[FIC] Star Trek: In Which We Change [1/2] (Kirk/Bones, PG-13)
Title: In Which We Change [1/2]
Author: salvaged_pride
Beta: sullacat
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Bones
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: "Werewolves: Separated from the Pack" from my hurt/comfort bingo card. #2 in attempted blackout.
Summary: AU - Leonard McCoy is your ordinary, grumpy village doctor. When a young man shows up bloody and hurt on his doorstep one night, everything he knew about his world was about to change. Word Count: 14,160
Master Fanfiction List | Part 2 >>
In Which We Change [Part 1]
In front of me was one giant wolf chained to a tree. He sat there staring at me, and I at him. Those blue eyes never left me, even when I forced my tired body up out of the chair and started to walk the line I had marked earlier, just past where the chain would let him come out. He got up as well and started to follow me, slow stalking movements of his long limbs. The instincts were strong in him to never let a stranger get out of his sight. I was sick and tired of being a stranger to him, so here I was, with a bunch of meat back beside my chair and a stick clutched in my hand as if it was some form of protection against a creature this size. Stood there, facing down one of the few things that could really scare me. I just had to keep him from knowing that, or all this time would be wasted.
At least it wasn't a vampire. Unfortunately, it was Jim.
Let me start at the beginning. Name's Leonard McCoy, and I'm the doctor in this village and have been for years now. Small practice, but a constant stream of patients means that I never stop being busy. I might have open office hours for ten hours a day, but in reality my doors never fully close. Even in the middle of the night, I end up getting woken out of a dead sleep at least once a week. It was during one of these wake-up calls that I met him.
When I stumbled through my house in the dark, sleep-numb fingers finding a lantern and getting it lit, I found him clinging to my front door like it was all that was holding him up. I barely managed to get through the thought of wondering how he had gotten my locked front door open before I saw him give me a grin with teeth smeared pink with blood. A second later, he collapsed in a dead faint. I didn't have time to think on the unlocked door before I was dragging him into the office attached to my home.
Whatever had attacked this kid, and for sure he had been attacked by something, it'd been powerful. There was a chunk taken out of his arm with what looked like claws, a strange pair of puncture marks on his shoulder, and bruises littered up and down his body, both new and old. I had to carefully remove his clothing and ignore the strange things that were hitting the floor so I could get a better look at him. First things first, however weird the situation was, I had to get some of the blood cleaned off to get a better look. By the time I finally got to the puncture marks, I realized I had never seen anything quite like them before. Two marks, side by side, no longer bleeding even if they were shallow. I was bent over studying them close when a hand grabbed the front of my shirt and practically stopped my heart on the spot.
He was staring at me, and the first thing I noticed as I stared back at his face were his eyes. I'm not one of those bards that'll wax poetry about people's eyes, but the first thing that came to my mind was how blue they were. All blue like the sky in summer. They were very focused, and I could see the pain in them.
"Holy water," he said roughly in a voice either hoarse from screaming or tight from pain. I stared at him, confused. What did he want with holy water? He must have seen that confusion, because he clarified, "Pour holy water on the bite."
Bite? I looked him over again, but I couldn't see any bite marks at all. Maybe he was delirious-- "Holy water. Shoulder." His other hand flopped up and his fingers landed splayed over the two puncture marks.
Things clicked in my mind, and they all added up into something I damn well didn't want it to. Holy water and two puncture marks? "You have to be kidding me," I told him. "Don't pull this religious bullshit on me."
He surprised me all over again by giving me that grin, same one I had seen at the door, then laughing. "Don't care if you don't believe me, just do it, Doc."
Something in his eyes, something in his eyes... actually made me answer truthfully instead of the answer I had already started concocting in my mind. "Don't have any, kid. I'm a doctor, not a priest." Whole lot less comforting than grabbing some water and lying my way to comfort his eccentricities.
"Am I going to bleed out on your table here, Doc?" the kid asked, humor in his voice even as it was tight with pain.
Easy to answer. "No."
"Then get some." Then, almost as if he realized how he sounded, the kid softened the order with a quiet please.
That please was what sent me out in the middle of the night, cursing my way through the village in the dark, to pound on the heavy wood of the church's side door. No way I was going up to the large front doors which could be seen by anyone passing by. Already I felt like a damn fool, waking up the Father with this inane request. I was grateful as much as I was embarrassed when the door opened and the priest looked at me with a level glare. "Doctor?" His tone was somehow welcoming and damning in the same breath, and I didn't blame him.
"I'll keep it short, Father," brisk maybe, but I knew to at least be polite to a man I was disturbing at this hour. "I need this filled up with some holy water." The bottle wasn't too big, but enough that I thought it would convince the kid barely patched up on my operating table that I took his request seriously. It had been a last minute grab before I ran out of the house as the only other suitable thing on me was my flask. I wasn't about to taint it with holy water; liquor's not meant to be blessed in my damn humble opinion.
I didn't miss the raised eyebrow I got from the Father, who gestured for me to follow him inside. I took a look over my shoulder before I went in, making sure no one saw me enter, and felt like an outsider once I stepped in. I respected the Father, mostly because he was one of the few other educated men in the village, but I didn't believe in this religious stuff and he knew it. Once inside the dark church, the priest just vanished into the deep shadows. I could remember when he first showed up; everyone was nervous about the man who called himself a man of God but had dark skin and a few visible scars. You ask me? I'd rather someone who's got some life in his face than some fat man with all too much pride in his wobbling gut like our last priest. Died of liver failure in his own church. Too much holy wine, talk about your blessed liquor. Sure blessed the hell out of his liver, didn't it?
The Father came back out from the shadows he had been moving around in and offered me back the bottle I'd brought, now full of water. I could only assume it was blessed, whatever he had to do to make it so. I gave him a little nod and went back out into the night, pausing only to look back. "Thanks, Robau."
Kid hadn't moved an inch from where I had left him. I considered it a small wonder and hung up my coat with some extra effort, making sure to make some noise to wake the kid up. Wasn't entirely surprised when he jerked awake with all the reflexes of a cat, putting his eyes on me and giving a look up and down as if double checking just who I was before he relaxed back on the table. Kid was a fighter for sure.
"Better be worth having bothered our local priest for this stuff, kid." It was all pandering, but in the end, I figured I could get in better with him and find out just what happened if he trusted me.
The kid nodded, giving that smile again. "Was. Thanks, Doc. Just pour it straight on, it'll do the rest." Almost like he knew what he was doing. I shook my head, tugging out the cork with my teeth, and did just what he said by pouring it over the wound.
You couldn't have believed how surprised I was when he flinched, and the wound started hissing, smoking, like I had poured acid straight on it. Feeling like maybe I'd been had, I sniffed at the bottle but couldn't smell a damn thing except the scent of church in it. I poured the smallest drop on my hand, but had no reaction. More and more worrying thoughts started to collect on the nugget of an idea that had cropped up earlier until it rolled right out of my mouth. "Vampire."
"Right on the nose," the kid said with a laugh under his breath, closing his eyes again. "Bastard bit me before I could do anything about it. Was young, but powerful. Totally forgot about the--"
"Kid, vampires don't exist. What the hell happened--"
"Don't tell me what doesn't exist." I turned, hearing a venom in his voice that hadn't been there the whole if short time I'd known him. Before I denied the existence of his myth, he had been joking about his injuries, almost laughing. Now his eyes were narrowed, and there was this anger there... like I'd insulted him straight down to his core. "Believe what you want, Doc, but this time, you've got to believe me. Holy water until the bite stops hissing, and I won't end up puking my guts up with the Sickness."
The strength in his voice was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. Even without knowing his name, there was something about this kid that screamed dangerous, a leader unto himself. So I asked what I thought I needed to rebuild the trust I had shattered without even knowing it. "What's your name?" making a mental note to ask about 'the Sickness' later.
"Jim." That was all I got from him, making me wonder if Jim was short for James, and why I didn't get a last name to go along with it. Maybe someone who believed in and got bit by mythical creatures wanted to keep himself as anonymous as possible.
"Doctor Leonard McCoy. Look, kid, I'm not going to sit here and bicker with you about what's real or not, I just want to make sure you're okay." I walked back around to the puncture marks, and even though my old bitter soul still thought it was ridiculous, I cleaned the marks with the bottle of holy water until it stopped spitting and hissing. It might have been my imagination that the wound looked less inflamed and like it was already healing when I was done.
It was the first thing I bandaged up, and all the other marks on him got far more earthly means of cleaning before they were re-bandaged. The scratches were already beginning to close over under his body's own natural healing anyway - whatever fight Jim had been in had happened at least an hour ago - this was just to keep them from getting infected. I had a dozen questions buzzing in my mind and couldn't chose one to start with first. Fortunately, Jim picked a topic for me.
"Sorry to bother you so late." He rubbed under his nose, winced, and I moved up to his face to see if anything was damaged. Looked like he'd have a swollen nose for a few days, but at least it wasn't broken.
"Isn't a bother. If I cared about getting a decent night's sleep, I wouldn't have become a doctor," I could remember grumbling at him, familiar with those words. Plenty of my patients ended up saying the exact same thing.
The next thing, like everything else tonight, wasn't so familiar. "Can I trust you, Doc?"
I looked down to his face, and gave him what I hoped was a patient look. "Course you can." However strange this was, that was one thing I could always offer. If my patients didn't trust me, what kind of doctor was I? His eyes seemed to stare into mine like he was looking through me, a deeper something that made me shift uneasily until he gave that smile again and closed his eyes. As the air around Jim seemed to relax, so did I. As if my night couldn't have gotten any stranger.
"Thanks."
"Welcome, kid. Come on, let's get you into a bed so you can sleep this off." I still wanted to know what happened to him, get details of how a vampire would have bitten him. On the floor around my table were fallen objects along with his coat - I spotted two long thin silver needles, a somehow unbroken glass capsule, a miniature cross that was on a broken string, and a small blade with flecks of blood up around the guard. I kept it all in mind as I took most of his weight, walking him over to the cot I had set up for just such occasions. He didn't fuss over moving despite his wounds, and laid down still watching me.
"So, now you're going to tell this old doctor just what happened." Didn't see a point in wasting words, and damn if he was going to come in here making me get some fool holy water and bleed all over my table without explaining himself.
I won't get into every detail he told me that night, but before he finally passed out from exhaustion, I had more than enough to keep my head spinning. Evidently Jim, if that was even his real name, was a self-proclaimed vampire hunter who had been trained by someone he called 'Teacher'. Outside of the village in the countryside, Teacher and Jim had tracked down a particular vampire and cornered it. Unfortunately, it wasn't alone and another vampire got the drop on them. A much stronger vampire Jim called a Master. He and his Teacher had injured the first vampire and badly injured the Master, but the Master had managed to get off with his Teacher and left Jim for dead.
It was a hell of a story, and considering Jim's blood loss and the painkillers I eventually injected into him, I wasn't sure how much of it I believed. The one thing I knew for sure was something completely out of the ordinary was happening, this kid was a part of it, and somehow, so was I at least temporarily. My head spinning with information, new terminology, and myths, I stumbled back into bed and curled up there until long after the sun had come up.
It took the better part of a week for my newest patient to finally be able to get around fully on his own. He ended up sick, a deep sickness that seemed to go down to his bones and twist his insides and throb in his head, a sickness that I had only seen once before when I was training under my father. The one I had witnessed had been a more severe case, and I could still remember what my father said about it. How the patients felt like their very bones were dissolving, and he had never seen a case where someone survived that stage of the sickness.
When I said as much to Jim, his laugh turned into a cough and he shook his head. "Means you must be saving me and my bones, Doc." Which led to two days of Jim calling me the Bone Saver, to which I finally told him that if he kept calling me that, I would break all of those bones I had just saved. Unfortunately, this didn't stop the new nicknaming. Where everyone in the village called me Doctor, maybe McCoy from some of the older folks, Jim started calling me Bones.
After futilely attempting for another few days to find a nickname to call Jim to annoy him enough to stop, I found myself responding to the damned name.
By the second week, there was a routine between us that I couldn't figure out where it came from. Should have kicked the kid out when he could walk on his own, but there was something about Jim that got under my skin and didn't let go. Maybe it was nice, having another breathing body in my home. Someone who was a surprisingly good conversationalist, had hundreds of stories and could tell them well, acted concerned when I got home too late.
I knew it was foolish to get used to it, after all I had it once and lost it all. That was a long time ago before I came here, another story. Just know that it was nice to have even a small part of it again. Not that Jim ever needs to know.
After you haven't done it for a long time, even something as simple as sitting down to breakfast with someone became something to look forward to. Jim could cook some things I couldn't, I could cook some things he couldn't, and meals ended up being a combination of us both. I think I growled something about him earning his keep once, and damn if he didn't do it. Place actually got cleaned for the first time since... ever. How some kid like him knew how to do the little things like patching up a hole in a shirt or fix a door I'll never know. It definitely wasn't his job or anything. He told me a lot about the 'job' he had.
He called himself a vampire hunter. Meant it in every sense of the word - tracked down vampires to their holes, flushed them out, killed them as neat as a terrier hunting rats. I got to see the full arsenal of his weaponry one day when I came home early, got to hear about how all of them worked. It was hard to believe that he was lying when there were knives made of pure silver, long thin needles made of the same, little glass capsules that smelled like holy water, wooden stakes, and any number of devices I didn't even have names for all spread out across the cot Jim had been sleeping on. He told me about his Teacher while he sharped each one of those knives of silver, each valuable enough to have fed a family for a year.
"Older guy who found me when I was a kid, decided to take me under his wing," Jim started, the fast motion of his knife against oil-slick whet stone, never hesitating. It was a beautiful blade, long with what looked like a leather wrapped, bone handle. "Teacher taught me everything I know. Even more than just hunting, but math, geography, politics... all sorts of things. Better than any school teacher or priest would know. Was my father, my brother, my family."
Which left me wondering what happened to Jim's actual blood family. "We were following a nest of vamps that chose to move each night instead of staying in one place. Not normal at all, because they can't build up any defenses. Was a big group too, at least three of them that we could spot." Before I could even ask, Jim clarified, "sometimes there's big groups of them, all from one Master vampire that keeps them in line. This was different. They all seemed pretty equally powerful, but it was hard to tell."
Jim shook his head, checking the edge of his blade with the side of his thumb. "Teacher and I went after them. We thought that it was the three of them, all equally powered, maybe banded together because they were so new. Just Fledglings. What we didn't know was there really was a Master, one that was drinking from them instead of from humans. Something we'd never seen before."
Wish I could describe the pain in his voice, and even considering that I knew what was going to happen by the end of it, my heart went out to this kid.
"We killed one of them, got him by surprise, and managed to get back into hiding in this old house they were sleeping in that night. As we moved room to room, searching for the vamps, we found the family. Five of them, right down to the little boy, drained of their blood and left in a pile." Jim's fingers curled into a tight fist, so tight I could see his knuckles turn white. "We found the Master in the bedroom, with one of the other vampires bent backwards, teeth in his neck. The Master didn't even stop drinking, just smirking at us with these dark eyes and pale skin from over top of the one he had in his arms. Dropped that one like a dead weight, could see the green blood rolling down his neck. It reeked of blood in that room, enough that I wondered if maybe the whole family had been killed there and dumped."
"The one that the Master had been drinking from attacked me, and the Master went after my Teacher. I heard them talking... they knew each other. Don't know how or what or why but they did. Maybe that explained why my Teacher was trying so hard to go after this group." Jim's eyes closed and he put down the whet stone and knife, one hand gripping his knee and the other the blanket he sat on.
When he had gone silent long enough, even if my heart was already telling me the ending of this story, I had to ask, "Jim, what happened?"
"He died." It was all Jim said in response, something moving at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Almost a smile, but there was madness there that I could see just on the edges of his expression. Something he was fighting. Shit, I couldn't just sit there and watch him hurt any more than I could sit there and watch him bleed out on my table. I can remember how he flinched when my hand touched his shoulder, how tense he was under my hand. Almost took it off then, didn't want to upset the kid, before he started to relax. "The Master killed him, and I killed the Master. Got out... and found you." That little almost-smile again. I'd almost rather him be bleeding, least I'd know how to stop that pain.
The whole thing was awkward, hell I felt awkward. Whatever I said next was important, and every comforting thing I could think was deserted me. So all that babbled out was, "Well, right now, you've got me kid. Long as you keep making yourself useful."
Not the best thing I'd ever said to a patient in pain, let me tell you.
I could tell something was different that day, when Jim was tense and something was in the air as he moved around the house. I spotted him working through his weapons again like he tended to do when he was thinking a lot, using the whet stone with that repetitive shing, shing sound quietly echoing. Jim and me, we had a good solid working relationship. Each of us had our privacy that we liked, specially once he settled into that empty room in the house I had been storing years worth of crap in. The house was in the best shape ever thanks to his hands, even my office was improving as several of my patients commented on. I didn't like to interrupt his privacy and didn't like him to do it to me, but something urged me after the third straight hour of silence to go talk to him.
"Jim?" Sounded foolish as soon as it left my mouth, like I was some kid ready to tell my parents I did something wrong. When he looked up, there was a seriousness in his face that I'd only really seen once before, that first day I met him and dismissed his beliefs. It just confirmed that something was going on. "What's-"
"Heard word about a possible sighting, I have to go after them." Damn, I knew what he meant instantly. Meant he was going to go out in the middle of the night and try to find some mythological creatures that would try and rip him apart like he had been. But what the hell was I supposed to say? Two, three weeks of us getting to know each other? That didn't give me any right to tell him not to go do whatever it was he did at the risk of his own life, but maybe, just maybe, it let me have some right to say something else.
"Don't want you to come back here all busted up again." Said a lot in a few words, hoping he understood what I meant. I think he did, the change in his expression, but with him it was hard to say. In some ways Jim wore his heart on his sleeve, and in other ways, he had a lot of locked doors and guarded his eyes when he thought someone was peeking in through the windows. It got him to smile, just a little. Hoped the kid realized someone was waiting for him to come back this time and it would make a difference.
When the sun rose later and Jim still hadn't come back, I knew that hope wasn't enough to make that damned brilliant, foolish kid come home.
I waited up all night; found myself unable to sleep. Couldn't even believe that I was worried so much about Jim, but when dawn rolled around and I still hadn't slept? I couldn't deny it to myself that I was. Damn if I'd admit it to anyone else, though. Just sat there with a cup of too bitter, too strong coffee in my hands and watched the sun rise, wondering if Jim had completed his job. Wondering about a whole lot of other things, each fate worse than the last until I couldn't sit anymore. For the first time in months, I put the sign on my door telling anyone who came a'knocking that I was away, pulled on a good pair of boots and pack, and did the craziest thing I'd done yet in my life. I went looking for a kid hunting vampires.
Turned out that I didn't have to go nearly as far as I thought. I spotted him just outside of the village, laying there in a small pool of his own blood. At first, I was sure I was too late. Jim looked unnaturally still and pale in the thin light of morning, only the glow of my lantern giving his body any shape in the early fog, but as I made my way closer, I finally spotted the rise and fall of his chest.
It was a nightmare after that, one that still haunts me. All alone, knowing there was no way I could explain Jim like this to someone to help me get him back to my home, not even sure what had happened to him. Even the first time I had met him, he hadn't been this bad. Maybe it was adrenaline that gave me all the strength I needed to haul him all that distance, hell I don't even remember doing it. Came back to myself with a pair of scissors already in hand, not wasting any time cutting off his blood-stiff clothing. The blood was everywhere, and I couldn't believe when I realized it wasn't only not all his, but some of it was a different color entirely. A thin green color, going a muddy moss color as it dried on his skin. "What happened, kid?" I whispered to him, fingers smeared in red and green.
There were bite marks everywhere. Not those puncture wounds I had seen at his shoulder that first time, but real ones. Like a damn dog, all over him. When I mean all over, I mean all over. On his thighs, back, arms, shoulders, buttocks, everywhere. The worst one was right on his shoulder, an all too eerie mirror of the vampire bite, but this one was a ragged, ugly thing. So saw to it first, even poured a bit of holy water onto it to no effect before I started stitching it closed. Couldn't even tell you how long I worked that morning, stitching him back up, making sure all the mud and infection was out of each mark on him.
After listening to him talk for so long about vampires, after seeing him come home pretty damn beat up, seeing all those weapons he came back with every night, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise that a new thought started to come out of my head. Was all his fault, putting those myths in my head, making me remember stories my Grandma told me when I was still young enough to sit at her feet and be entranced by them. Still, after the vampire thing, maybe it wasn't as much a myth anymore as a story told in blood and flesh right under my hands.
He never woke up. No matter what I did to try and rouse him, he laid there completely gone from the world. Oh sure, his body breathed, his heart beat, but for all the lights on there was no one home. I put him in the guest room he had been sleeping in, bandaged pretty much from head to toe, stitched up and creams against infections, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen. Seemed to be a trend I was finding in Jim.
I kept up my away sign all day, kept checking up on him. Even tried to see if I could get a little broth down his throat, but all I could do was coax it down through animal instinct, rubbing at the skin until nature took over and swallowed. Like trying to get a dog to swallow some damn medicine, back when I'd had one. It would keep him hydrated and give his body what it needed to keep fighting. As long as the body was alive, I convinced myself, I'd find a way to pull Jim back to himself. I was just that much more stubborn than he was.
I wasn't in the room the first time he transformed. I was standing there, ready to go back in and see if I could wake him and maybe try to get him to eat, when I heard something that sounded exactly like a breaking bone. I can remember freezing, just listening in silence, straining to hear something but I wasn't sure what. Maybe I had imagined it, after all it could have been anything at all, but some part of me knew that my first analysis of the sound was correct.
I felt like fucking coward, standing there and listening to the most inhuman sounds I have ever heard. The sharp cracking sound of snapping bones, the almost liquid sound of muscles rearranging, and quiet moans that were almost unheard under everything else. It wasn't until the silence return that I felt control returning to my legs. Even then I wasn't sure I could move, though I knew, or at least had a good guess, exactly what was happening in the bedroom. I felt almost numb as I crossed the room and put my hand on the doorknob. I took a moment to steady myself before I opened the door, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Even if I hadn't known that Jim was asleep on the bed only minutes ago, I would've known exactly who the creature was on my bed. Imagine... the biggest wolf you can think of, then double it. It laid there on the bed the size of a small pony, staring right at me. Great golden shaggy fur and blue eyes, always those blue eyes, that stared at me without an ounce of recognition. I might have known it was Jim, but this Jim didn't know it was me. All I saw was the look of an animal, and somehow that terrified me more than the transformation itself.
It started to growl, this deep ragged sound in its chest almost like thunder, and I knew I had no chance. What was I supposed to do against something like this? It got to its feet, the bed creaking beneath its weight, and shook off the remains of my bed sheets as it stepped onto the floor. It was more graceful than any dog I have ever seen, it moved more like a cat, one of those damned big mountain cats when it was on the prowl. When it crouched down, the growl still rumbling in its chest, I closed my eyes. "Just make it quick." There was a loud crashing sound, then silenced.
When I open my eyes again, after the silence seemed to last forever, the room was empty. Jim, or the creature that used to be Jim, was gone, and I was left to try and figure out what the hell just happened.
When the morning came, I couldn't believe I had fallen asleep. I cursed myself for being so weak willed as I got up out of my chair, and decided that I need to hunt for Jim. Turned out all I had to do was open my back door.
There he was laying on the ground naked, covered in dirt and scratches and I could see blood on his hands and around his mouth as if he had forgotten to clean himself up or have been unable to. He was unconscious when I knelt next to him and pressed my fingers over the pulse at his throat. I gave a sigh of relief when I feel his heartbeat under my fingertips. Not only had he survived his first night, but he had come home.
He was all dead weight as I dragged him into the bedroom. Mind you, Jim's no light weight, all muscle. After all, he needs it doing what he does. So I left him laying there on the rug in my bedroom as I hauled in buckets of water into the bathroom until it was deep enough that I'd be able to wash Jim up. Getting Jim into the tub was even more work than getting him in the house had been.
By the time I was done cleaning him, Jim still hadn't regained consciousness. I brought him back into the bedroom, cleaned up his wounds, and sat on the bed wondering what to do next.
It continued like this for weeks. I'd wake up in the morning and find him laying on the back porch. Some days were worse than others. Some days he would come home covered in blood, some days he would come home covered in bite marks, and some days he would come home covered in proof that somewhere out there, beyond the city limits, there was a wolfpack.
Every night, in that moment after sunset and before the stars came out, Jim would change. I don't know why, but even after so long, I refused to watch when he transformed. It kept Jim the human and Jim the wolf as two very separate beings in my mind. Jim the wolf was only the image of him as he lay there on my bed growling at me that very first night. Jim the human never stopped being so focused, determined, strong-willed, and funny man that I had always known. Somehow he took everything in stride even when I couldn't. Oh, he knew what happened every night even if he couldn't remember what he did as the wolf. Some part of me wondered if he only stayed with me because I took care of him.
He only slept for a few hours any more, but ate twice as much as he had before. I wondered at first if the wolf body required more energy than the human one. Night after night of Jim coming home with blood at his mouth proved to me that he hunted, killed, and ate in his wolf body too. Once I realized that, I assumed all the extra food became energy for this transformation.
I saw dozens of changes in him, little things I wondered if he even noticed himself, and bigger things that even outsiders could tell. Things like his sense of smell improved vastly to the point where when I came home for the night, he would ask about specific people I had seen during my open hours even though I knew he didn't know who was coming. His sense of hearing became so strong that I found myself catching him wincing when things got too loud, such as in the city square. He gained more muscle, became leaner, and as wild as he always was, he became that much more. He healed faster than any human, in just hours what would have taken someone days or weeks to heal from, and there was never any scarring except what had already been there before he had been bitten.
One of those little things that only I noticed was how possessive he became of me. I never mentioned it to him, didn't seem my place, but I noticed it in little ways. Staying close to me when we went out for supplies or food, subtle little looks when I was talking to someone else, but never interfering. I guess it wasn't much different because sometimes at night, I would hear the wolf pack howling out in the distance, and I wondered which voice was his and what his place in the pack was. His nights belonged to the pack, but his days belonged to me, and I was grateful for it.
I guess I'm a selfish bastard like that.
Sometimes I would catch him just after he'd transformed, like I had that first night he had changed. There was some sorta draw to him, to see something that damn big. He's beautiful as a wolf, just like when you see a real nicely formed hunting dog, but there's a wildness to him that a blind man could see. Nothing tamed or domesticated in him, but somehow that damn wolf is smarter than any wolf or dog I'd ever seen. He knows how to work himself out of a door or out of the back garden, even managed to figure out how to do that stuff without breaking anything eventually. I replaced the lock on the back gate so it was just something you had to flip up to release the latch - he had it figured out in three nights.
The problem was, like I said, is that while he's damned smart, he isn't human anymore. The wolf takes over all those things we take for granted in each other, things like morals and friends and the choice we make not to kill each other. When he's caught me watching him, he's growled. I'll tell you, it's one of the most terrifying sounds you'll ever hear. Sound of your death, right there in front of you.
When I've gotten too close, he's snapped at me. For a creature his size, he's fast. Wolf's gotta lope fast to catch up to prey, even if its main point is that it can go for miles at a run without needing a break. Damn faster than any human for sure. I just get out of his way.
I tried to convince Jim - Jim the human, that is - a buncha times to let me try different things to become more familiar to the wolf. I figured at some point, if humans could get a wolf to befriend them and we eventually domesticated them, I might be able to at least get the wolf to stop trying to bite me if I got within lunging distance. Each time, I got shot down. Even as a human, while nothing changed about our friendship except it seemed to get closer and closer, Jim had a wolf's instinct against being caged or captured. Maybe it was going about it all the wrong way, but damn if just couldn't think of anything else. Jim couldn't really remember much of what happened when he was a wolf, didn't understand most of what he could remember, so there wasn't a lot of help there. The only bit of help I got from Jim in this area was one clue - that the wolf would accept someone who was pack.
So I just had to make myself a part of his pack. However the hell I was supposed to do that.
Then one night, everything changed. Started out just like normal of course, he changed and all, but unfortunately neither of us was real good at figuring out just when the change was going to happen. Sometime right after sunset, but that was tough to figure out an exact minute. Jim had started to change right in the middle of helping me put away the last supplies from a long day of work in the office.
I didn't catch it right away, had my head buried in a cabinet trying to see if I had any more of - something, can't remember anymore - when I heard something clatter to the floor. "You alright, Jim?" Can remember asking him that. When I didn't get a response, I looked over my shoulder.
Jim was half out of his clothes, tearing at them frantically. I knew what was coming, and some sort of demon was playing a trick on me because there was Jim between me and the only door out. Nothing else I could do, I looked away. I got the close up pleasure of listening to each sound of his bones growing, breaking, adjusting with all that inhuman mythical supposed to be non-existent magic that made his body change.
When it was all over, I heard something scrape on the floor, the grunt as he stood up and the rustle as he shook himself off. Kinda like time slowed down, like my hearing suddenly got better. I could hear him take deep breaths, like my scent was floating straight in his direction. Didn't take much to scent or spot me, because the next thing I knew was that familiar growling. It goes straight through your bones, and it did then. I couldn't hear him cross the room, but it was almost like a physical presence that came with him, crowded the space I was in, until I was forced to look up at the wolf.
Did I mention the eyes earlier? Even as a wolf, it was still Jim's eyes. Still that bright blue, same exact shade as when he was a human. No friendship in them though, no light or warmth that I had grown to look for in Jim. I got locked by those eyes, unable to really think through the idea that I was about to die. Ropey saliva fell from his jaws as he breathed in deep, made the air around me tremble with his next growl.
There was a flash of pain, right at my neck. I blacked out. Maybe from fear, maybe from shock, maybe from blood loss. Still don't know. Maybe a combination of all of them. I woke up who knows how much time after that, still laying there on the floor, collar stiff with my own blood. The wolf had gotten its teeth in deep, as I checked the wound with shaking fingers. Any deeper, and I would have been a dead man outright. Instead, it was a series of tooth-punctures along my collarbone and neck that bled a lot and by some grace, closed up fast.
Cleaned myself up, bandaged myself up, even cleaned up the mess in my office before a terrifying thought crossed my mind. Not to mention I really should have been laying down long before that point, but something kept me going as if my own mind knew that maybe if it kept my body going it wouldn't have to think about this. I'd gotten bitten. By a werewolf. We all know that legend, about how that's all it takes to make a new one.
Don't think I have to tell you what new kinds of shock I went into at that point. Was one damn sleepless night as I tried to decide what to do. How long would it be before it infected my body? How long until I changed into some damn dog? I didn't feel any different other than a little dizzy, but damn Jim and his myths and stories and dog breath had messed with my head, made it hard to figure out what I needed to do. I tried to remember those stories Gran had told me, tried to remember anything at all useful.
I cursed Jim's name and place in my house a dozen times before I finally remembered something from Gran's stories. Something called Wolfsbane, an herb... I got up and started looking through my books. I had one, a large herb book done with delicate hand drawings, more than a hundred of ones with unusual medicinal purposes. I had inherited it from my father, you know. Rare old book, probably not another one quite like it in all the world--
Anyway, it was there I found it. What it looked like, what little my father had written about it, and couldn't believe I was wondering if I could swallow a poisonous plant to try and burn off werewolf Jim had introduced into my blood like it was some damn illness. I stood there staring at the drawing of the wolfsbane for more than an hour, the doctor in me knowing just how dangerous it would be ingest the part of the plant that was the most potent - the roots. My Father had made a note it could be used to induce numbness, but it could easily kill.
Along with being a selfish bastard, seemed I was a coward too. I knew I couldn't swallow that even if I had it in my hand. Who'd take care of my patients? Who'd take care of Jim?
I'll tell you, it was the longest time until sunrise I'd ever known. I missed it at some point, fell asleep or passed back out thanks to the bite. Only woke up when the door slammed open and cracked against the wall, making me jump and end up a sprawled mess on the floor. Instantly I could tell I was painfully dehydrated - the sticky feeling in my eyes, my tongue thick in my mouth, my head throbbing. The room still smelled like my blood, or so I thought because I was still wearing the blood-dried shirt I had been injured in.
I caught a glimpse of golden hair, and let my eyes close again. Looked like this was it. The wolf was back, and it was my time to die. Damn.
"Bones!"
There isn't a lot I remember after that. Everything was sort of fuzzy, but I can remember being dragged, my neck throbbing even though I had cleaned the wound the best I could. I can remember a sharp pain, a worried murmuring that was really distant like I was listening through cotton. I could see those eyes watching me, I could tell them even though everything was spinning. Jim.
Who was still there when I finally woke up. Not just there, but asleep on the bed beside me. His arm was over my chest, and he was drooling on my pillows. I still felt tired, enough that I didn't try to wake him. Maybe, just for a little while, I could let him stay. After all, it was warm like this.
That's how I know I definitely had lost more blood than was healthy, letting that kid stay in my bed. There was a raw sexuality to Jim that came across in everything that he did, and at everyone he interacted with. In that short time I'd known him, even healing from injured so badly, do you know what he was doing? Flirting. Flirting with me, with every patient that came into my office, with every male and female he found even remotely good looking around town. He acted like some damn whore down at the bar, but he had such charm to him that most people fell right into his hands or laughed off his actions. Even after the thousandth time I told him to quit it, no matter how much I ignored him, Jim kept at it like the brat he was. It was an unspoken fight, to see who would succumb first to the other's stubbornness. Problem is, I'm no saint, definitely no virgin, and he's a good looking man. Now he was laying there with me in my bed, a warm body pressed up against my back.
All those thoughts and about a hundred more spun through my head, coming and going without much linking them together. Laying there felt warm and weirdly enough, safe. You know, as if he wasn't in reality the giant wolf that had ended up with me like this in the first place. Guess that tells you just how much I separated them in my mind, Jim and the wolf. It wasn't the wolf that must have gotten me in bed, definitely wasn't the wolf that was curled up against me, definitely wasn't the wolf that had... stripped me nude.
No sleeping once I discovered that fact. I forced myself up, shoving Jim's arm off me. I've never been really injured in my life, at least nothing like this, and realizing just how weak I was? That was a damn scary thing. Just getting Jim to roll over the other way, the kid still hadn't woken up, and sit up in bed left me feeling tired. He looked real peaceful, laying there. Jim's a damn pretty kid and the problem is he knows it.
I asked myself how he had gotten us like this. Every time after the change from being the wolf, Jim was an exhausted, usually blood pile of limbs and up for little else. Dragging my unconscious ass into bed, getting us both cleaned up? That would have taken a lot of work. I sat there brooding on it, wondering what time it was as the sun was drenching my room in golden light. Must have been some time because I jumped about a foot when Jim finally spoke my name.
So I glared at him, even as grateful as I was that he had helped save me. "I told you so." I'm not a man above saying that, never have been.
Jim looked so confused that I knew he had no idea what I was talking about. I sighed, and explained, "Told you that we should have done something with the wolf to make it stop hating me. Told you, and now look what it's got me. Almost died and now I'm just as damned as you are."
I don't know if he had this ability before he got turned, or maybe it's some secret of werewolves no legend's ever told, but damn Jim gave me these eyes like some pup getting yelled at for piddling on the rug. Couldn't let that work on me, because if it did once it always would. Jim's voice was quiet when he spoke, just adding to the effect those eyes had. "Bones, I should have..." His voice trailed off and he looked at a loss for words. I gave him the time to find them again. Unfortunately for my attempts to keep him from using his charm on me, he only found two words. "...I'm sorry."
All those defenses crumbled at that, even as angry as I was with him. I knew Jim couldn't control the wolf, or all these new instincts, but I'm only a man. I need to be mad at something rather than nothing at all. From the corner of my eye I saw Jim biting at his lip before he sat up beside me, frowning. "What is it?"
"Why are you damned now? I think I missed that," Jim said with confusion, glancing up from under those thick brows that were all furrowed together.
"You bit me, dammit! Or have you forgotten that too!?" Felt like I kicked a puppy at the look on his face when I yelled at him.
Jim rubbed the back of his neck and got out of the bed, awkward and unsure. He's not the real awkward kind of person, so watching him like this was strange, almost painful. Did he feel guilty about it? He should have. I could feel the bandage pull every time I moved and wondered how bad the damage was beneath it. "So, now what?" Jim asked.
I sure as hell didn't know, but maybe the doctor in me took over. "First thing, I need to check and see if this wound's cleaned up--"
But Jim stopped me. "Won't need to. You've seen how fast I heal. Once you change, the wound'll be gone."
Kid was right about that. I'd seen Jim pulling off his bandages after only a few hours, even a few severe ones that could have maimed or killed someone who was only human. Still, years of training inserted themselves over myth and magic. "Still gonna do it, just to be safe." That same training made me look over Jim once before asking seriously, "Are you hurt?"
"M'fine, Bones," Jim said, sounding a little more like himself.
I went into the office, peeling back the bandage and exposing the ugly wound. I could see the puncture marks from the teeth, torn flesh at the edges. It started to bleed fresh just a little as I dropped the bandage into the trash, and I set about numbing it carefully. Doing stitches on myself sounded high on the list of things I didn't want to have to do as a doctor, but by the time I was finished, there were more than a dozen neat little stitches making my ugly hide more ugly than it was.
By the time I was done, Jim was gone. Once I saw his stuff was still here, including his weapons, I didn't have the heart go to after him. Like me, the kid liked his privacy, and even if there wasn't that, I wasn't sure I wanted to see him right now.
But when the sun started setting, I was feeling the exact opposite. I didn't want to be alone if I had to go through this transformation, didn't want to turn into a monster that couldn't think like a human. I didn't have those hunter instincts like Jim had built into him as a human, or even the good luck of being unconscious like he had been. I admit, I thought he wouldn't come.
I was sitting naked in my back garden when he showed up. I'd seen him naked what seemed like hundreds of times already, clothing never survived the transformation, hence why I was sitting out in the grass nude. He stopped at the gate, looking me over in a mixture of concern, guilt, and amusement. A strange combination, but you could see it written all over his face. "Hey, you," I called out, letting him know I wanted him there.
"...Didn't know if you'd want me around--" Jim started as he came through the gate, stripping off his own clothes.
"Of course I do, dammit," I snapped at him, then softened it with a shake of my head. "You put me into this, you think I would want to be alone and confused as a damn wolf?"
"Wolves aren't--" This time, Jim stopped himself and gave just a little smile. "Was stupid of me." And he sat beside me, looking at the last rays of the setting sun.
There were thousands of questions buzzing in my head, wanting to ask Jim what should I do, what did the change feel like, would I attack him or would he attack me, down to the stupid stuff like 'will I want to chase everything I see'. At the end there, I didn't say anything at all. We sat in silence, side by side, as the sun vanished behind the mountains in the distance.
When I saw the last of it, I closed my eyes and waited.
When I heard the first pop!, I nearly jumped out of my skin. My eyes flashed open, and I stared down at myself. It was like a terrible accident - you know you want to look away but you keep staring. I didn't want to see my bones break and shift, fur grow, and everything else my nightmares had described in detail.
Nothing happened, at least, to me. I actually moved away as I stared at the full transformation for the first time, my mind almost in a state of panic after being so wound up all day. Why wasn't anything happening? I won't give you all those gruesome details about the change, but even my nightmares hadn't come close to what the reality was. It happened so fast, too. Seconds really, though it felt like forever as I was sitting there.
I was still there, still human, still nude. With a look down at my own body to double check that was indeed reality, the realization that I hadn't been damned to be a werewolf finally started to sink in. Unfortunately, it also seemed to occur to the wolf not ten feet away. The wolf stared at me, growling quietly, and I just stared back. Couldn't believe it was happening all over again. I also think I might have lost my mind right there.
"Come on, then! Eat me! Kill me or whatever the hell else you want, wolfy!" It felt like a dream, like I was watching myself saying these things without telling myself to do it. The wolf sprang off the ground and slammed into me faster than I'd ever seen an animal move. Weighed a ton, all solid muscle as its front paws crushed my shoulders into the ground. It lowered its face to mine, until I could feel its hot breath against my face. I would have imagined it reeked like decay and blood, but instead it didn't really smell much different than any human's mouth I'd known. Not perfumed or mint or anything, but not disgusting. Weird, the things you notice when you know you're going to die. Things seemed to get calmer then, and I stared into the wolf's eyes.
Eternity passed before the wolf pulled back away from me, and ran off into the night with a leap over the high fence. I laid there for a long time, staring at the stars and the moon as the cold of the night pressed into my skin. My very much still human skin. The bite hadn't changed me, but why? Could only certain people become werewolves? Was one bite not enough? Did the person have to be weak before being bitten? So many questions that my mind tried to answer with its limited information, but the attempts only brought about more questions.
I went inside and got dressed only after I had started to shiver. Thought about laying in bed and actually sleeping at night, instead of the half-night half-day method I had taken up since Jim had come into my life and gotten changed, but realized I was just too awake now to do it. Why hadn't the wolf attacked me like it had only the night before? Guess I would have to wait until morning, when Jim and his humanity returned. In the mean time, I did what any man who had been scared out of his wits would have done. I pulled out a bottle of rotgut and started drinking.
Part 2 >>
Author: salvaged_pride
Beta: sullacat
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Bones
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: "Werewolves: Separated from the Pack" from my hurt/comfort bingo card. #2 in attempted blackout.
Summary: AU - Leonard McCoy is your ordinary, grumpy village doctor. When a young man shows up bloody and hurt on his doorstep one night, everything he knew about his world was about to change. Word Count: 14,160
Master Fanfiction List | Part 2 >>
In Which We Change [Part 1]
In front of me was one giant wolf chained to a tree. He sat there staring at me, and I at him. Those blue eyes never left me, even when I forced my tired body up out of the chair and started to walk the line I had marked earlier, just past where the chain would let him come out. He got up as well and started to follow me, slow stalking movements of his long limbs. The instincts were strong in him to never let a stranger get out of his sight. I was sick and tired of being a stranger to him, so here I was, with a bunch of meat back beside my chair and a stick clutched in my hand as if it was some form of protection against a creature this size. Stood there, facing down one of the few things that could really scare me. I just had to keep him from knowing that, or all this time would be wasted.
At least it wasn't a vampire. Unfortunately, it was Jim.
Let me start at the beginning. Name's Leonard McCoy, and I'm the doctor in this village and have been for years now. Small practice, but a constant stream of patients means that I never stop being busy. I might have open office hours for ten hours a day, but in reality my doors never fully close. Even in the middle of the night, I end up getting woken out of a dead sleep at least once a week. It was during one of these wake-up calls that I met him.
When I stumbled through my house in the dark, sleep-numb fingers finding a lantern and getting it lit, I found him clinging to my front door like it was all that was holding him up. I barely managed to get through the thought of wondering how he had gotten my locked front door open before I saw him give me a grin with teeth smeared pink with blood. A second later, he collapsed in a dead faint. I didn't have time to think on the unlocked door before I was dragging him into the office attached to my home.
Whatever had attacked this kid, and for sure he had been attacked by something, it'd been powerful. There was a chunk taken out of his arm with what looked like claws, a strange pair of puncture marks on his shoulder, and bruises littered up and down his body, both new and old. I had to carefully remove his clothing and ignore the strange things that were hitting the floor so I could get a better look at him. First things first, however weird the situation was, I had to get some of the blood cleaned off to get a better look. By the time I finally got to the puncture marks, I realized I had never seen anything quite like them before. Two marks, side by side, no longer bleeding even if they were shallow. I was bent over studying them close when a hand grabbed the front of my shirt and practically stopped my heart on the spot.
He was staring at me, and the first thing I noticed as I stared back at his face were his eyes. I'm not one of those bards that'll wax poetry about people's eyes, but the first thing that came to my mind was how blue they were. All blue like the sky in summer. They were very focused, and I could see the pain in them.
"Holy water," he said roughly in a voice either hoarse from screaming or tight from pain. I stared at him, confused. What did he want with holy water? He must have seen that confusion, because he clarified, "Pour holy water on the bite."
Bite? I looked him over again, but I couldn't see any bite marks at all. Maybe he was delirious-- "Holy water. Shoulder." His other hand flopped up and his fingers landed splayed over the two puncture marks.
Things clicked in my mind, and they all added up into something I damn well didn't want it to. Holy water and two puncture marks? "You have to be kidding me," I told him. "Don't pull this religious bullshit on me."
He surprised me all over again by giving me that grin, same one I had seen at the door, then laughing. "Don't care if you don't believe me, just do it, Doc."
Something in his eyes, something in his eyes... actually made me answer truthfully instead of the answer I had already started concocting in my mind. "Don't have any, kid. I'm a doctor, not a priest." Whole lot less comforting than grabbing some water and lying my way to comfort his eccentricities.
"Am I going to bleed out on your table here, Doc?" the kid asked, humor in his voice even as it was tight with pain.
Easy to answer. "No."
"Then get some." Then, almost as if he realized how he sounded, the kid softened the order with a quiet please.
That please was what sent me out in the middle of the night, cursing my way through the village in the dark, to pound on the heavy wood of the church's side door. No way I was going up to the large front doors which could be seen by anyone passing by. Already I felt like a damn fool, waking up the Father with this inane request. I was grateful as much as I was embarrassed when the door opened and the priest looked at me with a level glare. "Doctor?" His tone was somehow welcoming and damning in the same breath, and I didn't blame him.
"I'll keep it short, Father," brisk maybe, but I knew to at least be polite to a man I was disturbing at this hour. "I need this filled up with some holy water." The bottle wasn't too big, but enough that I thought it would convince the kid barely patched up on my operating table that I took his request seriously. It had been a last minute grab before I ran out of the house as the only other suitable thing on me was my flask. I wasn't about to taint it with holy water; liquor's not meant to be blessed in my damn humble opinion.
I didn't miss the raised eyebrow I got from the Father, who gestured for me to follow him inside. I took a look over my shoulder before I went in, making sure no one saw me enter, and felt like an outsider once I stepped in. I respected the Father, mostly because he was one of the few other educated men in the village, but I didn't believe in this religious stuff and he knew it. Once inside the dark church, the priest just vanished into the deep shadows. I could remember when he first showed up; everyone was nervous about the man who called himself a man of God but had dark skin and a few visible scars. You ask me? I'd rather someone who's got some life in his face than some fat man with all too much pride in his wobbling gut like our last priest. Died of liver failure in his own church. Too much holy wine, talk about your blessed liquor. Sure blessed the hell out of his liver, didn't it?
The Father came back out from the shadows he had been moving around in and offered me back the bottle I'd brought, now full of water. I could only assume it was blessed, whatever he had to do to make it so. I gave him a little nod and went back out into the night, pausing only to look back. "Thanks, Robau."
Kid hadn't moved an inch from where I had left him. I considered it a small wonder and hung up my coat with some extra effort, making sure to make some noise to wake the kid up. Wasn't entirely surprised when he jerked awake with all the reflexes of a cat, putting his eyes on me and giving a look up and down as if double checking just who I was before he relaxed back on the table. Kid was a fighter for sure.
"Better be worth having bothered our local priest for this stuff, kid." It was all pandering, but in the end, I figured I could get in better with him and find out just what happened if he trusted me.
The kid nodded, giving that smile again. "Was. Thanks, Doc. Just pour it straight on, it'll do the rest." Almost like he knew what he was doing. I shook my head, tugging out the cork with my teeth, and did just what he said by pouring it over the wound.
You couldn't have believed how surprised I was when he flinched, and the wound started hissing, smoking, like I had poured acid straight on it. Feeling like maybe I'd been had, I sniffed at the bottle but couldn't smell a damn thing except the scent of church in it. I poured the smallest drop on my hand, but had no reaction. More and more worrying thoughts started to collect on the nugget of an idea that had cropped up earlier until it rolled right out of my mouth. "Vampire."
"Right on the nose," the kid said with a laugh under his breath, closing his eyes again. "Bastard bit me before I could do anything about it. Was young, but powerful. Totally forgot about the--"
"Kid, vampires don't exist. What the hell happened--"
"Don't tell me what doesn't exist." I turned, hearing a venom in his voice that hadn't been there the whole if short time I'd known him. Before I denied the existence of his myth, he had been joking about his injuries, almost laughing. Now his eyes were narrowed, and there was this anger there... like I'd insulted him straight down to his core. "Believe what you want, Doc, but this time, you've got to believe me. Holy water until the bite stops hissing, and I won't end up puking my guts up with the Sickness."
The strength in his voice was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. Even without knowing his name, there was something about this kid that screamed dangerous, a leader unto himself. So I asked what I thought I needed to rebuild the trust I had shattered without even knowing it. "What's your name?" making a mental note to ask about 'the Sickness' later.
"Jim." That was all I got from him, making me wonder if Jim was short for James, and why I didn't get a last name to go along with it. Maybe someone who believed in and got bit by mythical creatures wanted to keep himself as anonymous as possible.
"Doctor Leonard McCoy. Look, kid, I'm not going to sit here and bicker with you about what's real or not, I just want to make sure you're okay." I walked back around to the puncture marks, and even though my old bitter soul still thought it was ridiculous, I cleaned the marks with the bottle of holy water until it stopped spitting and hissing. It might have been my imagination that the wound looked less inflamed and like it was already healing when I was done.
It was the first thing I bandaged up, and all the other marks on him got far more earthly means of cleaning before they were re-bandaged. The scratches were already beginning to close over under his body's own natural healing anyway - whatever fight Jim had been in had happened at least an hour ago - this was just to keep them from getting infected. I had a dozen questions buzzing in my mind and couldn't chose one to start with first. Fortunately, Jim picked a topic for me.
"Sorry to bother you so late." He rubbed under his nose, winced, and I moved up to his face to see if anything was damaged. Looked like he'd have a swollen nose for a few days, but at least it wasn't broken.
"Isn't a bother. If I cared about getting a decent night's sleep, I wouldn't have become a doctor," I could remember grumbling at him, familiar with those words. Plenty of my patients ended up saying the exact same thing.
The next thing, like everything else tonight, wasn't so familiar. "Can I trust you, Doc?"
I looked down to his face, and gave him what I hoped was a patient look. "Course you can." However strange this was, that was one thing I could always offer. If my patients didn't trust me, what kind of doctor was I? His eyes seemed to stare into mine like he was looking through me, a deeper something that made me shift uneasily until he gave that smile again and closed his eyes. As the air around Jim seemed to relax, so did I. As if my night couldn't have gotten any stranger.
"Thanks."
"Welcome, kid. Come on, let's get you into a bed so you can sleep this off." I still wanted to know what happened to him, get details of how a vampire would have bitten him. On the floor around my table were fallen objects along with his coat - I spotted two long thin silver needles, a somehow unbroken glass capsule, a miniature cross that was on a broken string, and a small blade with flecks of blood up around the guard. I kept it all in mind as I took most of his weight, walking him over to the cot I had set up for just such occasions. He didn't fuss over moving despite his wounds, and laid down still watching me.
"So, now you're going to tell this old doctor just what happened." Didn't see a point in wasting words, and damn if he was going to come in here making me get some fool holy water and bleed all over my table without explaining himself.
I won't get into every detail he told me that night, but before he finally passed out from exhaustion, I had more than enough to keep my head spinning. Evidently Jim, if that was even his real name, was a self-proclaimed vampire hunter who had been trained by someone he called 'Teacher'. Outside of the village in the countryside, Teacher and Jim had tracked down a particular vampire and cornered it. Unfortunately, it wasn't alone and another vampire got the drop on them. A much stronger vampire Jim called a Master. He and his Teacher had injured the first vampire and badly injured the Master, but the Master had managed to get off with his Teacher and left Jim for dead.
It was a hell of a story, and considering Jim's blood loss and the painkillers I eventually injected into him, I wasn't sure how much of it I believed. The one thing I knew for sure was something completely out of the ordinary was happening, this kid was a part of it, and somehow, so was I at least temporarily. My head spinning with information, new terminology, and myths, I stumbled back into bed and curled up there until long after the sun had come up.
It took the better part of a week for my newest patient to finally be able to get around fully on his own. He ended up sick, a deep sickness that seemed to go down to his bones and twist his insides and throb in his head, a sickness that I had only seen once before when I was training under my father. The one I had witnessed had been a more severe case, and I could still remember what my father said about it. How the patients felt like their very bones were dissolving, and he had never seen a case where someone survived that stage of the sickness.
When I said as much to Jim, his laugh turned into a cough and he shook his head. "Means you must be saving me and my bones, Doc." Which led to two days of Jim calling me the Bone Saver, to which I finally told him that if he kept calling me that, I would break all of those bones I had just saved. Unfortunately, this didn't stop the new nicknaming. Where everyone in the village called me Doctor, maybe McCoy from some of the older folks, Jim started calling me Bones.
After futilely attempting for another few days to find a nickname to call Jim to annoy him enough to stop, I found myself responding to the damned name.
By the second week, there was a routine between us that I couldn't figure out where it came from. Should have kicked the kid out when he could walk on his own, but there was something about Jim that got under my skin and didn't let go. Maybe it was nice, having another breathing body in my home. Someone who was a surprisingly good conversationalist, had hundreds of stories and could tell them well, acted concerned when I got home too late.
I knew it was foolish to get used to it, after all I had it once and lost it all. That was a long time ago before I came here, another story. Just know that it was nice to have even a small part of it again. Not that Jim ever needs to know.
After you haven't done it for a long time, even something as simple as sitting down to breakfast with someone became something to look forward to. Jim could cook some things I couldn't, I could cook some things he couldn't, and meals ended up being a combination of us both. I think I growled something about him earning his keep once, and damn if he didn't do it. Place actually got cleaned for the first time since... ever. How some kid like him knew how to do the little things like patching up a hole in a shirt or fix a door I'll never know. It definitely wasn't his job or anything. He told me a lot about the 'job' he had.
He called himself a vampire hunter. Meant it in every sense of the word - tracked down vampires to their holes, flushed them out, killed them as neat as a terrier hunting rats. I got to see the full arsenal of his weaponry one day when I came home early, got to hear about how all of them worked. It was hard to believe that he was lying when there were knives made of pure silver, long thin needles made of the same, little glass capsules that smelled like holy water, wooden stakes, and any number of devices I didn't even have names for all spread out across the cot Jim had been sleeping on. He told me about his Teacher while he sharped each one of those knives of silver, each valuable enough to have fed a family for a year.
"Older guy who found me when I was a kid, decided to take me under his wing," Jim started, the fast motion of his knife against oil-slick whet stone, never hesitating. It was a beautiful blade, long with what looked like a leather wrapped, bone handle. "Teacher taught me everything I know. Even more than just hunting, but math, geography, politics... all sorts of things. Better than any school teacher or priest would know. Was my father, my brother, my family."
Which left me wondering what happened to Jim's actual blood family. "We were following a nest of vamps that chose to move each night instead of staying in one place. Not normal at all, because they can't build up any defenses. Was a big group too, at least three of them that we could spot." Before I could even ask, Jim clarified, "sometimes there's big groups of them, all from one Master vampire that keeps them in line. This was different. They all seemed pretty equally powerful, but it was hard to tell."
Jim shook his head, checking the edge of his blade with the side of his thumb. "Teacher and I went after them. We thought that it was the three of them, all equally powered, maybe banded together because they were so new. Just Fledglings. What we didn't know was there really was a Master, one that was drinking from them instead of from humans. Something we'd never seen before."
Wish I could describe the pain in his voice, and even considering that I knew what was going to happen by the end of it, my heart went out to this kid.
"We killed one of them, got him by surprise, and managed to get back into hiding in this old house they were sleeping in that night. As we moved room to room, searching for the vamps, we found the family. Five of them, right down to the little boy, drained of their blood and left in a pile." Jim's fingers curled into a tight fist, so tight I could see his knuckles turn white. "We found the Master in the bedroom, with one of the other vampires bent backwards, teeth in his neck. The Master didn't even stop drinking, just smirking at us with these dark eyes and pale skin from over top of the one he had in his arms. Dropped that one like a dead weight, could see the green blood rolling down his neck. It reeked of blood in that room, enough that I wondered if maybe the whole family had been killed there and dumped."
"The one that the Master had been drinking from attacked me, and the Master went after my Teacher. I heard them talking... they knew each other. Don't know how or what or why but they did. Maybe that explained why my Teacher was trying so hard to go after this group." Jim's eyes closed and he put down the whet stone and knife, one hand gripping his knee and the other the blanket he sat on.
When he had gone silent long enough, even if my heart was already telling me the ending of this story, I had to ask, "Jim, what happened?"
"He died." It was all Jim said in response, something moving at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Almost a smile, but there was madness there that I could see just on the edges of his expression. Something he was fighting. Shit, I couldn't just sit there and watch him hurt any more than I could sit there and watch him bleed out on my table. I can remember how he flinched when my hand touched his shoulder, how tense he was under my hand. Almost took it off then, didn't want to upset the kid, before he started to relax. "The Master killed him, and I killed the Master. Got out... and found you." That little almost-smile again. I'd almost rather him be bleeding, least I'd know how to stop that pain.
The whole thing was awkward, hell I felt awkward. Whatever I said next was important, and every comforting thing I could think was deserted me. So all that babbled out was, "Well, right now, you've got me kid. Long as you keep making yourself useful."
Not the best thing I'd ever said to a patient in pain, let me tell you.
I could tell something was different that day, when Jim was tense and something was in the air as he moved around the house. I spotted him working through his weapons again like he tended to do when he was thinking a lot, using the whet stone with that repetitive shing, shing sound quietly echoing. Jim and me, we had a good solid working relationship. Each of us had our privacy that we liked, specially once he settled into that empty room in the house I had been storing years worth of crap in. The house was in the best shape ever thanks to his hands, even my office was improving as several of my patients commented on. I didn't like to interrupt his privacy and didn't like him to do it to me, but something urged me after the third straight hour of silence to go talk to him.
"Jim?" Sounded foolish as soon as it left my mouth, like I was some kid ready to tell my parents I did something wrong. When he looked up, there was a seriousness in his face that I'd only really seen once before, that first day I met him and dismissed his beliefs. It just confirmed that something was going on. "What's-"
"Heard word about a possible sighting, I have to go after them." Damn, I knew what he meant instantly. Meant he was going to go out in the middle of the night and try to find some mythological creatures that would try and rip him apart like he had been. But what the hell was I supposed to say? Two, three weeks of us getting to know each other? That didn't give me any right to tell him not to go do whatever it was he did at the risk of his own life, but maybe, just maybe, it let me have some right to say something else.
"Don't want you to come back here all busted up again." Said a lot in a few words, hoping he understood what I meant. I think he did, the change in his expression, but with him it was hard to say. In some ways Jim wore his heart on his sleeve, and in other ways, he had a lot of locked doors and guarded his eyes when he thought someone was peeking in through the windows. It got him to smile, just a little. Hoped the kid realized someone was waiting for him to come back this time and it would make a difference.
When the sun rose later and Jim still hadn't come back, I knew that hope wasn't enough to make that damned brilliant, foolish kid come home.
I waited up all night; found myself unable to sleep. Couldn't even believe that I was worried so much about Jim, but when dawn rolled around and I still hadn't slept? I couldn't deny it to myself that I was. Damn if I'd admit it to anyone else, though. Just sat there with a cup of too bitter, too strong coffee in my hands and watched the sun rise, wondering if Jim had completed his job. Wondering about a whole lot of other things, each fate worse than the last until I couldn't sit anymore. For the first time in months, I put the sign on my door telling anyone who came a'knocking that I was away, pulled on a good pair of boots and pack, and did the craziest thing I'd done yet in my life. I went looking for a kid hunting vampires.
Turned out that I didn't have to go nearly as far as I thought. I spotted him just outside of the village, laying there in a small pool of his own blood. At first, I was sure I was too late. Jim looked unnaturally still and pale in the thin light of morning, only the glow of my lantern giving his body any shape in the early fog, but as I made my way closer, I finally spotted the rise and fall of his chest.
It was a nightmare after that, one that still haunts me. All alone, knowing there was no way I could explain Jim like this to someone to help me get him back to my home, not even sure what had happened to him. Even the first time I had met him, he hadn't been this bad. Maybe it was adrenaline that gave me all the strength I needed to haul him all that distance, hell I don't even remember doing it. Came back to myself with a pair of scissors already in hand, not wasting any time cutting off his blood-stiff clothing. The blood was everywhere, and I couldn't believe when I realized it wasn't only not all his, but some of it was a different color entirely. A thin green color, going a muddy moss color as it dried on his skin. "What happened, kid?" I whispered to him, fingers smeared in red and green.
There were bite marks everywhere. Not those puncture wounds I had seen at his shoulder that first time, but real ones. Like a damn dog, all over him. When I mean all over, I mean all over. On his thighs, back, arms, shoulders, buttocks, everywhere. The worst one was right on his shoulder, an all too eerie mirror of the vampire bite, but this one was a ragged, ugly thing. So saw to it first, even poured a bit of holy water onto it to no effect before I started stitching it closed. Couldn't even tell you how long I worked that morning, stitching him back up, making sure all the mud and infection was out of each mark on him.
After listening to him talk for so long about vampires, after seeing him come home pretty damn beat up, seeing all those weapons he came back with every night, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise that a new thought started to come out of my head. Was all his fault, putting those myths in my head, making me remember stories my Grandma told me when I was still young enough to sit at her feet and be entranced by them. Still, after the vampire thing, maybe it wasn't as much a myth anymore as a story told in blood and flesh right under my hands.
He never woke up. No matter what I did to try and rouse him, he laid there completely gone from the world. Oh sure, his body breathed, his heart beat, but for all the lights on there was no one home. I put him in the guest room he had been sleeping in, bandaged pretty much from head to toe, stitched up and creams against infections, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen. Seemed to be a trend I was finding in Jim.
I kept up my away sign all day, kept checking up on him. Even tried to see if I could get a little broth down his throat, but all I could do was coax it down through animal instinct, rubbing at the skin until nature took over and swallowed. Like trying to get a dog to swallow some damn medicine, back when I'd had one. It would keep him hydrated and give his body what it needed to keep fighting. As long as the body was alive, I convinced myself, I'd find a way to pull Jim back to himself. I was just that much more stubborn than he was.
I wasn't in the room the first time he transformed. I was standing there, ready to go back in and see if I could wake him and maybe try to get him to eat, when I heard something that sounded exactly like a breaking bone. I can remember freezing, just listening in silence, straining to hear something but I wasn't sure what. Maybe I had imagined it, after all it could have been anything at all, but some part of me knew that my first analysis of the sound was correct.
I felt like fucking coward, standing there and listening to the most inhuman sounds I have ever heard. The sharp cracking sound of snapping bones, the almost liquid sound of muscles rearranging, and quiet moans that were almost unheard under everything else. It wasn't until the silence return that I felt control returning to my legs. Even then I wasn't sure I could move, though I knew, or at least had a good guess, exactly what was happening in the bedroom. I felt almost numb as I crossed the room and put my hand on the doorknob. I took a moment to steady myself before I opened the door, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Even if I hadn't known that Jim was asleep on the bed only minutes ago, I would've known exactly who the creature was on my bed. Imagine... the biggest wolf you can think of, then double it. It laid there on the bed the size of a small pony, staring right at me. Great golden shaggy fur and blue eyes, always those blue eyes, that stared at me without an ounce of recognition. I might have known it was Jim, but this Jim didn't know it was me. All I saw was the look of an animal, and somehow that terrified me more than the transformation itself.
It started to growl, this deep ragged sound in its chest almost like thunder, and I knew I had no chance. What was I supposed to do against something like this? It got to its feet, the bed creaking beneath its weight, and shook off the remains of my bed sheets as it stepped onto the floor. It was more graceful than any dog I have ever seen, it moved more like a cat, one of those damned big mountain cats when it was on the prowl. When it crouched down, the growl still rumbling in its chest, I closed my eyes. "Just make it quick." There was a loud crashing sound, then silenced.
When I open my eyes again, after the silence seemed to last forever, the room was empty. Jim, or the creature that used to be Jim, was gone, and I was left to try and figure out what the hell just happened.
When the morning came, I couldn't believe I had fallen asleep. I cursed myself for being so weak willed as I got up out of my chair, and decided that I need to hunt for Jim. Turned out all I had to do was open my back door.
There he was laying on the ground naked, covered in dirt and scratches and I could see blood on his hands and around his mouth as if he had forgotten to clean himself up or have been unable to. He was unconscious when I knelt next to him and pressed my fingers over the pulse at his throat. I gave a sigh of relief when I feel his heartbeat under my fingertips. Not only had he survived his first night, but he had come home.
He was all dead weight as I dragged him into the bedroom. Mind you, Jim's no light weight, all muscle. After all, he needs it doing what he does. So I left him laying there on the rug in my bedroom as I hauled in buckets of water into the bathroom until it was deep enough that I'd be able to wash Jim up. Getting Jim into the tub was even more work than getting him in the house had been.
By the time I was done cleaning him, Jim still hadn't regained consciousness. I brought him back into the bedroom, cleaned up his wounds, and sat on the bed wondering what to do next.
It continued like this for weeks. I'd wake up in the morning and find him laying on the back porch. Some days were worse than others. Some days he would come home covered in blood, some days he would come home covered in bite marks, and some days he would come home covered in proof that somewhere out there, beyond the city limits, there was a wolfpack.
Every night, in that moment after sunset and before the stars came out, Jim would change. I don't know why, but even after so long, I refused to watch when he transformed. It kept Jim the human and Jim the wolf as two very separate beings in my mind. Jim the wolf was only the image of him as he lay there on my bed growling at me that very first night. Jim the human never stopped being so focused, determined, strong-willed, and funny man that I had always known. Somehow he took everything in stride even when I couldn't. Oh, he knew what happened every night even if he couldn't remember what he did as the wolf. Some part of me wondered if he only stayed with me because I took care of him.
He only slept for a few hours any more, but ate twice as much as he had before. I wondered at first if the wolf body required more energy than the human one. Night after night of Jim coming home with blood at his mouth proved to me that he hunted, killed, and ate in his wolf body too. Once I realized that, I assumed all the extra food became energy for this transformation.
I saw dozens of changes in him, little things I wondered if he even noticed himself, and bigger things that even outsiders could tell. Things like his sense of smell improved vastly to the point where when I came home for the night, he would ask about specific people I had seen during my open hours even though I knew he didn't know who was coming. His sense of hearing became so strong that I found myself catching him wincing when things got too loud, such as in the city square. He gained more muscle, became leaner, and as wild as he always was, he became that much more. He healed faster than any human, in just hours what would have taken someone days or weeks to heal from, and there was never any scarring except what had already been there before he had been bitten.
One of those little things that only I noticed was how possessive he became of me. I never mentioned it to him, didn't seem my place, but I noticed it in little ways. Staying close to me when we went out for supplies or food, subtle little looks when I was talking to someone else, but never interfering. I guess it wasn't much different because sometimes at night, I would hear the wolf pack howling out in the distance, and I wondered which voice was his and what his place in the pack was. His nights belonged to the pack, but his days belonged to me, and I was grateful for it.
I guess I'm a selfish bastard like that.
Sometimes I would catch him just after he'd transformed, like I had that first night he had changed. There was some sorta draw to him, to see something that damn big. He's beautiful as a wolf, just like when you see a real nicely formed hunting dog, but there's a wildness to him that a blind man could see. Nothing tamed or domesticated in him, but somehow that damn wolf is smarter than any wolf or dog I'd ever seen. He knows how to work himself out of a door or out of the back garden, even managed to figure out how to do that stuff without breaking anything eventually. I replaced the lock on the back gate so it was just something you had to flip up to release the latch - he had it figured out in three nights.
The problem was, like I said, is that while he's damned smart, he isn't human anymore. The wolf takes over all those things we take for granted in each other, things like morals and friends and the choice we make not to kill each other. When he's caught me watching him, he's growled. I'll tell you, it's one of the most terrifying sounds you'll ever hear. Sound of your death, right there in front of you.
When I've gotten too close, he's snapped at me. For a creature his size, he's fast. Wolf's gotta lope fast to catch up to prey, even if its main point is that it can go for miles at a run without needing a break. Damn faster than any human for sure. I just get out of his way.
I tried to convince Jim - Jim the human, that is - a buncha times to let me try different things to become more familiar to the wolf. I figured at some point, if humans could get a wolf to befriend them and we eventually domesticated them, I might be able to at least get the wolf to stop trying to bite me if I got within lunging distance. Each time, I got shot down. Even as a human, while nothing changed about our friendship except it seemed to get closer and closer, Jim had a wolf's instinct against being caged or captured. Maybe it was going about it all the wrong way, but damn if just couldn't think of anything else. Jim couldn't really remember much of what happened when he was a wolf, didn't understand most of what he could remember, so there wasn't a lot of help there. The only bit of help I got from Jim in this area was one clue - that the wolf would accept someone who was pack.
So I just had to make myself a part of his pack. However the hell I was supposed to do that.
Then one night, everything changed. Started out just like normal of course, he changed and all, but unfortunately neither of us was real good at figuring out just when the change was going to happen. Sometime right after sunset, but that was tough to figure out an exact minute. Jim had started to change right in the middle of helping me put away the last supplies from a long day of work in the office.
I didn't catch it right away, had my head buried in a cabinet trying to see if I had any more of - something, can't remember anymore - when I heard something clatter to the floor. "You alright, Jim?" Can remember asking him that. When I didn't get a response, I looked over my shoulder.
Jim was half out of his clothes, tearing at them frantically. I knew what was coming, and some sort of demon was playing a trick on me because there was Jim between me and the only door out. Nothing else I could do, I looked away. I got the close up pleasure of listening to each sound of his bones growing, breaking, adjusting with all that inhuman mythical supposed to be non-existent magic that made his body change.
When it was all over, I heard something scrape on the floor, the grunt as he stood up and the rustle as he shook himself off. Kinda like time slowed down, like my hearing suddenly got better. I could hear him take deep breaths, like my scent was floating straight in his direction. Didn't take much to scent or spot me, because the next thing I knew was that familiar growling. It goes straight through your bones, and it did then. I couldn't hear him cross the room, but it was almost like a physical presence that came with him, crowded the space I was in, until I was forced to look up at the wolf.
Did I mention the eyes earlier? Even as a wolf, it was still Jim's eyes. Still that bright blue, same exact shade as when he was a human. No friendship in them though, no light or warmth that I had grown to look for in Jim. I got locked by those eyes, unable to really think through the idea that I was about to die. Ropey saliva fell from his jaws as he breathed in deep, made the air around me tremble with his next growl.
There was a flash of pain, right at my neck. I blacked out. Maybe from fear, maybe from shock, maybe from blood loss. Still don't know. Maybe a combination of all of them. I woke up who knows how much time after that, still laying there on the floor, collar stiff with my own blood. The wolf had gotten its teeth in deep, as I checked the wound with shaking fingers. Any deeper, and I would have been a dead man outright. Instead, it was a series of tooth-punctures along my collarbone and neck that bled a lot and by some grace, closed up fast.
Cleaned myself up, bandaged myself up, even cleaned up the mess in my office before a terrifying thought crossed my mind. Not to mention I really should have been laying down long before that point, but something kept me going as if my own mind knew that maybe if it kept my body going it wouldn't have to think about this. I'd gotten bitten. By a werewolf. We all know that legend, about how that's all it takes to make a new one.
Don't think I have to tell you what new kinds of shock I went into at that point. Was one damn sleepless night as I tried to decide what to do. How long would it be before it infected my body? How long until I changed into some damn dog? I didn't feel any different other than a little dizzy, but damn Jim and his myths and stories and dog breath had messed with my head, made it hard to figure out what I needed to do. I tried to remember those stories Gran had told me, tried to remember anything at all useful.
I cursed Jim's name and place in my house a dozen times before I finally remembered something from Gran's stories. Something called Wolfsbane, an herb... I got up and started looking through my books. I had one, a large herb book done with delicate hand drawings, more than a hundred of ones with unusual medicinal purposes. I had inherited it from my father, you know. Rare old book, probably not another one quite like it in all the world--
Anyway, it was there I found it. What it looked like, what little my father had written about it, and couldn't believe I was wondering if I could swallow a poisonous plant to try and burn off werewolf Jim had introduced into my blood like it was some damn illness. I stood there staring at the drawing of the wolfsbane for more than an hour, the doctor in me knowing just how dangerous it would be ingest the part of the plant that was the most potent - the roots. My Father had made a note it could be used to induce numbness, but it could easily kill.
Along with being a selfish bastard, seemed I was a coward too. I knew I couldn't swallow that even if I had it in my hand. Who'd take care of my patients? Who'd take care of Jim?
I'll tell you, it was the longest time until sunrise I'd ever known. I missed it at some point, fell asleep or passed back out thanks to the bite. Only woke up when the door slammed open and cracked against the wall, making me jump and end up a sprawled mess on the floor. Instantly I could tell I was painfully dehydrated - the sticky feeling in my eyes, my tongue thick in my mouth, my head throbbing. The room still smelled like my blood, or so I thought because I was still wearing the blood-dried shirt I had been injured in.
I caught a glimpse of golden hair, and let my eyes close again. Looked like this was it. The wolf was back, and it was my time to die. Damn.
"Bones!"
There isn't a lot I remember after that. Everything was sort of fuzzy, but I can remember being dragged, my neck throbbing even though I had cleaned the wound the best I could. I can remember a sharp pain, a worried murmuring that was really distant like I was listening through cotton. I could see those eyes watching me, I could tell them even though everything was spinning. Jim.
Who was still there when I finally woke up. Not just there, but asleep on the bed beside me. His arm was over my chest, and he was drooling on my pillows. I still felt tired, enough that I didn't try to wake him. Maybe, just for a little while, I could let him stay. After all, it was warm like this.
That's how I know I definitely had lost more blood than was healthy, letting that kid stay in my bed. There was a raw sexuality to Jim that came across in everything that he did, and at everyone he interacted with. In that short time I'd known him, even healing from injured so badly, do you know what he was doing? Flirting. Flirting with me, with every patient that came into my office, with every male and female he found even remotely good looking around town. He acted like some damn whore down at the bar, but he had such charm to him that most people fell right into his hands or laughed off his actions. Even after the thousandth time I told him to quit it, no matter how much I ignored him, Jim kept at it like the brat he was. It was an unspoken fight, to see who would succumb first to the other's stubbornness. Problem is, I'm no saint, definitely no virgin, and he's a good looking man. Now he was laying there with me in my bed, a warm body pressed up against my back.
All those thoughts and about a hundred more spun through my head, coming and going without much linking them together. Laying there felt warm and weirdly enough, safe. You know, as if he wasn't in reality the giant wolf that had ended up with me like this in the first place. Guess that tells you just how much I separated them in my mind, Jim and the wolf. It wasn't the wolf that must have gotten me in bed, definitely wasn't the wolf that was curled up against me, definitely wasn't the wolf that had... stripped me nude.
No sleeping once I discovered that fact. I forced myself up, shoving Jim's arm off me. I've never been really injured in my life, at least nothing like this, and realizing just how weak I was? That was a damn scary thing. Just getting Jim to roll over the other way, the kid still hadn't woken up, and sit up in bed left me feeling tired. He looked real peaceful, laying there. Jim's a damn pretty kid and the problem is he knows it.
I asked myself how he had gotten us like this. Every time after the change from being the wolf, Jim was an exhausted, usually blood pile of limbs and up for little else. Dragging my unconscious ass into bed, getting us both cleaned up? That would have taken a lot of work. I sat there brooding on it, wondering what time it was as the sun was drenching my room in golden light. Must have been some time because I jumped about a foot when Jim finally spoke my name.
So I glared at him, even as grateful as I was that he had helped save me. "I told you so." I'm not a man above saying that, never have been.
Jim looked so confused that I knew he had no idea what I was talking about. I sighed, and explained, "Told you that we should have done something with the wolf to make it stop hating me. Told you, and now look what it's got me. Almost died and now I'm just as damned as you are."
I don't know if he had this ability before he got turned, or maybe it's some secret of werewolves no legend's ever told, but damn Jim gave me these eyes like some pup getting yelled at for piddling on the rug. Couldn't let that work on me, because if it did once it always would. Jim's voice was quiet when he spoke, just adding to the effect those eyes had. "Bones, I should have..." His voice trailed off and he looked at a loss for words. I gave him the time to find them again. Unfortunately for my attempts to keep him from using his charm on me, he only found two words. "...I'm sorry."
All those defenses crumbled at that, even as angry as I was with him. I knew Jim couldn't control the wolf, or all these new instincts, but I'm only a man. I need to be mad at something rather than nothing at all. From the corner of my eye I saw Jim biting at his lip before he sat up beside me, frowning. "What is it?"
"Why are you damned now? I think I missed that," Jim said with confusion, glancing up from under those thick brows that were all furrowed together.
"You bit me, dammit! Or have you forgotten that too!?" Felt like I kicked a puppy at the look on his face when I yelled at him.
Jim rubbed the back of his neck and got out of the bed, awkward and unsure. He's not the real awkward kind of person, so watching him like this was strange, almost painful. Did he feel guilty about it? He should have. I could feel the bandage pull every time I moved and wondered how bad the damage was beneath it. "So, now what?" Jim asked.
I sure as hell didn't know, but maybe the doctor in me took over. "First thing, I need to check and see if this wound's cleaned up--"
But Jim stopped me. "Won't need to. You've seen how fast I heal. Once you change, the wound'll be gone."
Kid was right about that. I'd seen Jim pulling off his bandages after only a few hours, even a few severe ones that could have maimed or killed someone who was only human. Still, years of training inserted themselves over myth and magic. "Still gonna do it, just to be safe." That same training made me look over Jim once before asking seriously, "Are you hurt?"
"M'fine, Bones," Jim said, sounding a little more like himself.
I went into the office, peeling back the bandage and exposing the ugly wound. I could see the puncture marks from the teeth, torn flesh at the edges. It started to bleed fresh just a little as I dropped the bandage into the trash, and I set about numbing it carefully. Doing stitches on myself sounded high on the list of things I didn't want to have to do as a doctor, but by the time I was finished, there were more than a dozen neat little stitches making my ugly hide more ugly than it was.
By the time I was done, Jim was gone. Once I saw his stuff was still here, including his weapons, I didn't have the heart go to after him. Like me, the kid liked his privacy, and even if there wasn't that, I wasn't sure I wanted to see him right now.
But when the sun started setting, I was feeling the exact opposite. I didn't want to be alone if I had to go through this transformation, didn't want to turn into a monster that couldn't think like a human. I didn't have those hunter instincts like Jim had built into him as a human, or even the good luck of being unconscious like he had been. I admit, I thought he wouldn't come.
I was sitting naked in my back garden when he showed up. I'd seen him naked what seemed like hundreds of times already, clothing never survived the transformation, hence why I was sitting out in the grass nude. He stopped at the gate, looking me over in a mixture of concern, guilt, and amusement. A strange combination, but you could see it written all over his face. "Hey, you," I called out, letting him know I wanted him there.
"...Didn't know if you'd want me around--" Jim started as he came through the gate, stripping off his own clothes.
"Of course I do, dammit," I snapped at him, then softened it with a shake of my head. "You put me into this, you think I would want to be alone and confused as a damn wolf?"
"Wolves aren't--" This time, Jim stopped himself and gave just a little smile. "Was stupid of me." And he sat beside me, looking at the last rays of the setting sun.
There were thousands of questions buzzing in my head, wanting to ask Jim what should I do, what did the change feel like, would I attack him or would he attack me, down to the stupid stuff like 'will I want to chase everything I see'. At the end there, I didn't say anything at all. We sat in silence, side by side, as the sun vanished behind the mountains in the distance.
When I saw the last of it, I closed my eyes and waited.
When I heard the first pop!, I nearly jumped out of my skin. My eyes flashed open, and I stared down at myself. It was like a terrible accident - you know you want to look away but you keep staring. I didn't want to see my bones break and shift, fur grow, and everything else my nightmares had described in detail.
Nothing happened, at least, to me. I actually moved away as I stared at the full transformation for the first time, my mind almost in a state of panic after being so wound up all day. Why wasn't anything happening? I won't give you all those gruesome details about the change, but even my nightmares hadn't come close to what the reality was. It happened so fast, too. Seconds really, though it felt like forever as I was sitting there.
I was still there, still human, still nude. With a look down at my own body to double check that was indeed reality, the realization that I hadn't been damned to be a werewolf finally started to sink in. Unfortunately, it also seemed to occur to the wolf not ten feet away. The wolf stared at me, growling quietly, and I just stared back. Couldn't believe it was happening all over again. I also think I might have lost my mind right there.
"Come on, then! Eat me! Kill me or whatever the hell else you want, wolfy!" It felt like a dream, like I was watching myself saying these things without telling myself to do it. The wolf sprang off the ground and slammed into me faster than I'd ever seen an animal move. Weighed a ton, all solid muscle as its front paws crushed my shoulders into the ground. It lowered its face to mine, until I could feel its hot breath against my face. I would have imagined it reeked like decay and blood, but instead it didn't really smell much different than any human's mouth I'd known. Not perfumed or mint or anything, but not disgusting. Weird, the things you notice when you know you're going to die. Things seemed to get calmer then, and I stared into the wolf's eyes.
Eternity passed before the wolf pulled back away from me, and ran off into the night with a leap over the high fence. I laid there for a long time, staring at the stars and the moon as the cold of the night pressed into my skin. My very much still human skin. The bite hadn't changed me, but why? Could only certain people become werewolves? Was one bite not enough? Did the person have to be weak before being bitten? So many questions that my mind tried to answer with its limited information, but the attempts only brought about more questions.
I went inside and got dressed only after I had started to shiver. Thought about laying in bed and actually sleeping at night, instead of the half-night half-day method I had taken up since Jim had come into my life and gotten changed, but realized I was just too awake now to do it. Why hadn't the wolf attacked me like it had only the night before? Guess I would have to wait until morning, when Jim and his humanity returned. In the mean time, I did what any man who had been scared out of his wits would have done. I pulled out a bottle of rotgut and started drinking.
Part 2 >>