by L. C. Davis
“So that’s how he got you running his errands,” I muttered.
Something like anger flashed in his eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t fight him on everything. When you piss him off, he’s not the one who gets hurt.”
Ouch. “Daniel...I’m sorry, where is this coming from exactly?”
“Nowhere. I’m sorry,” he said, standing as he rummaged through his wallet. “I’m just in a weird mood. Please, just forget I said anything.”
“Wait!” I called after him, but he was already halfway down the street. He moved fast when he had eaten recently. Supposedly, he was stronger, too. I tried not to think too much about that, either. The list of things I did feel safe thinking about was growing shorter by the day.
Five
DANIEL
It had been a week since I’d exploded on Holden and I hadn’t stopped feeling like shit ever since, but I couldn’t bring myself to apologize, either. I couldn’t bring myself to face him at all, especially now that I knew he was moving out of Mrs. Marrin’s place.
Locke got what he wanted, as usual. I had gone back to avoiding him but he knew as well as I did that it was just a matter of time, just a matter of getting desperate enough again. I was already hungry and taking out my frustration on a punching bag at the gym wasn’t doing much to help, but it was better than moping around my apartment or going out. Whether it was the market or the park, I couldn’t escape the gossip about Nick and Holden’s budding romance. All the eligible bachelorettes of Stillwater were devastated, and I knew Tiffany Whitaker wasn’t much happier. For years, she hadn’t shut up about how she was just waiting for Nick to “find the right guy.” Now that he had transitioned, something told me she wasn’t thrilled that he had gone from one shade of queer to the other. If there was any consolation in all of it, it was the knowledge that the bitch was as uncomfortable with the latest grist in the town rumor mill as I was.
At least I could count on the gym being empty. Even Ken, the owner, was rarely there. It was an old-school gym with a couple of rings and a few treadmills that collected dust and shielded the weight racks from the glare through the window, but I wasn’t eager to sign up for the franchise that had finally made its way to the edge of town. When I needed to let off steam, the last thing I wanted was smalltalk.
The bag I’d been abusing for the last three hours was starting to burst at the seams and if I didn’t let up, I was going to have to start a tab with Ken. At least it was better than taking out my frustration on people who didn’t deserve it. Ever since my death, I’d felt like I was going through a second puberty and it had been just long enough since the first to forget what a mercurial little bitch I’d been then.
“You picturing my face or Locke’s?”
Nick’s voice was so rare those days that for a moment, I was more ready to believe it was an auditory hallucination induced by starving myself than that it was actually him. I turned as he stepped through the ropes and into the ring, shrugging out of his battered leather jacket. He was always dressed for a street fight when he wasn’t in his uniform and there was still grease from one of his cars on his undershirt. He always went to the garage when he needed to clear his head before doing something he was dreading. Usually it was family dinner with his mom, but I guessed talking to me was the new chore he had to psyche himself up for.
“If you’re here to kick my ass for what I said to Holden, be my guest,” I muttered. “I was already planning on apologizing.”
Nick frowned. “You did what?”
So Holden hadn’t ratted me out, after all. Part of me wished he had. Then maybe I could feel slightly more entitled to my resentment.
Nick shook his head before I could respond. “Nevermind, I didn’t come here for that. I came here to apologize to you.”
“For what?” I asked warily.
“For not handling this,” he said, gesturing in my general direction, “as well as I could have.”
“You mean me being dead?”
He winced. “Yeah. That and I’ve been so wrapped up in things with Holden I kind of let other shit slide even before that.”
I had a feeling “other shit” was as close as he’d come to referencing our friendship. Maybe in his mind, it was “too gay” to put a concrete label on things.
“Don’t worry about it. Shit happens.” It was as close as I’d come to saying, “Yeah, you pretending like I didn’t exist for the better part of a year pretty much gutted me, but I forgive you because I don’t know how to do anything else.”
He looked at the wounded punching bag and nodded. “You feel up to a partner that hits back?”
I hesitated. We’d sparred before I knew Nick was a werewolf, and at least now I knew why I lost every damn time.
“Come on,” he said with a knowing grin, putting his fists up. “You scared now that you know I don’t have to hold back?”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re not a fragile human anymore. Maybe you’ll make a halfway decent sparring partner.”
I took a swing at him just for that and he dodged it easily. He moved so swiftly I realized he wasn’t just busting my balls about having to hold back before. I got in one more attempt at a punch before he laid me out on the mat and my head nearly went off the edge.
All three of him were watching me with a look of concern as I struggled to sit up. “Or maybe not…”
I staggered to my feet and charged him. This time I actually managed to graze his side. “You’re a weaselly little shit,” I muttered.
“I’m not little, you’re just built like a tank,” he scoffed, sweeping out with his leg to take me off my feet.
“What the fuck? I thought we were boxing!”
“Aw, I’m sorry,” he said in a mocking tone as I got back onto my feet. “I forget how much little Danny likes to play by the rules.”
“Fuck you,” I growled, taking another swing at him. This time, it hit him in the gut and he made an, “oof” sound before my jaw cracked. I barely even registered the blow, it happened so fast, but I registered the pain. Something more than my bone snapped and this time, I lunged at him with everything I had, taking him down onto the mat. “You wanna fight dirty? Fine.”
His surprise lasted only for a second before he brought his leg up between us and kicked me in the chest hard enough to send me flying back into the ropes. He didn’t even give me a chance to recover before he grabbed the back of my hair and flung me to the ground. Things cracked that definitely weren’t supposed to crack, but before I could push myself up with my hands, his knee dug into the small of my back with all his weight behind it. “Dirty?” He gave a husky laugh as he ground my face into the mat. It smelled like it was made of sweat and tasted about half as good. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
I strained to buck him off me but he had me straddled firmly and twisted my arm behind my back. One move and it would come out of the socket. “Christ, Nick!”
“Say it,” he said, his voice overlaid with a growl, the vibrations of it rumbling through my back as he held me down. Under all the lupine ferocity, there was amusement.
“Say fucking what?” I hissed, humiliated and achey.
“Mercy.”
“Fuck you.”
He gave my arm a sharp jerk and a stabbing pain shot all the way from my shoulder joint down to the tips of my fingers. “Fuck! Mercy!” I snarled.
He let me up and I flew to the other side of the ring, clutching my shoulder while he laughed like he’d just told the funniest joke in the world. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“That answers my question,” he said, grinning.
“What question is that, you psycho freak?”
“You’re not stronger than me.” His grin turned to a smirk as he leaned against the ropes and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Never met a zombie before, so I wasn’t sure. I was in danger of developing a complex.”
“You’d be better off developing a conscience,” I shot back, str
uggling to regain the last vestiges of my dignity.
“Chill out, Danny. Most people couldn’t hold their own with a werewolf for two seconds. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Fuck off,” I repeated, climbing out of the ring. I wiped the blood off the corner of my mouth and realized he’d split my lip open.
“Come on, Daniel,” he called, cutting me off on my way into the bathroom. “I was just messing around.”
“Whatever,” I muttered, bending over the sink to rinse the metallic taste from my mouth. I saw him roll his eyes in the mirror. When I turned around, he was there and he had me blocked against the sink.
“Let me see,” he said in a half-mocking, half-apologetic tone, reaching out to touch my face before I could stop him. “I forget you don’t heal fast.”
“It’s fine,” I growled, batting his hand away. He didn’t seem to notice. He licked his finger and swept it over the cut on my lip. The contact stung but I was more surprised by the touch. “The fuck?”
“Look in the mirror.”
When I did, my lip was healed. “How the hell did you do that?” I demanded, wiping away the last bit of blood to reveal that the skin underneath was unbroken. It didn’t hurt anymore.
“Werewolf spit is kind of the ultimate panacea. Why do you think dogs always lick their wounds?”
“I don’t know. Because they’re dogs and they’re disgusting?”
“Come on,” he said, nodding towards the door. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
I waited a second before following him, mostly because the smell of the bathroom was getting to me. Ken wasn’t exactly into hygiene. I didn’t say a word until we made it to Cal’s and settled for sulking over my slightly less flat beer.
“You’re seriously still pissed at me? Fine, I’ll go back to using kid gloves when we spar.”
“It’s not about that.” It had started out as that, but I knew the moment I’d gone after Nick in the ring that I hadn’t actually let go of my anger.
He said nothing for a long while, staring into his half-empty mug. “I already apologized, Daniel. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“It’s not what I want you to say now, it’s what you should’ve said seven fucking months ago. Something, anything. I would’ve taken, ‘Go to hell, I never want to see you again,’ but dropping off the face of the Earth? That was shitty and you know it.”
“Fine. It was shitty, okay? I’m a shitty person and a shitty friend. Is that what you wanna hear?”
“That’s the problem. You’re not a shitty friend. You’re the best friend, the only real friend I’ve ever had, and then you just disappeared. I needed you and you just disappeared. I think I deserve to know why, after everything we’ve been through.”
“I told you, I’ve been focused on Holden and --”
“Bullshit. Don’t put this on him,” I growled. “You’re seeing someone. He’s important to you, you love him, fine. It happens. It’s part of life, and I’m happy for you, but I saw the way you looked at me that day. Like you didn’t know who I was, like I wasn’t even…”
“Human?” he offered. “You’re not. Neither am I.”
“I know that.”
“You know, but you don’t get it. You don’t get how much it matters. I’m a wolf. Wolves are designed, bred and raised to do one thing better than anything in this world, and that’s hunting.”
“Hunting things like me.”
“Especially things like you. As far as anyone knows, werewolves were created to preserve the natural order, to keep things that aren’t natural in check. Vampires we tolerate, unless they give us a reason not to, but things that are really, truly dead?”
“‘Created?’” I asked flatly.
“That’s what you pick to harp on out of all that?”
“So what, I’m offensive even to other monsters?”
“The dead and the living don’t belong in the same world, Daniel.” The sadness in his voice kept me from taking as much offense to his words as I ordinarily would have. “It’s the very definition of unnatural, what Locke did.”
“What Holden did,” I reminded him.
“Right.” He finished his beer and ordered another round.
“You get that I never wanted this, right? If I’d known it would be like this, I never would’ve let them bring me back.”
He frowned. “What do you mean you ‘let them’ bring you back?”
Shit. “When I was...dead--and I mean when I was dead dead--an angel named Remiel showed up pretending to be my mom.”
Nick grimaced. “I knew you had mommy issues, but that’s kinda fucked up.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, taking another gulp of beer. “Anyway, he warned me that Heaven would be looking for Holden and you with him. Remiel was trying to take my soul to Heaven or whatever before they had the chance to bring me back, but I wouldn’t go with him.”
“You would’ve gone to Heaven?” There was guilt in his voice.
“Shocking, I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer right away. I’d been carrying a chip on my shoulder over the fact that Nick was treating me like shit after I’d given up a one-way ticket to eternal paradise to keep him safe, but I hadn’t actually done all that much since coming back. Now that I was faced with admitting it, I just felt pathetic.
“Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Please don’t stay you stayed because of me.”
“Okay. I won’t say it.”
“Goddamn it, Daniel,” he snarled. The handle snapped off his mug. Good thing the bar was too cheap to use real glass.
“I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it, okay?”
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said, spinning on his stool to face me. “Do you have any idea what you signed up for? It’s not just the ritual, that’s just the beginning. This is the literal apocalypse we’re talking about. The end. The final bang and now you’ve got a front row seat.”
“So what, you’d rather I just died?”
“Yes!” He said it with such conviction, too. His gaze softened as his voice lowered. “What I did to Brent, I’ve gotta live with that for the rest of my life, but I don’t regret it. You? I don’t even get to grieve you.”
“I’m right here. You talk like I’m gone.”
“You are. You’re here, you’re talking, but you’re not you. Nobody comes back from the dead, no one.”
“Then what does that make me?”
His face fell. For the first time, I realized it wasn’t rage I’d seen in his eyes that day. It was grief. “I don’t know.” He turned back toward the bar, his shoulders slumped. “I’m still trying to figure that out. I was afraid I’d hurt you if I stayed around you.”
“You did. Dying I could handle, but you shutting me out like that? I’d rather you just put a bullet in my skull or whatever the hell it would take to actually get rid of me if you’re gonna do that again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. There was a point where you said I was the only reason you were still here, and I know you’ve always resented me for finding you that night, for keeping you here --”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” I muttered. We so rarely talked about the night Nick had tried to take his own life, and I didn’t like to think about it, but I had to get the words out. Something had to change, even if it was for the worse. I couldn’t keep going the way things were. “And I don’t regret it. I’ve never been able to bring myself to regret it. No matter how much it hurts to be your enemy, no matter how much it hurts to know he means more to you in a year than I have in sixteen years of friendship, I’m happy you’re happy. I’m happy you have more reasons, better reasons, but I get it now. I get why you were so angry at me then because now I know what it’s like to be brought back and to be forced to keep living a life that doesn’t feel like your own.”
Nick was silent and when I looked
up, I half expected him to punch me again, but he didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and crushed the air I breathed out of habit more than necessity from my lungs and for the second time that night, every bone in my body seemed to crack. He was holding me so tight I couldn’t even hug him back, so tight it hurt, and I never wanted it to stop. “I’m sorry,” he said in a ragged whisper. “Never again. I promise. I’m never going to leave you again, okay?”
I nodded because that was all I could do. I didn’t believe him, but I believed he meant it. For now. He always meant what he said in the moment, but I’d learned a long time ago that moments were all Nick had to give me and I cherished every one of them.
“People are staring,” I warned him.
He pulled away slowly and looked around. The staring stopped. “Yeah, well, word of my homosexuality has spread rapidly, so they can’t be too surprised.”
I laughed but it came out like more of wheeze and I tapped my mug against his. “Welcome to the shitshow that is being bisexual in Stillwater. Or is Holden still the exception?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “He’s the only one of anything there’s going to be, as long as he’s willing to put up with me, so I guess bisexual fits as well as anything else.”
“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “Well, that’s probably for the best. If you did date a woman again, they’d all think you were straight. This town’s not big on nuance.”
“No, it’s not,” he said with a heavy sigh, throwing back the last of his drink. “Here’s to being queer in Stillwater.”
Six
HOLDEN
When the week of Carla’s gala came around, I didn’t make the same mistake I’d made at her mixer. I had planned to rent a tuxedo at the local dress shop, but when Locke found out, he threatened to disown me. That sounded fine with me, but I let him play dress up and ended up with a surprisingly tasteful black tux that was tailored with magic.
Ever since Daniel’s outburst, I had been choosing my battles with Locke more carefully. The words had gotten under my skin and stayed there the way only truth ever did. I hated to admit it, but I knew my obstinacy regarding anything and everything Locke wanted was more a matter of pride than principle. I knew I didn’t have any real control over what happened in my life and I hadn’t ever since I had fallen into Locke’s trap--maybe I never really had--so doing the opposite of whatever he wanted was my small, ineffective way of maintaining the illusion of autonomy. Daniel had forced me to accept that I wasn’t actually accomplishing anything, just making things harder for the others Locke had caught in his web.
