IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN - i: stockholm syndrome
Even before Danny saw the wolf, he could sense its presence following along behind him, stalking him. He pulls his hoodie tighter around his body and keeps one hand on his camera, ready to whip it out the second it darts out from the underbrush. It’s cold out, darker than he would’ve liked, but he’s not worried about being alone in the woods with the wolves. They never bother him - they stay the hell away from him, which is frustrating. His scent confuses them; they don’t dare come near him because of it. Except for this wolf, circling around him in the darkness, herding him in a particular direction.
He wonders if it will try to bite him or not. It finally rushes out from its hiding place into the middle of the clearing, pauses, and looks over its shoulder at him. Danny raises his camera quickly and snaps a picture, hoping his new lens will pick up all of the finer details in the low light. He wants to capture the startling colour of the wolf’s eyes, not quite brown in the moonlight.
The wolf chuffs softly at him and takes a few steps forward. “Okay,” he says, and follows it through the trees, clomping noisily through the dead leaves. “I’ll follow you until the sun comes up.” This wolf, unlike the others, doesn’t seem thrown off by his scent. It seems single-minded in its request for him to follow; he can almost feel it willing him along, demanding his attention as they go. He thinks, as he walks, about what it would be like to join them. Every full moon he hears them howling and it strikes a chord of longing in his own chest as well. Like it or not, he is connected to them by a very thin thread. It’s April now. In two months he will change. But, for now, they look at him and wonder who he is, what he is, and why he smells so like yet so unlike them.
Danny has never once hated his father for giving this life to him.
They come upon a house at the edge of the tree line, just off a section of the highway that he knows well. This is where he drove into town a month ago; he drove across and checked into the shitty motel on the other side just before the outskirts and his things are still there. The wolf stops in front of the door and scratches the wood petulantly. Danny tells the wolf, “This isn’t Grandma’s house, so if I get busted for breaking and entering, it’s your furry ass that’s going to jail.” He tries the knob, and it isn’t locked.
It’s a nice house. One storey, maybe a little bare inside, but it’s well-kept and obviously lived in. Danny wonders where the owner is; maybe dude keeps a wolf as a pet because he thinks it makes him look tough. There’s an old pick-up in the driveway. Or… nah. He brushes the thought aside. As he explores the house a little more, he starts snapping pictures instinctively, trying to piece together an idea of the person who lives inside it. He doesn’t find any mail lying around to get a name. There are no pictures on the wall. But the longer he lingers there, the stronger the sense of déjà vu gets, that niggling sense of familiarity, though he knows he’s never been here before.
“Who are you?” he mutters to himself, opening the kitchen cupboards and the fridge before moving on to the bedroom.
He is surprised that it’s so tidy, honestly. There’s no dirty laundry on the floor, no towels left hanging on the back of the door and the bathroom mirror is spotless. It is… quite impressive. A cursory examination of the garage presents him with multiple toolboxes, a shelf full of well-maintained power tools and various other gadgets he has no idea how to work. So maybe the homeowner works in construction, he reasons when he comes across the dusty work boots sitting by the garage door. He pokes around in the beer fridge and the chest freezer, but it’s all very nondescript. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about this place, so why is he so fascinated with it?
Once he decides that there’s nothing else to find here, Danny goes back inside, hoping to find the wolf. Which is ridiculous, he knows - the creature is probably long gone. There’s just something about those eyes… It’s not there, though, which is to be expected, so he takes his shoes off and lies down on the couch. The sun is just beginning to creep over the horizon; a couple hours’ nap won’t hurt anybody and then he can find his way back to his car and go home. He is more than a little disappointed not to have come across the wolves yet again. Sleep finds him easily in this place - it’s not more than five minutes before he blinks out of consciousness.
*
When Danny wakes up, there’s a naked guy standing in the middle of the room staring at him with a mixture of surprise and shock. It takes him a minute to process this information. He rubs his eyes, wondering why he’s not in his flea-ridden motel room with the fuzzy old television blaring at him, and then he realizes that there’s an incredibly attractive naked man before him.
“Oh,” he says, blinking the sleep away. “Hi.” He knows he should explain the whole breaking-and-entering thing, but what is there to say? Somehow ‘a wolf made me do it!’ sounds a little too Brothers Grimm, a little too unbelievable. And there is that part of his brain awakening that’s incredibly aroused, too, wondering what this guy’s cock would taste like in his mouth. He says, “Sorry I broke into your house.”
The guy says, shaking his head, “You smell like… No, it can’t - I was so sure…”
“There was this wolf,” Danny says, sitting up. “I followed it here and the door was unlocked, and it was scratching like it wanted in, and no one was home and I was kind of lost. So I let myself in. I don’t know where the wolf went, though, it disappeared… It’s strange. As soon as I walked in I felt like I’d been here before, and even now it feels like you’re familiar, somehow, but I’m sure we’ve never met before.” He doesn’t ask the guy why he is not wearing any clothes; it doesn’t seem like his business to know, especially since he is very guilty of enjoying the show.
The guy is staring at him with this expression, maybe partly terrified but also something else. “I should put some clothes on,” he whispers. “I’ll be right back, I just… This would be less awkward if I were wearing clothes.”
Danny does not think about his next actions: Instinctively - he doesn’t know why he should do it, but he does - he rises from the couch and follows. “Wait,” he says, leaning on the doorway to the bedroom. The guy turns and looks at him, one of those over-the-shoulder glances that is both beautiful and disarming, and he wishes he hadn’t left his camera in the other room. He wants to photograph this man. More than that, he wants to touch, taste, feel. It’s the most powerful thing he has ever felt.
“Tell me you weren’t bitten. Promise me,” the guy says, strangely demanding with this request. He’s still naked, the distance between their bodies mere inches suddenly instead of feet. Danny can actually feel him breathing. So, slowly, he shakes his head ‘no’ because he wasn’t, he hasn’t been, he’s never been bitten. He’s just got this weird thing where his father was a werewolf and now he changes twice a year, every year since he hit puberty.
He leans in a little with every word, hands carefully remaining at his sides. “I have never in my life been bitten,” he breathes, moving even closer until they are sharing the same breath. Their lips meet briefly and hesitantly; Danny pulls away to strip off his hoodie and the shirt underneath. Without really understanding how he knows it, he just knows that they are going to have sex and it is happening right now. “I’m Danny,” he says, figuring that they should at least know each other’s names before they do it.
“Matt,” the guy mumbles against his lips. “Why do you smell like a wolf? You said you weren’t, aren’t…” They move clumsily to the bed, stumbling over one another on the way there. Matt is surprisingly strong, surprisingly agile at undressing him; he barely even notices it until he can’t tell whose limbs are whose anymore and his lips feel bruised from kissing. Then for the briefest moment Matt pulls away to stare at him and something clicks in his brain.
It’s not even an accusation. “It was you,” he gasps, suddenly recognizing the strange hazel eyes. They’d seemed unfamiliar out of context, but now he understands. “You were the wolf. It was you all along.” He understands and he doesn’t; he understands how it’s possible, of course, but he doesn’t understand why here, why him, why now. Matt nods. The thing is he’s not angry. He doesn’t feel tricked or anything, just curious.
Matt kisses him deftly, at the same time slipping one hand between his legs to tease. “You should be afraid,” Matt tells him. “You should tell me to stop right now.” Then Matt kisses his neck, his shoulder and he doesn’t want to stop this at all, not really. There is no reason for him to be afraid.
“How can I tell you to stop when I want this just as much as you do?”
“I was going to bite you.” Matt reaches over him to the bedside table for a bottle of lube, slicks up his fingers. “I was going to lure you here and then bite you so I could have you. So I could keep you,” he murmurs into Danny’s ear. He pushes the first finger in easily and quickly figures out that he can add the second right away. “You shouldn’t want to be here at all after what I was going to do to you. Because you wouldn’t have been able to resist; I wanted you so badly but then you were here and your smell was so confusing…”
Danny pushes back against Matt’s fingers. “Please,” he moans. “More.” The stretch is so good; he hooks one of his legs over Matt’s shoulder. “I’m not afraid. I want this.” He can smell Matt’s wildness still, buried beneath the clean people-smells of soap and aftershave and toothpaste. It’s a little like wet dog, but much more enticing than that. This must be what an addict feels like when they’re taking a hit, he thinks. Exhilarating.
Somehow, he expected this to be rougher than it is. Matt pushes into him carefully, watching him the whole time. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah.” He breathes out slowly and evenly, then says, “It’s okay, you can move. I’m okay.”
The sex is short-lived but very good. It’s intense, with neither of them able to stop looking at the other, and again there is that strange sense of familiarity and intimacy between them. Afterward, once Matt has pulled out, Danny lies on his side and catches his breath. Matt’s lips brush his shoulder lightly. “Stay for breakfast,” Matt says. “Please.” He so wishes he could. But he’s got to shoot stupid high school yearbook pictures all day and then he’s got a wedding at four and he can’t, he can’t and this is the first time he’s ever truly wanted to stay after sex.
“I can’t,” he whispers. “I wish I could but I have to work.” I want to know you, he thinks desperately. Every single stupid, shitty thing about you, I want to know it all. I want to stay in this bed forever and wake up next to you and kiss you and hold your hand. I want to be yours.
Matt kisses him once before he gets up and dresses quietly, unable to find the words to fill the silence that can mean what he needs them to.
He zips up his red cotton hoodie and says, “I’m sorry. I really wanted to stay.” When Matt doesn’t say anything, he goes into the living room and locates his camera, puts his shoes on slowly and carefully. He thinks about it for a minute before deciding to leave one of his business cards on the table, just in case. They all have his cell phone number on them. Maybe it’s foolish of him to hope that Matt will call. He checks his phone every chance he gets all day, but no matter how many times he glances at the small screen he has no new messages. It was the best sex he has ever had. Just sex, he tells himself. It was just sex.
*
Danny asks around about Matt in town, but no one seems to know anything about him. He works construction as an independent contractor doing odds jobs. He drives a black Ford pickup truck. He keeps to himself, mostly, and that’s all anyone will say about him. There are certain people that the townspeople seem to instinctively distrust or shy away from, himself included. He wonders if they can smell the wolfishness rolling off of him even though he’s only half; he wonders if werewolves distance themselves on purpose or if they are all maybe genetically, inherently weird. He takes pictures by the lake of some wolves, but it’s the quarter moon. They are just wolves. None of them carry with them Matt’s stunning eyes.
It’s probably a dangerous idea to go tromping around in the woods alone at night, but Danny does it anyway. He thinks bitterly of all the children’s tales told to keep young kids out of the dark. Little Red Riding Hood, he thinks, didn’t know how lucky she was. He walks and walks until he doesn’t know where he is anymore and then some more until he finds his way back to his car with no luck. He passes by Matt’s house when he drives back to town on the highway, but his hands freeze on the turn signal and jerk back onto the main road. Matt hasn’t called. Matt probably doesn’t want to see or hear from him, anyway. This time he doesn’t even have his camera to use as an excuse.
The local veterinarian tells him that he’s not in any danger if he’s walking through the woods at night and that all the noise he makes will scare off most wild animals. “And anyway,” he says with an uncomfortably stiff laugh, “The wolves around these parts are stranger than most.” Danny does not ask what he means by that even though, on the inside, he’s dying to know. They go for drinks, instead. Alex’s boyfriend joins them and entertains him with a history of most of the locals, old town gossip and an explanation of the intermingling bloodlines in the area.
“If you really want to see him again that much,” Grieco tells him, “Maybe you should be the one to make the first move.” Alex sighs and shakes his head, like he’s heard this same pep talk given a thousand times to a thousand other guys just like Danny. And maybe he has; regardless, there’s something about both of them that makes Danny want to trust them and so they become his first real friends in this place.
*
It’s a stupid plan. It’s a really, incredibly stupid plan, but somehow that Friday night, Danny finds himself spending an hour getting ready in front of the mirror, preening and fussing over his appearance in order to go through with a plan that may ultimately backfire on him. He gets in the car and just drives, straight down the highway past the sign advising him that it’s ten miles to the next town and hangs a right, stirring up the gravel in the driveway with his tires. And of course as soon as he engages the parking brake he starts to feel nervous and his mouth goes all dry, palms clammy.
Matt saunters over to the car, sweaty and shirtless with his jeans hanging low on his hips. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he says slowly. There’s grease under his fingernails, like he’s been working on his truck or maybe the ATV Danny noticed sitting in the garage the other day. He’s like a dream, a little bit, only this is real, right down to the sweat gathering in the hollows of his collarbones.
“I wasn’t invited. But I just…” Danny sighs. “I had to know.”
He climbs out of the car and leans against the hood, anxiously fiddling with the pullstrings on his hoodie. It’s the same one he wore when they met, when they… The red one, it’s the red one, his favourite. He watches Matt standing there, thumbs hooked through the front belt loops on his jeans and pulling them even lower to almost-but-not-quite remind Danny of the reason he came back here.
And Matt sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t control myself around you,” he says. “I’m normally not this… this.” There is a smear of grease on his cheek and it takes a great amount of self-control for Danny not to close the gap between them and wipe it away. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have come back. I shouldn’t have done anything the first time. You deserve so much more than what I can give you. I mean, I can’t even… I can’t.”
“I owe you an explanation. You have to admit that I at least owe you that. So please, hear me out and then I’ll go. Okay?” Danny holds his hand out for Matt to shake. Or not, whichever. But he’s praying to whoever listens to half-assed, crazy requests from desperate people that this plan works.
Matt’s fingers close around his; solid handshake, brief but friendly. “Okay. We can sit out here,” he says, “I’ll get you a beer.” He disappears into the garage a moment and then reappears with two bottles of beer. It’s alright though - Danny is half-hoping the alcohol will settle his nerves a bit. “You know,” Matt comments dryly, “in the stories where Red Riding Hood gets away, there’s usually a handsome woodsman who takes her away and marries her or something. She’s not supposed to come back and explain to the big bad wolf why she was in the woods to begin with.”
“Usually Red Riding Hood has to worry about being bitten. In this version I’m thinking of, she doesn’t. Maybe she comes back sometimes because she realizes the big bad wolf doesn’t have a choice about what he is and she recognizes that she was a dumb bitch for walking off the path but she can’t help it because she really, really wants to be around the goddamn wolf. So you’re a werewolf, okay? Big fucking deal. Am I supposed to be afraid, like, losing sleep at night worrying that you’ll hunt me down and sneak into my motel and bite me?”
“You have no idea how unbelievably tempting you are.”
Danny rolls his eyes. “I already know you won’t bite me though, or you would have done it when you had the chance.” He takes a huge gulp of his beer, feeling slightly uneasy under Matt’s steady gaze. The words are heavy tumbling out of his mouth when he says, “My father is - was - a werewolf. My mother is human.”
“But that’s impossible. How is that possible, how is it real, how are you…? You don’t change. You can’t, you smell so… human all the time,” Matt says quietly. Danny wants to kiss him so badly then; he wants to explain this feeling in his chest, this magnetic pull he feels that dragged him back to this place but there are no words for it. Instead of doing that he takes another long gulp of his beer. Matt nudges his foot. “Why’d you really come back?” He nudges Matt’s foot back, feeling strangely giddy about it.
So he admits, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I met you. I just… I don’t want what happened to be a one-time thing. I want more than that. I’m not afraid of what you are, okay? I’m not. I’m half-werewolf, you can’t hurt me, so don’t you be afraid of that. I know this is lame and probably completely out of line for me to say, but I want to be with you even though you think you’re dangerous.”
“How can you say that? I could have killed you.”
“I change twice a year,” Danny says. “That’s why my scent confuses you. I can’t explain why I don’t change because I still feel it there, in my chest, like I should be and I can’t and… my parents, they tried to prepare me for both lives in case I changed or I didn’t but instead I’m stuck this stupid in-between thing. And now…” he swallows, hard, because this is the scary part to have to talk about. “Now I guess I’m a lot more wolfy than we originally thought because this is like, this feels a lot more like how my dad felt about my mother than how she felt about him. I’m… I think…”
Matt cuts him off with a kiss, which catches him totally off-guard. Surprised, he kisses back, pressing his body into the werewolf’s as much as he possibly can. “Please don’t say it,” Matt whispers. “I can’t handle it if you are. I want you to be so badly. I do, Danny, I want this so much but what if you change your mind…?”
“If I am wrong about this,” he says fiercely, “I give you my full permission to rip my heart out and eat it.”
He kisses Matt before he can protest anymore, one hand on his knee and the other resting lightly on the back of his neck. “Will you please stop trying to argue and let me be right about this?”
“Will you stay for a while? I’ll make dinner if you want, we can… We’ll watch a movie or something.” They sit on Matt’s front porch kissing and nuzzling each other until the sun sinks low in the sky, whatever Matt was working on long-forgotten. Danny feels safe with him, despite his opinions on the matter. They are opposites but they go so well together, like puzzle pieces that fit perfectly into each other’s empty spaces. He likes that Matt’s hands are always dirty and he’s sweaty and strong and quiet. He likes Matt’s house and his bed and the owls in the tree outside when they’re lying together after sex that hoot and swoop off into the darkness, hunting.
*
When they wake in the morning, Matt’s arms are wrapped tightly around his waist and sunlight is streaming through the window. It’s all a little Disney-esque; the birds are singing and there are probably even rabbits and other woodland creatures frolicking outside. Danny pokes Matt in the chest lightly and asks, “How many kisses will it take for you to make me breakfast?” The sheets are tangled between his legs but he can’t be bothered to extract himself from them. Matt yawns sleepily and strokes his hair.
“All of them,” he mumbles. “How do you want your eggs?”
“Runny so I can dip my toast in them, please.”
Matt sits up in bed and stretches. “I can do that. Just gimme a minute to wake up,” he yawns again, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looks so beautiful doing this that Danny rolls over and grabs his camera instinctively. “What’re you doing?”
Danny tells him, “Don’t move,” and takes his picture all sleep-eyed and sex-haired. It’s an immensely satisfying feeling. “You’re so pretty, can I just take your picture forever?” he sighs. Matt laughs and leans down to kiss him good morning. He likes the press of Matt’s lip ring against his lips. But before they can get distracted by making out and the potential for sleepy morning sex, he pulls away and reminds Matt, “Breakfast. Then sex. I can’t love you on an empty stomach.”
“Ha. What big teeth you have,” Matt says sardonically.
“All the better to bite you with.” Very solemnly, Danny reaches for his boyfriend and starts kissing him again, waiting for the moment when Matt relaxes into it before making like he’s going to kiss Matt’s neck and instead biting him playfully. “You didn’t say it back. Say it back or I’m not putting out after you feed me.”
“I’m not going to say I love you back when it’s so clearly a veiled insult.” Danny snaps another picture of him, this time looking grumpy and pensive. “Stop taking my picture!” He growls and climbs out of bed, pulls on a pair of shorts and pads out of the room, presumably to make breakfast. Once cooking-sounds start happening in the kitchen, Danny goes through his pictures and smiles. Most of them are of Matt. So they won’t sell and get him hundreds or thousands of dollars, but he likes looking at them and remembering the moment they’re from. He finds one of Matt brushing his teeth and grins, thinking about how exciting the previous night was, how excited he was just to watch Matt doing normal things and being all cute and romantic with him.
Matt comes back into the bedroom and sits on his legs. “Why are you back?” he asks, slightly confused.
“I forgot something,” Matt says, grinning wolfishly. He leans in for a kiss and then nuzzles Danny’s cheek affectionately. “Also, how do you feel about moving in with me? We could go pick up your stuff this afternoon if you want.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, who was right?”
Matt scowls. “Shut up, Red Riding Hood. For all you know I’m trying to lull you into a false sense of security before I trick you into hanging out in my oven for an hour or two.”
“That is not even the right story. You love me,” Danny says happily. “Now stop confusing your fairy tales and go make me breakfast, wolf boy. Then maybe you can find something to distract me for an hour or two and I’ll stop taking your picture for a while… although,” he muses, “I see no reason to stop taking your picture once the clothes come off. That actually gives me more incentive.” When Matt looks completely horrified by this idea, he laughs and adds, “I’m joking. As if I want to share you with the rest of the world. You’re mine.”
Next
He wonders if it will try to bite him or not. It finally rushes out from its hiding place into the middle of the clearing, pauses, and looks over its shoulder at him. Danny raises his camera quickly and snaps a picture, hoping his new lens will pick up all of the finer details in the low light. He wants to capture the startling colour of the wolf’s eyes, not quite brown in the moonlight.
The wolf chuffs softly at him and takes a few steps forward. “Okay,” he says, and follows it through the trees, clomping noisily through the dead leaves. “I’ll follow you until the sun comes up.” This wolf, unlike the others, doesn’t seem thrown off by his scent. It seems single-minded in its request for him to follow; he can almost feel it willing him along, demanding his attention as they go. He thinks, as he walks, about what it would be like to join them. Every full moon he hears them howling and it strikes a chord of longing in his own chest as well. Like it or not, he is connected to them by a very thin thread. It’s April now. In two months he will change. But, for now, they look at him and wonder who he is, what he is, and why he smells so like yet so unlike them.
Danny has never once hated his father for giving this life to him.
They come upon a house at the edge of the tree line, just off a section of the highway that he knows well. This is where he drove into town a month ago; he drove across and checked into the shitty motel on the other side just before the outskirts and his things are still there. The wolf stops in front of the door and scratches the wood petulantly. Danny tells the wolf, “This isn’t Grandma’s house, so if I get busted for breaking and entering, it’s your furry ass that’s going to jail.” He tries the knob, and it isn’t locked.
It’s a nice house. One storey, maybe a little bare inside, but it’s well-kept and obviously lived in. Danny wonders where the owner is; maybe dude keeps a wolf as a pet because he thinks it makes him look tough. There’s an old pick-up in the driveway. Or… nah. He brushes the thought aside. As he explores the house a little more, he starts snapping pictures instinctively, trying to piece together an idea of the person who lives inside it. He doesn’t find any mail lying around to get a name. There are no pictures on the wall. But the longer he lingers there, the stronger the sense of déjà vu gets, that niggling sense of familiarity, though he knows he’s never been here before.
“Who are you?” he mutters to himself, opening the kitchen cupboards and the fridge before moving on to the bedroom.
He is surprised that it’s so tidy, honestly. There’s no dirty laundry on the floor, no towels left hanging on the back of the door and the bathroom mirror is spotless. It is… quite impressive. A cursory examination of the garage presents him with multiple toolboxes, a shelf full of well-maintained power tools and various other gadgets he has no idea how to work. So maybe the homeowner works in construction, he reasons when he comes across the dusty work boots sitting by the garage door. He pokes around in the beer fridge and the chest freezer, but it’s all very nondescript. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about this place, so why is he so fascinated with it?
Once he decides that there’s nothing else to find here, Danny goes back inside, hoping to find the wolf. Which is ridiculous, he knows - the creature is probably long gone. There’s just something about those eyes… It’s not there, though, which is to be expected, so he takes his shoes off and lies down on the couch. The sun is just beginning to creep over the horizon; a couple hours’ nap won’t hurt anybody and then he can find his way back to his car and go home. He is more than a little disappointed not to have come across the wolves yet again. Sleep finds him easily in this place - it’s not more than five minutes before he blinks out of consciousness.
*
When Danny wakes up, there’s a naked guy standing in the middle of the room staring at him with a mixture of surprise and shock. It takes him a minute to process this information. He rubs his eyes, wondering why he’s not in his flea-ridden motel room with the fuzzy old television blaring at him, and then he realizes that there’s an incredibly attractive naked man before him.
“Oh,” he says, blinking the sleep away. “Hi.” He knows he should explain the whole breaking-and-entering thing, but what is there to say? Somehow ‘a wolf made me do it!’ sounds a little too Brothers Grimm, a little too unbelievable. And there is that part of his brain awakening that’s incredibly aroused, too, wondering what this guy’s cock would taste like in his mouth. He says, “Sorry I broke into your house.”
The guy says, shaking his head, “You smell like… No, it can’t - I was so sure…”
“There was this wolf,” Danny says, sitting up. “I followed it here and the door was unlocked, and it was scratching like it wanted in, and no one was home and I was kind of lost. So I let myself in. I don’t know where the wolf went, though, it disappeared… It’s strange. As soon as I walked in I felt like I’d been here before, and even now it feels like you’re familiar, somehow, but I’m sure we’ve never met before.” He doesn’t ask the guy why he is not wearing any clothes; it doesn’t seem like his business to know, especially since he is very guilty of enjoying the show.
The guy is staring at him with this expression, maybe partly terrified but also something else. “I should put some clothes on,” he whispers. “I’ll be right back, I just… This would be less awkward if I were wearing clothes.”
Danny does not think about his next actions: Instinctively - he doesn’t know why he should do it, but he does - he rises from the couch and follows. “Wait,” he says, leaning on the doorway to the bedroom. The guy turns and looks at him, one of those over-the-shoulder glances that is both beautiful and disarming, and he wishes he hadn’t left his camera in the other room. He wants to photograph this man. More than that, he wants to touch, taste, feel. It’s the most powerful thing he has ever felt.
“Tell me you weren’t bitten. Promise me,” the guy says, strangely demanding with this request. He’s still naked, the distance between their bodies mere inches suddenly instead of feet. Danny can actually feel him breathing. So, slowly, he shakes his head ‘no’ because he wasn’t, he hasn’t been, he’s never been bitten. He’s just got this weird thing where his father was a werewolf and now he changes twice a year, every year since he hit puberty.
He leans in a little with every word, hands carefully remaining at his sides. “I have never in my life been bitten,” he breathes, moving even closer until they are sharing the same breath. Their lips meet briefly and hesitantly; Danny pulls away to strip off his hoodie and the shirt underneath. Without really understanding how he knows it, he just knows that they are going to have sex and it is happening right now. “I’m Danny,” he says, figuring that they should at least know each other’s names before they do it.
“Matt,” the guy mumbles against his lips. “Why do you smell like a wolf? You said you weren’t, aren’t…” They move clumsily to the bed, stumbling over one another on the way there. Matt is surprisingly strong, surprisingly agile at undressing him; he barely even notices it until he can’t tell whose limbs are whose anymore and his lips feel bruised from kissing. Then for the briefest moment Matt pulls away to stare at him and something clicks in his brain.
It’s not even an accusation. “It was you,” he gasps, suddenly recognizing the strange hazel eyes. They’d seemed unfamiliar out of context, but now he understands. “You were the wolf. It was you all along.” He understands and he doesn’t; he understands how it’s possible, of course, but he doesn’t understand why here, why him, why now. Matt nods. The thing is he’s not angry. He doesn’t feel tricked or anything, just curious.
Matt kisses him deftly, at the same time slipping one hand between his legs to tease. “You should be afraid,” Matt tells him. “You should tell me to stop right now.” Then Matt kisses his neck, his shoulder and he doesn’t want to stop this at all, not really. There is no reason for him to be afraid.
“How can I tell you to stop when I want this just as much as you do?”
“I was going to bite you.” Matt reaches over him to the bedside table for a bottle of lube, slicks up his fingers. “I was going to lure you here and then bite you so I could have you. So I could keep you,” he murmurs into Danny’s ear. He pushes the first finger in easily and quickly figures out that he can add the second right away. “You shouldn’t want to be here at all after what I was going to do to you. Because you wouldn’t have been able to resist; I wanted you so badly but then you were here and your smell was so confusing…”
Danny pushes back against Matt’s fingers. “Please,” he moans. “More.” The stretch is so good; he hooks one of his legs over Matt’s shoulder. “I’m not afraid. I want this.” He can smell Matt’s wildness still, buried beneath the clean people-smells of soap and aftershave and toothpaste. It’s a little like wet dog, but much more enticing than that. This must be what an addict feels like when they’re taking a hit, he thinks. Exhilarating.
Somehow, he expected this to be rougher than it is. Matt pushes into him carefully, watching him the whole time. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah.” He breathes out slowly and evenly, then says, “It’s okay, you can move. I’m okay.”
The sex is short-lived but very good. It’s intense, with neither of them able to stop looking at the other, and again there is that strange sense of familiarity and intimacy between them. Afterward, once Matt has pulled out, Danny lies on his side and catches his breath. Matt’s lips brush his shoulder lightly. “Stay for breakfast,” Matt says. “Please.” He so wishes he could. But he’s got to shoot stupid high school yearbook pictures all day and then he’s got a wedding at four and he can’t, he can’t and this is the first time he’s ever truly wanted to stay after sex.
“I can’t,” he whispers. “I wish I could but I have to work.” I want to know you, he thinks desperately. Every single stupid, shitty thing about you, I want to know it all. I want to stay in this bed forever and wake up next to you and kiss you and hold your hand. I want to be yours.
Matt kisses him once before he gets up and dresses quietly, unable to find the words to fill the silence that can mean what he needs them to.
He zips up his red cotton hoodie and says, “I’m sorry. I really wanted to stay.” When Matt doesn’t say anything, he goes into the living room and locates his camera, puts his shoes on slowly and carefully. He thinks about it for a minute before deciding to leave one of his business cards on the table, just in case. They all have his cell phone number on them. Maybe it’s foolish of him to hope that Matt will call. He checks his phone every chance he gets all day, but no matter how many times he glances at the small screen he has no new messages. It was the best sex he has ever had. Just sex, he tells himself. It was just sex.
*
Danny asks around about Matt in town, but no one seems to know anything about him. He works construction as an independent contractor doing odds jobs. He drives a black Ford pickup truck. He keeps to himself, mostly, and that’s all anyone will say about him. There are certain people that the townspeople seem to instinctively distrust or shy away from, himself included. He wonders if they can smell the wolfishness rolling off of him even though he’s only half; he wonders if werewolves distance themselves on purpose or if they are all maybe genetically, inherently weird. He takes pictures by the lake of some wolves, but it’s the quarter moon. They are just wolves. None of them carry with them Matt’s stunning eyes.
It’s probably a dangerous idea to go tromping around in the woods alone at night, but Danny does it anyway. He thinks bitterly of all the children’s tales told to keep young kids out of the dark. Little Red Riding Hood, he thinks, didn’t know how lucky she was. He walks and walks until he doesn’t know where he is anymore and then some more until he finds his way back to his car with no luck. He passes by Matt’s house when he drives back to town on the highway, but his hands freeze on the turn signal and jerk back onto the main road. Matt hasn’t called. Matt probably doesn’t want to see or hear from him, anyway. This time he doesn’t even have his camera to use as an excuse.
The local veterinarian tells him that he’s not in any danger if he’s walking through the woods at night and that all the noise he makes will scare off most wild animals. “And anyway,” he says with an uncomfortably stiff laugh, “The wolves around these parts are stranger than most.” Danny does not ask what he means by that even though, on the inside, he’s dying to know. They go for drinks, instead. Alex’s boyfriend joins them and entertains him with a history of most of the locals, old town gossip and an explanation of the intermingling bloodlines in the area.
“If you really want to see him again that much,” Grieco tells him, “Maybe you should be the one to make the first move.” Alex sighs and shakes his head, like he’s heard this same pep talk given a thousand times to a thousand other guys just like Danny. And maybe he has; regardless, there’s something about both of them that makes Danny want to trust them and so they become his first real friends in this place.
*
It’s a stupid plan. It’s a really, incredibly stupid plan, but somehow that Friday night, Danny finds himself spending an hour getting ready in front of the mirror, preening and fussing over his appearance in order to go through with a plan that may ultimately backfire on him. He gets in the car and just drives, straight down the highway past the sign advising him that it’s ten miles to the next town and hangs a right, stirring up the gravel in the driveway with his tires. And of course as soon as he engages the parking brake he starts to feel nervous and his mouth goes all dry, palms clammy.
Matt saunters over to the car, sweaty and shirtless with his jeans hanging low on his hips. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he says slowly. There’s grease under his fingernails, like he’s been working on his truck or maybe the ATV Danny noticed sitting in the garage the other day. He’s like a dream, a little bit, only this is real, right down to the sweat gathering in the hollows of his collarbones.
“I wasn’t invited. But I just…” Danny sighs. “I had to know.”
He climbs out of the car and leans against the hood, anxiously fiddling with the pullstrings on his hoodie. It’s the same one he wore when they met, when they… The red one, it’s the red one, his favourite. He watches Matt standing there, thumbs hooked through the front belt loops on his jeans and pulling them even lower to almost-but-not-quite remind Danny of the reason he came back here.
And Matt sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t control myself around you,” he says. “I’m normally not this… this.” There is a smear of grease on his cheek and it takes a great amount of self-control for Danny not to close the gap between them and wipe it away. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have come back. I shouldn’t have done anything the first time. You deserve so much more than what I can give you. I mean, I can’t even… I can’t.”
“I owe you an explanation. You have to admit that I at least owe you that. So please, hear me out and then I’ll go. Okay?” Danny holds his hand out for Matt to shake. Or not, whichever. But he’s praying to whoever listens to half-assed, crazy requests from desperate people that this plan works.
Matt’s fingers close around his; solid handshake, brief but friendly. “Okay. We can sit out here,” he says, “I’ll get you a beer.” He disappears into the garage a moment and then reappears with two bottles of beer. It’s alright though - Danny is half-hoping the alcohol will settle his nerves a bit. “You know,” Matt comments dryly, “in the stories where Red Riding Hood gets away, there’s usually a handsome woodsman who takes her away and marries her or something. She’s not supposed to come back and explain to the big bad wolf why she was in the woods to begin with.”
“Usually Red Riding Hood has to worry about being bitten. In this version I’m thinking of, she doesn’t. Maybe she comes back sometimes because she realizes the big bad wolf doesn’t have a choice about what he is and she recognizes that she was a dumb bitch for walking off the path but she can’t help it because she really, really wants to be around the goddamn wolf. So you’re a werewolf, okay? Big fucking deal. Am I supposed to be afraid, like, losing sleep at night worrying that you’ll hunt me down and sneak into my motel and bite me?”
“You have no idea how unbelievably tempting you are.”
Danny rolls his eyes. “I already know you won’t bite me though, or you would have done it when you had the chance.” He takes a huge gulp of his beer, feeling slightly uneasy under Matt’s steady gaze. The words are heavy tumbling out of his mouth when he says, “My father is - was - a werewolf. My mother is human.”
“But that’s impossible. How is that possible, how is it real, how are you…? You don’t change. You can’t, you smell so… human all the time,” Matt says quietly. Danny wants to kiss him so badly then; he wants to explain this feeling in his chest, this magnetic pull he feels that dragged him back to this place but there are no words for it. Instead of doing that he takes another long gulp of his beer. Matt nudges his foot. “Why’d you really come back?” He nudges Matt’s foot back, feeling strangely giddy about it.
So he admits, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I met you. I just… I don’t want what happened to be a one-time thing. I want more than that. I’m not afraid of what you are, okay? I’m not. I’m half-werewolf, you can’t hurt me, so don’t you be afraid of that. I know this is lame and probably completely out of line for me to say, but I want to be with you even though you think you’re dangerous.”
“How can you say that? I could have killed you.”
“I change twice a year,” Danny says. “That’s why my scent confuses you. I can’t explain why I don’t change because I still feel it there, in my chest, like I should be and I can’t and… my parents, they tried to prepare me for both lives in case I changed or I didn’t but instead I’m stuck this stupid in-between thing. And now…” he swallows, hard, because this is the scary part to have to talk about. “Now I guess I’m a lot more wolfy than we originally thought because this is like, this feels a lot more like how my dad felt about my mother than how she felt about him. I’m… I think…”
Matt cuts him off with a kiss, which catches him totally off-guard. Surprised, he kisses back, pressing his body into the werewolf’s as much as he possibly can. “Please don’t say it,” Matt whispers. “I can’t handle it if you are. I want you to be so badly. I do, Danny, I want this so much but what if you change your mind…?”
“If I am wrong about this,” he says fiercely, “I give you my full permission to rip my heart out and eat it.”
He kisses Matt before he can protest anymore, one hand on his knee and the other resting lightly on the back of his neck. “Will you please stop trying to argue and let me be right about this?”
“Will you stay for a while? I’ll make dinner if you want, we can… We’ll watch a movie or something.” They sit on Matt’s front porch kissing and nuzzling each other until the sun sinks low in the sky, whatever Matt was working on long-forgotten. Danny feels safe with him, despite his opinions on the matter. They are opposites but they go so well together, like puzzle pieces that fit perfectly into each other’s empty spaces. He likes that Matt’s hands are always dirty and he’s sweaty and strong and quiet. He likes Matt’s house and his bed and the owls in the tree outside when they’re lying together after sex that hoot and swoop off into the darkness, hunting.
*
When they wake in the morning, Matt’s arms are wrapped tightly around his waist and sunlight is streaming through the window. It’s all a little Disney-esque; the birds are singing and there are probably even rabbits and other woodland creatures frolicking outside. Danny pokes Matt in the chest lightly and asks, “How many kisses will it take for you to make me breakfast?” The sheets are tangled between his legs but he can’t be bothered to extract himself from them. Matt yawns sleepily and strokes his hair.
“All of them,” he mumbles. “How do you want your eggs?”
“Runny so I can dip my toast in them, please.”
Matt sits up in bed and stretches. “I can do that. Just gimme a minute to wake up,” he yawns again, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looks so beautiful doing this that Danny rolls over and grabs his camera instinctively. “What’re you doing?”
Danny tells him, “Don’t move,” and takes his picture all sleep-eyed and sex-haired. It’s an immensely satisfying feeling. “You’re so pretty, can I just take your picture forever?” he sighs. Matt laughs and leans down to kiss him good morning. He likes the press of Matt’s lip ring against his lips. But before they can get distracted by making out and the potential for sleepy morning sex, he pulls away and reminds Matt, “Breakfast. Then sex. I can’t love you on an empty stomach.”
“Ha. What big teeth you have,” Matt says sardonically.
“All the better to bite you with.” Very solemnly, Danny reaches for his boyfriend and starts kissing him again, waiting for the moment when Matt relaxes into it before making like he’s going to kiss Matt’s neck and instead biting him playfully. “You didn’t say it back. Say it back or I’m not putting out after you feed me.”
“I’m not going to say I love you back when it’s so clearly a veiled insult.” Danny snaps another picture of him, this time looking grumpy and pensive. “Stop taking my picture!” He growls and climbs out of bed, pulls on a pair of shorts and pads out of the room, presumably to make breakfast. Once cooking-sounds start happening in the kitchen, Danny goes through his pictures and smiles. Most of them are of Matt. So they won’t sell and get him hundreds or thousands of dollars, but he likes looking at them and remembering the moment they’re from. He finds one of Matt brushing his teeth and grins, thinking about how exciting the previous night was, how excited he was just to watch Matt doing normal things and being all cute and romantic with him.
Matt comes back into the bedroom and sits on his legs. “Why are you back?” he asks, slightly confused.
“I forgot something,” Matt says, grinning wolfishly. He leans in for a kiss and then nuzzles Danny’s cheek affectionately. “Also, how do you feel about moving in with me? We could go pick up your stuff this afternoon if you want.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, who was right?”
Matt scowls. “Shut up, Red Riding Hood. For all you know I’m trying to lull you into a false sense of security before I trick you into hanging out in my oven for an hour or two.”
“That is not even the right story. You love me,” Danny says happily. “Now stop confusing your fairy tales and go make me breakfast, wolf boy. Then maybe you can find something to distract me for an hour or two and I’ll stop taking your picture for a while… although,” he muses, “I see no reason to stop taking your picture once the clothes come off. That actually gives me more incentive.” When Matt looks completely horrified by this idea, he laughs and adds, “I’m joking. As if I want to share you with the rest of the world. You’re mine.”
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