in the midnight sun - act I, scenes xiii-xvi
Alex stands in front of the mirror with his shirt off, just staring.
There’s the bite on his shoulder. Yesterday it just looked puffy, swollen and pink. Now it is less pink. Or maybe it’s not; he can’t tell because most of the affected area is sprouting hair.
He wants to scream. He is a trained professional. Nowhere in his textbooks does it say what to do when people get bitten by their hot werewolf boyfriend mid-change and then the bite starts growing hair. It isn’t normal.
Once he’s finished wanting to scream he puts his shirt back on and calls Jeff.
*
Jeff tells him not to try hot-waxing the bite. Alex does not ask why he’s now privy to this information. Besides, he doesn’t own anything like that. He’s proud of his chest hair. He likes his chest hair. It makes him feel manly. He does try pulling the hairs out with tweezers, but that hurts so much it makes his eyes water. Instead he keeps his shirt on all day. He even wears it in the pool. Which sucks, because Alex really loves swimming. Grieco does not, though; he sits on the back porch with his book and reads for most of the afternoon.
“Why are you wearing your shirt in the pool?” Grieco asks, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Alex shrugs. “I don’t want to get skin cancer?” Before he has to come up with anymore stupid answers, he leans over the side of the pool, not caring that some of the water spills out onto the lawn. “Come over here and kiss me.” It’s actually kind of ridiculous how horny he is. His boyfriend gets up though, and kisses him slowly. He thinks they should have sex in the pool, again, but he doesn’t ask because that would be a very bad idea until he can take Grieco’s stitches out. They make out over the side of the pool instead, which is pretty nice in and of itself. He tugs the hem of Grieco’s t-shirt, pulls away and goes, “So I’m thinking you should take this off.”
The buzzing in his head, the queer not-quite-itch under his skin goes away when they’re touching. He’s pleased with himself when the offending garment drops onto the grass. They make out for a while longer and then Grieco asks, “Why are you acting all weird? Did I do something?”
“No,” Alex says, feeling vaguely panicked. “God, no, you’re perfect.” He anchors his hands on the rubber side of the pool and hoists himself over the edge. To hell with the ladder. His feet make two perfect splssssh noises when they hit the ground. Grieco reaches for his hand and sighs sadly, taking in the long, thin slashes on his arms. They are shiny and pink still. Maybe the fact that they aren’t healing fast is a good sign… It’s a problem he still hasn’t been able to figure out how to solve. So far, all he’s noticed is that he has this weird headache, but even that is hard to pin down because he gets them a lot in the summer months from the humidity and the air pressure being unstable. “I just have a headache,” he says.
Grieco rubs his shoulders and murmurs, “Maybe you should have a nap. I know you didn’t sleep last night ‘cause your side of the bed was cold when I got up and you went to work super early. And you always get crabby and weird when you don’t sleep, so let’s go curl up and nap and we’ll order pizza for dinner, okay?”
“’Kay,” he sighs, following his boyfriend inside. They both strip down to their underwear - it’s too hot for clothes, really, and anyway Alex’s bite isn’t as gnarly as it was in the morning; it’s shedding and the skin looks pink and enflamed but otherwise it’s pretty unremarkable at this point. At the back of his mind he’s kind of hoping that he just imagined the hair, or that maybe, maybe it was hair that got embedded in the wound at the point of contact. People don’t get bitten and then start sprouting hair from the bite. They just don’t. Even as he thinks it, though, Alex knows it’s a fool’s logic. He’s been dating a werewolf for seven years and he’s seen enough people who have been bitten to know the signs. He doesn’t think about how many of them have never come back, haven’t survived. If he ignores the problem, maybe it will just go away. Maybe he won’t change.
“Are you done being a head case now?” Grieco asks, snuggling up against his side. “Mm. You smell like a wet dog. Stop spending so much time at work and stay home with me tomorrow.” It’s meant to be a joke, of course, but Alex’s stomach twists uncomfortably at the words. Grieco massages his scalp lightly, which helps his headache and also makes him sleepy. “Shhh, it’s okay, fall asleep. Can’t have you wearing yourself out taking care of everyone else when you need to look after yourself, too. I love you.”
He mumbles, “L’ve you too,” and then he falls asleep.
*
When he wakes up it feels like his body is on fire. He feels feverish all over and his hair is damp with sweat. “Baby,” he whines. “Babe, can you bring me some painkillers?” Then he opens his eyes and immediately closes them again because everything is too bright and hurts his head. So then he’s not turning into a werewolf, he supposes, he’s just got some crazy kind of flu bug that’s turning his bones into jelly.
Grieco brings him two Tylenol and a bottle of water and a kiss on the forehead. “How did you get so sick? Your skin is so hot… No, hey, don’t get up, you’re sick. You are supposed to stay in bed and let me look after you until you’re feeling better.”
“Might want to hold onto those for a minute,” Alex moans weakly, sitting up despite the fact that his body is actually dying because he needs to throw up. “Gonna puke.” Somehow he forces his legs to hold him up long enough to carry him into the bathroom and then his body forcefully ejects the entire contents of his stomach in all its brownish-orange glory. Stomach acid is so, so painful on the way up. His entire body shakes with the effort of holding him up, of being awake; peripherally he is aware of his boyfriend rubbing his back but his skin is so hot it barely feels like anything.
Neither of them notice, in all the chaos of trying to find something for him to eat that his stomach will accept and several attempts at swallowing painkillers, that the scratches on his arms - and the bite on his shoulder - have completely healed over. Alex doesn’t even know what time it is. It’s dark and cool outside, though he doesn’t feel any cooler once they have the windows open and the fan blowing feebly at him. Grieco tells him, “If you aren’t feeling better in the morning and your fever hasn’t gone down then I am taking you to the doctor.” His fever is currently at a hundred and four; it would be worrying if he didn’t always run extremely high fevers. But Grieco is right: If it doesn’t go down then it could be extremely dangerous.
“It’s probably just a twenty-four hour thing,” he whispers. “Try not to worry about it.”
“I am trying. It’s not working.”
Alex sighs and kicks the blankets away from his side of the bed. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be okay.” They rub noses and then the usual shifting around to get comfortable gets underway; Alex quickly figures out that snuggling makes him too hot so he ends up on his side with Grieco’s hand curled inside his own. This time sleep is not so easy to find. He lies awake for another hour willing himself to fall asleep before he’s finally exhausted enough to pass out into a dreamless sleep.
*
The alarm seems about a hundred times louder than usual when it goes off in the morning. “Oh my god, shut up,” Alex grumbles, twisting around to find the snooze button and slams his hand down on it. He feels a crunch under his fist and forces his eyes open. Somehow he managed to smash the alarm clock; the plastic face is cracked and the red digits are… unreadable. “Um.” The next thing he realizes is that his fever is gone. Actually, it’s better than gone. He feels great. Grieco makes a small sleepy noise next to him, alerting him to his next problem.
He’s horny. He’s just really, really horny and he needs to get off right now.
“Mmmf, good morning,” Grieco yawns, rolling over to nuzzle him gently and kiss him. “Are you feelin’ any better? You feel less - oh. Guess you are feeling better.” They kiss and end up wrapped around each other as they are prone to doing, sleepily making out, touching all over and initiating sex without even needing to think about it. It feels good, Alex thinks, dragging his teeth across his boyfriend’s collarbone possessively. He thinks, mine, mineminemineMINE and bites down hard enough to leave a mark. Sex is always good, but this is even better than usual, quick and hard and strangely possessive. They’ve been apart too long. A week is too long.
It’s afterward, when they’re curled up together just breathing that everything goes to hell. Grieco is touching him, just his skin all over, and then he pauses. He looks at Alex and goes, “Alex, what the hell happened?”
“What?”
“You weren’t going to tell me.” Grieco pulls away from him, suddenly looking fierce and hard and determined. “What, were you hoping it would just go away and you could pretend nothing happened? Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Do you honestly think I’m that stupid? Because I’ve been this way for nine years, Alex, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be obvious to me when my boyfriend is turning into a fucking werewolf.”
Dumbly, Alex says, “Jeff Maker told me not to freak out. He said there was a high probability that nothing would happen because you were changing when you bit me. It was an accident! It’s not like, it’s not like I planned for this to happen. I was trying to save your life.”
This is the absolute wrong response, but he’s horny as fuck and he can’t think. Grieco’s anger is like a sharp assault on all of his senses; he sits up in bed and twists his fingers in the sheets. “So not only were you not going to tell me but you told Jeff ? That’s really great, Alex. That is just - that’s great.” He doesn’t fight back when Grieco hits him. His jaw aches for about thirty seconds and then stops. “Get out. Get out, get out, I don’t want you in here, get the fuck out of bed and just… go be somewhere else. I don’t want to talk to you. I am pissed. And you can sleep on the couch tonight. I am fucking pissed at you.”
“I love you.” He pulls on the first clothes he finds - jeans, t-shirt, mismatched socks. “I’m sorry. I love you. I love you so fucking much, please don’t be mad.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t want us to fight about this. I am going to work. Please don’t be mad at me. We can talk about this when I get home. Okay?” He doesn’t want to go to work, though. He wants to stay home and jerk off and have sex. He wants to scratch his skin until it all comes off his body. Grieco glares at him and refuses to speak to him. This sucks. This completely and utterly sucks. Alex gets into his truck and pulls onto the highway, keeping both hands on the steering wheel to keep from touching himself when he drives.
Oh yeah, this really sucks. He’s hornier than he’s ever been in his entire life, his boyfriend is mad at him, and he’s also turning into a fucking werewolf. The stalk for the windshield wipers breaks off in his hand when he goes to turn them on. So the rain beats down on the windshield relentlessly and the wipers won’t come on because such is life that not only is he having the worst day of his life, but now he needs to figure out how to explain to his mechanic that, hey, he broke the truck because he’s turning into a fucking werewolf. When he gets to the animal hospital, he stomps inside and flies through his paperwork so fast the ink from his pen bleeds through the top page onto other papers. Today is the worst day ever.
*
Alex calls home at lunch, knowing that Grieco will be there, but he doesn’t pick up the phone. It goes to voicemail. “Hey baby,” he sighs. “It’s me. Listen, I know you’re still mad at me and I really am sorry, okay? I was going to tell you as soon as I was sure. I didn’t want you to worry if it turned out to be nothing. I’m so sorry, babe. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I love you. Anyway… Um. I guess I’ll see you when I get home. ‘Kay. Bye.” He hangs up the phone sadly and tries not to think about what it means that he didn’t pick up. He always picks up.
There’s the bite on his shoulder. Yesterday it just looked puffy, swollen and pink. Now it is less pink. Or maybe it’s not; he can’t tell because most of the affected area is sprouting hair.
He wants to scream. He is a trained professional. Nowhere in his textbooks does it say what to do when people get bitten by their hot werewolf boyfriend mid-change and then the bite starts growing hair. It isn’t normal.
Once he’s finished wanting to scream he puts his shirt back on and calls Jeff.
*
Jeff tells him not to try hot-waxing the bite. Alex does not ask why he’s now privy to this information. Besides, he doesn’t own anything like that. He’s proud of his chest hair. He likes his chest hair. It makes him feel manly. He does try pulling the hairs out with tweezers, but that hurts so much it makes his eyes water. Instead he keeps his shirt on all day. He even wears it in the pool. Which sucks, because Alex really loves swimming. Grieco does not, though; he sits on the back porch with his book and reads for most of the afternoon.
“Why are you wearing your shirt in the pool?” Grieco asks, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Alex shrugs. “I don’t want to get skin cancer?” Before he has to come up with anymore stupid answers, he leans over the side of the pool, not caring that some of the water spills out onto the lawn. “Come over here and kiss me.” It’s actually kind of ridiculous how horny he is. His boyfriend gets up though, and kisses him slowly. He thinks they should have sex in the pool, again, but he doesn’t ask because that would be a very bad idea until he can take Grieco’s stitches out. They make out over the side of the pool instead, which is pretty nice in and of itself. He tugs the hem of Grieco’s t-shirt, pulls away and goes, “So I’m thinking you should take this off.”
The buzzing in his head, the queer not-quite-itch under his skin goes away when they’re touching. He’s pleased with himself when the offending garment drops onto the grass. They make out for a while longer and then Grieco asks, “Why are you acting all weird? Did I do something?”
“No,” Alex says, feeling vaguely panicked. “God, no, you’re perfect.” He anchors his hands on the rubber side of the pool and hoists himself over the edge. To hell with the ladder. His feet make two perfect splssssh noises when they hit the ground. Grieco reaches for his hand and sighs sadly, taking in the long, thin slashes on his arms. They are shiny and pink still. Maybe the fact that they aren’t healing fast is a good sign… It’s a problem he still hasn’t been able to figure out how to solve. So far, all he’s noticed is that he has this weird headache, but even that is hard to pin down because he gets them a lot in the summer months from the humidity and the air pressure being unstable. “I just have a headache,” he says.
Grieco rubs his shoulders and murmurs, “Maybe you should have a nap. I know you didn’t sleep last night ‘cause your side of the bed was cold when I got up and you went to work super early. And you always get crabby and weird when you don’t sleep, so let’s go curl up and nap and we’ll order pizza for dinner, okay?”
“’Kay,” he sighs, following his boyfriend inside. They both strip down to their underwear - it’s too hot for clothes, really, and anyway Alex’s bite isn’t as gnarly as it was in the morning; it’s shedding and the skin looks pink and enflamed but otherwise it’s pretty unremarkable at this point. At the back of his mind he’s kind of hoping that he just imagined the hair, or that maybe, maybe it was hair that got embedded in the wound at the point of contact. People don’t get bitten and then start sprouting hair from the bite. They just don’t. Even as he thinks it, though, Alex knows it’s a fool’s logic. He’s been dating a werewolf for seven years and he’s seen enough people who have been bitten to know the signs. He doesn’t think about how many of them have never come back, haven’t survived. If he ignores the problem, maybe it will just go away. Maybe he won’t change.
“Are you done being a head case now?” Grieco asks, snuggling up against his side. “Mm. You smell like a wet dog. Stop spending so much time at work and stay home with me tomorrow.” It’s meant to be a joke, of course, but Alex’s stomach twists uncomfortably at the words. Grieco massages his scalp lightly, which helps his headache and also makes him sleepy. “Shhh, it’s okay, fall asleep. Can’t have you wearing yourself out taking care of everyone else when you need to look after yourself, too. I love you.”
He mumbles, “L’ve you too,” and then he falls asleep.
*
When he wakes up it feels like his body is on fire. He feels feverish all over and his hair is damp with sweat. “Baby,” he whines. “Babe, can you bring me some painkillers?” Then he opens his eyes and immediately closes them again because everything is too bright and hurts his head. So then he’s not turning into a werewolf, he supposes, he’s just got some crazy kind of flu bug that’s turning his bones into jelly.
Grieco brings him two Tylenol and a bottle of water and a kiss on the forehead. “How did you get so sick? Your skin is so hot… No, hey, don’t get up, you’re sick. You are supposed to stay in bed and let me look after you until you’re feeling better.”
“Might want to hold onto those for a minute,” Alex moans weakly, sitting up despite the fact that his body is actually dying because he needs to throw up. “Gonna puke.” Somehow he forces his legs to hold him up long enough to carry him into the bathroom and then his body forcefully ejects the entire contents of his stomach in all its brownish-orange glory. Stomach acid is so, so painful on the way up. His entire body shakes with the effort of holding him up, of being awake; peripherally he is aware of his boyfriend rubbing his back but his skin is so hot it barely feels like anything.
Neither of them notice, in all the chaos of trying to find something for him to eat that his stomach will accept and several attempts at swallowing painkillers, that the scratches on his arms - and the bite on his shoulder - have completely healed over. Alex doesn’t even know what time it is. It’s dark and cool outside, though he doesn’t feel any cooler once they have the windows open and the fan blowing feebly at him. Grieco tells him, “If you aren’t feeling better in the morning and your fever hasn’t gone down then I am taking you to the doctor.” His fever is currently at a hundred and four; it would be worrying if he didn’t always run extremely high fevers. But Grieco is right: If it doesn’t go down then it could be extremely dangerous.
“It’s probably just a twenty-four hour thing,” he whispers. “Try not to worry about it.”
“I am trying. It’s not working.”
Alex sighs and kicks the blankets away from his side of the bed. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be okay.” They rub noses and then the usual shifting around to get comfortable gets underway; Alex quickly figures out that snuggling makes him too hot so he ends up on his side with Grieco’s hand curled inside his own. This time sleep is not so easy to find. He lies awake for another hour willing himself to fall asleep before he’s finally exhausted enough to pass out into a dreamless sleep.
*
The alarm seems about a hundred times louder than usual when it goes off in the morning. “Oh my god, shut up,” Alex grumbles, twisting around to find the snooze button and slams his hand down on it. He feels a crunch under his fist and forces his eyes open. Somehow he managed to smash the alarm clock; the plastic face is cracked and the red digits are… unreadable. “Um.” The next thing he realizes is that his fever is gone. Actually, it’s better than gone. He feels great. Grieco makes a small sleepy noise next to him, alerting him to his next problem.
He’s horny. He’s just really, really horny and he needs to get off right now.
“Mmmf, good morning,” Grieco yawns, rolling over to nuzzle him gently and kiss him. “Are you feelin’ any better? You feel less - oh. Guess you are feeling better.” They kiss and end up wrapped around each other as they are prone to doing, sleepily making out, touching all over and initiating sex without even needing to think about it. It feels good, Alex thinks, dragging his teeth across his boyfriend’s collarbone possessively. He thinks, mine, mineminemineMINE and bites down hard enough to leave a mark. Sex is always good, but this is even better than usual, quick and hard and strangely possessive. They’ve been apart too long. A week is too long.
It’s afterward, when they’re curled up together just breathing that everything goes to hell. Grieco is touching him, just his skin all over, and then he pauses. He looks at Alex and goes, “Alex, what the hell happened?”
“What?”
“You weren’t going to tell me.” Grieco pulls away from him, suddenly looking fierce and hard and determined. “What, were you hoping it would just go away and you could pretend nothing happened? Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Do you honestly think I’m that stupid? Because I’ve been this way for nine years, Alex, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be obvious to me when my boyfriend is turning into a fucking werewolf.”
Dumbly, Alex says, “Jeff Maker told me not to freak out. He said there was a high probability that nothing would happen because you were changing when you bit me. It was an accident! It’s not like, it’s not like I planned for this to happen. I was trying to save your life.”
This is the absolute wrong response, but he’s horny as fuck and he can’t think. Grieco’s anger is like a sharp assault on all of his senses; he sits up in bed and twists his fingers in the sheets. “So not only were you not going to tell me but you told Jeff ? That’s really great, Alex. That is just - that’s great.” He doesn’t fight back when Grieco hits him. His jaw aches for about thirty seconds and then stops. “Get out. Get out, get out, I don’t want you in here, get the fuck out of bed and just… go be somewhere else. I don’t want to talk to you. I am pissed. And you can sleep on the couch tonight. I am fucking pissed at you.”
“I love you.” He pulls on the first clothes he finds - jeans, t-shirt, mismatched socks. “I’m sorry. I love you. I love you so fucking much, please don’t be mad.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t want us to fight about this. I am going to work. Please don’t be mad at me. We can talk about this when I get home. Okay?” He doesn’t want to go to work, though. He wants to stay home and jerk off and have sex. He wants to scratch his skin until it all comes off his body. Grieco glares at him and refuses to speak to him. This sucks. This completely and utterly sucks. Alex gets into his truck and pulls onto the highway, keeping both hands on the steering wheel to keep from touching himself when he drives.
Oh yeah, this really sucks. He’s hornier than he’s ever been in his entire life, his boyfriend is mad at him, and he’s also turning into a fucking werewolf. The stalk for the windshield wipers breaks off in his hand when he goes to turn them on. So the rain beats down on the windshield relentlessly and the wipers won’t come on because such is life that not only is he having the worst day of his life, but now he needs to figure out how to explain to his mechanic that, hey, he broke the truck because he’s turning into a fucking werewolf. When he gets to the animal hospital, he stomps inside and flies through his paperwork so fast the ink from his pen bleeds through the top page onto other papers. Today is the worst day ever.
*
Alex calls home at lunch, knowing that Grieco will be there, but he doesn’t pick up the phone. It goes to voicemail. “Hey baby,” he sighs. “It’s me. Listen, I know you’re still mad at me and I really am sorry, okay? I was going to tell you as soon as I was sure. I didn’t want you to worry if it turned out to be nothing. I’m so sorry, babe. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I love you. Anyway… Um. I guess I’ll see you when I get home. ‘Kay. Bye.” He hangs up the phone sadly and tries not to think about what it means that he didn’t pick up. He always picks up.