#marvin's stubborn and doesn't really take no for an answer

[beerecordings]

Wolf Bite - Part 14

“Okay,” says Marvin, hugging his arms around his chest. “I didn't want to make a big deal, but now I am beginning to get worried.”

Jackie tugs on the handle to Sean's office again as if it's going to have unlocked itself since the last time he tried it. “He should be here,” Jackie says. “We have class every Tuesday and Thursday at six. It's six-fifteen, and it's Thursday. He should be here.”

“I know.”

“He should be here and he's not here.”

“I know, Jackie, we're going to figure it out, but try to be calm, okay?”

Marvin peers into the windows of the office again and takes a deep breath. Jackie's right. They had class scheduled today. The full moon is tomorrow, and Marvin was looking forward to going for a run. They were going to help Chase and Henrik practice shifting before tomorrow. Sean wanted more time to prepare them. He wouldn't cancel this for anything, and if he's just running late, then where are Chase and Henrik?

Yeah, he's starting to get a little worried.

Then again, they were going for a run tonight...

“Hey,” he calls, grabbing Jackie's shoulder. “You know what, they probably just had plans to meet at the park. They forgot to text us or we forgot Sean said it or something. We were going to the park anyway.”

“Right,” says Jackie tersely. “Okay, let's check.”

Marvin feels better, walking to the park, and Jackie loosens up a little too, although the last-minute change of plans has added some stress nobody needs. Marvin takes his arm and squeezes it, grinning up at him as they walk, pressing his scent into his shoulder for a moment. It's such a nice day, anyway, or Marvin thinks so.

“I love it outside after a storm,” he purrs.

Jackie snorts. “The street is half-flooded and all I can smell is the rain.”

“I like rain smell.”

It came down so hard last night Jackie's little house shook once or twice, and Jackie, unable to sleep in the noise and the lightning flashes, woke Marvin up to force him to play Battlefront at about one in the morning. There are worse ways to spend the night, though.

“I'm excited to see the new guys turn.” Marvin swings Jackie's arm as they walk. “Henrik is wound so tight all the time, I bet he's the most liberated wolf you've ever seen. He'll be rolling around in the mud and nipping at everybody's heels.”

“You don't think he'll be stiff?”

“We'll warm him up.”

Jackie grins faintly at him, turning back to the pavement too quickly.

“What?”

“Mh, nothing,” Jackie answers. “Just wonder what he'll do.”

“When he goes back to Germany?”

“You really think he'll go?”

“He's a pretty stubborn guy. I don't know, maybe he's close with his family.”

“I don't think they even know, from what I've heard.”

“Fuck's sake. Maybe he really will just – ”

“Isolate himself?”

“Yeah... yeah. We'll have to keep in touch. But maybe Chase will convince him to stay. They're cubs from the same litter. And hey, at least Chase sounds like he's staying around.”

“Yep,” agrees Jackie, spotting the park sign up the way.

Marvin watches him for a second, trying to phrase the question he wants to ask.

“He gets kind of lonely, too, I think. Chase, I mean. You seem to like taking care of him.”

“I like newbies. I like helping people.”

“So... I don't know, maybe we keep him around.”

Jackie blinks at him. “Yeah, he can hang out with us whenever! You need more friends cause you're rude to people.”

“Hey!”

Jackie cracks up. Marvin shoves against his side. “I mean it, Jackie. Maybe we think about looking after him a little more closely, you know? With you being an Alpha again – ”

Jackie stops short on the pavement, turning to stare right at him. “What? You... you would want Chase for pack?”

Marvin clasps his hands together uncertainly. If he says yes, will Jackie get excited and explain that he thought Marvin wanted it to just be the two of them? Somehow, it doesn't feel that way. “Just, um. Just wondering. Thinking. Like, he's a nice guy. Could use a pack.”

Jackie stares at him for a second longer, gears turning behind his eyes. After a second, he shakes his head. “Chase will find a nice big pack somewhere in town,” he says, heading into the park, the soft grass squishing beneath his feet. “This can just be for the two of us. I hope Chase will be a friend, and we will help him with anything he needs, but we don't have to take him in just because he doesn't have one right now.”

“Well, I just thought you seemed to like him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do, but, you know. Right?”

What? No, he doesn't know. He almost laughs, bewildered. It's not a very Alpha thing to say, that a new wolf can just find another pack, and Marvin's always known Jackie has strong pack instincts. Didn't he take care of Chase right from the beginning, telling him where he lived if he needed anything and walking him home? He's about to ask his cousin what the hell he's talking about when Jackie straightens up and freezes, nose turning up.

"What?" asks Marvin.

Then he smells it, half a moment after his cousin, beneath the heavy scent of the rain: blood.

"Spirits save us," he murmurs, and Jackie takes off at a run, all thought of calm abandoned. Marvin rushes after him, but he can't help but wish they could take some time to think before acting - what if it's strangers fighting, and they're about to rush into danger that isn't their business?

"Jackie!" he calls, but Jackie won't stop even when Marvin catches up to him. His teeth are extended, his hair getting thick at the nape and standing up, the rest of him human. "Jackie, Sean knows how to take care of himself. We don't even know if he's here!"

"That's his blood, I know it," pants Jackie.

"Jacks, you can't know that, you - "

He crashes into Jackie as his Alpha stops abruptly.

"Sean," Marvin whispers.

He's on his side on the floor of the forest, and it is his blood.

"Go look for Henrik and Chase," barks Jackie, racing to his friend's side.

"Well, I'm calling a fucking ambulance first!" Marvin cries, scrambling for his phone. "Maybe it was humans with guns, do you smell iron?"

"Sean, Sean, Sean," Jackie chants, falling to his knees next to him.

Sean's in his wolf form, his flame smell melding into the heavy scent of earth and rain. Blood leaks into the dirt around him. He doesn't move as Jackie leans over him, stroking his fur, searching for the injury.

"He could have been here all night," whimpers Jackie. "What happened, Sean, who did this?"

"This park is always full of wolves, Jackie. If no one's found him, he can't have been here all night." Marvin grips his phone as his call goes through. "Yes, I need an ambulance at the park on Crawford street, please, please! I don't know if he's - Jackie, is he breathing, is he - ?"

"He's breathing. But - here, they're bitemarks, a bite wound, another wolf did this to him. Circle, Marvin, quick, check for any other scents."

Marvin backs off and prowls the nearby trees as he chatters desperately to the phone operator, his nose raised. But he doesn't smell anything but the remnants of the thunderstorm, electricity and petrichor, and Sean's scent, bitter with blood and paprika-anger.

"Did you find Chase and Henrik?"

"No," croaks Marvin. "They must not have known he was out here either."

"But why weren't they with us at the office, waiting for class?"

"Maybe they were just running late?"

Jackie shoots him a look somewhere between skepticism and concern, and Marvin knows that they weren't just running late, much as he wants to believe it. He swipes into his messages, but there's no reply to either of his texts. Something's wrong.

"Why would Sean be out here alone?"

"Maybe he had... you know how Alphas schedule fights sometimes?"

"Oh, come off it! Sean's not an Alpha, and he's not violent. The only thing that even makes him angry are his court cases. Like when that red wolf bit that predator's hands off - "

"What? Oh, that's the vigilante Henrik and Chase mentioned."

Marvin stares at him.

He hasn't wanted to ask, hasn't wanted to jeopardize their new togetherness, their happiness. But he'd never been able to get rid of the idea that Jackie was the vigilante.

Why did he say 'what?' like he had no clue what he was talking about?

Jackie never lies.

"You're really not the one that did that?" Marvin manages.

Jackie blinks at him, wrapping his hoodie around Sean's injured side as he tries to stop the bleeding. "Bit someone's fucking hands off? I like a good fight, Marvin, and I know you've seen me vicious a couple times, but I don't truck with humans like that. Just gives them a reason to put you down like a dog who bites too many times."

Sean shifts in the dirt and Jackie gasps, leaning low over him to speak softly to him, swearing to him that everything will be okay. It would be easier for the doctors if Sean were human, Marvin knows, but Sean doesn't have the strength to shift right now. His red-brown fur is stained with mud and blood, but it's still that warm color. When the light gleams on it, it's not red-brown. It's just red.

"Holy shit," Marvin whispers. "He was so angry about that man touching the kid - and he told me, he said - the week before, he told me he had a case where mom was fighting for custody of a little werewolf girl after her dad touched her, and Sean was so frustrated - "

"What are you talking about?" Jackie demands, but then the paramedics are there, and Marvin thanks the stars for the camaraderie of wolves, because two of them he's never met before have helped the medics find them as soon as possible, following the trail of blood without question when they saw the ambulance arrive. A huge grey wolf trots up to Marvin and presses against his legs, and all he can do is try to breathe as Jackie helps the paramedics get Sean out on a stretcher, begging them to find a doctor instead of a vet, stroking Sean's fur. For a moment, Sean's rolling eyes find Marvin's, and he stares at his friend as Sean pants and gazes at him, jaw stretching. There's... something in his mouth.

Jackie spots it a moment later too, reaching tenderly down to Sean's teeth and extracting swirls of black caught there. He's finally pried away from the stretcher and he and Marvin both follow after the paramedics as they bring him back to the ambulance outside the park, and disappear down the road.

Marvin thinks he could faint. He checks himself for seizure warning signs, and he thinks Jackie does too, because he wraps an arm carefully around his shoulder like he might fall. But he's just... scared. The tears come then, blooming and spilling over, and Jackie squeezes him tight, his scent pounding with fury and fear.

"Let's go to Chase's and check for them," Marvin wheezes. "Please. I don't understand what's going on, they have to be there, they - "

Jackie shakes his head slowly. His eyes are hard in a way Marvin hasn't seen them since they were teenagers.

"They won't be there," he says, soft.

"What? No, no, they have to be. They were just running late, or they got caught up with something and couldn't come to class, or - "

Jackie hands him the black stuff he pulled from Sean's teeth. Fur, Marvin realizes, some of it with skin still attached at the end. Sean bit back. He pulls the fur close to his face and scents it, and there - beneath blood and saliva and the strong scent of the lightning-wrought storm - is lemon and chocolate and caramel.

"The wolf who stole them," Marvin whispers. "He came back, and Sean - Sean smelled him, somehow, went to confront him, tracked him down, but - "

Jackie takes the fur back from him. His hands do not shake, but his nails press into his palm as they squeeze into fists, tight, tight.

"The wolf has them already," he says.

.

The night of the storm, the crack of thunder roused Chase from sleep, but it shouldn't have.

He turned over on his bed, facing towards the window, and squinted out at the flash of lightning and the racing water down the glass before letting his eyes slide shut again, still half-asleep.

Something moved in the hallway, but he had a guest. Henrik was moving around, then. He was too sleepy for it to matter. The storm made the air cold, but it was perfectly hot in the security of his blankets. He snuggled into his own chocolate scent, snuffling. The smell of the rain, even inside his own house, seemed to dull everything else.

A creak, in his room. The door, maybe. He was barely awake. It was so warm.

The scent of the storm was heavy and electric. Familiar, in a way.

His eyes cracked open again. He sighed slightly to be disturbed from comfy sleep. What time was it?

“He's asleep, go get the other one.”

Chase froze, eyes flashing open. He didn't move.

There was someone in his room. Wasn't there? Did he dream that? A whisper, nothing more, but – no, he heard it. Not a dream.

There was someone in his room.

Henrik – but why would Henrik whisper that? Why would Henrik just be standing there, then, unmoving in the doorway, not waking him? Looking at him? Staring at him, silent?

There was an exhale of air in the doorway, soft. Like anxiety. Like uncertainty.

He wanted to turn over in a rush, but he couldn't move at all. He knew there was someone there, in his doorway, looking at him, but he couldn't turn over. Too scared to see them standing there. His eyes were watering, his heart jack-hammering in his chest.

“Oh, not asleep,” whispered that voice. “I scared you. I'm sorry. It'll be okay, pup.”

That was not Henrik's voice. Chase almost gagged on the whimper he tried to keep down, staring blankly at the wall as he struggled in vain to react. Please, please, please. He didn't know who he was begging, or for what. There was someone in his fucking house. In his bedroom. Looking at him.

They moved, feet padding against his carpet. They came close to him. He hyperventilated, no longer able to make a show of being asleep, panic overriding everything. The closer they came, the stronger the smell of the storm, and he recognized it as distinct from the smell in the air, then. The wolf came the night he knew his scent would be masked, blending into all else. Was he waiting for a storm? Or for something else? Did he finally find them, or has he always known? Has he always been watching?

The weight of the wolf sank onto the mattress.

Chase screamed at last, turning over and throwing himself back against his window, but the other wolf was faster; his hand shot out and grabbed Chase by the throat. Chase screamed again, coming face-to-face with his abductor, but the press of the wolf's thumb into his jugular vein made him choke on the noise, and he couldn't do anything but groan and grab at that hand, tears racing down his face. Lightning burst outside his window, illuminating green eyes in the darkness, only for a moment.

“Henrik!” Chase wailed. “Henrik, run!”

“Enough of that, now,” chided the wolf. “You did so good, bringing him home to you, making him smell like pack. He'll come with us too.”

“No, please, we don't want this!”

“You will, though. And things will be better. Once we get out of town, out to the real forest, we can live the way we were meant to.”

Chase's response was cut off as a second hand wrapped around his throat, the pressure so oppressive that he shut up instinctively, eyes blown in the darkness. That thumb soothed up and down his neck, the hands just tight enough to scare him, but not tight enough to cut his air. He couldn't move, bowed nearly in half by the sudden desperation of his body to just submit before he got hurt. He'd lost a fight, and now he had to obey. His head faltered, drooping over those hands, and his eyes met those of the wolf. That smell was so familiar, so fragrant and soothing, five times as powerful as the piece of fabric he gave to Sean. Of course, something in his body sang. My pack came back for me.

His fear cut in half and he went limp on the bed. The wolf rumbled at him and released his throat from one hand, helping pull him up. “Shift for me, Chase, come on. Time to go home.”

He got him to his feet. Chase felt dizzy and disoriented, his throat aching. He wanted to bury himself in the other wolf's smell. He wanted to rip the other wolf's heart out with his teeth. He couldn't move. As he pulled him towards the door, that hand on his neck shifted for just a second, moving away from his vein, and Chase –

Chase bolted.

“Henrik!” he screamed. “Henrik, run, call the police!”

Laughter followed him as he charged into his guest room, slamming open the door and then shoving it closed behind him, using his body as a barricade. In Henrik's room, the storm lashed the window. Chase turned as a strike of white light burst through the room, and in that glow, he saw the silhouette of his friend, limp as a doll and laid out on the ground. Above him stood a black wolf, and the wolf had its teeth in his throat.