by Alex Kidwell
To save himself from chopping things off, Redford refocused on cooking. The recipe was fairly simple, and he found himself smiling a little as he worked, hearing the faint sounds of Jed rustling his maps in the background. Honestly, maps and guns and radii were all a bit beyond Redford, so he was glad to help somehow. Between this and getting partway into cleaning the bathroom, Redford hoped that he might, in some way, be able to pay Jed back, to properly thank him for saving his life and taking him in when he needed protection.
When everything was done and cooking, Redford wandered back out to join Jed. There were even more colored marks on the maps now.
“I liked that cheese,” Jed said, making Redford wonder if he’d spent the last half hour sulking in defense of his cheese.
“I could smell it from all the way down the street,” Redford protested.
“It could have been its own civilization. It was close to forming its own government.”
“It was disgusting.”
“Democracy is never disgusting.” Jed scowled, and Redford sighed quietly. It was easy to tell that Jed wasn’t truly upset about the loss of the near-sentient cheese. The frown never touched his eyes. A lot of who Jed was seemed to be held in them, totally apart from the leers and cocky grins. If Redford paid attention, he thought he might just get to know what Jed was really thinking instead of the front he put up so often. Right then, Jed just looked a little confused, glancing occasionally back toward the kitchen.
Suddenly, Redford worried. “Am I… I’m sorry, I didn’t ask if I could cook. Or if you liked chicken and bacon. Or if you’re allergic to anything, or—”
“Redford.” Jed was smiling at him again, something strangely vulnerable in the corners of his eyes. “It’s fine. Just never had anybody cook for me before.” He leaned back over the table, now cleaning one of the guns, rubbing an oiled cloth over the barrel. “It smells good.”
“Oh.” The sudden turnaround of worry into pleased relief was a little too quick for Redford’s nerves to handle right then. “Thank you.”
He had forty-five minutes to wait until the casserole was cooked, so he spent his time with Jed, trying to listen to and learn what Jed told him about the maps and what he was doing. Jed occasionally took a few minutes to call people—contacts, he said. He even called David back, though the man sounded even more annoyed than he had last time. Jed just grinned and said something about being a horny son of a bitch, getting the information he needed.
Eventually, they—Jed, mostly—had managed to narrow down Grasio’s location to three possible buildings. All of them were cheap apartment complexes, close enough to where they were attacked that Grasio would be able to make the bodies disappear relatively quickly, as Jed had witnessed.
Forty-seven minutes later, because Jed’s oven was a little different than his own, Redford pulled the casserole out. Jed hovered behind him, seemingly anxious and oddly excited. “You never checked it before now. How do you know it’s ready?” Cooking, apparently, really was something Jed only experienced through the magic of television. The practical application seemed to bewilder him.
“I have a very good sense of smell.” Redford wasn’t sure where they were with Jed believing if he was a werewolf or not, so he kept his answer vague. The truth was, he didn’t need to check the food because his nose had told him exactly what stage the meat was at, at any given time while cooking. It was a useful side effect of a condition that otherwise kept him quiet, isolated, and paranoid.
Jed looked as though Redford had created some kind of miraculous event in the oven when he dealt the food out onto the plates and immediately dug in before he’d even gotten back to the table. “Oh my God.” Worried, Redford turned to him, eyeing Jed as he spoke again. “Oh my God, Fido. This food.”
“Is it bad?” It hadn’t smelled bad, but now Redford was worried again.
“Are you shitting me? This might be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.” Jed paused after his words, and a quick smirk flitted across his features. “Second best. When it comes to things technically classified as food though, definitely the best.” He eagerly took his plate back to the table, leaving Redford staring at his back, wondering what he’d meant. Jed only got that look when he was talking about sex, but try as he might, Redford still couldn’t figure that comment out.
Jed, Redford noticed when he arrived at the table, was wearing a look of complete ecstasy as he ate. Redford decided that he obviously needed to cook more often, if this was the reaction he got. Clearly there was a need for more homemade meals in this house. If he stayed, Redford decided, that would be one of the ways he could pay Jed back.
They ate in silence, punctuated by the occasional enthusiastic groan from Jed, leaving Redford’s thoughts to wander. Dusk was beginning to settle in, the moon rising pale and nearly full in the sky. Tomorrow it would be full, but the itch was already beginning. It had never been much of a problem when Redford had lived alone—he’d read, distracted himself in whatever way he could—but now he was here, with Jed. Tomorrow, he’d have to go back home to his cage.
“I, um,” Redford started, staring down at the scraps of food on his plate, pushing them around with his fork. How did he even approach this topic? “I’m going to be busy tomorrow night.”
“We’re both going to be busy,” Jed agreed, distracted. He’d shoved his plate over to make notes on the map in a messy scrawl. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t used to people being around during meals. After the first awkward moments of silence, he’d hunched his shoulders and shoveled his food in appreciatively, but he was definitely focused more on the maps than Redford. “If I’m right, we’ll be making Fil’s weekend start out with a bang.”
Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly what Redford meant. “No, I mean….” Redford nervously twisted his hands together. “The moon’s full tomorrow night. I need to go back to my place.”
Blinking a few times, Jed pulled his attention from scribbling what looked to be a little stick man running out of the house, who he’d helpfully labeled “The Bastard.” “You what?” Frowning, Jed looked back down, silent, jaw working. To fill the quiet, he added flames to the stick figure. “Okay, look, I… I don’t know what your angle is with all the werewolf stuff. But you’re not leaving my sight, not until this is done. If you’re that desperate to get rid of me, I guess I could sleep out on the doorstep. That’s as far as I go.”
There was his answer. Jed didn’t believe in werewolves, and Redford would have to get as far away as possible. He’d have to get back to his cage. He tried not to feel a little hurt that Jed didn’t believe him, so Redford collected their plates, taking them back to the kitchen to start fussing with the remains of the casserole. He’d deliberately made a lot so that Jed could have leftovers. Now he just had to find some containers to store it in.
If Jed wasn’t willing to believe him, then he’d have to sneak out. There was no way Redford was going to change here. He didn’t remember what happened during the moons—that was the wolf’s domain, not his—but from what he could gather, the wolf got violent. The cage and the walls were always scuffed when he woke up, not to mention his own injuries from where the wolf turned its frustration inward. He couldn’t subject Jed to that.
A rustle of noise and then Jed was there, warm and solid behind him. The other man didn’t touch him, though there was a brief movement, like his hand had reached out before it was snatched back, fingers curled into fists at his sides. “I don’t understand,” Jed admitted lowly, voice little more than a rumble. “If I put money down on you, Fido, it’d be on the side of you being truthful as a church mouse. But goddamn, darlin’. Werewolves? This is the real world; all I know is my fist and my wits, right? And then there’s you, all big eyes and talking about the evidence of shit definitely not seen.” He sighed, rubbing his forehead with one thumb, leaning against the sink. The clocked ticked forward, relentless, and Jed appeared lost in thought.
There was no way that Redford could actually prove
what he was, outside of letting Jed witness the transformation. He didn’t have any answers. Instead, he kept his head down, stacking the dishes.
“I wash,” Jed finally spoke up again, simply, turning to twist on the knobs of the sink and rummaging around for the soap. “You dry, furbutt.”
Jed seemed to be waiting for something, for Redford to join him, like that was some kind of sign. His shoulders were slumped a little, in worry or defeat or some other emotion that sat so strangely on him. “You’re not leaving,” he said, so quietly Redford almost didn’t hear him. “Just promise me that.”
There really seemed to be no way that Jed was going to let him leave. Redford understood that leaving would be dangerous—it would put him in the sights of Fil, alone, without Jed to protect him—but it was even more dangerous to stay here. He could kill Jed. Still, Redford wasn’t sneaky. He knew he wasn’t street smart or good at making plans. He wouldn’t be able to leave without Jed stopping him.
“I’ll need to go shopping, then,” he said quietly, drying the dish that Jed had handed him. “I know you don’t believe me, and I can’t prove it right now. Just humor me for one night? Please?”
Another pause. It was weird, even as little as Redford knew Jed, to see the man this quiet. Normally he was talking endlessly, patter that Redford was beginning to suspect masked a deep intensity. Now, though, those green eyes glanced over at him, Jed turning things over in his mind. “What kind of shopping?” he finally drawled, hands buried in the soapy water, muscles in his arms bunching as he struggled with some baked-on cheese. “Need some unmentionables? Cause I can tell you, no need to worry about clothes or the like here.” There was the familiar leer, directed toward Redford as Jed gave him a lingering look. “Don’t trouble on my account.”
He was getting used to the random innuendo now, so Redford just snorted a little. At least he understood that one. It wasn’t easy to ignore the flush of heat at the comment though, and Redford’s mind went back to the alley, to Jed’s hands and the press of their lips together. He didn’t know if something like that would happen again, but he found himself hoping that it would.
Unfortunately, thinking about that wasn’t very productive right now. He had to think about tomorrow. Setting up a cage to house a fully grown werewolf in Jed’s apartment wasn’t feasible, not without serious time to prepare. Although Redford was still extremely hesitant about turning here, he knew Jed wasn’t going to let him leave. Now he just had to think about damage control.
“Chains,” he started. “Thick ones. Several locks. A muzzle. An iron hoop to attach to the wall, for the chains.” Redford dried the next dish, hoping that he wouldn’t drop it with the shaking in his hands. He’d never talked about this with anyone before. “We’ll need to go to a hardware store and a pet store.”
Quiet, Jed carefully set the last plate back into the sink, hands braced on the metal sides while he blew out a slow breath. “Didn’t take you for the kinky kind, sweetheart,” he murmured, one corner of his lips turning up, though without the usual heat. Taking the towel from Redford, slowly drawing it through Red’s fingers as he pulled it away, Jed held his eyes with a scary kind of intensity. “That what your grandma used to do?” he whispered. “Tie you down before she traipsed off to her roses and her fucking doilies?”
Redford got the feeling that if Jed wasn’t whispering, he’d be shouting. Hunching his shoulders, Redford tried to remind himself that Jed wasn’t angry at him. At least, he really hoped he wasn’t.
“It was safer that way,” Redford replied, and he wasn’t entirely sure why Jed seemed insulted. “She was keeping herself and everybody else safe.”
Jaw tight, Jed turned away, washing the last dish like he was expecting the Queen to come by and eat off it herself. Once that was done, he walked toward the bedroom, silent, rifling through a drawer and pulling out a clean shirt. He spent a few seconds fighting with it, yanking it on over his head before he stalked back to the table, sitting down among his maps and his guns again. Redford watched him go, confused. He’d obviously said something very wrong.
After drying the last dish and putting it away, he trailed after Jed. Knievel intercepted him, staring up at him angrily, making Redford wonder if she was insulted that he hadn’t given the cat her fair share of the far-superior people food. It looked like Jed wasn’t exactly in the talking mood right now, so he went back to the kitchen, picking out a few pieces of chicken and feeding them to her.
Redford wondered if Knievel could smell what he was. She certainly seemed to act like he was completely beneath her attention, and he was sure that she was only purring and being cute right now just to get to the chicken. Tentatively, he reached out to run his hand over her back as she ate, lifting his head to watch Jed. The man was turned away from him, the hunch of his shoulders suggesting that he wasn’t very happy. Redford just wished he knew what he’d said to upset Jed.
He wanted to give Jed space. But it didn’t happen like that. Instead, Redford found himself going back over to him, hands hovering nervously before he briefly touched Jed’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he ventured. “I didn’t mean to upset you. But I really do need those supplies.”
Jed’s muscle twitched under Redford’s fingers, a heated awareness, though the man didn’t look up. “I’m not tying you up, Red, so stop asking. Look, you’re freaking me out, hovering. Just sit down, will you?”
It felt like a cold stone weight had settled in Redford’s stomach, but he did his best to ignore it. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong, but he needed to make preparations. He looked up at the clock on Jed’s wall, moving away to find his jacket. He didn’t work, but his grandmother had left him more than enough to live on when she’d died, so he had enough money to buy what he needed. The stores should still be open.
If they weren’t, he’d go back to his house and find what he needed there. The cage was the big safety net, but he had chains, the old, worn-out muzzle that prevented him from biting anybody. On second thought, maybe he should get those instead. They’d be better than buying something that might not work.
Tugging his jacket on, Redford stared at the back of Jed’s head. How did he explain this? He was just trying to keep Jed safe, but it seemed like everything he said was just upsetting the other man.
“Then I’m going back to my place to get some stuff,” he announced, taking a deep breath and trying to sound assertive. “I have what I need there. I’ll bring it back here. I’m not asking you to get involved and tie me up, I just… I’m just asking you to indulge me. Once. Please. I need this.” As far as Redford knew, assertive speech did not usually contain the word please, but he’d tried his best.
Briefly closing his eyes, Jed rubbed his forehead. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no sound ever made its way out. Finally, with a low curse, he threw his pen onto the table and stomped over to the door. “Fine,” he muttered, shrugging on his jacket and, with just as much grace and ease, strapping on several guns. “Let’s go shopping. But I’m not buying you ice cream after, Fido; I don’t care how good you are.”
Redford breathed out a sigh of relief. Jed clearly still wasn’t very happy about any of this, but Redford was willing to put up with that if Jed was safe. He followed the other man as he stomped out the front door, Redford’s own steps significantly quieter, and got into the car after him.
They drove, and Redford spent the time looking out of the window, resisting the urge to reach out to Jed and try to apologize. He’d probably be apologizing a lot soon, and Jed didn’t look like he was in the mood for it right now. Jed still didn’t seem all that happy when they pulled up outside, but his expression lightened a little when Redford took his arm, leading him into the house.
The basement door was well hidden. Redford’s grandmother had, long ago, painted it the same color as the surrounding walls, because she hadn’t wanted it to be obvious. She’d wanted to be able to ignore the room and what happened in there. Redford had understood. Some days,
most days, he wished he could forget what happened there too. He took Jed down the rickety stairs, flipping the switch at the end of them. A single bare bulb lit up, its light barely reaching the corners of the room.
His cage was along the far wall, battered and rusted, deep scored marks on the wall beside it. There were chains inside—ones Redford had hardly used, because he already had the cage—so Redford crouched down, pulling them through the iron loop in the wall, gathering them. Jed was still behind him, and Redford had no clue what to say. He didn’t know how to explain the dried blood along the thick bars of the cage, the scars on the walls. None of it made any sense without the explanation that he was a werewolf, one that Jed wasn’t readily believing right now.
Callused fingers brushed against the rough wall, touching the scores into concrete, the rust-colored stains, and Jed pursed his lips in thought. He didn’t say anything, though. He merely took the heavy chains away from Redford and draped them over broad shoulders, sad eyes looking around again. Jed reached out to touch the scar that stood out, pale, starting over the bridge of Redford’s nose, those same work-roughened fingers now so sweet and soft against his skin.
“I’ll be done in a minute,” Redford promised, leaning into the touch. It was a strange thing, to be touched so gently in this place. He didn’t really associate the basement with that sort of thing.
“Take your time,” Jed rumbled, but the words hardly mattered. It was the tone that said everything, something deeper than normal, some harsh tenderness there. Jed was a fighter; that much was obvious. The way he walked, how he moved—he was a human weapon. He was all lean muscle and sun-kissed skin, his movements graceful and economic. But right then, all that power, all that bristling, blunt force, was wrapped around Redford. Like Jed wanted to protect him. Like he was desperate to be the thing that stood between him and the rest of the world. Redford had never felt so safe before.
Tearing his gaze away from Jed, Redford picked up the muzzle that lay at the bottom of the cage. It was an old thing, battered leather and silver clasps. The collar was next, a simple strap of leather like any pet owner would pick up at a store, a silver circle bearing his address. As much as his grandmother had hated his transformations, she’d wanted to protect people, and she hadn’t wanted him to get lost, should the wolf wander outside of the house if it got free. It wouldn’t be especially useful if he was going to transform at Jed’s, because the address would be wrong, but Redford didn’t want to go without it.