by Zakarrie C
“You don’t have to do fudging,” Phin assured him, “I know I’m inside out and back to front.”
“That’s uncannily accurate,” Jack chuckled. “Not in a negative way, it’s just that it seems as if your senses are set to constant reboot…so you see, feel—even think—things for the first time, every time. As if that doesn’t sound stupid enough…sometimes I’m afraid you’ll bleed, if I speak—or even look at you—too sharply.” Jake did dipping his head, which made his hair fall forwards to shield his face. Daftie, when his blushes smelled scrumptious, as if they’d do tasting like strawberry milkshake.
“If it makes you feel less of a ’nana…? I may have done checking,” Phin admitted.
“To see if you were bleeding?” Jake risked a peep from under his lashes, he was a very pretty shade of pink. For a fearsome beastie, an’ all.
“I wasn’t. Well, not then, anyhoo.”
“Afterwards.” The word landed with a hollow thud on the table between them, echoing with…Phin leaned in to do snuffling the subtle shift in the scent seeping from Jake’s skin.
“What’s that whiff? I can’t tell, except it’s strange and I need to do licking you.”
63. Jake
“Afterwards.” It wasn’t a guess; Jake was certain of it. Not because he’d seen the evidence of all Phin had tried to expunge that night, but because he felt the slash of memory as if he’d taken a blade to his own body. Jake did not check to see if he was bleeding—that would have been ridiculous—the scent of the blood that accompanied it was not his own. Phin’s brow knitted in puzzlement, then he leaned in to sniff at Jake, with small, suspicious snuffles, as if he might’ve gone off. Pinpricks of pleasure still skittered across Jake’s skin, scything through the lunacy of it all.
“What’s that whiff? I can’t tell, except it’s strange and I need to do licking you.”
“Memory, maybe? Pain, perhaps your own blood…” A shaft of lust sparked along Jake’s spine when Phin started lapping at his earlobe before tracing its shell with his tongue. “Gnrrrr…”
“It’s doing fading now, you smell…mmmm…” Phin murmured, across moist flesh, making every tiny hair thrill to attention and a shiver of longing scorch through his veins. “You taste…” He smudged his lips across Jake’s cheek to place a kiss at the corner of his mouth “…luscious…” then trailed a featherlight tongue across its seam to mirror their so soft press. “Thank you…” was a whisper of breath that stole his own away. Even had Jake been in full possession of his faculties, he wouldn’t have known what Phin could be thankful for. His chances of regaining them any time soon was…
Never, I hope. I far prefer you with your nuts in a knot. Loath as I am to interrupt, I suggest you move this upstairs…before Phin keels over.
“You have nothing to be grateful for…” Jake clasped his face and pressed their foreheads together, trying to focus beyond the icy fingers of fear clutching his heart. “C’mon, let’s get you back to bed…”
“That’s not going to be as fun as it sounds, is it…?” Phin’s sigh was resigned, rather than recalcitrant, which was something to be thankful for.
“You’ll have forever for that, if you want it…” Jake promised, “…but right now, you need rest, you’re exhaling exhaustion.”
“Okay…” Another sigh, tinged with a tut. “I would do pouting, ‘cept I am a bit pooped.”
“C’mon…” Jake couldn’t help but grin, the scamp was far too adorable for their welfare. All…four of them.
“I’m coming… dammit, that won’t be, either. I might be furry next time it happens…I wonder if it does feeling different…” Phin was starting to slur his words, like certain ‘regulars’ at turfing out time in The Albion. About ‘one for the road’ before falling off the barstool. After persuading Phin to his feet, Jake bent to scoop him up and cart him off to the bedroom before he dreamed up any more mischief to delay matters. “This is like being whisked away to your lair without the wicked-way part to look forward to. Humph,” Phin chuntered between titters at finding himself transported thus.
“I’ll give you humph…” Jake chuckled.
“I wish you would…’cept I feel a bit floppy…” A huge yawn swallowed the rest of whatever Phin might’ve been about to say, which was probably for the best when—lolloping limbs aside—he sure as hell wasn’t elsewhere. “Hmm…that’s lusciously cool…” he sighed with a smile like a smear of cream after being deposited on the duvet. He’d only donned a pair of pants but was still burning up. Not too badly, Jake judged. Yet. “I’ve done remembering what I wanted to say…” Phin told him, peering up through a veil of feathery lashes. “I’m ever so hot…where was I?”
“You’ve remembered…” Jake supplied, stretching out beside the extravagance that was Phin and propping his head on a bent elbow.
“Oh…that’s it…you seem to think I’m too calm about doing changing…when really, it’s more that…I’m not fussed about that part. It’s not real to me yet…I’ve never done it, so I can’t do picturing it. I’m comfy with the important bit—being the same as you—that’s what matters most. If I try to do focusing on the rest, my head just shrugs, cos it knows I can do enduring worse to get what I want.”
“As stubborn as fuck,” Jake smirked, although his brain was whirring away, busy reconciling his assumptions with Phin’s reality.
“We’re not so different, after all…” His smile was too smudgy for ‘smug’, but a whiff of glee was tinging his scent when he rolled onto his side and threw an excessive leg across Jake’s own. Its weight throbbed through his body, thrilling to his toes. “Will you tell me the rest of your changing story…I can’t do keeping my eyes open,” Phin noted with another luxurious yawn.
“’Kay…I was just lying there, staring around the room, stunned by the realisation that could see in the bloody dark. I’m not sure which came first, but my muscles started contracting in tight hot spasms—clenching like fists—and my temperature spiked. As sharply as if I was about to burst into flames. The heat…trembling through my body felt…alive, which sounds nuts.” Jake paused, trying to reassemble scraps of memory long banished to the back of his brain. “It all does, I’ve never tried putting it into words before… The physical pain was less…horrific than the mental one—the terror was worse—the not knowing what the fuck was happening. Death seemed the most feasible…end, which was…a welcome prospect. I wanted it. It couldn’t come fast enough…to make it all stop.”
“Don’t do telling me more, it’s too much upsetting for you. I can feel it, but I don’t know how to do making a memory better, which hurts.” When Phin lifted his head to ensnare Jake’s gaze, the brown was so bleak it made him break out in a cold sweat. “Now you’ve gone all clammy, please do stopping, it’s not fair to make you—”
“The not fair part is that you are going to have to endure it,” Jake all-but snarled, to his shame.
“Shhhh…s’okay,” Phin crooned, his voice as soft, soothing, as a lullaby. The sudden swoop of his hand was so swift, it was clamped to Jake’s cock before he could protest.
“Fuck!” he gasped as a shaft of lust overshot the fear.
“There, that’s better…” Phin whispered into Jake’s neck as he began to sweep his wrist with smooth strokes as heady as they were hypnotic. “Now you can finish your story with a happy ending before I do conking.”
“I can’t see straight…let alone think,” Jake grumbled.
“You don’t need to do either…just do drifting and mumble on a bit.”
“‘Mumble on a bit’…” Jake muttered. “Er, the heat seemed to unfurl from the base of my spine, as if it had been coiled there. Waiting. Now that does sound bonkers…God, Phin,” he groaned, when the glorious glide sped up, spilling liquid fire through Jake’s veins. “But that’s how it felt…”
“I’m so sorry it did happening all on your own…” Soft lips as ripe, tempting as…Jake couldn’t think of anything on Earth comparable, his brain had melted to mush.
“Tell me the worst thing… well, aside from not knowing what that would be…”
“Prob’ly the stuff I couldn’t see, the visceral…sounds that should be inside. Popping joints, sinews straining, the tear of tendons…fuck, it hurt. The grate of bone grinding bone was sickening, the images it…threw up were worse: snapped-off shards, the glisten of gristle, thick globules of blood. I could barely believe it was real, happening… Phin, you’re driving me demented…” He had slowed to a mesmerising sweep as Jake spoke just enough to keep him teetering on the brink of oblivion…a twist of wrist away from bliss. “Then the shudders started rolling down my back…guts convulsing as if I was about to vomit black bile—like a bad horror movie—which might’ve been preferable to the fact fur started flowing over my body.”
“Flowing...was that how it felt…or the way t’happened?” Phin’s voice was dragging lazily across the words as if he were drugged…quite at odds with the mind-boggling rhythm elsewhere, which was gathering pace.
“Both…maybe? Fuck…Phin…aah!”
“ComeformeJake…” had scarce caressed Jake’s ears when the white-hot shiver of silver, shimmering on the edges of his vision exploded in a scorch of ecstasy. Snatching Jake far, far, from the dread world of darkness he’d dwelled in…alone, for so long.
∞∞∞
“’Jake…?” His name was a brush of breath at Jake’s lips, its scent as serene as it was sultry. Raw cassia bark, richer, rougher, now…yet still as soft as a dusting of cinnamon sugar. “Whatever happens, even if it does killing me, I need you to know…I wanted it. ’Kay?”
“Phin, you won’t die, I won’t let you…” Jake promised. “No matter what.”
“I trust you…both yous…” Sighed with a smudgy smile as his eyelids fluttered shut and Phin succumbed to sleep.
“Whatever happens…even if…I wanted it…wanted it…’kay?”
So soft words that had lulled Jake into believing him. That all would be well…this was meant to be…Phin would be as fine as Jack swore he would. For the briefest, blindest, of moments as those stargazy eyes—ablaze with all he’d ever craved and did not deserve—held his own, Jake had allowed himself to hope.
So, so, stupid. Shit for brains fuckwit.
Whatever happens…even if…I wanted it…wanted it…’kay? Evenifevenif…
The soundtrack to Jake’s relentless pacing. Paused, purely to have a swift wash and Phin-proof the room. As if in anticipation of a toddler…or puppy, oh gawd. No glass, lamps, nothing sharp to stumble against. Ludicrous, but it gave Jake something to do. Other than pace. Or rake impatient fingers through his hair and fret, like an expectant father. Keeping watch…as he waited. Waited and watched. Pacing back and forth, to and fro like a bloody pendulum, fuelled by jittery energy and the relentless echo resounding ’round his head. Whatever happens…even if even if….
“Over my dead bloody body,” Jake muttered. What!?
Quit flapping. He will be fine.
How the hell can you be sure? What if…Jack, what if something goes wrong…what if—
It won’t.
How the fuck do you know? Did I miss the part where you become omnipotent?
Christ, you’re cranky. Why won’t you listen?
Listening to you did this to him, that’s why. I should never have laid a finger on him.
What about Phin? You can’t dismiss his wishes as if they don’t count. He wanted you…just as he wants this. Us.
He thinks he does. NOW. ‘He’ll be fine, he wants this’…hollow words to fob me off. That was then, this is now. HOW DO YOU KNOW!? Instinct? That’s not good enough. I don’t care if it’s ‘all you’ve got at the mo’. I know you love him, too. You’re talking to yourself, by the way. Just sayin’. Shut up.
Jack…? How much longer must we wait? Midnight or thereabouts…? Can you be a bit more bloody specific? Can’t I what? Sense it? Close my eyes…? F’fucksakes.
Jake stopped pacing. Then stood, eyes shut. Like a lunatic. In order to ‘sense’ the…dusk descending, drawing its veil over the day…the shift in the air. The shift is in the air…how romantic. Stop smirking—from day to night, smart arse.
Phin…I won’t let you down. I love you loveyouloveyou. Clenching his fists, Jake recommenced pacing, a forever of empty seconds filled with feverish footsteps. Fury, fear, regret and rage. Futile. His own hammering heartbeat. Phin’s, pounding far too fast.
Jake had lost the plot. He was talking to himself, pacing about, waiting for his mate…to wake up and turn into a goddamn jackal. Jake clearly needed a drink.
Calm down. I am calm. Calm? Yes, calm. I am a sea of serenity. Clearly.
Fuck. Jake snapped his head up. He was beside the bed in the blink of an eye. Phin was still lying on his side, facing the window; angel face bathed in darklight, sooty lashes fanning pearlescent skin. Long, lean limbs gleaming like moonlit alabaster. So peaceful, so unearthly beautiful, it snatched their breath away.
Focus. Crap. Inhale. Slow. Steady. Deep. Jake filled his lungs with the scent that had snatched him from his…raving. Reverie. A smell so potent it had a presence; he could almost see it shimmering off Phin’s skin. No, he could see tiny tremors skittering beneath it. Sort of similar to the twitch of fur whilst dreaming. Running the length of Phin’s body in little ripples, every tiny hair trembling to attention.
“Phin…” His name fell from Jake’s lips as a prayer. Reaching out tentative fingertips, he brushed the scorching curve of an ivory shoulder. Phin’s eyes flared wide. Branding Jake with a brown that blazed amber flame. Eternal. Filled with forever.
“Jake…”
64. Phin
Nudge nudge. Ooh…Phin didn’t want to do waking up. His delicious dream was just getting to the best bit, but someone was doing shaking him with ‘c’mon sleepy head’ insistence. That wasn’t so strange, but the prodding seemed to be…inside himself, which was a wee bit weird.
Trying to ignore it didn’t do working, Phin’s inner frolics were having none of his lazing about lark, even if his outsides were as cosy as can be and quite content to do snoozing the day away. Scoundrels. As if to up the ante, their revelries did afflicting his skin, which set off a ticklish fit of the fidgets. That sounded far too daft to be true, so p’raps…someone was feather-dustering him?
“Phin…” That velvety voice. Impossible to do ignoring—even if Phin wanted to—he didn’t. Mine.
“Jake…” A slow smile did spreading across Phin’s face. Now that was a sight worth prising his eyelids apart for. Plink. Quick as a flash, they flared open, like a till drawer. Um, that was a smidge random, but no matter…hmm. Bewitching blues stared back, ablaze with…worry…wonder…fear… What was Jake afraid of? He smelled most oddsome…like a bowl of whiskey trifle with curry sauce. Phin was willing to do giving it a bash if Jake was serving it up but blimey, that was one hell of a curried fruit ’n’ custard cocktail.
“Are you okay?” A lot better than Jake, that was for sure, who seemed a mite green about the gills. P’raps his trifle had gone off.
“Hmm…very. Did you do feather-dustering me? I woke up all tickly.”
Jake looked a smidge incredulous—it had been a bit of a daft question, Phin had to admit—Jake was perched on the edge of the bed beside him and not waving a duster of any description about. He looked anx— Ponderings that puttered to a halt when Phin realised that he could not only see anxiousness etched on Jake’s face…he could do seeing full stop. Despite it being dark outside…and the floodlight wasn’t switched on. Ooh…
Had he done changing? Phin glanced down at himself. He looked much the same—except for his skin, which was…pretty. Sort of shimmery, like moonstone rather than matt milk white.
“I’m still here,” he noted, mostly to himself, a mite surprised to be so, which was a bit bonkers when that would mean he’d done sleeping through the shift. Duh. It was just that…it felt sort of…wrong to still be his bog-standard self. Had something gone amiss? “Hmm…you look luscious…” Lifting h
is hand, Phin did brushing aside the tendril of hair obscuring Jake’s right eye, it felt like spun silk slithering through his fingers.
