Wolfspeaker 6/?
Title: Wolfspeaker
Author: 2he_re (Heather and Reena)
Fandom: Jonas Brothers
Pairing(s): Kevin/OFC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, animalistic, gore, angst.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, the real people in it are used without their permission and we do not own them or have any copyright to any part of any of them. We do not believe any of this happened, is likely to happen, or will happen. It is simply a story created around known facts about those involved.
Summary:
Wolfspeaker, this is your wolf, your child.
Love or to hate, you can never forget each other, leave each other.
~*~
The girl tries to touch Kevin, help him change the bandages, get him food, hand him water. He doesn’t want it. He refuses what she gives him. He can’t look her in the eyes anymore. His heart jolts when he does; when he catches a reflection of the bright blue orbs. He flushes and remembers her hot air on his neck, her hands pushing him down, her tongue sliding over his skin. He remembers her inability to stay from Daniel’s grip, her wild words and jerks of her body, screaming as two separate people.
Kevin’s scared that’s going to be him.
There, he admits it, trying to push himself up and stumble out of the cave, even though he knows he shouldn’t be moving so much. He falls back down onto the ground, and his head bangs against the rock and dirt floor. Shit. He hunches over, clutching the back of his skull and holding back tears.
He’s scared he won’t ever be able to think for himself because Markus will always be in his mind. He freaks out at the thought that Markus is in him right now, influencing his thoughts, cataloging his every movement, feeling his increased heart rate, his harsh breaths, and cries of pain. He always checks his eyes, making sure they’re still his chocolate brown. He needs to constantly look at his skin, a color he knows so well, to make sure it hasn’t faded into a black, white, or grey. He’s scared of what he will do if it ever changes.
He falls asleep and there he runs in Markus. Their long legs reach together, their strong bodies flying over fields and weaving between trees.
He wakes up with a sob, and there she is, staring him. He has to look away from her, look down to the ground. He puts his hand over his mouth, trying to breathe like she had made him the other day. Air barely comes to him, because he keeps remembering her hanging over him. How helpless he felt, how she had every mean of control. How he felt Markus’s hot breath at the back of his neck, and his pant of want. Her drawing voice, her caressing hands.
She reaches out. “Kevin.” He grits his teeth and sucks in breath. “Let me help you.”
“Go away, Daniel.” He sees her recoil, and all he wants is to hurt her. He wants to tear her apart. She didn’t let Danielle find him. She didn’t let him go home. She kept him here, in this fucked up forest, to fucking rot in a cave! “What? Something wrong with that, Daniel?” He watches her from beneath his eyelashes, her taunt face. “Aren’t you two one? Does it hurt when I say that? Oh, poor, lonely, bitch.”
She slaps him. He shuts up, gritting his teeth. “Do not call me that. We are one but different. I am a Wolfspeaker. He is a wolf.” He doesn’t grace her with a response. “Fine,” she spits to him. “Act like that. I was only trying to help.”
“Only trying to rape me,” Kevin snaps back. His emotions aren’t at all stable. He has never changed so quickly. He feels so fucking bi-polar, up and down. God, he hates it. Why is it happening? His anger flares. It has to be something she did to him. A fucking vet is what her mom was, not a human doctor.
“You told me I could not end it.”
“I said you started it.”
“Same difference!”
Kevin scowls, crossing his arms and turning his head. The conversation is done, over with. Let her find some other cave to crawl into. She finally leaves, muttering under her breath. Kevin can relax then, fall into sleep. Into a sleep where he prowls as Markus prowls. His feet pad over the ground -- black and white - cracking sticks that haven’t had enough water. They haven’t had rain in a while, unusual, food is scarce. His throat dries at the thought of the warm blood and the food to fill his empty belly.
Kevin wakes up to black and white. It distorts where he sits, where he is. The cave looks different. His throat has gone dry. He gets up without problem, hunched over as he scurries from the cave. He feels Markus starting to run, sprint after something. He explodes into the woods, dark, moon casting jumping shadows through leaves. He barely hits branches, barely rustles the colorless leaves. He feels strong, powerful, unstoppable.
He runs and runs. Markus sees something different than him -- different trees, different stones, branches -- but they move at the same pace, in the same way. Their feet twist and turn together. Kevin doesn’t know how he’s running, except he knows he never wants to stop. Noises move past him in a blur like the ill-defined lines of the woods. He feels strong, powerful. Running on adrenaline or hidden energy he’s never felt before? He takes a breath through his mouth, sucking in crisp air. He feels complete, feels whole. He can see colors within the shades.
Take on your Markus or you will never fulfill this longing, she snapped to him - her clothes hanging haphazardly on her boney frame, her eyes never resting for a minute in the ever changing forest, with her Daniel never too far away. Die with a longing. Markus disappears. Kevin stumbles, the colors shoots back. They blind him. He crashes down, stride breaking, power leaving.
He bites back a howl at the pain. His whole body aches. He feels no lingering touch at his brain, no rush of strength, no sense of belonging, all grace disperses from him. Everything so gripping and overwhelming; his head pounds, his breath comes without pace, his heart doesn’t beat in its normal rhythm. He pushes himself up, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He grips for a tree to keep from falling, and there’s that spider.
It crawls slowly downward on a part of its newly built web. A fly captured below.
“It’s so cool!” Kevin’s eyes rotate around to see past the web, to the other side. Frankie’s chunky face grins back at him. “Never see one of these at home.” Kevin swallows. Frankie gives him a strange look. “Hey, Kevin, planet Earth or still up in the orbits?”
“Frankie?”
Frankie laughs, light grey cap bouncing on his curls. He fixes it and gives his eyes a roll. “You sound so surprised. You were the one who asked me to go for a walk.”
“I did?”
“Out of it today, aren’t you?”
Kevin scratches the back of his head. So what if Frankie does sound a little off? He’s still Frankie, right? A dream then? Is that what he’s waking up from? So nothing in the past months is real? He wakes up, and here’s Frankie talking to him, something like that? It hurts his head to think about it, but there’s Frankie standing across from him, in flesh and blood. He still looks more or less the same. Frankie does like creepy crawlies more than Kevin doesn’t like them. “I guess.”
“Yeah, I know, these trees are so strange, puts everyone in a loop.” Frankie goes back to watching the spider, too much like that girl - of Kevin’s dreams? So she’s not real at all? Kevin forces all that away, it hurts too much. “What do you think about this one then?”
“What about it?” Kevin asks.
“Eating the fly?”
“Don’t like flies. So it’s nice the spider’s eating them.”
“No, I meant like, um… The spider catching the fly as part of survival. We don’t have to do that, all we do is hop in the car and go grocery shoppin’.”
“Yeah,” Kevin says. He doesn’t really understand.
Frankie gives Kevin a look, before reaching up in a nervous gesture to adjust his red hat. “If I was dead, and I was the only thing to eat, would you eat me?”
Kevin flinches backwards. He remembers the girl saying something about eating humans. But that’s not true. It was all a dream, and he never ate humans. A dream. All a dream, right? “I -“ Frankie turns and walks away. “Frankie!” Kevin calls after him, suddenly scared that his dream will become reality. “Wait!” Frankie takes off running. His shoes squish into the mud that Kevin can’t feel under his shoes. Frankie makes farting noises as he tromps along. Kevin panics, calling out after his baby brother. But Frankie won’t stop. He’s laughing back at Kevin, as if they’re playing a game. “Traps! Frankie, be careful of -“
Frankie screams, going down, teeth clamping his foot. Kevin can’t move. He doesn’t even know if he breathes or not, his head goes light. Frankie cries, he cries and cries reaching out to his big brother. “Kevin,” he begs. “It hurts, Kevin, it hurts.”
He can’t move, Kevin can’t move. He feels like a tree, rooted to its spot seeing so much, unable to interfere. The wolf bounds out. Markus he knows now, it’s Markus who takes Frankie away from him. Who rips Frankie from the trap as Kevin fights Daniel. He watches Markus devour Frankie. Hears the horrible screams, sees all the blood.
He closes his eyes, falling to the ground. He screams at it all to stop. He doesn’t want to see Frankie die again. He doesn’t want this to be reality. Why can’t it be a dream? He wants it to be a dream. He opens his eyes, and the sight remains. Why can’t he wake up? He chokes something down his throat. Markus leers over Frankie’s dead body, a falling drop of blood caught in freeze frame. The two figures don’t move. Kevin grasps a branch to rise from his knees. All around Mother Earth shakes her limbs, but his brother and his wolf stay still. He’s too afraid to move, to lose the sight of Frankie forever, no matter how mangled he looks.
Kevin reaches out to touch, to capture one last memory of Frankie’s skin, and the blood falls. Markus shakes his head and tears a lifeless Frankie away into the foliage. Kevin doesn’t have strength to follow. He stares at the spot, with the trap, still red, still holding Frankie’s leg. He glances away, to where Frankie’s black hat has fallen. He has to turn away, and when he looks back, finally deciding on taking the hat to remind him of Frankie, it’s gone. The trap has left, too.
Kevin steps forward and picks up a stick. He prods the ground. No trap. No blood. No limb. No hat. No Frankie. He staggers, but doesn’t fall. He wonders how long he can take the reality that has set in on him, again. He wonders if it would be worth trying to convince himself Frankie never died, and his family still surrounds him. He knows them well enough, he probably can mimic everything they’ll say. He could make a life so believable that he’d die happily, in his family’s arms.
But he could never do that. Then he runs the risk of them finding out about the girl - the girl still without a name that calls herself Wolfspeaker, who has no morals, and has no problems with becoming a wild animal. Who cared for Kevin in one breath and in the other, tried to rape him, if rape is even the right word. He isn’t sure what all she did. He flushes at the thought of their confrontation again. What would he do if she invades his mouth again, runs her hands down his chest. He doesn’t want his family to find out about that. He won’t be able to deal with that. In an imaginary life, in a real one.
He gasps at how hard it is to think about anything. It hurts. It never physically hurt so much to think. He’s even willing to find his brother’s killer, connect to him, try to find strength, no matter how much it hurts afterwards. He needs something now, to cure the headache, go someplace else. Away from here. This isn’t where Kevin saw Frankie go down as they played tag, but he saw it here. He doesn’t like it.
He tries to think of Markus, think of the wolf to connect, to find, to fade the world to simple shapes and go back to running without problems, not a care in the world. He focuses on the need for the hunt, on the need for clean air and water. It doesn’t work.
Kevin closes his eyes against tears. He probably imagines up the girl too, the whole Wolfspeaker thing, the whole idea of finding his wolf. What does he know? Nothing. Groundhogs eat people now, too. See the shitty tricks his brain plays on him? No good, stupid brain that has him repeatedly fucking himself up.
Listen. That is good advice. The only good advice he’s come up with. The girl, he names her Amanda - so sure everything is indeed happening in his mind - and thinks he gave himself good advice, because Amanda is only a figment of his imagination. He tries to conjure her up for some more, but she refuses to come into the forefront of his mind, or when she does, she’s flimsy and only barely there. She scowls and tells him to move more silent, faster, straighter, even when he hasn’t taken a single step.
He knows he’ll only be able to walk in one direction after he starts moving - too much energy to even think of changing directions - and he doesn’t want it to be the wrong way. But he needs to get away. He doesn’t like what he’s seen in this place, even if it is all fake. So he listens until he hears a babbling brook and hopes that’s not a part of his imagination too, because he knows he’s thirsty. He refuses to focus on what hurts as he starts to walk in the direction of water. He does, however, think all about everything he knows to be the truth. He knows his family is dead. But he’s not sure anymore if wolves got them, because why would they spare Kevin then? The Wolfspeaker excuse his mind has come up with makes no sense whatsoever. So, his family died, he knows that. Or maybe not.
He steps around a log as best as he can, thinking, which hurts, but not quite so much as walking where ever step he fumbles for a branch.
Maybe his family hasn’t died, and Kevin’s only lost. Then, it explains everything except his reoccurring thoughts of Frankie and the wolf, which he has come to name Markus, a name Kevin has always been particularly fond of. Unless, seeing Frankie die by a wolf is simply what Kevin’s afraid of happening.
He ponders as he stumbles along, gripping limbs like lifelines, and listening to the water. He really hopes the sound isn’t fake, because he knows he’s thirsty and that’s all about he does know. No matter what he does, none of the parts of his mind will appear to him again, no Markus or Daniel or Amanda or Frankie, but Frankie is real, not his imagination, right?
It takes time to finally get to the water, and when Kevin does arrive, he’s not disappointed. It’s not the same water area he visited (imagined?) before. Nowhere near as picture perfect, which convinces Kevin it’s real enough to step close to, to crouch by the banks filled by grass and scattered rocks. He sees fish, larger than the ones he tried catching back in the pool.
He dips his hand in, and brings it up to his face, dribbling the water into his mouth. He loves how it slides down in a very realistic way, meaning reality. He scoops up more and more, so much that it rolls in the bottom of his stomach. It slides down his throat easier than last swallow, smoother and makes it through his mouth without having to hydrate everything.
That’s when he notices who has joined him. Is this someone new he has come up with, or something real? “Hello,” he says softly. No black and white. Is that a good thing or bad? The little wolf doesn’t look up at him. Kevin frowns. “Shouldn’t you talk back?”
The cub gives him a startled look, before scampering away with a whine.
Kevin furrows his eyebrows. Frankie sits a little away from him. He looks so much younger than before, wearing a quirky blue cap. He picks at the grass, a little circle of dirt appears before him. “I dunno,” Frankie mumbles. “Kevin, why dunno?”
Kevin shakes his head. So, Frankie is a part of his imagination too? Last time he checked Frankie has turned ten. But then, what if?
“Where sense? Kevin, tell me sense.”
Kevin opens his mouth. He closes it. “Nothing makes sense…”
“Oh…”
Kevin falls back into the grass by the water and drifts to sleep. It’s easier on a stomach full of water than one without.
He wakes up with a pounding headache and barely has time to roll on his side, before he throws up. Most of it’s water. Actually, that’s the only thing Kevin sees in it. He shifts to his knees, trying to understand why his head has decided to kill him today of all days. His throat’s parched again, and the only thing Kevin needs is more water. He, however, wants nothing to do with said liquid. It settles in a lump at the pit of his stomach and sloshes around at his movements, understandingly small movements, and he feels seasick.
When he looks up, there’s Markus. The wolf comes over to him, flank knotted and tangled. Kevin doesn’t know why he would imagine something ugly. Why not imagine something perfect? He tries, but the wolf’s fur doesn’t change. Markus huffs to him. He brushes the tip of his nose along Kevin’s collarbone. Kevin jumps backwards.
Not real, he tries to tell himself. Markus is not real. But he’s not sure what good it does, or why he’s doing it. Markus twists around him, fur brushing at every angle, and Kevin stands, grasping Markus for support. Real, he finally believes. He shouldn’t be able to stand if Markus is fake, then his hand would go right through the animal. But it doesn’t, it wraps into the dirty fur. He can feel all the knots, the matted hair, the dirt tied in.
Markus tugs away, and Kevin lets go with a stumble. The wolf moves back to him, wrapping through Kevin’s legs, until Kevin re-grabs the coat.
“What are you going’?” Kevin starts over to his brother’s voice. Frankie has his arms crossed over his chest. Old. He looks so old. His eyes flash, and he stands almost as tall as Kevin. He doesn’t look anything like the baby brother Kevin knows. It scares him. It scares him so much he shoves Markus away. He reaches out to touch Frankie, but his brother moves away with a hard glare. “It killed me.”
Kevin’s knees crumple. “I…”
“It killed me. That thing!” Frankie waves his hand towards Markus, who brushes up against Kevin. He freezes at the contact. Frankie scowls, adjusting his green hat. “I’m not alive, because of it. And you go, and you go and start being all okay with it.”
“Frankie…”
“Why? How? How can you all of a sudden pretend I don’t exist, never did. That Mom and Dad and Joe and Nick don’t matter?”
“You do! You don’t -“
“And that girl.”
Kevin’s eyes widen. “How do you know about Amanda?” She’s part of his imagination. How does Frankie know?
Frankie blows on, not carrying what Kevin said. “You go and let her be all nice to you. And you don’t care about any of us. You watch stars with her, and she gives you ‘Markus’. And then, you go and let her kiss you. Explain that to me?”
“I never let her!” Kevin screams.
“You didn’t seem to mind,” Frankie shoots back. “You got all hard and panted for her.”
“That was Markus.”
Frankie snorts. “I didn’t see Markus, only you and her with your yellow eyes.”
Kevin stands and grabs onto a branch. He makes his way over to Frankie, who stands rooted to his spot with that fiery gaze of his. It reminds Kevin of the flames that leapt up and consumed the van. His imagination, maybe? Kevin reaches out to grab his brother’s hand, planning on pulling him closer. But there’s no Frankie. There’s no hand.
Markus nuzzles his feet, and Kevin kicks at the head. Markus cries, darting away. He comes back, circling around Kevin, watching him. “Go away,” Kevin tells him. Markus won’t leave. Kevin tries telling his mind to get rid of Markus, but he can’t believe Markus isn’t there now, that his family is still alive, and that the girl is only part of his imagination. What’s real? What’s real? The wolf comes back to him, and Kevin shoves him away, barely staying up right. “Leave,” he snarls to it.
The world doesn’t flash without color. He doesn’t feel power seep into him over any bond. He feels weak, powerless. Markus doesn’t leave him. If anything, the hound keeps touching him, whining, weaving around him, trying to push him in one direction or the other. Then there’s his little brother, blue baseball hat jammed onto his head. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
Then Kevin’s next to him, trying to grab him, to give soothing words to his broken brother. But Kevin’s hand falls into air. Markus worms between his arms, and Kevin recoils. Markus shifts away, tail low. The black and white takes hold. He feels so sad. “Go away,” Kevin mumbles to Markus. Markus slides back, the colors come back, and Markus left him.
All alone, Kevin limps back to the stream. He sits by it, but doesn’t take a drink. He can’t see his reflection, everything moves too quickly, and he likes it that way. He lies back. Maybe Amanda isn’t Amanda, but an actual girl with a name she won’t tell him for some reason. Maybe he’ll recognize it and judge her? He doesn’t know. He wakes up, feeling better and has some water. His stomach growls for food, but Kevin knows that the only way he could catch a fish is if it’s with his imagination, but then he couldn’t eat the fish.
He stands, not as shaky as the day before. Relief floods him when he sees there is no Markus. It’s him alone in a forest, no imagination that he can tell of, and no Frankie - real or fake. He walks alone, trying to be quiet. He doesn’t like being so loud, but it can’t exactly be helped can it? It starts to rain, and he doesn’t know where to find shelter. He has no desire to stand in the rain, so he tries to hunt a cave out. He can’t very well listen for anything in the rain which is why he stumbles along, blindly trying to find his way as the ground hungrily took in everything the clouds had to offer.
Well, he’s in luck. There’s a cave up ahead, and he stumbles into it. He collapses on the ground and dozes off. He wakes up to a low growl. There’s a lady wolf snarling at him. “Go away,” he says to it. Stupid him, she doesn’t listen. She snaps at his face, and Kevin shuffles back, slamming into the cave wall.
She growls to him, and behind her he sees four cubs peeping at him. No Dad. She lunges and he ducks, black and white. Black and white, makes the cave harder to navigate in. But he doesn’t hurt all that much anymore. He’s scared though, shit, it’s coming through Markus too, pure fear, anxiety, strength. He takes a step back, and knocks into something. A screech and he realizes it’s a baby pup.
He turns to the mother. She lunges at him with a howl and yelp. He barely ducks in time, claws slashing at open air. Markus urges him to go back further into the cave. Safety is back there. Kevin shakes his head, as the mom starts to prep to attack him again. She walks with a distinct placement of the paws, so soft and quiet he can barely hear. That’s the idea; it’s hard to see in black and white, when almost everything blurs. So he has to rely on sound. Sound won’t help him if she doesn’t make any.
She swipes at him, and he doesn’t see, but Markus knows. Markus jerks something inside of him, flight. Kevin jumps farther back into the cave, head knocking into the ceiling. He gives a cry and goes down. Markus yells at him to get up. Kevin isn’t sure he can. Shit, that hurt, his head spins and he can’t see right. There’s a strange echoing in the cave he doesn’t like. It smells bad, clogging up his nose. He gags and trips backwards. Markus howls at him to crawl. To crawl backwards and stay. Don’t move. He’s coming, he’s coming as quick as he can. Kevin freezes at the stumble of rocks from the mom. She snorts and rustles. Kevin bites back a whimper.
Kevin’s wrenched into Markus’s mind. His feet fly over the ground, crashing through the trees, sliding through mud. He’s not silent, but loud and furious. His breath comes in pants and strong yelps. He’s threatening, commanding. Animals scurry out of the way, and he knows where he’s going. He needs to get there soon. His heart tears in half at the idea of coming too late. His Speaker. His Voice. His two-leg.
Then he’s there, and he howls. She doesn’t appear; the mother still hunts for his two-leg. But the pup squeals as he appears. The pup. He tears at it, and the pup gives a cry, barely months old. His two-leg. His and his alone. He claws the pup open and throws it back with his teeth. It slams into the wall and Markus stalks forward. He jumps on another pup while he waits for their mother. The longer she takes, the more will die.
This one gets away, a slash bleeding over his muzzle. Markus barks after him. Let the pup know about him, his two-leg. Then the mother comes, careening out of the back. She growls at him, trying to fight him. He takes her over without problem. He rolls her into the floor, raking down her back with snarls. Submit to him. Submit to someone not her mate.
“Markus.” Markus turns his large head towards the sound, towards the front of the cave. The mother smashes in his nose, and he staggers away. She hisses to him, darting in front of her pups. Protect them. He whips around to the speaker, to the intruder. It’s her again, the other two-leg. Not his. Daniel’s. “Don’t.”
He steps towards her. Don’t. Don’t she tells him. She is not his two-leg. Never was. Only someone to help him understand two-legs for when his finally came. His has finally arrived. She does not command him. He draws back his lips, showing her his teeth. She backs down, and he lumbers forward to her. She bows her head, and Markus slides around her, twisting between her legs. That’s right.
He nips at her leg. She tenses. Keep Kira here. My two-leg.
He snaps at Kira who tries desperately to protect her young from him. But he can take them, take any he wants. He doesn’t, because his two-leg waits for him.
He starts back to his two-leg. His Kevin.
Color replaces the black and white, and Kevin swallows. He can’t move. Fear keeps him in place, Markus’s fear, anger, strength. The wolf comes to him and nuzzles his cheek, wet from running in the rain. Feet muddy from pounding over the forest to get to him. Kevin gulps, and with shaking hands wraps them around the wolf’s neck. Markus hums, lying down and rolling into Kevin.
A scream echoes around the cave, a howl of frustration, pain. Little yelps fill the cave, and Kevin feels the limp body under his teeth, hurtling it into the wall. It doesn’t hurt to feel that, because Markus reassures him that it’s all part of the wild. Kevin doesn’t know how he knows that’s what Markus says, but he knows that the pup Markus killed wouldn’t have lasted the winter. He simply saved Kira and Daniel the hurt from thinking they killed their child and stretching the food supply so they all became gaunt and thin, starved themselves.
Daniel. Kevin’s blood runs cold, every inch of his skin cold and clammy. Markus stretches out and falls asleep, as exhausted as Kevin who can’t sleep. Frankie sits opposite him, petting Markus’s water-logged coat. A grey hat sits next to him, not on his wet curls.
“I don’t know why you let him,” Frankie says. Something sticks in Kevin’s throat. He can’t talk. His brother looks innocent, but older than his age when he died. He looks cute, adorable even. Kevin took away any chance of a girl seeing him like that, for Frankie to grow up and have a family, kids, grandkids. “He killed me.”
“I never…”
“And you don’t mind sitting next to him.”
“He saved me, too,” Kevin mumbles, eyes downcast. He doesn’t want to see Frankie’s disapproving expression.
“He doesn’t care about killing, Kevin. I thought you were better than that.”
“I’m trying!” he screams, flashing his eyes up to his brother. But Frankie’s not there, and neither is his hat. The girl crawls close to him, from the forefront of the cave, but when he glares, she stops.
“Who were you talking to?” she asks.
“Frankie,” he tells her.
She rolls her eyes. “He’s dead.” Kevin shrugs. “I need to change your bandages or you’ll be infected.”
“I can do it,” he snaps as she reaches out.
She snorts and drops her hand. “You can’t, not without finding your Markus and straining more.”
“He’s right here.”
She laughs at him. “You do not understand.”
Someone frowns from behind her, hands crossed over his chest. He’s old, maybe in his twenties. “She’s a bitch.” Kevin jumps at the voice, Frankie. He didn’t know Frankie had a green hat. He thought he’d had red. No, he shakes his head. Frankie had a blue hat, he thinks, but he doesn’t know. But then, maybe Frankie does have green too?
“What? Can’t talk now?” she jabs towards Kevin.
Frankie scoffs. “See? I told you.”
Kevin looks between the two. The girl doesn’t turn around to glare at Frankie, draw a knife to his throat. She huffs. “You need to unwrap at least. Take off your clothes. The water makes bacteria to grow better.” She turns away, and takes her time going away, out of the almost pitch-black area.
Kevin struggles to take off his shirt, but he can’t. He gives up, Frankie watching him with a look Kevin doesn’t know. It’s a look from the older Frankie, not from the one he knew, the little innocent one who ran around. Kevin falls asleep under that look.
He wakes up, panting, another nightmare. His clothes have all been removed. He doesn’t even wear boxers. He shoves the wolf roughly away from him, straining against the rips he feels all over him. Markus snorts, waking up. Kevin hits him again, but the push does nothing. “Go away,” Kevin tries to command him, but the large hound woofs out, settling back down, pressing his wet flank into Kevin. He recoils away, and Markus whines. “No,” Kevin says.
Markus’s ears go back. He growls. Kevin stares him down. Markus huffs, shuffling away. Kevin looks up, startled at a noise. The girl appears, holding a blanket. She doesn’t spare him a glance. She tosses it over to Kevin. “Sleep,” she says. “Then Markus will hunt for you.”
~*~