Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  Now Teague screwed up his eyes against the words. “Jesus, Katy… I’m no one to dream about…”

  “Bullshit—you don’t want to be but that don’t make you not a good person—that don’t make you not my dream guy. Only time I ever saw you be a bad guy is now, treating Jacky like a boy when he’s all grown.”

  Her mouth was set and angry and her pointed chin quivered and she was so damned beautiful that for a minute he couldn’t breathe. But her words about Jack conjured those lean hands on his skin in the dark, the way he’d traced the scars Teague had lived with for his entire life, and suddenly every scar felt new and raw. His heart broke, cracked like brittle china, and his brain must have cracked a little too.

  His hands moved to the front of his plaid flannel shirt, fumbling with the buttons, his breath coming in thick, furious pants as he tore open the front and then hauled everything, his leather jacket, his undershirt, his flannel shirt over his head and hurled it with all the force he had. There he stood, pale, naked, thin, scarred and ugly for the world to see.

  “THIS!!!” he screamed incoherently. “THIS is your dream guy, Katy—goddammit, LOOK at me!”

  “I’m looking, Papi,” she said in a small, sad voice and he wanted to rip his chest with his nails and howl.

  “This is the man you want, this is the man Jacky’s stuck with—and look at me! I can’t protect anything, I couldn’t protect myself, I couldn’t protect Jacky…I’m NOTHING. I’m a punching bag, an ignorant redneck, a dumbfuck killer—I’m NOTHING!!!”

  He howled the word ‘nothing’ into the air until it echoed on the treetops, and then he turned to the tree stump behind him and kicked at it and kicked again until he felt something give in his toe in spite of the steel-enforced waffle-stompers on his feet. He turned back to Katy none of his fury abated, and she was still glaring at him, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “How am I supposed to protect you? How am I supposed to be a good lover or husband or father or…or…or anything, if I’m nothing? You tell me that, Katy. You tell me how I’m supposed to do right by Jacky or right by you if I can barely do right by myself. So here I am. Nothing. And Green comes, and he tells me I’m something. I can be something for him—for Green!!” He held up his wrist, tattooed with an oak tree with a bloodied sword in a granite base. Green and Cory’s mark, blown through him because he accepted a hug from a brother, a kiss on the cheek.

  “So for Green,” he continued, “and for Lady Cory. And all I can think is, maybe if I’m something for them, maybe I won’t be nothing no more. So yeah. I’m going on a run, and I’m going without Jacky, and I’m hoping that if I’m all hot Alpha and shit then maybe Jacky goes back to school and becomes what he’s supposed to, and he does that and I keep going on runs and being Green’s boy, because next to being in Jacky’s bed it’s the best thing I’ve ever been. Jacky, he’s got shit in his head. He knows he’s something. I’ve got to prove it, or I don’t get him. It’s not fair, he’s stuck with me and I’m nothing. It’s not fair, you want me, and I’m nothing. I go tonight and I know I’m something, and then I’m straight in my head, you see?”

  Oh Jesus-fucking-mercy-fucking-son-of-a-tinker’s-fucking-bitch, he was crying.

  He didn’t know what to do with that—with any of it. He stood there, his chest heaving, trying to pretend he wasn’t crying—wasn’t bare and naked in front of this smart, vulnerable woman who had apparently loved him since her childhood—and wondered where he’d managed to hurl his goddamned clothes.

  Katy met his eyes and bit her lip. “Teague, Papi, your skin is blue—it’s fucking November for Christ’s sake…”

  He didn’t wait for her to say anything else, to notice that he had tears when the only other time he’d cried in years had been when Jacky had been wounded and bleeding out at his feet. Instead he turned his back and looked futilely for his damned clothes.

  He found his jacket right behind him on the damned stump and he was scanning the grass and bracken on the wet ground when two little hands came into his vision—one with his T-shirt and one with his flannel shirt—and he reached out to take them.

  Katy took his bomber jacket instead and folded it over her arm, then held the neck of the T-shirt like a mother dressing a child.

  “Here, mijo,” she murmured, and he rolled his eyes and ducked his head, just to humor her. She pulled the neck of the tee over his head, and then stalled, smoothing her hands over his shoulders. There were bumps on his collarbones—two on one, three on the other, where they had been broken. There were little boiling craters of healed flesh over his pectoral, where lit cigarettes had been put out. There was a thick lump of glazed flesh on his upper arm, where the bone had burst through, and lumps on his side where his ribs had been broken.

  The list went on. The damage to his heart was documented in every scar on his body.

  Angrily he grabbed at his shirt and jerked back, but she kept her hands on his chest. “It’s not your shame, Teague. You earned Jacky—you earned me too. You earned us just by surviving.”

  “You’re not grades, Katy,” he muttered, trying to back up some more but bumping up against that damned tree stump. God—after Jack’s touch the night before this complete scenario was a surreal experience in being completely exposed.

  “Here—would you let me get dressed?”

  Katy smiled a little, and ran her hands one more time across his chest, watching his face closely. When he closed his eyes and shuddered—and not from the cold, either—her smile grew a little. And it grew a little sadder as well.

  “You’re right—we’re not grades. We’re not a paycheck. We’re the people who love you…”

  “Katy, you don’t know me,” he grunted and pulled the white T-shirt down his torso to cram it hurriedly in his jeans.

  “I know you fine, Teague,” she replied without heat. “Everything I needed to know about you I heard in your voice when you thought Jacky was dying. Anything else is discovery—they tell me that’s the fun part.”

  A little chuff of air shook Teague’s chest, and the corner of his lean, sculpted mouth turned up. “Well then why don’t we take it easy, and let the discovery happen? Why you got to jump into me and Jacky when we’re just finding out what we are?”

  Katy looked stricken, and Teague stopped in the middle of finding the arm of his flannel shirt to take her hands back in his. “What’s the matter, Field Mouse? It’s just a little time…”

  “You don’t get it, Teague!” She shook her head and looked over to the car where Mario looked suddenly asleep. “The Goddess—she dicks with us, when it comes to mating. Every group save the vampires, but really, isn’t being dead enough? Anyway, we all got our own little quirks, like her own little ‘fuck with me’ stamp on our species. For some of us it’s death if we cheat, for some of us it’s that we mate for life. The Avians?” she nodded towards the car, “They have to stay with their mate for their whole lives or they die. If the elves actually bond, any outside action—and you know those people, they do everything but hump trees and call it experimenting—well they melt into fucking goo. Werewolves, we ain’t no different.”

  Teague blinked. “What’s our glitch then?” he asked, half afraid for him and Jacky, half afraid for her.

  “We got it easy—we’re like real wolves. There’s no big mating ceremony, no big flash of light—but the person we hang with for a while after we turn—well, that’s our mate. Pretty soon, all desire, all attraction for anyone else pretty much fades. Which sounds great, but what if the coupling isn’t so good? Well, you split up and all, but you got no one else—your body just won’t go. And what if you want to do something epic—something like Cory and Adrian and Green?”

  She swallowed, and her voice lost its casual instruction. “I mean, here you are, in the hill where everybody’s getting some and here I am—the man I’ve wanted all my entire fucking life just a few doors down, and if I’m not a part of you and Jacky in the next few weeks, you’re a million fucking ligh
t-years away.”

  Teague scrubbed at his face with both hands, his flannel shirt dangling from one shoulder. “God,” he muttered. “Goddess. Whatever. You really want to mate with me? How do you know someone better isn’t going to come along?”

  Katy’s look was dismal and near as naked as Teague had been, just moments before. “I was a smackwhore, Teague,” she said grimly, “and I did anyone who would fix me. I got to tell you, quantity ain’t quality. The only man I ever dreamed about was you.”

  Teague sighed, the implications—all the implications—of what she just told him seeping into his brain, fitting themselves like a puzzle. It was easier, somehow, to think about the situation in terms of what would make Katy happy, what would make Jacky happy, and not how to persuade her that he wasn’t the one who could do it. Katy reached up and grabbed his flannel shirt and helped him into the sleeve in total silence, and then gave him the leather bomber jacket and watched as he shrugged into that.

  When he was done he opened his arms and she ran in, leaning her head on his chest and wrapping her arms under his coat, rubbing at his back.

  They stood that way in silence, the quickness of their breathing heating their faces as they leaned together. “You’ll have to love Jacky too,” Teague said at last, and a quick, hopeful smile crossed Katy’s sad, pretty face.

  “You think I don’t know that?” With that she stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss—not enough to arouse, just a press of her lips on his.

  Because he was becoming a werewolf, he smelled the spice of her skin for the rest of the day.

  Mario made the rest of the drive as comfortable as he could—he really did seem to be asleep when they got back to the car. It was obvious though, that he’d seen enough to put his two cents in.

  “You sure you don’t want to come inside to eat, brother?” he asked as they dropped him off on the long drive to the Aerie—a fantastical invisible fiberglass perch for the twenty or so man-sized birds that lived in the newly refurbished house at Camp Far West.

  When Teague said a gruff ‘No thank you’, Mario shook his head. “Man, you’d better eat something. I’m telling you, just looking at your ribs makes me want a cheeseburger!” And with that he blurred quickly, turning his skin and ruffling his feathers, then flapping his six-foot wingspan and soaring to his home.

  Teague watched him fly and laughed a little to himself. “Good man,” he murmured, and Katy agreed. It was the last thing they really said to each other, even when Teague ran into the Raley’s for Grace’s last minute supplies before they ventured back to the canyon. It felt as though they’d said everything they needed to for a while.

  Jack Running

  Jack was reading in a corner of the front room, facing the window that overlooked the canyon, when Teague and Katy came in with their bags of groceries. Teague looked down and jerked his chin in Jacky’s direction and Katy looked over and nodded, seriously.

  Teague walked to the corner and bent down over the back of the overstuffed chair. Jack almost stopped breathing when he felt Teague’s breath near his ear. “You want to go running, Jacky? There’s a cross-country trail around the hill—I want to go running. I do my best talking when I move.”

  And with that, Teague was trotting towards the network of halls where their room was located, Jacky at his heels. Jacky turned around belatedly, right before the living room was out of sight, and caught Katy’s eyes. She wasn’t looking forlorn or left behind at all—she was looking sad and thoughtful. She caught his eyes as he looked and winked reassuringly, then shooed Jack down the corridor and he went.

  Teague was already into his running shorts and a sweatshirt by the time Jack got to the room. He bounced on his toes a little while he waited for Jack to struggle to find his own sweats and sweatshirt and lace his running shoes. Jack glared at him in irritation as he did the laces.

  “You’ve got some place to go or something?” he asked, and the expression on Teague’s face went all inscrutable.

  “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about—don’t panic!”

  Jack had no idea what his expression had been, but his chest felt half frozen with fear. “I wasn’t!” he lied gamely, and Teague’s own expression became instantly contrite.

  “That’s my fault,” Teague said quietly. He moved forward to the bed, where Jack was sitting and bent down, placing a quick, awkward kiss on Jacky’s temple. Jack wondered if Teague had ever given a casual kiss to the women he’d dated—and thought that maybe he hadn’t. “You’re sort of stuck with me unless you come to your senses in time. Now hurry up and let’s go.”

  Teague ran all the time—but he made Jack run with him at least three times a week. If we only run when we’re chased, Princess, we’re gonna get caught. Teague ran like a real runner, with a quick, wiry grace that always fascinated Jack. Jack ran like an epileptic gazelle—he could achieve speed, but there was some awkward gamboling at the beginning and there were some spazzing out parts in the middle that weren’t pretty either. Teague knew this—he waited until Jacky had hit a mild, easy stride, before he started talking.

  Because he was Teague, and because they were running, he made it quick and dirty.

  “I’m going on a run tonight.” He punctuated that bit of news with a little skip around a rock. The path itself was fairly smooth—it ran in a series of loops around the hill, ending (or so Teague told him) on the crown of the hill at the Goddess grove. From what Cory had told Teague, it had been a wedding gift of sorts from Green and Bracken, and she used it often.

  “A run,” Jack repeated blankly. “I thought we were running now?”

  Teague rolled his eyes in mid stride. “A run, genius—a job, an errand, that thing we do that puts money in our bank accounts…”

  Jack tripped and almost went down on one knee. “Without me?”

  Teague gave a half-turn, and launched himself off a rock, to a tree and over another bump in the road while mostly running backwards, but Jack was too heartsick to be impressed.

  “You’re going to leave me behind?” he asked again, hating the plaintive note in his voice.

  And that’s when Teague hit him with the ‘master plan’. Jack was going to school, Teague was going to stay in the business and be an Alpha wolf and Green’s right hand guy, and they would move up from Sacramento to someplace nearby, because “I hated high school, Jacky—I love this place, but I can’t live here twenty-four/seven.”

  As Teague wrapped it up, Jack actually stopped running. To his surprise, Teague noticed immediately, turning around and jogging in place and looking at him irritably.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Teague, I don’t know where to start! It’s like you’ve turned into this whole other person!”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re both fucking werewolves now—or, well, we’re gonna be. Werewolves, I mean. When this waiting’s all done.” He blinked when Jack didn’t respond. “I mean, we’re fucking right now, right?”

  “We’re still going to be us!” Jack exclaimed, half laughing. He was lost, racking his brain for a response to all of this information in so short a time.

  But Teague wasn’t laughing at all. “That’s the problem,” he said, his voice sober to the point of heartbreak, that constantly vibrating body suddenly quiet. “I’m still me, and I’m not enough.” As though he’d said too much, he suddenly whirled and continued his graceful trot down the path and Jack struggled to catch up to him.

  “Bull…shit…” he panted, pissed because he was winded already. “That’s bullshit Teague!”

  Teague turned around, keeping his body moving, and shrugged. “It is what it is—you don’t get a second rate supernatural PI. You get Lady Cory’s right hand man—I’m not good enough for you, I don’t get to keep you. If I can’t make this run and not be an asshole, I’m not good enough to keep you.”

  He turned again and ran slower, and Jack was able to catch up, but as much as he was wheezing, he was too frustrated to keep
silent. “So I just stay home like the little woman? I thought you liked working with me!” Ouch. Just fucking ouch.

  Teague turned to him and fluidly sidestepped a puddle in the same motion. Jack flatfooted through the puddle and got water all over his shoe. “I love working with you, Jacky. Best year and a half of my goddamned life. But I want to live with you, make a life with you and maybe Katy now, and you stood up in front of a pissed off werewolf and took my wound for me. I’ll be damned if you ever get to do that again.”

  Teague’s voice was choked, passionate, and as he kicked up a burst of speed Jack found that he just couldn’t catch up. He slowed to a walk, feeling helpless, and watched Teague trot up a rise. Before the dumb mother fucker could disappear from sight, Jack shouted, “Fine! You go off and be danger-hero-fucking-werewolf-man, and I’ll stay home and feed the goddamned cat!”

  Jack was almost as surprised as Teague was when Teague tripped on a rock, did a flat-out shoulder roll, came to his feet with full momentum and smacked into a goddamned oak tree. Then he fell flat on his ass.

  Jack hurried to help him up, but he wasn’t anticipating Teague to launch upwards, swinging a haymaker that connected solidly with Jack’s jaw. Jack went down on his ass and glared up at the man he loved more than his own life.

  “What in the fuck…”

  “You were AWAKE?” Teague’s eyes were wide and outraged, and Jack noticed that the ‘fight or flight’ pulse in the side of his temple was throbbing.

  “Yeah,” Jack said weakly, trying to wrap his brain around yet one more thing his lover hadn’t told him. “I was awake.”

  “You couldn’t have told me?” Oh gods… the betrayal on his face—Jack half expected him to turn around and take off for the hills behind them and never come back.

  “But then you wouldn’t have talked to me!” Jack protested, feeling utterly, utterly lost.

  “Well maybe there was some shit I didn’t want you to know!”

  “Well then why did you tell it to me?”

  “I thought you were asleep!” Teague began to bounce on his toes again, looking miserable and betrayed and suddenly Jack was angry instead of lost.