by Grace, A. E.
“I really fucked that guy up bad,” she said into his shoulder. “What a crazy day. I mean, what if he dies?”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know that,” she said. “I don’t know. I’m tired. I want to go home.”
He didn’t say anything then, and the unasked question hung in the air over them. But he asked it eventually.
“Can I come home with you?”
Sasha nodded slowly. “Fine. You’ll need help washing that wound, anyway.”
“I can do it myself.”
“It’s not like I want to do it, Dylan.” She pushed backward, her eyes glistening. “And you’re sleeping on a towel tonight. I don’t want you suddenly bleeding or leaking puss into my sheets. Yuck!”
“Your sheets? I thought you might put me in the spare room,” he said, grinning.
“I am. Those sheets still belong to me. We’re going to have to take a taxi, too. My car’s still at the station.”
“Do you need to check in?”
“I already did, while you were getting patched up.”
“What did they say?”
“Not much. We’ll both have to give statements tomorrow. They’ll ask you a load of questions. We need to talk about what to do.”
“Okay.”
“That’s the only reason I’m inviting you over, by the way,” she added.
“Got it.”
Interviewer: You were suspended, weren’t you?
Sasha: Yes. Two weeks.
Interview: What for, exactly?
Sasha: Oh, I can’t remember exactly what it all was. But it suited me fine, actually. I had some leave saved up and so I took it after the two weeks, too. There needed to be a cool-down period, you know? I mean, two officers injured by the guy who was my killer? Yeah, there needed to be some break-time… for me, and for the station.
Interviewer: So how long until Marcus woke up?
Sasha: Oh, it was ten days, I think. [Looks at Dylan.] Ten?
Dylan: Yeah. Something like that.
Interviewer: Was it difficult for you, having to wait so long before you could question him?
Sasha: A little.
Interviewer: Only a little? Didn’t you want to find out everything you could?
Sasha: Well, Dylan and I actually went on couple of dates. We sort of tried to forget about it and get to know each other.
Dylan: Yeah. That was an odd little bit of normalcy amidst it all, wasn’t it? Especially for you. Just finding out shapeshifters exist, and then we’re eating spaghetti and talking about our childhoods and favorite colors.
Sasha: [Laughs.] Yeah. To tell you the truth, I was a little distracted the whole time.
Dylan: As I later found out.
Interviewer: Did you ever suspect that there were some kind of connection between you two?
Dylan: I did. I think she did, too.
Sasha: Yeah. When I looked back on it over those few days before we talked to Marcus in the hospital, it just seemed the inevitable conclusion, you know?
Dylan: Yeah. The way we were brought together. Her promotion. That I even managed to track Marcus there. And then, of course, when we met. I think I might have suspected it first then, even if I didn’t know it, you know?
Sasha: For me, it was when I agreed to go to dinner with you. I don’t even know why I did that.
Interviewer: Now that you two are where you are, you know?
Dylan: Yeah.
Interviewer: Is it more obvious, looking back?
Dylan: Of course! And when it was all explained to me by this lot here [Gestures at the rest of the group.], it seemed crazy that I missed so many of the signs. I thought about it for a long time, trying to spot things. I started trying to analyze everything.
Excerpt from full transcript of Interview with a Shapeshifter by Circe Cole. Printed with expressed permission.
*
The Italian restaurant was nearly empty, but it was late, and Sasha had deliberately chosen the time to avoid the dinner crowd. It wasn’t a particularly fancy place – small and family owned – but they did do great handmade ravioli which she had found herself craving for most of the day.
“Good?” Dylan asked her.
“Yeah. Here, try a bit.”
“So,” he said, before looking surprised at her. “That is pretty good! I only ever eat this stuff out of a tin.”
“You know, for all this time you’ve been alive, you’re pretty uncultured.”
He put down his fork. “Italian food? Cultured?”
“Please,” she said, putting up a hand. “No more showing off about how many places you’ve been to in Europe.”
“Every country,” Dylan said. “And all by train in those days, too.”
“Meet anyone while you were busy continent-trotting?”
“Nobody like you.”
Sasha sneered at him. “Ha! Right.”
“I’m serious.”
“Hey, do you get the feeling like we’re doing this all out of order?”
Dylan peered at her. “Doing what out or order?”
“Well, I mean, you know. Everything is backward. Yesterday we had our, what, fifth date, and-”
“Mm, not really a date,” he said. “More like sex and home cooking.”
“That doesn’t sound like a date to you?”
“No,” he said. “It’s too familiar.”
“Well, you get what I mean, right? We start off with all the sex and drama, and now we’re at the getting-to-know-you stage.”
“I’d say we got to know each other pretty well when I was your suspect. Anyway, speaking of that, I’ve sort of been wondering something.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I’m not sure if I’m crossing a line here, since it’s related to your work.”
“No,” Sasha said. “I don’t want to talk about work. I’m off-duty for at least four weeks now, though the bastards aren’t paying me for two. So I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s just one tiny thing,” Dylan told her. He was wearing a playful smile.
“Fine, fine,” Sasha relented.
“Do you use your work handcuffs in bed, or do you have a second pair?”
Sasha stopped her fork halfway to her mouth. She considered it for a moment. “No, I wouldn’t use the work cuffs,” she said. “I’d get a second pair.”
“But you don’t have one?”
“No.”
“That’s disappointing. There a sex shop around here?”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Dylan, my boy. Hey, I wanted to ask you something, too.”
“Oh no,” Dylan teased. “Sounds serious.”
“It is, kind of.” She paused before asking him. The question had been lurking somewhere in the back of her mind, and she wanted to know what he thought. “Are we just fucking?”
“No,” he said instantly. “Definitely not. Not on my side.”
“You sure?”
He took her hand across the table. “You’re mine, and I’m not letting you go.”
“But how do you know?” Sasha pressed. “We barely know each other.”
“Bear-ly,” Dylan repeated, amusement in his eyes.
“Ha, not intentional, I swear!” Sasha laughed. “But I’m being serious.”
“I just know, Sasha. Instinct. A feeling. Trust me, I’ve learned to hone it.”
“So, what, you think we were fated to meet?”
“I don’t know about fate,” he replied. “But maybe. Well, what about you?”
“I thought we were just fucking at first,” Sasha admitted. “I mean, come on. We do it every night and every morning!”
Dylan grinned at her. “Hell yes.”
“Stop it. Be serious.”
“Okay, so you thought it was just fucking at first. But not anymore?”
“No,” she said. “I kind of like you. It’s quick you know. It’s making me think.”
“About what?”
“You know, y
our… condition.”
“Is that related?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said, pushing her lips together. She sipped from her glass of wine, and then ran her hands through her hair. “I think so.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Same as you. A gut feeling. There’s something else, too.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to know more about it.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“You know, my training is telling me ‘investigate’ but we’ve nowhere to turn at the moment.”
Dylan put his fork down then, and she saw in his eyes that he didn’t really want to talk about it.
“Come on,” she said, touching his hand. “We can’t just ignore this forever. We’ve done it for a few days already, but we need to talk. I know it’s eating you up. And, to tell you the truth, I find myself more and more fascinated every day. I want to ask you so many questions that-”
“That I don’t have the answers to,” Dylan said. “Yup.”
“Don’t be like that, Dylan.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve been trying not to think about that, you know? I know my trail has gone cold. Shit, Marcus probably won’t talk.”
“You don’t know that. We’ll try when he wakes up.”
“Anyway,” he said, sipping from his beer. “What are you getting at with all this?”
“I can’t say for sure. Maybe it’s the lack of closure.”
“No such thing as closure,” Dylan said. “Things never stop. Closure is just a prompt to forget things.”
“Well, then if not closure, which does exist by the way, then at least some answers. I mean, that’s what I’m talking about when I say we’re doing this backward. We’ve had all this stuff happen, and I’ve just learned that people like you exist, and-”
“Maybe it’s just me and Marcus.”
“I doubt that,” Sasha said.
“Why?”
“Seven billion people on this planet. And you guys live for how long, right? How many billions in those timeframes? If you’re something nature intended, then there are more of you than just two, and just two males! That’s not how nature works.”
He sighed. “I try not to frame it with any kind of logic, anymore. I used to try, but I always got nowhere. What I need is someone else like me who knows what we are.”
“What if nobody knows? What if everybody else like you is just as lost as you?”
Dylan shrugged. “Maybe there’s a biologist or something, somewhere, like me.”
“Maybe,” Sasha said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Marcus seemed to know. He called me a cub. At least he knows lifespans, right? If I’m still a cub, then when will I be, I don’t know, fully grown?”
“Maybe hundreds of years,” Sasha said. She stopped then as a realization dawned on her. “Do you have any friends?”
“I used to. I’m sure most of them are dead or nearly there by now.”
“I never thought about it like that.”
“It’s strange living so long. Many inconveniences, actually. I have to get the date of birth on my passport altered, for instance.”
“How do you manage that?”
“Well it’s getting harder these days, with everything being computerized. But before it was as easy as steaming off the lamination and scratching a three into an eight.”
“You can buy new identities, you know.”
“I know.”
Sasha sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve got so many questions. I just want to ask them all at once.”
“Don’t be afraid to,” Dylan said. “Any I don’t want to answer, you’ll know.”
“Nah,” Sasha said after a moment’s thought. “I’m not going to interrogate you. I don’t need to know it all, not right now, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Dylan said, smiling at her. “Since you don’t have work tomorrow, I was wondering.”
“What?”
“Do you want to watch a movie? Midnight showing?”
“Sure. Anything in mind?”
Dylan laughed. “I have no idea, actually. Haven’t been to the cinema in, hmm, let me think.”
Sasha braced herself for an absurd number like twenty years, but she shook her head when she heard the answer.
“A year, I think?”
“Actually,” she said. “Me, too. Let’s just see what’s showing when we get there.”
“Yeah,” Dylan agreed. “Because all I want to do right now is sit with you and watching something.”
*
Dylan sat on the sofa wearing nothing but his briefs, arms stretched out to either side, and sweat dripping down the center of his chest. Sasha lay curled on his lap, in her underwear and a t-shirt, face ruddy and hair sticking to her forehead.
“I can’t believe your air-conditioner gave out,” he said, stroking her wet hair from her eyes. “It is crazy hot in here. Why is it so wet, anyway?”
“There’s always a couple of weeks in the summer that it gets humid,” Sasha told him. She ran a finger up the outside of his thick, hard thigh. “It’s the wind pattern, brings moisture in. There will be some rains in the coming few weeks, and that’s basically all the water the desert gets all year.”
Dylan didn’t respond, but instead rested his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. The two were watching crappy evening reality television, but it was fairly okay background noise while his mind wandered.
Tomorrow they would be visiting Marcus in the hospital. He had woken up after ten days of being unconscious since Sasha had smacked him with her car. He was lucky to be alive, but then Dylan didn’t doubt that the fact that he was a shapeshifter had saved his life.
He’d had a wonderful few days with Sasha. They hadn’t done anything nearly as exciting as the first day they met. He didn’t think there would be much they could do that would match that day.
“Hey,” he said quietly, stroking her arm. He squeezed it, and then snaked his fingers down to her elbow.
“Mm?”
“That first time we slept together.”
She shifted her weight, turned on his lap, and looked up at him. He was certain he caught the briefest of smiles, but she had obviously retracted it. “What about it?”
“I’ve just been thinking about it all,” he started. “Since we’re going to see Marcus tomorrow.”
“I’m thinking about that, too.”
“And there was something about that afternoon in my motel room.” She didn’t reply. She just looked at him, waiting, and so he continued. “Why did you have sex with me?”
“Why?” Sasha repeated. She turned it on him. “Why do you think I did?”
“Were you trying to, how was it you said it, something about buttering me up?”
She paused for a moment before answering him. “No.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you were, would you?” He grinned at her while tracing the outline of her ear.
“Probably not.”
“So it’s a possibility, then, that you were doing some extra-curricular police work?”
She looked back at the television. “When you’re police, nothing is extra-curricular.”
Dylan laughed. “Gung-ho and groan-worthy.”
“Best of the best,” Sasha said. They watched the show for a while, before she broke the quiet. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure what I was thinking.”
“And here I was thinking it was because I was irresistible.”
She looked up at him again, and he held her face, feeling continually surprised at how much he enjoyed this intimate and comfortable time he was spending with Sasha.
“Okay, fine, there was some of that.”
He donned a look of play-smugness. “Knew it.”
“But there was something else.”
“What? That I might slip-up during our love-making and groan out incriminating information?”
“No… I wasn’t certain you had that information. It was somethi
ng else.” She narrowed her eyes, and shook her head. “I can’t really explain it.”
Dylan frowned, and his brow knitted. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “It just felt right, sort of. Meant to be, but that sounds sappy.”
Dylan didn’t reply, considering what she had said. He, too, had felt like there was something else, more than just an unrelenting attraction that had pulled them together that day, that afternoon.
He felt right with her. She made his desert days impossibly brighter, and moments that they had spent time away from one another, he had felt empty. His thoughts had always returned to her.
There was a worry lurking in his mind, one at the very back of it that he refused to confront: Would he have to leave her? Would he have to choose between continuing his search for answers, his quest for truth, and staying with her?
Would she join him? It seemed a big ask, and more than that, beyond staying with him, there was little motive for her.
He pushed the worry away. That would be a problem for another time. For now, he wanted to just enjoy his time with Sasha. Enjoy being able to smell her whenever he wanted, kiss her both with passion and affection as he pleased, and make love to her every night and every morning like it was going out of style.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
It was the first time in his life that he felt he might actually be anchoring himself to something.
*
“Try and get some sleep tonight,” Sasha said, running her hand down the side of his face. “I know you’ve been getting up in the middle of the night.”
“Well,” he said, a glint in his eye.
“Oh, what, you going to tell me shapeshifters sleep less as well, do they?”
“I was,” he said. “But it’s not true. I just… I want to make sure I get answers out of Marcus tomorrow. I’ve had a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“That’s what’s been keeping you awake?”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t know, I get four or five hours a night and I’m pretty much okay. Always been like that.”
“It’s because you’re fit as a fiddle,” she said to him, poking his stomach with a finger.