by Julia Leijon
Lucas eased himself down to sit beside Ryan, his bad leg stretched out in front of him.
“You’re still you. I know it’s you,” Lucas told Ryan in a quiet voice. “No matter how it changes you, I’ll be here, okay?”
He kissed Ryan gently, like he didn’t want to push too hard. Ryan was grateful, even as his body craved a higher intensity of touch. They stayed there, hopeless on the kitchen floor, kissing and kissing and kissing.
When they finally broke apart enough to make it back onto their feet, they made their way together through to Ryan’s room, at which point they pounced on another again.
Lucas’ skin felt cool against his own, which Ryan knew meant that his own body was running hotter now. It probably felt hot to the touch for Lucas, judging by how Lucas was running his hand up Ryan’s arm with a look of wonderment and desire.
Their kisses were fierce and desperate now. A few minutes later, when their foreplay had advanced significantly, being forced to slow down enough to prepare Lucas with his fingers almost drove Ryan crazy. He wanted and he wanted now. Lucas seemed to feel the same way, his body arching and clenching as Ryan worked the third finger in, his breath coming in shocky gasps.
“Now. Now, I don’t care if it hurts,” Lucas demanded, his hand scrabbling to grip at Ryan’s forearm.
“Okay, okay, hang on,” Ryan said, as if he felt any less urgent than Lucas did.
Desperate to be closer and closer, they moved until they were locked together, every movement burying Ryan deeper. It felt so good that Ryan was halfway certain that he’d lose his mind from the sensation alone. He was inside Lucas, they were a single unit of pleasure together, working each other higher and higher towards a state of complete, mind-blowing bliss.
Ryan had always scoffed at people who talked about sex in terms like that, but now the joke was on him because he couldn’t think of another way to describe it. If this was what it was like to have sex with someone he loved, then Ryan should have started doing that long ago.
It seemed pointless to lie to himself about that for any longer: he loved Lucas. He had loved Lucas for a long time, and there were very, very few people in the world that Ryan loved. It wasn’t something that came particularly naturally, or easily, to him. But he loved Lucas. Very, very much.
His orgasm hit him like a firework, an explosion of light that shimmered out as it diffused. Lucas followed him a moment later, shuddering in Ryan’s arms, and Ryan held him through it.
Ryan liked lying together afterward, though it ran the risk that he’d start talking and say more than he wanted to.
“I’ve wanted this for so long. I tried to pretend to myself that I didn’t, and I even half believed it. Looks like I’m a good enough con man to con even myself.” Ryan gave Lucas a crooked half-smile. “I didn’t want to ruin what we had. And now I can’t even stop myself from blurting out this garbage. Turns out tigers are big on sharing their feelings, who knew?”
To stop himself saying anything else completely mortifying, Ryan buried his face in the crook of Lucas’ shoulder, burrowing his nose and mouth into the warm sweat-smell behind Lucas’ jaw and ear.
“Are you nuzzling me?” Lucas teased gently, laughter in his voice. “That tickles.”
“Absolutely not,” Ryan replied, nuzzling him some more.
They slept for a while after that, dozing gently together. When they were both awake, Ryan could feel the wellspring of words rise up in himself again, and this time nothing could stop it.
“Remember that thing that happened at my school? You were living with your mom by then, talking about the Marines. It was only a couple of months before I graduated.”
“Yeah, Ry,” Lucas answered. The soft circles he was rubbing on Ryan’s shoulder helped Ryan feel grounded. “Of course I remember. You coulda just said ‘the thing at school’ and I’d’ve known.”
Ryan hummed in acknowledgment. “I guess you’re right.”
Ryan and Jennifer had gained a macabre fifteen minutes of fame, back when they were still in school. Their image had been all over the news, internet and TV and print alike. It had been the perfect post-tragedy snapshot, a private moment that the whole world had wanted a piece of: a pretty all-American pre-teen clinging to her older brother, his varsity letter jacket spattered with vivid, recent blood, both of the pair sobbing.
Even now, whenever a new school shooting happened, the picture usually showed up on a sidebar in articles, as part of the recap of other shootings in the past. As far as Ryan knew, Jennifer didn’t pay that stuff any attention anymore.
He pretended that he didn’t think about it, either, but that wasn’t completely true.
“Tell me what you know about it,” Ryan ordered Lucas. “Give me a recap.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. Tell me how it happened, according to what you know about it.”
Lucas sat up, a worried frown on his face. “Ry…”
“Please.”
Lucas sighed. “Okay. Uh… a guy who was going around your school with a gun came into your algebra class and started shooting. You played dead, among the bodies of your classmates, until the guy shot himself as well. Then you escaped. It really fucked you up for a while, which is pretty understandable. I’d be terrified of anyone who wasn’t fucked up by something like that.”
Ryan pushed himself up into sitting position as well, so he could more easily look Lucas in the eye. “That’s the version I told everyone. Even my therapist only ever heard that version, which I guess was sort of a waste of money, huh? If I’m lying to a shrink, it’s not like I’m getting any kind of useful counseling out of the deal. That’s probably why I gave up going after a little while. It seemed stupid to pay someone and lie to them when I could be spending my time pulling off bank robberies where I left everyone standing around naked while I got away.”
Ryan tried to make himself smirk at the memory, but Lucas’ face was full of deep concern. “What do you mean?”
“I really did play dead, at first. That part’s true. But he caught me out. I guess he saw me breathing, or that I cracked one eye open to see if he was still there. He made me stand up, so he could make sure he shot me for real this time. I went straight into motormouth mode. I couldn’t tell you even half of what I said to him then, just that I knew my life was on the line. I convinced him that he needed to keep me alive. I told him that he needed me, so that I could tell the world what it was that he’d stood for and all that shit. I told him how they’d misinterpret his Youtube videos and all that shit, you know? I made him buy it.”
Ryan drew in a deep, ragged breath before continuing. “That’s why I’m never scared when I’m on a con, you know? Not even when the fucking tiger was lunging at me. I was pissed, and I wanted out of there as fast as fucking possible, but I wasn’t scared. I’d talked my way out of dying. What was anything, after that? Nothing was ever frightening.”
“Jesus, Ryan.”
Ryan shrugged. His eyes were stinging, and it was only by blinking hard and keeping his voice even that he was avoiding breaking down. Telling the truth after all this time felt surreal, almost like he was dreaming.
“That’s what really happened. I got myself out of dying by spouting bullshit. That’s why I’m always saying it: I can talk my way through any door. But I don’t know how to get myself out of this, and it’s terrifying me.”
On the last few words, Ryan’s voice cracked, and the tears he’d been working so hard to hold back flooded out. Lucas held him close, running a broad, rough palm down Ryan’s back over and over, like he was an animal in need of soothing.
Maybe that’s exactly what Ryan had become.
Lucas
Practically before they knew it, the full moon arrived. They did just as Sadie had instructed, driving over to the townhouse in the morning so that Ryan had time to get settled before things began in earnest.
Lucas set up all his CCTV equipment, and settled in for a very long night.
Ryan’
s transformation was pretty harrowing to watch, but Lucas never looked away from the screen. If Ryan had to go through that, the very least that Lucas could do was observe it without running away. Being a protective observer was the only way that he could be any help to Ryan as Ryan went through this.
Ryan’s form as a tiger was breathtaking. There was such controlled power in his heavy legs and feet, a threat and a promise of the kind of violence he would be capable of if he wasn’t confined to a cage. Lucas felt a very confusing shiver up his spine, equal parts fear and fascination.
He’d thought in the past about how powerful and lithe and sleek tigers were, because those were all traits that it was relatively easy to imagine Ryan possessing to this degree. But Lucas had never really stopped to think about how frighteningly violent tigers always looked, how ready they were to tear and rend the flesh of their prey at any given moment.
Ryan prowled the cage restlessly and relentlessly, growling in frustration at the lack of stimulus present in the bare space. Lucas made a mental note to himself to ensure there were distractions there next time. Did zoos make tiger-sized chew toys? He’d have to look into it.
At dawn, Ryan began to change back, his bones cracking and crunching as they shrunk and changed. It was even more painful-looking and harrowing to observe than the one in the evening had been. Lucas’ eyes stung with sympathetic tears at the agonized sounds he could hear Ryan making.
When Ryan seemed to have settled into his human form again, Lucas took the thick bathrobe he’d brought with him and made his way down to the cellar. Sadie was sitting against the wall, wrapped in an expensive-looking quilt and smoking a Gauloises cigarette. She waved Lucas on, clearly uninterested in making small-talk with him.
Seeing Ryan in the flesh was even worse than watching him on the monitors. Lucas made his way to Ryan’s side and sat down beside him. He eased the sleeves of the dressing gown over Ryan’s bruised, dead-weight arms, settling the rest of the robe over him carefully and guiding Ryan to lean back. Ryan was only half-awake, at best, but let himself be handled and rearranged until Lucas had him resting back against Lucas’ chest, with Lucas resting his own back against the wall of the small space.
It wasn’t a perfect position, but it meant they were close to one another. They were both so incredibly weary from exhaustion that they didn’t care at all about anything except closing their eyes and resting for a while.
After a while, Ryan had the strength to stand and walk, so Lucas helped him upstairs and out into the car. It wasn’t far at all to their apartment, but it was a greater distance than Ryan looked capable of walking, and Lucas was glad that they’d thought ahead.
“Hey,” Ryan said quietly as Lucas drove.
“Hmm?”
“I feel like me again.”
Lucas glanced over, wishing he could stare for longer at the expression on Ryan’s face. It was a look of absolute, almost transcendent relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. All my weird tiger shit is right at the way back of my brain. I guess it’ll get stronger again as the month goes on.”
“At least this time you’ll know that the old you is still safe underneath,” Lucas said. “That’s the main thing, right? That’s cool?”
Ryan gave an exhausted laugh. “Trust me, if I was capable of it right now I’d be running through the streets in joy. It’s very cool.”
“And we’ll know how to handle it better next time, too,” Lucas pointed out. “Though frankly, it would be a pretty amazing achievement to handle it worse than we did this first time.”
“I don’t know. We wound up with each other. That’s not so bad.”
When they arrived home, Lucas helped Ryan out of the car and into the building, guiding him up the stairs and through into his bedroom.
“Do you want me to leave you alone so you can sleep, or stay?”
Ryan’s smile had a wicked edge to it this time. “Stay.”
They kissed a little, because neither of them ever got tired of doing that, and then after a while Lucas began to work his way down Ryan’s neck and chest, sucking and licking at every piece of skin that wasn’t bruised and sore.
“Glad to see that playing nurse turns you on so much,” Ryan joked, running his thumb over Lucas’ cheekbone, his smile softer now.
“You just lie back and let me look after you,” Lucas answered, sucking the thumb into his mouth for a moment before returning to his earlier work.
When he reached Ryan’s erection, Lucas planted a series of soft, lingering kisses up the length. “I’m pretty glad to see it’s not just the you when you’re getting nearer to the full moon who wants me, because that would create all kinds of new problems.”
“Fully-human Ryan is just as into you as tiger-Ryan, trust me,” Ryan said. “In case the current state of my dick wasn’t enough to confirm it.”
“Your dick does make a pretty compelling argument,” agreed Lucas in a faux-thoughtful tone. Then, without giving Ryan any time to prepare, Lucas took Ryan’s dick into his mouth and bobbed his head down as far as he could go in one motion. He could feel his cheeks hollowing, his focus narrowed down to making Ryan feel as good as possible.
Lucas ignored the strength of his own need as he worked, his own untouched dick hardening further at every helpless sound Ryan made. Lucas ran his tongue over the slit, coaxing forth a briny flavor of precum.
It was a slow, lazy blowjob, Lucas working hard to make Ryan feel good in his strung-out state. Judging by the gulping, wrecked sounds that Ryan made as he came in Lucas’ mouth, the plan succeeded.
Ryan melted back against the pillows, boneless as a cat. “I could get used to being pampered like that.”
Lucas swatted a light slap at Ryan’s bare leg. “You already are used to being pampered. That’s why you’re so effective in the field, and why you’re insufferable.”
Ryan gave him a lazy grin. “Yeah, but you love me, so who’s really the jackass in this equation.”
Lucas felt his eyes go soft. He crawled up the bed, resting his head beside Ryan’s. “Yeah.”
“So you admit it, that you’re a jackass?”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “Clearly that was the part of what you said that earned a heartfelt declaration, sure. You’re such an obnoxious jerk.”
Ryan just grinned again. Then, a moment later, he gave Lucas a surprisingly soft kiss.
“I guess we make a pretty good match, then, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
——
