blue, isn't jollier. He knows how the ragged edge feels against his fingertips.

(He'd asked Mike about his guitar, and gotten the answer he'd expected. Kris had been too surprising a discovery, and too determined at resisting, to give anyone a chance to look for a scratched acoustic resting behind a boulder. Afterward, it'd been too big a risk to send anyone to retrieve it. Mike had apologized; Kris accepted. )

The world is a hard place. Then again, it was that way long before the wolves came; it's the layout of the troubles that are changed. The safe roads are closed, the cities are quiet, the wires are sleeping. There's panic and need, there's risk and scarcity, there's fear.

And then there's Adam with Kris' guitar strap.

zxZxzxZxz

Kris comes to Mike during lunchtime and tells him outright: he was leaving. He's polite, waiting till Mike's done eating and he makes a point of assuring he won't take anything from the center's supplies. Kris even adds a hearty thank you and offers to shake hands goodbye.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have told Mike who he was going to meet.

zxZxzxZxz

Mike says, "This isn't about punishing anyone."

Mike says, "You—I don't think you've done anything wrong, exactly. Not on purpose."

Mike says, "Try to think reasonably."

"We're only trying to keep you safe," Mike says.

The trouble is, though, Kris is really damn tired of being kept.

zxZxzxZxz

Four days and three nights after Kris is unofficially and well-meaningly locked away, Adam walks into the room.

zxZxzxZxz

Kris jolts awake suddenly and badly, sleep lingering like mud in his ears. The room is dark, but not unreadable; the furnishings, a few low-maintenance pieces, are in odd relief. Something about them confuses Kris' eyes. It takes a moment to realize there's shouting and knocking outside his “cell” door and then it's opening. Maybe Anoop is battling insomnia again or Allison has sneaked away another can of peaches, or maybe Mike is developing a guilty conscience.

Or maybe, thinks Kris while his breathing freezes halfway out his lungs, it isn't Anoop or Allison or Mike at all.

The jeans are decidedly new; Kris can make out the telltale crease in the leg and the more revealing lack of tears. The polo shirt is ridiculous, but whole and fresh. Kris is fairly certain it was a last-minute grab. There's a definite absence of footwear.

My, my, grandma, what pale toes you have...

“Oh,” Kris says. It's not very witty, but that's okay. Kris isn't feeling particularly brilliant at the moment.

“You forgot,” Adam says. His hair is long and delirious. From this angle, the moonlight turns his eyes wondrously pale. It makes Kris want to count each eyelash with a kiss, and it makes him want to punch Adam's jaw. It makes the whole moment kind of unbelievable.

“I forgot,” Kris agrees.

“I keep saying we should carry around a calendar or something. Instead, every full moon it's like a one man surprise party,” Adam says over his shoulder and that's when Kris notices the guns.

Mike has good nerves. It's not just the way he holds his gun or levels his eyes, it's the way he makes it look completely normal: no formality, utter practicality. Anoop's respectably steady grip can't compare.

“What the hell is going on?” Kris says, rising up off the bed. Which, admittedly, is another stroke of genius as he's also forgotten about the thrice-damned riot cuff around his ankle. Kris flounders back onto the mattress in a patently embarrassing show of grace.

“Oy,” he says and then “Oy” when Adam is suddenly there, fingers prying at the links and band. There's a surprisingly crunchy sound and broken metal trickles from Adam's loose fist. Kris is significantly more affected by the absence of anything in Mike's voice.

“Step away from him. Slowly.”

“You chained him.” It's not a question. From what little he can see of Adam's expression—and, oh boy, does he know that expression—Kris knows they've lost any opportunity for polite inquiries. On the plus side, the growling has yet to make an appearance.

Mike's face doesn't change, but Kris spies a telltale tightening around the eyes. “It wasn't to hurt him. Now step-the-hell-away.”

“Adam,” Kris starts at the same time as Anoop's, “Mike, hold on.”

“You chained him up.”

And, yeah, there's that growling. It's a low, hairsplitting undertone which is all the more disturbing for its subtlety. Like shaking a human hand, Kris thinks, and feeling the claws inside. He congratulates himself on the situation having reached its worst.

Until Adam says, “I should have trashed that fence down to the last nail.”

Kris' stomach does an abrupt U-turn. “You did what?”

“He threatened to have his posse,” Mike spits the word, acidic, “dig the poles out to breach the power flow.”

“Only if we didn't let him in to see you,” Anoop adds, which is the only thing stopping Kris from decking Adam outright. The temptation evidently shows on his face, because Adam's snarl withers around the edges.

“I only started digging at them to test the foundation. Which, by the way, is utter crap. You people are damn lucky the previous alpha was too big of a drooling lunatic to figure it out. If you don't do something to reinforce them, they'll sink with the next storm's mudslide.” Anoop's face registers the information seriously, but he's not the one Adam is looking at. “Kris, I—I couldn't smell you. I could nearly every night before, when you were out by the wall, and then I couldn't at all, and—um, babe, that's a bit on the choking side.”

Kris doesn't loosen his hold on the shirt collar. “You—you—”

Anoop fidgets. “Maybe we should—”

“Kris, man, I need you to step—”

“Shut. Up.”

The room shuts up.

Kris lets go of the wrinkled cotton and steps away from Adam. The werewolf raises one arm as if to stop him—and then drops it back immediately, singed by Kris' glare. Mike looks a little less comfortable with his gun. Anoop, clearly the smart one, lowers his completely.

“I,” says Kris, “am hereby officially tired of listening of what I supposedly need to do. I'm especially tired of goddamn arrogant assholes trying to either abandon or adopt me for the sake of their own lip service. And I'm tired of listening to them argue as if either one is less of a goddamn hypocrite than the other! You,” he pokes at Adam's chest, hard, “left me. You fucking left me. How the hell do you think that felt?”

“I wanted you to be saf—”

“You don't get to pick how I stay safe,” Kris snaps. He whips towards Mike. “And neither do you. I don't care if the both of you decided to crown yourselves king of the heap and want to be bleeding martyrs because of it; this is my life. I make the choices, I bear the consequences, I don't need someone sitting out on the porch with a shotgun. I don't want chaperoning.” He sucks in a breath; it sizzles all the way down. “What I want is a partner. And a friend. Anyone who shoves anything else down my throat, good intentions or not, is just another predator.”

The silence that follows is slow and severely uncomfortable; it hugs Kris' skin like a rash. They're still standing in the dark, he realizes, the combined tension not at all softened by the moonlight dripping through the window.

“God damn it,” Mike says and lowers his gun.

“Thank you,” says Kris.

“Oy,” says Anoop.

“Seriously,” says Adam.

“Wow,” says Allison.

zxZxzxZxz

The lemonade is refreshing, too sweet, plainly artificial, and as improbable as everything else about this night. There's only three cups and two straws, so Anoop and Mike gets the straws and a cup, Adam shares a cup with Kris, and Allison keeps her own to herself. Mike initially made some noise about needing two hands free but—well. Allison is...persuasive.

“So,” she says to Adam like Adam isn't a werewolf or a six-foot stranger perched hazardously at the corner of a paisley bedspread, “you're Kris' someone.”

Kris snorts.

“I—” Adam's eyes cut to the window, the moon, and then back to Ally. “I'm trying.”

“Huh.” Sluuurp goes the lemonade. “You kind of suck at it. I mean, not counting the whole wolf thing. Which is, you know, whatever. Not judging.”

Mike snorts. Anoop openly elbows him in the gut. The exchange is appreciably more palatable with the guns put away (under the bed).

“Thank you,” Adam says. He's amused, Kris can tell. “It wasn't a very voluntary lifestyle choice, but a boy learns to make do.”

“Plus you only have to stress about laundry once a month,” Allison says. “We've got full facilities but, like, the pipes freak out every other week and you end up washing your undies in whatever was used to wash your privates. Or, like, someone else's privates.”

Anoop snorts, but it rattles suspiciously like a badly hidden laugh owned by someone not used to hiding or laughing. Nobody tries to prod him in the rib.

“There's a reservoir about five miles west,” Adam says. If you don't know him, you'd say casual. Kris knows him. “You could probably rig out something, in case of emergencies. I hear the droughts get pretty ugly here.”

“Hear from who?” asks Mike. If you don't know him, you'd say abrasive.

“Lil,” Adam says. “She's the head of the pack here.”

“You got fired?” Mike says.

“I quit,” Adam says. “This was never going to be a permanent arrangement. I don't—they're not my pack.”

His gaze darts up and away, again, pleading; Kris stares into his lemonade, immune.

“But you took care of the other wo—guy. The mad case. You were the one who took him down,” Mike insists. “Doesn't that grant you automatic leadership?”

“We're not wolves.” Allison and Anoop look a little sharper at hearing it. Mike simply waits for the rest. “You've got to understand, what's happening with the rest of us, with those that Changed, isn't that different what you've got in here. Everyone is fighting like hell to survive.” His mouth tightens. Kris fights the urge to reach out and press his thumb to the lower lip, soothing. “Some of us give up too much to do it. You burnt a bang-up example of that last time.” Adam looks at Mike. “We're as scared as you are. I don't know what you need to hear to believe it, but it's true.”

“Lil is a good leader,” Adam says, continuing easily. “She lost a lot of family and she's dead set on not losing any more. You can trust her. More importantly, you can work with her.”

“I wouldn't even know where to begin,” Mike says finally.

Adam shrugs. “That's why I'm not a leader. Starting with the basics seems like a good bet, though. Protection, for one thing; Lil's crew can make sure you don't get another horror show candidate running loose in the backyard. In return, there's plenty of first aid that requires clean bandages and opposable thumbs. There's a hell of a lot you people can do for each other.”

You people, Kris thinks.

“How would we talk to each other?” Anoop asks. “Not everyone has Kris', um, experience.”

“Like having a boyfriend is an experience.” Allison rolls her eyes. Even the moonlight can't blunt it. “We can leave a notebook and a pen outside if everyone is that freaked out. At least until everyone here learns to pull their heads out of their—”

“Ally,” Kris says.

“—whatever.” She sticks out her tongue. Mike reaches out to slap her shoulder and ends up surrendering the last of his lemonade instead. “The point is they'll get over it. We all will. Besides if I don't get someone fresh to talk to, I'll explode. Into pieces. Then you'll all start crying and being totally miserable, and it'll be absolutely embarrassing. Completely pathetic. Besides,” she adds. “I'm not afraid.”

Maybe that's how it happens, Kris thinks. Not with plans for a treaty or a truce, or with a brave, tired man putting down his gun, or a smart man laughing, or even with someone falling in love under the moon. Maybe those actions are simply ripples. Maybe the world truly changes when one girl—one kid—is braver than what everybody knows. Maybe that's enough.

Kris pointedly clears his throat. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Am I still under house arrest for my own good?” Kris generously tries to keep the sarcasm to a thin, light glaze.

Mike sighs. He's a good guy, truly. He doesn't deserve the job he's obviously preparing himself to do, which is probably why he's a good choice to do it.

“You're free to take your crazy ass wherever it wants to go,” he says. “I'd give you the key to the cuffs if there was anything left of them, or if your boyfriend didn't look like he'd eat it.”

“Fuck you, baby,” Adam says. The two idiots smile at each other, and Kris strives not to imitate Anoop's expression.

Instead, he says, “Thank you. Now could you guys give us a moment, please? I want to speak to my so-called boyfriend. Alone.”

Adam looks alarmed.

Good.

zxZxzxZxz

The upside to having a Significant Other who spends more time on four feet than two is fewer talks about feelings. It's practically a law.

At least, in Kris' opinion, it damn well should be.

"I don't blame you for being angry," Adam says, eyes earnest. Moonlight or not, it's still dark as tar and Kris is looking at the wall, but he still knows Adam's eyes are earnest, wide and sincere like it's breaking something inside. "You've got a right to be as pissed as you want to be, really. You should be angry. It's healthy." Oh, God: psychoanalysis from a werewolf. "Could you just, maybe, be angry more...at me? Instead of the wall? You're making me a little nervous, baby."

Something inside Kris does break. Violently. He turns like he's readying to strike, to punch, to tear Adam's empty head off his shoulders. "You—sit."

Adam sits, mattress creaking from the abrupt deposit. "Um."

"Did I say speak?" Kris asks conversationally. Adam's mouth snaps shut. Kris steps close enough to flatten his hand against the weave of Adam's stupid shirt. The cotton is warm, familiar; the Change tends to run hot. He doesn't move his hand to find Adam's pulse; Kris can hear it in his breath. It's a language he's fluent in; Kris knows how the thread of it changes in the morning, or evening, they wake up, the fur under his cheek bunching right before a cold nose investigates his neck. He knows which inflections mean faster and which mean wait here and which are stop. He knows how it slows with fear, how it thickened with every day Kris' fever got uglier and the rest of him got weaker, as if his bones turned to milk.

How it halted and sang the first time, the fifth moon, the night in the warehouse with the slapdash fire and the dried pears, the snarl of Army blankets, the lukewarm tea, the salt on his lip, the broken nail scraping Kris' stomach, blunt and rough, but so good, so good, the warm-wet press on his wrist.

Kris echoes the moment now, reversing his mouth to Adam's wrist, but the same telling moon watching him pin Adam's hips, knees bracketing either side. There's just enough moonlight to pick out the hopeful tell in the wolf's human eyes. Kris nips the wrist at his mouth, catching the pulse beneath and hearing the breathing change.

"I wasn't mad," he says, lips brushing the infinity and protection. "I was right. We're going to be having a very, very long talk about that—later. Much, much later. Yes?"

Adam nods.

"Good boy."

zxZxzxZxz

"Okay, what else, what else—oh. Keep an eye on the elecampane, the stems need to be cut back soon. The sugar snap vines, too; don't forget to cover them when the nights start going cold." Kris rubs the back of his neck. "I told you about mulching the beds with at least two inches of clean straw, right?"

"No," Allison says. "You completely skipped it while detailing every mind-numbing gardening fact known to man and worm. Please, oh please, tell me again. Enlighten me with your epic poetry on beets and eggplants and Harley-Davidson bugs. Please."

"Harlequin," Kris says and cuffs her lightly. "They'll eat the kale."

"My heroes." Allison huffs, fanning her bangs. The dye has faded into a mere shadow of pink, but it's still a flag of defiance. Or maybe it's optimism. "I'm not going to forget everything the moment you're gone, you know. Don't underestimate us beautiful people; we're sharp and able. I can handle squash. I can handle it like a pro."

"Word," Kris nods solemnly then pulls the girl, grungy coveralls and rebel hair and unsinkable attitude and all, into the tightest hug he knows. She's just short enough to fit under his chin. "Be good?"

"Can't. Am too awesome." She headbutts his chin; Kris lets go. "You're going to miss out on the strawberries."

"We don't have strawberries."

Allison grins. "Not yet. But there's got to be seeds somewhere. I'm going to ask the wolves to find some. I bet they miss strawberries. I mean, dude, who doesn't miss strawberries? They're the Kardashians of berries."

"Well," Kris says. "I guess we'll just have to come back and check them out, then."

"You'd better." This time Allison hugs him, monkey arms snug as bands around his middle. "We'll have jam and fruit salad, so you have to come back and taste it. And to worship my mad gardening skills. Like, you'll write songs about it."

"I'll start now. What rhymes with squirt?"

"Goddess. Diva. Genius." She squeezes his ribs with each laurel. "V-I-freaking-Princess."

"Brat." One last hug, a cachet of warmth secured somewhere between heart and soul, then the resigned step back: away. "Take care, you hear me?"

"Loud and sober, Major Tom." She salutes; it's appalling. "You take care of you and yours, mister. Don't let Casanova run you ragged. And don't let him boss you around, either. Roll up a newspaper or something, take charge."

"Don't die," is Anoop's bounteous valediction. "I'm serious, if you stomp off only to die in some godforsaken gutter, I'll help Mike hunt down your sweetheart's furry ass and mount it above a fireplace."

"Okay," Kris says and hugs him too. There's a fair share of surly squirming and kvetching, but it still lands where it should. Nobody gets bit. Kris counts it as a win.

"That's the plan, then?" Mike asks.

Kris nods. "Head back west until we find that pack, yeah. They were fairly receptive when we met, I think they'll be willing to talk to us. There'll be a moon night by then, too. We can, I don't know. Discuss. Brainstorm. Something."

"Not much of a plan."

"Not much to lose," Kris shrugs. "They've got at least two Beatles fans in the pack. I figure it's a start."

"You're cracked," Mike says. "Both of you."

But he almost smiles when he says it, and Kris figures that's as promising a sign to carry out with him as anything.

zxZxzxZxz

Outside the wall, Adam licks his nose.

"Weirdo." Kris rubs the spot with his sleeve and gets off his knees. He shoulders his pack more securely into the familiar slot across his back. "Come on, lets not waste the weather while we have it; I think there's rain coming. Think we can make it to the highway before the wet?"

Adam yelps.

"Yeah," Kris says. "I'm feeling lucky."

zxZxXxZxz