by Megan Derr
Clothes were waiting for him on the counter. Like, they looked brand new and everything. Even the boxers still had tags on them.
What really bothered him, however, was that he hadn't heard Peter come in. He hadn't been that enamored of the soap. Almost, but not quite. That wasn't like him; the fact that he always paid such careful attention to his surroundings was the reason he was a miserable werewolf rather than a dead one.
So why hadn't he heard Peter come in?
He shrugged the question off for the time being, and considered the clothes instead. Brand new, he felt more than a little guilty…but he'd take them off again before he left, so all was good. Tearing the tags off, he quickly pulled on the blue boxers, jeans, white t-shirt, dark green sweater, and lastly a pair of thick, soft, white socks.
Finally he dragged his eyes up the mirror – and was not as horrified by what he saw as he had been expecting. He'd always tried to care of himself as best he could, cadging and filching and stealing what he could on the chance that someday he might have to look healthy and presentable.
Cleaned up, with his blonde hair showing and the grime scrubbed away enough you could see his green eyes…he was no one's idea of a prize, especially since he was mostly bone, but…he wouldn't make little children cry either.
Taking a deep breath, he threw his towel in a hamper near the toilet, then finally let himself out of the bathroom and found his way quickly back to the kitchen.
His stomach growled as the smell of something that contained veggies and steak and potatoes hit his nostrils. He wanted to actually growl, which was sort of freaky, 'cause normally he did that shit only a lot closer to the full moon.
"Warm and refreshed?" Peter asked, giving him another pretty smile.
Lowell nodded, hastily looking away, eyes landing instead on the table and the wonderful smelling food on it. Some sort of casserole thingie, with all the yummy stuff layered just so, mashed potatoes on top.
Peter laughed softly, and Lowell jerked his gaze up, feeling his cheeks heat. "Sit down, eat. Lord knows I would never have been able to eat this much by myself. Women around here seem to think I'm perpetually starving."
Not quite certain what to say to that, Lowell slowly slid into one of the seats and…sat and waited. He totally had no clue about uh, manners and stuff. 'Werewolf Eats More Like Werepig, Says Horrified Local Doctor.'
Then Peter sat down, and almost before he could blink Lowell found himself staring at a heaping plate of food. It was probably the second-best thing he'd ever smelled in all his life…and he would figure out why it took second place to Peter and his weird yummy smell later.
Picking up his fork, Lowell began decimating the contents of his plate. It was briefly empty, then suddenly filled again, and he could not find it in him to protest. He wouldn't be able to eat like this again for a very long time.
When he finally finished, and bothered to look up, he realized that Peter was watching him with a smile curving his face.
Flushing, Lowell dropped his fork and ducked his head. "Sorry," he muttered. "Guess I was hungrier than I thought…I, uh, didn't mean to—"
"It's all right," Peter said, reaching out and lightly patting his hand. "All this is the very least I can do, the very least I owe you, after you worked so hard to come here for something that proved false."
Oh, yeah. Suddenly the reason he would be sneaking out later came crashing back down, and Lowell struggled not to let it get to him because he'd known it likely wasn't true but still who wanted to spend his whole life a freak?
Peter's hand was on his again, squeezing it tight. "I'm sorry," Peter said slowly. "I tried for years to develop a cure, truly I did, but I've never been able to make it work. I gave up for good two years ago. A brighter mind than mine will figure it out someday, perhaps."
Lowell nodded, trying to accept, cause he'd known all along in his heart of hearts…but…"Stacey just sounded so…so…"
"Convincing?" Peter finished, voice going hard and flat. "Yes, I'm sure he did. Stacey was very good at sounding convincing."
Startled, Lowell looked up, only to be completely thrown by the anger and pain that were etched deep into Peter's face, sunk into his eyes. "Um…" He licked his lips, feeling nervous, hating that Peter seemed so miserable suddenly. "You knew Stacey?"
Peter nodded, voice still so flat and cold when he answered. "Yes, I knew Stacey." He started to say more when the back door abruptly flew open.
Lowell stared, nostrils flaring at the smell of blood that washed over him. Yet he could not associate it with the woman who stood in the doorway, though she was unmistakably the source.
She was…colorful. Jangly. Her skirt was made of all kinds of blocks of different colors and patterns, like she'd made it from a quilt or something. She wore a bright red tanktop, and jangled because of the profusions of beads and bells and other random bits and charms at her neck, wrists, and waist. Her blonde hair was just as crazy as the rest, curly here, braided there, most of it held up off her neck by a pair of red chopsticks. Pretty, but sort of overwhelming, and the color and beads and all were completely at odds with what he knew her smell to be.
"Vampire," he said in disbelief as she drew close enough there could be no mistaking the scent.
Peter groaned. "Bloodsucker, go away. Learn to knock."
The woman sniffed, planting a hand on her hips, a measuring cup clasped idly in the other. "If I knocked, you wouldn't let me in. Easier to skip that part."
"Go away, Sally," Peter repeated, glaring.
Instead, Sally just ignored him and strode to the counter near the stove, pulling forward a blue porcelain container, pouring out some of the contents into her measuring cup. "So who's the cutie?" she asked as she returned the container and wandered to the table.
Lowell just stared. He'd seen vampires before; they were usually kinda scary though they'd never actually bothered him. Always in the cities, though, he'd never seen them in the small towns. Not that he'd been in many small towns himself, but still.
"You're scaring him," Peter said sharply. "You scare everybody."
"Not you," Sally said, rolling her eyes. "I’m not scaring him. He's—"
"Probably not even eighteen," Peter said sharply. "I found him walking along the highway, and he was on his way to see me."
Sally blinked. "Oh. I see." She moved around the table and plopped down next to Lowell, slinging an arm over his shoulder. "You're a handsome one, no mistake. If I ever divorce my idiot husband, you and me can run away together."
Peter groaned. "I'm so about to go fetch your husband."
"Don’t you dare, he's still recovering from your nasty little stunt with the flares."
"You started it this time, bloodsucker," Peter retorted. "Next time tell him not to get in the line of fire."
Sally sniffed. "Whatever, Mad Scientist."
Lowell wondered if it were possible to discreetly slip under the table and then sneak away.
"You get used to her after awhile," Peter said, smiling briefly at him before shooting another glare at Sally.
"He's a cutie, really. Gonna keep him around?"
They exchanged a look, and Lowell knew undercurrents when he felt them. What was going on? Should he bolt? The arm around his shoulders was starting to freak him out. People didn't touch him. Ever. Unless they were cops or something and those guys were never nice except for like one who'd given him a cup of coffee and kept looking vaguely guilty.
"Let him go, Sally."
Instead of arguing, as Lowell had half expected, Sally promptly let him go and stood up, wandering to the fridge and pulling out a carton of eggs. She selected two and put them carefully on top of her sugar.
"I am not your grocery store, you damn bloodsucker," Peter said, standing up in exasperation and taking away the butter she'd just stolen.
Sally snatched it back, set it with her sugar, then vanished into the pantry. "Yes, you are. Especially when I'm making cookies. Don't you have any cocoa?"
"Third shelf, toward the back," Peter said, rolling his eyes at Lowell before striding over to the coffee maker tucked away in the corner of the counter near the sink. "Do you like coffee, Lowell?"
"Uh, yes," Lowell said. He loved coffee, not least of all because people would most often give him that for free. Coffee, (powdered) cream, and sugar tended to be his most common food groups.
Sally returned from the pantry, arms loaded down with various things – cocoa, chocolate chips, nuts… She smiled at him, setting everything on the table. "Do you like cookies, Lowell? I'm making double chocolate, classic chocolate chip, sugar cookies, and probably peanut butter or my husband will whine like a five year old."
Lowell tried not to stare, but he suspected he was failing. "Uh…you are a vampire, right?"
"Yes," Sally said, laughing. "The cookies are for the school fair tomorrow. I always help stock the snack bar. Plenty left over for my darling neighbor, however, even if he should still be in trouble for the flare stunt."
Peter snorted. "You started it, bloodsucker, and given you just emptied my pantry to make the cookies – you can share the goods."
Sally rolled her eyes at Lowell, then winked at him. "Have you got a basket? I forgot to bring one, and I can't carry all this back by myself."
"You!" Peter said, heaving a long sigh before stomping off into the laundry room. He came back with a basket that looked like an Easter Bunny reject and knocked Sally lightly upside the head with it.
"Thank you, darling grocery boy."
"Bloodsucker!"
"Mad Scientist!" Packing everything neatly into the basket, she wiggled her finger at Lowell and departed as suddenly as she had come.
Peter rolled his eyes again as he returned with two cups of coffee, departing briefly to fetch a sugar bowl and a carton of half & half from the fridge. "You get used to her after a bit. Vampires think they can muck with everyone and everything. Need to be kept in line." He grinned as he sat down, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
Was it okay to find his rescuer attractive? That was probably against the rules, or at the least very stupid – but ignoring shit like that was what had kept him alive. Despite everything, Peter smelled good and looked good and that definitely meant Lowell needed to go the very minute the getting was good.
He fixed his coffee and sipped it slowly, and wished he could freeze time right like this, where everything was perfect and nothing was going to ever go wrong. "Um. Thank you for, uh, all of this. I'm sorry to be such a problem."
Peter looked at him, smiling softly. "You're not a problem. I live here all alone; it's always nice to have someone else about. Besides, it's mostly my fault you're here at all. You're welcome to stay as long as you like. Was there anywhere else you needed to be?"
"No," Lowell said, almost laughing. Where would he have to go?
"If you don't mind my asking," Peter said slowly, setting his coffee down. "How old are you?"
Lowell shrugged, and looked down at his own coffee, humiliation making his cheeks hot. "I don't know." How could he? Vaguely he remembered an orphanage or something, but one too many fights with some of the others…
After that, it seemed there was always a reason no one wanted him around – even other supernaturals. The few wolves he'd encountered hadn't wanted company, which he'd never gotten, cause it'd be nice not to be the only wolf…
"That's what I thought," Peter said thoughtfully, idly tracing the rim of his cup. "If I had to guess, I would say you are right around eighteen, give or take a few months…" He smiled faintly. "Not that it really matters, forgive a scientist his curiosity."
Lowell shrugged, confused but beyond caring. It didn't matter to him how old he was, if it interested someone else, fine.
Peter laughed softly and stood to fetch the coffee pot, refilling Lowell's mug. "I'm glad you appear to have escaped being sick. I've learned the hard way that werewolves make lousy patients." He winked.
"Being sick sucks," Lowell said, because it did. He hated being sick. It just made the wolf stuff harder to control and contain, and he pretty much wanted to bite every stupid person that crossed his path.
He didn't know much about being a werewolf, but he'd learned pretty young not to bite people. Not that he usually wanted to, people never smelled like something he'd want to sink his teeth into.
Sometimes he wondered who had bitten him. The other werewolves he'd met knew who had bitten them, and why. Lowell couldn't remember; he must have been really tiny when he'd been bitten. There wasn't even a scar. He wondered what sort of jerk inflicted ly-whatever on a poor, dumb kid.
"You look ready to fall over," Peter said, breaking into his thoughts.
Lowell shrugged. He was tired, but really it seemed like he was always tired.
"Come on, you can catch some z's. I keep weird hours, I warn you now. All of Midsummer keeps weird hours, minus a small handful." Peter smiled. "It's a supernatural kind of town, really. Even the humans here have some sort of connection to supernaturals."
"Um…" Lowell had never heard of such a thing. He rarely ever saw supernaturals. Sometimes he swore the ones he did see tried to avoid him, except that was dumb – well, unless they were avoiding the werewolf hobo, which made sense, but sometimes he got good work and managed to be respectable for a bit and even then none of them hung about him for long. "That's weird."
"It's certainly not common, but I promise you won't be treated here the same as you've probably been treated everywhere else. Especially if you've got Sally's approval, which I think you do. No one is going to cross a top vamp, even if most other vampires consider her an embarrassment to their name."
Lowell almost smiled, but felt bad doing so. "I've never seen another vampire like her, though I haven't seen many. What's a…top vamp?"
Peter looked at him in surprise. "Do you not know anything about vampires? What do you know about werewolves?"
"Umm…vampires are scary, especially the ones that smell like there's something wrong with their blood. I met two others that smell like Sally, though I only saw them from far away."
"Top vampires," Peter said. "They've been around usually for centuries. I think Sally staked a claim here back when it was just a handful of shacks and a village well. Her husband – just one of her eccentricities – is human. Jordan, he's a nice guy, with the patience of a saint if he's married to her." He winked again, then turned more serious. "So you really don't know much about werewolves?"
Lowell shrugged. "Not really. Biting spreads it. I've never run across many others, and they never wanted to stick around. I don't remember who bit me or why."
"Bit you?" Peter repeated softly. "I see."
"See what?" Lowell asked.
"Mm, you really do look tired," Peter said. "I shouldn't keep rambling on. Come on, I'll show you to your bed, and get you settled, and we can talk more over breakfast."
Lowell frowned. But he'd been about to talk about werewolves…why would he stop? That wasn't fair. How did a human doctor know more about werewolves than him? He probably even knew that stupid Ly-word Lowell could never remember. "But—how do you know so much about werewolves? Were you really working on a cure? What…" What was going on, and why did he feel like he was missing something?
Peter reached out to lightly hold his hand again. "I promise I will explain what I know, and why, in due time. But right now you're tired and upset, and being inundated with information would not help you at all. I should never have started asking questions; my curiosity gets me in a lot of trouble. Come, let's get you to bed."
He tried to muster a protest, but even with the coffee in his system Lowell was suddenly succumbing to the exhaustion he'd been fighting since Peter had woken him up in the car. Shelving the protests for later, he went obediently as Peter guided him out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into a room that smelled like it hadn't been used for a bit. All the people smells were old, faded, and the sheets as he fell down on them smelled like nothing more than detergent.
&n
bsp; It occurred to him belatedly, as he grew too heavy and sleepy to move, that if he wanted answers then he couldn't sneak away…but could he stay? Why would Peter want him to stay?
Then sleep took him, and the questions left him in peace for a time.
*~*~*
Lowell didn't know what to do with himself.
After eating breakfast, Peter had told him to 'explore and have fun' before vanishing through a door beneath the stairs. Lowell wondered what was down there, because it was obviously a lot more than a closet unless Peter was particularly strange.
Explore and have fun?
He got the explore part well enough, but how exactly was he supposed to go about having fun? What was fun? He didn't have a whole lot of 'fun' memories stored for reference. In his experience, fun usually required money and even though he now had two hundred dollars to play with…he had no idea what to buy with it.
Well, new soap and detergent and all kinds of things he should replace for Peter since he was using them.
Exploring the house didn't take long. It was a pretty big house, but half the downstairs was given over to a little clinic thing packed with all kinds of weird stuff that he was pretty sure, though not positive, were normally in a doctor's office.
The rest of the downstairs was a living room, and something that looked like a second, smaller living room but with more books and board games and a TV and stuff. Otherwise, it was just the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room.
Upstairs was just three bedrooms and another bathroom, a couple of closets. Lots of windows, most of the coloring blue and green and gray, though 'his' bedroom was red and brown.
He wondered who had used it before. No hint of the former occupant remained, even most of the smell – not enough of it to give him some picture of the owner.
Not that he was really trying anymore, not after realizing he'd gotten some faint whiff of sex. It still felt like his face was on fire, cause that was so none of his business.
Still, probably a lover or something of Peter's? Which definitely meant it was none of his business.