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swan-archive · 7 years

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boy, that last thing i posted was kind of a fucking downer, huh? how about we lighten things up a little bit? have some gross wereham marrieds. let us all shame Eliza heartily for being a fucking furry. shame, shame.

I’ll never understand you, Angelica would say to Eliza, when they were girls, what’s so great about waiting for a thing to happen? Isn’t it better to just—you know—have it, and have done with all the sitting around? Clever Angelica with her whip-fast mind, and the patience to match. She could drive a person crazy, the way she’d used to fuss over the run-up to some special date, birthday, holiday, a long-awaited ball. But Eliza, for her part, has always enjoyed the tingling rush of anticipation. She can wait, doesn’t mind whetting her appetite on imagination. The reward at the end of the road is sweeter for her wanting it so, she almost always finds.

Her patience isn’t limitless, though. And just now, Alexander is late.

Eliza putters around the parlor, trying vainly to distract herself. Fluffs the cushions on the settee once, twice, three times. Picks up a book and sets it down. Late, late, late. She’d check the almanac just to make sure she hasn’t gotten the date wrong, but no point to that. She knows the rhythms of Alexander's monthly change better than anyone, save Alexander himself. She knows what tonight is.

Another thing she knows—exactly how long it takes Alexander to get from his office to the house, and he’s far outside that particular window, so it can't just be that he's held up on the road. Eliza lets out a displeased little grumble. Almost wolfish herself, there, the same sort of noise Alexander might make at a mouse scurrying inside the walls or a turn of phrase that won’t untangle itself under his quill. Petty irritation, not a particularly becoming look, but she can excuse it in herself right now. It’s that case that’s been troubling him so these past weeks, she knows it. The damned thing has already cost them a few precious evenings, but now that it’s elbowing in on tonight, she’s quite done making allowances.

Alexander is her husband every night, and they've perhaps a week out of every month where he can—ahem—perform the duties of a husband, but it’s new moon, and new moons are special.

New moons are for Eliza, and Eliza alone.

She flicks a fold of her dressing gown at some imagined speck of dust on the end table, twists the fabric between her fingers. Deep breaths, Bess, easy, your husband’s an important man, and a busy one. And he could no more forget what tonight is than misplace his own hand on the end of his arm. Nature of the change. He’ll be here soon. Has to be here soon. Had better be here soon—

Slam goes the front door, right on cue. Hurried footsteps in the hall, growing quieter, more measured, as they approach the parlor. Yes, yes, oh, finally. Eliza draws in a long breath and stands perfectly still. Imagines herself a deer poised for flight in a forest clearing, and listens to the parlor door swing open with a genteel creak, the quiet sounds of shoes against the carpet, moving closer and closer.

“Well, fancy seeing you here, Mrs. Hamilton,” murmurs a voice in her ear, and an arm snakes around her waist. Eliza’s heart leaps, like she’s a girl being courted for the first time and not a mother and the mistress of her own house. She collects herself, though. The play is part of it, for them. He’s a hunter, let him think he’s had his hunt.

So, “It can’t be Mr. Hamilton, can it?” she says, in her archest tones. “No, I think not. I expected him—oh, over an hour ago. Ages ago. Must’ve stood me up. Terrible man. Heartbreaker.”

“A villain and a scoundrel,” Alexander agrees, kissing her on the ear. “Even if he did have a brief that needed to be finished no later than today, and a client breathing down his neck, and even if he left the office just as soon as he—”

“Uh-huh.” Eliza strives to keep her tone even, but Alexander’s arm tightens around her waist and she pushes back against him with a soft exhale. She can almost see his smug smile at her impatience, less like a wolf than a cat that’s gotten into the cream.

“I came as soon as I could. Really, I did.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Alexander spins her around gently so he can look at her, dark brown eyes twinkling with good humor in his familiar-unfamiliar face. High forehead. Nose a bit too big to be handsome, but charming in its imperfection (“I always hope this will get left behind, somehow,” he jokes, prodding at it, when his muzzle finally melts away each month). Neat little beard framing his mouth, slight pout to the lower lip. She’d like to taste that. Resists. She lifts her chin imperiously and stares him down, and the pout curves up into a grin.

“You seem unimpressed. There must be some way I can make up for my appalling tardiness. And for surprising you in your, ah, state of dishabille.” He plucks at the dressing gown she’s wearing, draped over stays and petticoats and not much else.

“Well, you haven’t even kissed me hello properly yet.”

“Dear, oh dear. I haven’t, have I?”

“Let’s start there, and after that—”

Alexander doesn’t let her finish. He kisses the same way he does anything, impatient and eager and with the searing focus of sunlight shining through a curved glass. Eliza lets that focus burn her down to a point, lets her world narrow down to lips and tongue and breath and roving hands. At last, at last. All that anticipation paying off, and never mind that this is the game they play every month, it’s always sweeter than she remembers, sweeter than she could have hoped.

Alexander draws back from the kiss, sighing against her lips. Pauses. Eliza opens her eyes and sees a puzzled little wrinkle between his brows. He snuffles at her curiously, makes a soft hrm noise in the back of his throat that’s somewhere between a hum and a whine.

Still not quite human, this husband of hers, even now.

“You’re wearing a new scent,” he says at last.

“Yes, Angelica sent it to me. It’s quite dear, I’d been saving it for, you know, a special occasion,” she says, with a coy smile.

“Huh.” The tip of Alexander’s nose twitches.

“It’s not…it isn’t too much, is it?”

“No, no, not at all, it’s just…different. It suits you though. It does.” He leans forward deliberately and buries his face in her hair, breathes deep. “Mmm. Honeysuckle. Yes, I think I like it.”

“Well, good, otherwise I’d have to go and bathe, and then you’d have to sit here and wait for me to be done like a good boy.”

“No chance of that.” He moves her hair behind her ear, noses at the corner of her jaw. “I’d come in and join you.”

“Naughty.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice, though? Someone to, hm, help you get really clean, maybe rub your back a little while you soak, you could relax…” He trails off, absorbed in pressing open-mouthed kisses to her neck. Always terribly, terribly gentle. No teeth. A little suck, though, just at the edge of her collar, and her knees tremble despite herself.

“Alexander.”

“Hmm?”

“Will you—if I have to wear a shawl for the next week, I swear—”

“Tell your friends you were attacked by an animal.” He grins at her, his hand straying under her dressing gown and plucking at her stays. “Tell them you were out for a walk, and a vicious wild creature jumped out at you from the trees and went straight for the throat, you barely escaped with your life—”

“—and I fought the beast off with a sword, I suppose, and rode away on a white—ah, Alexander!”

“Oh, no,” he murmurs into the hollow of her throat, “I came up in the nick of time and saved you. No fiercer beast in the forest than a wolf. The creature was no match for me.” He growls a little, resonant and low in his chest, but it’s all playacting, and Eliza fights down a grin of her own.

“My hero.”

“What prize should I claim for my deeds, I wonder?”

“Hmm, let me think…”

“Because I’m told—and correct me if I’m wrong—the love of a fair maiden is traditional, in these cases.”

“Interesting. Tell me more.”

“I’ll be sure to, in as much detail as I can—” He stops, fingers still tangled in the laces of her stays. His head goes up again, cocks ever so slightly to one side. “Um, the baby—?”

“With Peggy for the evening,” says Eliza, working at the buttons on his waistcoat. “She’ll bring him back around seven or so.”

“Ummm. Is it, it’s almost five already—”

“So we haven’t a moment to waste, now have we?”

“No,” says Alexander. “No, we really haven’t.”

They leave a trail of discarded clothing behind them: dressing gown crumpled on the sitting room floor, Alexander’s coat on the stairs when they pause to kiss again, his waistcoat caught under the bedroom door, wedging it open a crack, but no one’s home, it doesn’t matter. By the time they make it to the bed, Eliza is down to her shift and Alexander is in shirt and breeches, hopping awkwardly on one foot as he pulls off his stockings. He flashes an apologetic grin at her for his clumsiness, and Eliza blinks at him for a long moment, puzzling out the shape of it, before she realizes what’s missing. No fangs. Of course.

Here is a secret: Alexander is stranger to her as a human than in any other form. This is what he ought to be, new moon or not, and still she’s more used to golden eyes and pointed teeth, paws and claws and tail. He seems so soft like this, so naked, and it doesn’t suit. Something in his carriage suggests he’s feeling the missing parts of himself, compensating by moving through the world with extra care.

Eliza doesn’t want care just now, though. She wants him.

“Eager, aren’t we,” Alexander says smugly, letting Eliza pull him on top of her. She doesn’t bother to dignify that with a response, mouths at his throat and feels a burning surge of delight at the noise he makes. Payback for earlier, she thinks, and scrapes her teeth against his skin. Eliza hasn’t the same restrictions on using teeth that Alexander does, and anyway he’s got those nice high collars and cravats to wear for everyday. No one needs to know but him.

She bites down.

Alexander whimpers. Alexander’s pulse thunders under her lips. Alexander doesn’t pull away until Eliza’s quite satisfied herself, and when she has he looks at her like a man seeing a vision, golden light and angels with trumpets and perhaps the voice of God Himself ringing in his ears. “Oh,” is all he says, the livid mark on his neck bobbing with a hard swallow, and then he slips down the bed, down her body.

He’s always so sweet with her after a thing like that, all melting glances and tender kisses and delicate touches. Eliza luxuriates in the sweetness for a bit, lets him nuzzle between her breasts and trail kisses over her belly and stroke up and down her legs. Reverent. She could almost expect him to start humming a hymn. Nice to be a goddess for a while, and she reaches down and tangles her fingers in his hair, tugs but gently. He leans into the touch like a dog being praised. Yes, yes, I'm good for you, see how good I can be. It’s all too easy to imagine his bushy tail wagging in satisfaction.

And it’s lovely, but a few minutes go by, and a few more, and he’s still nuzzling and fluttering, and—it’s getting a little old. He kept Eliza waiting. She hasn’t the time to be worshipped just now. And, she realizes all of a sudden, he’s only touching her with the very tips of his fingers, same as he would at a less fortunate phase of the moon. As though there’s still some risk there of him tearing her to pieces, as though there were ever any fear in her that he would. Funny-sad. She props herself up on her elbows with an impatient noise, just south of a laugh.

“I’m not made of glass, Alexander,” she says. Alexander startles and glances up at her, an embarrassed flush leaping into his cheeks. It’s—nice. Not that he’s hard to read, any other time of the month, but there’s something so disarmingly human about a blush. Rose gold against his smooth skin. A trace of guilt in his eyes, so Eliza adds, with a little more heat, “Like this—” and draws the hem of her shift up over her thighs, letting her nails drag against skin.

Alex makes a broken, wanting sound and lets his fingers follow hers, tracing the warm pink score marks her nails have left. Pushes her shift further up, so it gathers around her hips. He leans forward.

Eliza gasps. Breath cool against her in puffs, a quiet laugh.

“I got distracted, before,” he says, honey-sweet all of a sudden, the cheekiness back in his voice. “I was making up for my lateness. My forfeit was a kiss hello, I think? A proper one.”

“Yes,” says Eliza, trembling and wanting and too giddy to banter, “yes.”

“My Betsey’s so merciful,” he says. Flicker of tongue, the lightest touch of fingers. “Such a tiny price to pay.”

“Alexander.”

“I can do better than my first attempt, I know it.”

“Alex—” Eliza catches her lip between her teeth. Alexander’s clever fingers not quite in her, stroking just a little. He looks up at her, fire leaping in those dark-dark eyes, and bares his teeth in a smile too sharp and too hungry to be human.

“So. A proper kiss hello, for my charmer.”

He dips back down, and the world goes white.

—

Alexander wakes to pale dawn-light, with Eliza snoring softly in his arms and his body slowly, tangibly, starting to slip away from him.

He can’t quite explain it, but after so many years with the change he can always tell just when it’s coming upon him again. A tiny stirring somewhere deep inside him, blood or bone or marrow, pulled toward the waxing moon. He’s learned that it won’t be fought, that no degree of clinging by his fingernails will make him stay human a second longer than the heavens dictate, but it still aches for him to find himself—once again, as he is every day of the month but two—stuck somewhere in-between.

At least he’s still far enough toward one end of the cycle to be mostly furless, and he curls close to Eliza, enjoying the warm guilt of lying in bed when he should be up and about, the touch of her skin on his. An uncomfortable realization, to know that if he were put entirely to rights at this moment he’d probably go out of his mind a week later, the flood of sensation on his bare skin more than he could tolerate. For now, though, safe in in the quiet, Eliza-scented dark, it’s simply thrilling rather than overwhelming. Silk of skin and hair against his palms and chest and lips. He nuzzles gently at her cheek, presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

Eliza wrinkles up her nose, rolls over, and blinks blearily at him. “…’Xander?” she mumbles.

“Sorry, darling. Sorry.” He rests his forehead against hers for a moment. “Go back to sleep, Betsey. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Hmm.” Eliza squirms close enough to tuck her head under his chin, breathes out long and slow. “Wh’ time’s it?”

“Early. Too early. Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be awake yet.”

“If I don’t, you don’t.”

Alex lets out a sad chuff of laughter. “Sadly, duty calls. I should’ve been up half an hour ago.”

“Stay.”

“I wish I could, love.”

Eliza pulls herself up enough to look him full in the face. Surely she can’t see much but a vague blur of features—her eyesight’s nowhere near as good as his, in the low light—but Alex still ducks his chin and nestles into the pillow, trying for quiet indignation and not quite finding it. He knows what his eyes look like. They’re always the first things to go, when the moon starts calling him again. Wide and upturned at the corners and the color of fresh-minted coins.

Unmistakably, the eyes of a wolf.

The coverlet rustles, and Eliza reaches up to trace a hand down his jaw. Tilts his head up to look at her, and doesn’t flinch away at the eyes of a wild animal staring back at her from her husband’s face. Kisses him, lazy and slow, like there’s no world waiting outside their bedroom door. Like they have all the time they could want here and more.

“…Five more minutes?” she asks sweetly, when they break apart.

“Unfair,” says Alex, baring his teeth at her, “unfair, you’re not allowed to use—coercive tactics on me, you little siren.”

“Mm,” says Eliza, twiddling a lock of his hair, her fingers just happening to brush against that spot behind his ear that feels so good when scratched. “So five more minutes, then.” It’s very hard to argue with the dozy certainty of someone who’s still half asleep, especially when she’s giving him the eyes like that. He’s always been easy for that look.

“I. Well. I suppose I could spare five. Just five.”

Eliza makes a triumphant little noise, nestles herself against Alex’s chest, and goes quiet again. Alex runs his fingers over her shoulder where the blanket’s slipped off. Back to touching with just fingertips again. It isn’t so bad, really, he thinks, glancing at his hands, the nails a bit longer than they’d been yesterday, darker at the beds. He won’t have real claws for another day or two yet, but it’s better not to get into bad habits. Someone could get hurt.

“Mmph. Tickles.”

“Sorry, Betsey.”

“You can touch.” Without opening her eyes, she lays her hand over his, presses it flat against her arm. “You know that. You’re allowed.”

“So you tell me.”

“Every month.”

“Remind your poor, absent-minded husband again, though, will you, love?”

“Ridiculous man,” she murmurs against the pulse in his neck, and Alex feels his breath catch in his throat. Dizzying, to lay himself bare like this, to be so vulnerable, and to know himself safe. Goes against all his instincts, but here he is, no teeth at his throat, no blood. Safe safe safe home mate love safe flutters in his brain. He kisses the crown of Eliza’s head.

“I’ll be home early again tonight,” he says. “As early as I can. We’ll have the evening together, you and me and Phil. It’ll be nice.”

“Mm.” That could mean anything, Don’t talk to me, I’m trying to sleep or fat chance you will or yes, darling, that sounds lovely. He chooses to believe the latter.

“And then we’ll have tomorrow night. The two of us. And the night after that.” He rolls the words over his tongue. Could tack another night on the end there—maybe not, though. Always a bit of a gamble, guessing how quickly his body will throw itself into the change. Three more nights, then, to be safe. A short enough span. If only he’d been more judicious with his time coming into new moon week, damn him, they could’ve had more, but work’s work, and the law doesn’t stop for one love-struck werewolf.

So. Three nights. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing. He runs his not-quite-claws over the curve of her shoulder, gentle, gentle.

“We have time,” he says, to the quiet room, to Eliza maybe-sleeping, warm against him. “We still have time.”

#swan talks #hamilton for ts #wereham au #sex cw #a little bit #sadly did not manage to work this in but some bonus material for ya: alex-as-human is absolutely as hairless #as your common or garden lin-manuel miranda #so it is also quite funny for eliza to see him like this; aka as sleek and unfurred as the beautiful dolphin; the rider of ice #she had to work VERY hard not to burst out laughing on their honeymoon when she realized that none of the chest hair #she had previously seen on him was inherent to his human form #he's trying very hard bless him

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swan-archive · 7 years

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welcome to another thrilling episode of “hey uh swan? literally NOBODY asked”! on the menu for tonight: wereham Reynolds affair. thanks to Hannah @the-everqueen for making this anything even vaguely approaching postable, sorry i’m like this, no i’m not sure why it keeps happening, enjoy maybe, etc.

(general warnings for sexual content, infidelity, mentions of physical and emotional abuse, and dubious consent apply.)

It’s been about a week since Eliza, Angelica, and the puppies packed up and headed for Albany.

Or, well: it’s been eight days, thirteen hours, and six minutes. Not that Alexander has been counting.

(Seven minutes.)

(...Okay, he’s been counting.)

He stayed behind for a reason, he reminds himself several times a day. The country needs this plan, won’t sustain itself for long without wrangling its finances back into working order after the chaos of the war. Alex isn’t the kind of person to slap a bunch of sloppy, unrealistic policies together, call them sufficient, and expect Congress to shrug and approve them; no, this is a good plan, one that he’s been hashing out in notes and letters and essays and drafts for years. One that would work. And yet, somehow, somehow (he thinks of Madison’s soft, convincing murmur, Jefferson’s smirking drawl, and curls his lip), the damn thing’s stalled in the House, stonewalled by a bunch of whining Southerners who don’t understand the concept of national interests.

Figure it out, Alexander, Washington had said, and Alex is the Secretary of the Treasury, this is his job, this is his responsibility, so he’d lowered his tail and bowed his head and said yessir, gone home and holed up in his office and sent out the first of the letters pushing for a reconsideration on the matter of assumption that very evening.

That was back at the end of winter. It’s July. Still no movement on the plan, aside from a couple hard-bought, tepid ehh, maybes.

So, no, he does not have the time to spare just now to go on a vacation. Not even if the whole family’s gone. Not even if he’s been tempted with descriptions of the grounds of Eliza’s parents’ home, spacious and secluded, plenty of room for a wolf and his growing pack of puppies to stretch their legs and explore. Not even if he hasn’t had a quiet night in with Eliza in ages, has spent even his wolf days poring over economics texts that he knows by heart, on the off chance he’ll stumble across the perfect point to convince his detractors.

Not even if (and his heart clenches painfully to think of it) Angelica is back from England. Bright-eyed, brilliant Angelica, who tears into his writing with a ferocity no one else has ever matched, who can match him point for point in any debate, who even an ocean away always seemed to vibrate on the same wavelength as Alex. Angelica, who, in the handful of days she’d been in their home, had left Alex lying awake at night, her words thundering in his ears and her smile dancing before his eyes and the memory of her fingertips brushing casual against the back of his paw burning, burning in him...

Alex growls and balls up another substandard draft without bothering to let the ink dry first, shoves it to the edge of his desk where it falls down onto the floor. Heel, boy, that’s your wife’s sister you’re talking about. If he’s going to be like this, maybe it’s a good thing they’re all out of the house. Keep him out of trouble, give him some peace and quiet to work in.

And that thought makes him whine so loudly he can’t help but chase the noise with a slightly hysterical laugh.

Funny to think that he’d used to pride himself on his independence, on his ability to shrug off little things like loneliness and too much silence and an empty bed in service of his goals. Not anymore; he’s a pack animal to his marrow, now, used to a den full of pups and his mate there to hold him as they both drift off to sleep. No matter how he rationalizes, he comes home to his empty home night after night and finds the first panicky thought in his head is they’ve left me. They’ve left me, and they’re never coming back. It’s truly pathetic, but he’s taken to bringing a blanket from the nursery with him to bed at night, curling up with it and with Eliza’s pillow in his arms or between his paws so when he wakes up in the morning he can smell them all, pretend for a second that he’s surrounded by his little pack and not alone, alone, horribly alone.

And that leaves him here, eight days, thirteen hours, and seventeen minutes without his pack, holed up in his office, laboring over yet another letter to a damned fence-sitting Congressman who will probably end up doing nothing more than exchanging a few meaningless notes with Alex before politely refusing his—

(“Compromises,” Eliza would call them, complete with air quotes, reading over his drafts with a faintly exasperated air. You have to give something in order to get something, Alexander.

Don’t you think I know that? he’d challenge her. Would you have me cut my entire plan to ribbons to get one bloody Congressman on my side? It works because it’s a whole, Eliza, they have to see that, unless they’re fools, and if they’re fools then I ought to be able to convince them...

Tell me, brother dear, have you ever made a compromise in your life? Angelica would quip, because you sound to me like a man very out of his depth. Would you like me to write your letters? I’m sure I could get your plan through to Congress in a quarter of the time it’d take you to manage it.

No, no, I’m an honest man, I’ll not have them accusing me of hiring a ghostwriter to do my work, he’d say with a grin. Save for at full moon. But then I’ve no thumbs, so I have no choice, really.

And then Angelica would roll her eyes fondly, and Eliza would laugh and lay a kiss to the side of his muzzle, and then the puppies would burst into the room at the sound of their laughter, and he’d lift little Jamie to his shoulder, and tousle Angie’s curls, and they’d all go down to supper together...)

There’s a knock at the door.

Eliza, he thinks instantly, leaping from his chair, frustration and self-pity forgotten. He throws open his office door and fairly sprints for the stairs. Eliza’s home, she changed her mind and came back to me, thank God, she’s back, they’re back, they’re all back.

He’s halfway down the stairs before his mind catches up with him, clears its throat and murmurs that Eliza has a key, surely she wouldn’t need to knock to be let in, and even if she did she wouldn’t stand on the front step scuffing her toes nervously against the ground like she’s not meant to be there. And, if it were Eliza, she wouldn’t have come without the littlest pups, and he can’t hear any of them. Alex cocks his head, takes the last few steps with a cautious tread. So, not Eliza. Then who...?

He opens the door, and the woman on the front step jumps. There’s a shawl drawn up over her head and face, concealing her features, and her wavy brown hair conceals more, but there’s no mistaking the new-coin gold of her eyes, or the scent of animal musk she gives off. Another wolf. A strange wolf. The hackles that have just grown in over his shoulders bristle automatically, intruder in my territory not my family not my pack. But—no, Alex, calm down, he thinks, she doesn’t mean any harm, the cast of her ears under her shawl and her shrinking posture all crying out no threat. They’re civilized people. He can control himself.

“Can I help you, madam?” Alex asks, once he’s tamed his voice back down to a reasonable tenor and not a snarl. The other wolf straightens up with a quickness, as if remembering what shape she’s in.

“Secretary...um, Mr. Hamilton?” she says, a bit muffled by the fabric covering her mouth.

“That’s me.”

“I—I don’t mean to bother you at home, sir, I know this must be—irregular, but would it be possible, might we have a word?”

“I’m sorry, have we met?” says Alex. He moves forward and sniffs, but no, doesn’t recognize that scent, and he would certainly remember another bitten wolf if he’d run across one in his social circles. She sounds young, as well, too young for a colleague��s wife.

“No, no, I—you don’t know me,” she says, a hint of keep-away growl in her voice at Alex leaning into her personal space. She coughs to damp it down, smooths her skirt down behind over the stir of her tail.

“Then, if I might ask...”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she interrupts. “Forgive me, Mr. Hamilton, I wouldn’t have—but I know, I’ve heard you’re a man of honor, a charitable man. That you’re sympathetic to, well...people in need.” She pauses for a moment, shakes her head like that phrase is an annoying fly she’d like to shoo away, but pushes on. “And I thought, maybe you’d understand, you’re like—that is, you’re a—”

She trails off, looks at Alex a little desperately. You’re like me. You’re a werewolf. A stir of pity in his breast. Yes, maybe he would understand. He knows something of how humans and fullblooded wolves treat their kind. And he’s terribly busy, really ought to get back to his work, but he has to admit, the prospect of focusing his efforts on something different is appealing right now. Something that he can actually resolve. Ride in on a white horse and help the lady in need, and go back to his work later bolstered by the victory under his belt. He makes up his mind.

“Perhaps we ought to continue this conversation inside?” he says. He holds the door open, gestures gallantly. The other wolf gives him a wary glance, but steps over the threshold, her clawed fingers working at a fold of her skirt. She raises her head to the unfamiliar smells of the house, looks about the foyer. Alex can’t resist the urge to circle around her curiously, still sniffing. Faint smell of cheap perfume, of one—no, two—other wolves. Her pack?

“You needn’t keep that thing on,” he says at last.

“Sorry?”

“Your shawl, Miss...?”

“Reynolds. Maria Reynolds.” She pauses, then adds, rather grudgingly, “And it’s Mrs., actually.”

“Oh, excuse me. Mrs. Reynolds. But you can still—I mean.” Alex laughs. “We’re all wolves here, aren’t we? You don’t have to cover up like that. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” He gestures at his own face with a wry grin, wags his tail slow at his little joke. Maria doesn’t seem to find that funny; Alex sees her nose wrinkle, just above the edge of her shawl. She unwraps it anyway, though, settles it about her shoulders and shakes her hair out.

They’re coming up on half moon, not a particularly flattering time for a bitten werewolf. Both of them are saddled with ugly, skewed features, noses stretched out too long and lips thinning over pointed teeth and dark fur beginning to sprout on cheek and forehead. Maria tugs a lock of hair down over the side of her face, self-conscious, but it’s obvious to Alex that she must be a great beauty when she’s human. Heart-shaped face and full lips, he thinks, soft tan skin still showing in places under her patchy fur. Prettier than he is, any time of the moon, and he chuckles to himself again at that.

A glint of irritation shows through the nervousness on Maria’s face, and her ears twitch as though she’d like to flatten them out to the sides, come on, stop fucking around, I didn’t come here to get smarmed at.

Fair enough. “So. What was it you needed my help with, madam?”

Maria swallows hard and becomes very focused on the hem of her skirts. Pretty red dress, flattering, even at this time of the moon, but slightly out-of-fashion, like something saved from several summers ago.

“It’s my husband,” she forces out at last. “He’s—you were an officer, back during the war, perhaps you knew him, James, James Reynolds? He served in the commissary department for a time. His father too.”

“I’m afraid I don’t…”

“It’s, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter. I just thought you might—not that it’s relevant at all, but—oh, Lord.” Her ears droop tragically, and she ducks her head, tongue-tied. Poor girl.

“Please, Mrs. Reynolds,” Alex says, dropping his chin and lowering his eyelids soothingly, “It’s all right, but I don’t understand—your husband, he’s in trouble?”

“In trouble? Ha.” Maria smiles humorlessly at that. “He is the trouble.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, he’s a…that is to say, he hasn’t…behaved toward me as a gentleman ought,” she says with excruciating delicacy. Worry, worry, worry, her fingers at her skirt again like to wear a hole in the fabric.

Flash of memory: Maman, years and years and years ago, caught in a candid mood. Sometimes, petit, marriages are not happy things. When I left Johann, and your half-brother, it was not on a whim, but—because he didn’t treat me as a husband should treat his wife. And I couldn’t live that way any longer.

Alex had been a smart child. He’d been able to piece together the gaps in the story from Maman’s odd comments and the disputes he’d heard of around the neighborhood and, when he could bear to listen, from the gossip swirling around his mother’s name. So. Hasn’t behaved as he should. Lots of implications there, none of them good.

Hard to find the words to respond to those implications, too. “I—Mrs. Reynolds…”

Maria takes his hesitation for disbelief, though, and hastens to add, “I mean to say, what I mean is—it’s not, I wouldn’t have come to you with a trifle, sir, please believe me, I can handle the odd argument. But he disrespects me, he brings women home and doesn’t even bother to hide it and lets them make a madhouse of our place. Staggers home drunk with them every night. And the things he says to me when he’s been drinking, oh, Mr. Hamilton, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, terrible, vile things—I’ve feared for my life, some nights, the way he talks. And then, when he started to—when he…” She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head hard, but can’t keep her hands still. They flutter about, ghosting from ribs to shoulder to cheekbone, her touch careful, so careful.

Maria notices him noticing. She presses the pads of her fingers against her face, deliberately, trying for nonchalant, but her whiskers twitch once with discomfort.

“Anyway—I’ll spare you the gory details, shall I?” Maria says, with harsh, affected sarcasm. “He—he beats me. On top of everything else. And, well, there’s not much I can do about that, is there? You know.”

Alex nods, a burning knot rising up in his throat. Oh, he does know. One slip for creatures like them and then it’s mad wolf, and after that the muzzles and manacles and silver chains. So easy to pin blame on a thing, just because you don’t like the look of its face, just because it did what any animal in a trap would do and snapped at its captor.

And here comes another unpleasant flicker of memory. Eight years old, lying in bed with the covers drawn up over his head, trying his best to ignore the raised voices from downstairs. They cut off with a stinging slap that makes him clutch at his own cheek. Nothing to say to that, next morning, to the bruise on Maman’s face. Nothing to say to it now.

Just because there’s nothing to say doesn’t mean Alex can stand to stay silent, though, so, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Reynolds,” he tries, rather weakly.

“I’ve borne it as long as I could,” she continues, as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “really, I have, I know I’m not, that I can’t help being remiss in my duties as a wife, and if it were just me, I’d’ve never bothered you, but, you see...” For the first time in their conversation, some of Maria’s nervous prickliness melts away, and her voice is almost gentle as she continues, “I’ve a little girl. Susanna. She’s just six. My pride and joy. I couldn’t leave her with—him—I just couldn’t—but she’s another mouth to feed and we’re staying in a boarding-house and that’s no place for a child, it’s simply not—”

“A boarding-house? You mean you can’t even stay in the same house with him?”

“No, that’s just it, he’s broken with us. He’s gone and left me. Left me, and my little girl, and is living with another woman, put us out of our own house and left us with next to nothing, all because I’m a—”

“Because you’re a bitten wolf,” Alex says grimly.

She nods, and digs her fangs into her lip, and grits out, with an obvious effort, “So. You see. I had nowhere else to turn. And I know you have a family of your own, sir. But if you had anything, anything at all you could spare, just enough to, to get us out of the city, to find us somewhere else to stay, even…” Her voice breaks, wavers with an ugly, hurting whine. Her eyes very wide and shining.

“Oh, Mrs. Reynolds—here, please, take this.”

Maria makes a soft whimper—the only sound at her disposal at the moment—and snatches the handkerchief out of his hand. Buries her face in it, half-turning away from him. Alex thinks about reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder, maybe nosing at her in a gesture of gentle canine reassurance. No, probably too forward. Must be something else he can do to make her stop crying.

“This…husband of yours,” he says after a moment. “He wouldn’t happen to be human, would he?”

“N-no. No. Wolf. Born to it.”

“Hah. Shame. I’d’ve offered to give him a bite of his own, if he were. Teach him something about empathy, eh? I could still mess him around a bit, if you think it’d be any help, I could take a born wolf it it came to that…”

Maria lets out a wet little cough and shakes her head. “Th-thank you, Mr. Hamilton, but I just…I want to be rid of him. I never want to have to think of him again. That’s all.”

“Of course. Of course.” Stupid, Alex, you stupid brute, he snarls at himself, twisting a cuff button between his fingers. First that idiotic apology, and now this? Some help you are to this poor girl. He’s too keyed, that’s what it is, he’s not thinking straight. All those uncomfortable recollections, and Maria sobbing silently into his handkerchief, and behind it all his plan still nudging at the back of his brain. Pull it together. Focus. Make yourself useful, and the rest will fall into place. Should fall into place. He clears his throat.

“Mrs. Reynolds?” He brushes his fingertips against the back of her hand. Soft fur there, muted tickle against his callused paw pads. “I’m terribly sorry to leave you alone, but would you mind if I ran and fetched something? It’ll only take a moment. I won’t be gone long.”

Maria bobs her head, makes a muffled noise of assent into the handkerchief. Good enough for Alex, and he turns and heads back upstairs.

Probably a stupid idea to leave a strange wolf alone in his home, unsupervised, but Alex can’t bring himself to care much as he throws open his office door and walks over to his desk. He pulls out a drawer, rifles through it for his checkbook. Habit of squirreling cash away in the bank whenever he thinks to do it: throwback to those lean years of his childhood, coins in a box under his bed, insurance against the next inevitable disaster. What’re you saving up for, Eliza always asks, what do you think’s going to happen to us? Think you’re going to get run over by a carriage on your way home from work?

Just for a rainy day, he’ll reply, or you never know what life will throw at you. The reasonable part of his brain stills his hand on the quill. Yeah, you never do know what life will throw at you, it says archly, like—losing your job if you can’t get your plan past Congress, perhaps? Remember Eliza, remember the puppies, remember what happens if you fail.

And he does, he does, that specter hasn’t given him a moment’s peace in months, but Maria’s right downstairs. Maria has a puppy too. She’s playing against high stakes, just like Alex, but with no one at all in her corner.

She’d looked so lost. So very helpless.

He won’t fail, he thinks, pushing back against caution. He’s never failed before, not in an arena like this, and he’s not about to start now. He’ll manage things in the end. So he can afford to show a little charity.

He scrawls a number on the check, blots it quick. Thirty dollars. That should be enough, right? Enough to get one wolf and her pup somewhere safe. You have a family, gasps his reason, thirty dollars, you gonna buy this girl a horse of her own to ride out of Philly in style, or—

Okay, so maybe more than a little charity. But whose business is it what he does with his own money, anyway? He crumples the blotter paper savagely and tosses it amongst his discarded letter drafts. He’s Secretary of the fucking Treasury. There are much worse things he could do with his cash than hand it off to someone down on her luck. Before he can scare himself out of it, he seizes his quill and slashes his signature down in the margin.

There. No going back now. He’s helping.

Flapping the paper to dry it, he hurries back downstairs. Maria’s standing there waiting for him in the middle of the room, still as a statue but for her hands twisting his handkerchief, the fur on her face scrubbed clean and dry. You’d never know she’d been crying, just a few minutes ago.

“I’d like you to have this, Mrs. Reynolds. I only hope it’ll help,” he says, crossing the short distance to her and pushing the check into her hands. “Get your little girl a safer place to sleep.” Maria flips it over, scans it. Her eyes widen, and her ears perk straight up with shock.

“I—oh—Mr. Hamilton…” Maria tilts her head down and peers at his writing over the too-long bridge of her nose, as though sure she must have misread his writing. “This is—thank you—oh—”

“Please, don’t mention it,” Alex says, with a wave of his hand, warm glow of done-something-right settling over him. It feels good to be generous, feels like winning. Maria clutching the check so hard it crumples, her claws in danger of punching straight through the paper. Must not have been expecting such a gift. Poor girl.

Alex pats her on the arm, feels the trembling tension of inhuman strength there. “You put that somewhere safe, now,” he says solicitously. “Wouldn’t want someone taking it from you on your way home. In fact, I’d be happy to walk you back to your lodgings, if you like. It’s coming on night, no time for a lady to be out on the streets by herself.”

It’s a whimsical, even silly offer—what kind of fool would try to jump a werewolf at night, lady or not?—but Maria colors up under her fur and lowers her eyes and says, “That would be...I’d appreciate that, sir, thank you.”

“Of course, Mrs. Reynolds. If you’ll just give me a moment to fetch my coat…”

Maria’s destination turns out to be a boarding-house not two blocks from Alex’s own front door, barely far enough to be called a walk. Alex goes slow, enjoying the sultry evening, the sounds and smells of the city, his tail up at a cheerful angle and swishing back and forth. Maria is more subdued, her hand resting chastely on his offered arm and her shawl drawn back up over her muzzle. Both of them panting a little with the lingering heat in the air.

Maria catches herself, puts her hand over her mouth in embarrassment, even though her face is covered. “Excuse me, Mr. Hamilton,” she says, “it’s—reflex, you know how it is, it’s terribly uncouth of me though, I’m sorry—”

“No, please don’t worry,” he replies, licking his own chops with good humor. “The weather really is intolerable in this city. I can’t remember New York ever getting so hot in the summer.”

“Me either,” says Maria, “must have been the ocean breeze, or—” She stops abruptly, almost guiltily, and hitches her shawl up her muzzle. Clears her throat. Says nothing, and they walk on a ways without speaking.

“You’ve spent time in New York, then?” Alex asks after a minute, to fill the awkward silence. Maria glances up at him out of the corner of her eye, cagey, as if trying to judge whether he’s earned an answer to that question. Exhausting, that constant vigilance, and trying to rub away the sharp edges of it a little, he continues, “I studied law there, when I first got to America. King’s. You know King’s?”

“Of course I do,” Maria almost snaps. Her hand on his arm twitches, and then she appears to regroup, lowers her chin in submission, takes a breath as if to steady her voice. “Um. Yes, I—I grew up in New York. Born and bred, actually.” Her eyes soften, a flicker of that human beauty of hers showing through again. “My parents still live there. My sister.”

“That’s nice. You go back and see them much?”

Alex can practically feel the shockwave as Maria’s walls slam up again. “No,” she says, the word grinding against a growl in her throat that she tries and fails to soften with a harsh laugh. “No, James has never been much of a fan of unnecessary expenses, like hiring a coach just to visit a family who doesn’t even—well. So, no. I haven’t seen them since we came to Philadelphia.”

Alex bites back the question that wants to slip between his teeth, which is are you sure you don’t want me to tear this guy’s throat out? Might be better for all of them if he did just that. “Do you miss them?” he asks instead.

“Of course, but...well. It’s not—it’s complicated. I wasn’t seeing them much anyway, not after, after...” Alex recognizes that tone, that reluctance, has heard it in his own voice plenty of times. After the accident, she means, after the bite. “They like to see Susy, at least. Liked to. She’s a sweet pup, a pretty little girl. Easy to be around.” Bitter note there. Not like me.

“I’m sure she’s perfectly charming.” Alex flashes a doggy grin at her. “Like her mother.”

Maria snorts, gives Alex another sidelong look. Glances back down at her toes. “Anyway. I like New York summers. Liked. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle them now, either. Who knows.”

Interesting. Alex picks at the timeline forming in his brain. Bitten before she came to Philly, left New York quick enough to miss the changing of the seasons. Family back there who know her daughter, knew Maria herself after she was changed, for a little while. And then, wistful—would he be able to bear a Christiansted summer, now, if he were sent back there?

Maria’s fingers squeeze his wrist lightly. Must’ve caught the thoughtful cast to his ears. Clever thing, paying attention. He folds his free hand over hers, and she tenses. Face unreadable under the shawl. “I hope we get a good storm to break this heat, soon,” is all she says.

“Hope so,” he agrees. Almost imagines he can sense it building in the air right now, a barely tangible frisson between the two of them. The corners of Maria’s eyes crinkle in what might be a smile.

The boarding-house, when they reach it, is a shabby little place, dark weathered wood and tiny windows that dim the already weak evening light, knots of customers muttering to each other and glancing around suspiciously in the foyer and common room. Alex insists on walking Maria up to her quarters and seeing her safe inside, watches her shrug off her shawl and bustle around the room. She removes his folded check from her pocket and tucks it safely inside a drawer before busying herself lighting candles. Nondescript space she’s got here, stuffy with the heat, musty mildew smell in a few corners, but there are small stabs here and there at making it livable. A clumsily-stitched, brightly-colored quilt thrown over the threadbare bed. A fat red poppy starting to wilt in a chipped glass bottle on the windowsill. Half-mended dress, or petticoat, or shift, stuffed hastily into a basket next to the nightstand.

Something very obviously missing.

“Your daughter?” Alex asks, his ears twitching as though he’ll hear her hiding under the bed, or perhaps behind the curtain.

“With an acquaintance, for the evening. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be, well, out. She’s safe where she is, for now. I’ll go and fetch her soon.” Maria shifts the candle on the nightstand, so the light catches gold on her eyes. Shadows dancing on the line of her muzzle, the soft curve of her lower lip. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Hamilton?”

Alex looks at the spindly little chairs up against the near wall. “I suppose—sure. Why not. Just for a moment,” he says, and tucks his tail alongside his leg to sit more comfortably. A taut flicker of smile crosses Maria’s face, and she saunters over, lowers herself into the second chair. Cocks her head at him, all charm. The light blurs her human features, so for a moment it’s simply a wolf in a red dress blinking at him. With the dim light and close warmth and wolf-smell, he could almost be in a den.

“I just wanted to thank you properly for your generosity, Mr. Hamilton,” she says. She smooths her skirts, the same slightly crumpled blood-shade as the poppy’s petals. The hem brushes the toe of Alex’s shoe. “It’s—what you’ve done for me—for us—” She pauses, then, quite deliberate: “If there’s anything at all I can do to repay you for your kindness…”

“Please don’t, Mrs. Reynolds. Please. You don’t owe me a thing.”

“Don’t I?”

“It’s enough to have spent the evening in the company of a young woman like yourself.” And where did that come from? He looks at Maria for any sign of offense, but she doesn’t growl or recoil or reprimand him. Just sits there, worrying her skirts again. A strange sharpness in her eyes, he’d almost call it fear, but of what? Nothing to be afraid of, surely not while he’s here.

This heat is making him crazy. He lets out a gruff half-bark, shaking his head in the stagnant air. Candlelight shining red through his eyelids when he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Mr. Hamilton?”

“I…I ought to head back home,” Alex says. Makes no move to stand.

“Someone waiting for you?”

“No. No.” Alex manages a weak grin. “Just. Lots to do. Lots of work.” Important work, crucial work, he knows, but an unaccountable surge of irritation wells up in him at the thought of it, so he sits there, his leg jittering a little with nervous energy. Just a few seconds more, up here in the half-light, lingering in the smells of candle smoke and fur, and then he should go—he should—he will—

“You don’t need to leave,” Maria says suddenly. “You could stay. For a bit. If you wanted.” She lays a hand on his knee, ghosts it up his thigh.

Alex jumps. Burning sensation on his skin, under the fabric, under the fur, like she’d struck him with a red-hot poker. “Mrs. Reynolds—”

“Maria,” she interrupts. She presses her lips together for a moment, looking at her own hand on his leg like she can’t quite believe it’s there, but she collects herself. Bears down enough for claws to sting. She meets Alex’s eyes, hesitation gone. “You can call me Maria.”

“I—” Alex says. Stops. I shouldn’t, I couldn’t, I won't caught in his throat. Yes, he should refuse her. He’s a taken man. He has children. A pack. A life that would not benefit from a liaison with a married woman. He should go now—

—back to his empty home, with only scent-phantoms to keep him company. Back to Congressional deadlock and the sneers of Jefferson’s faction. No one to offer a new perspective on the tail-chasing circle of his thoughts, no one to commiserate, no one to stroke his ears and hold him close and tell him that his hard work will be worth it in the end.

And there’s a warm body here in front of him, warm and soft and she smells so good, oh, nothing like Eliza or Angelica but she smells like wanting and she smells like wildness and she smells like mate.

And he’s alone.

Almost before he knows what he’s doing, he leans forward and presses his lips to hers.

They’re neither of them shaped quite right for it; their noses bump together and Alex's fangs catch on her lower lip and she makes a little noise and they both freeze for a long awful moment. No no no no no no echoes in his ears, as if screamed from a long way off, but he feels velvet of just-grown fur under his fingertips and someone else’s breath against his lips so he surges up to her again, and she softens to his touch.

And then he’s kissing another werewolf, and the only thing strange about it is that he’s never done it before. Wrong, the angles of her face under his hands, not human, but his must be too, and she hasn’t pushed him away, and she isn’t pushing him away. Fireworks going off behind his eyes, want and hungry and mate in little flashes of animal frenzy. Feels raw and new and intoxicating. He’s sure he must have been wanted before, by someone, but he can’t seem to remember when or by who—

Maria ends the kiss, ducking her head, unexpectedly coy. Her curls fall in her face. Alex pushes them back. Tilts her chin up. She trembles, but wrinkles her nose slightly, meets his eyes. Alex thrills at that. A challenge. Let him work for it. He’d always been a flirt, even after the bite—he can convince. With words, or not.

“You’re very beautiful, Maria,” he says.

Maria barks sharply. Not even pretending to be a laugh. Yeah, tell me another one.

“You are, though.” He traces a claw down the line of her neck, over the downy fur just appearing there. Strokes his thumb over her collarbone. “Do you not hear that much? You should. You should have someone to tell you that every day...” Like Eliza does for you, murmurs a voice in his head, like your perfect, wonderful, loving, faithful wife does for you. Remember her?

Yes, but Eliza isn’t here, he thinks. And I’m so lonely.

It’s not too late. You can still say no. Can still walk away.

Alex leans forward and sets his teeth against Maria’s skin. Bites down but gently, not enough to really hurt, not enough to draw blood. Still a revelation. No teeth with Eliza, too much of a risk, what if he pushed too hard, then she’d be cursed like him, spoiled, a monster.

But Maria’s already—and the taste, the taste—

Maria shivers, and her hands come up to rest against Alex’s hair. He lays his cheek against the pulse in her neck, under the faint marks of his teeth. Quick frightened flutter, a bird he’d flushed from the underbrush on a full moon hunt. He would like to sink his teeth all the way in, still the beating wings and consume, predator triumphant. Settles for whining and licking a long stripe up Maria’s bared throat. Animal. Doesn’t matter. We’re all wolves here, aren’t we?

She looks down at him, and he realizes he’s left his chair, fallen to his knees before her. She is beautiful, really is, in a way that only another wolf could recognize, another creature, someone like him. Soft and sharp in turns, long white fangs and loose dark curls. Delicious dichotomy. Those eyes gleaming like candlelight in a fever dream. Golden, golden, and he pushes his hand up under the hem of her red, red dress, her body twisted with the wolf-change but so is his, neither of them human so it’s all right, isn’t it, it’s all right. He can touch. He can—

“Mr. Hamilton,” she says, and he freezes, his hand flinching away from her thigh. Thank God, he thinks, yes, give me an excuse, make me stop and I’ll go and we’ll never speak of this again, and no, no, please, let me give this to you, let me keep going, I thought you wanted me, I need it, I need it. He whimpers softly in confusion. Maria rises from her chair; Alex crawls backward on hands and knees, still looking up at her, half-expecting a kick or a cuff. Bad dog. Go to your kennel and think about what you’ve done.

“Mr. Hamilton,” she repeats. Her tone bizarrely cool, makes no sense with the heat in the air, the heat under his skin, and she’d panted too, earlier, just like him, she must be able to feel it the same.

“Alex,” he says, hoarsely, stupidly, because even now, he has to say something. “It’s Alex.”

Maria walks to the bed and perches herself on the edge. Maria draws her skirts up over her knees, over her thighs. Maria regards Alex, and Alex breathes in the warm musk of her from across the room. Counts his heartbeats, and after seven of them, she crooks a finger at him. Come, boy.

Crass.

But Alex does, eventually.

#swan talks #hamilton for ts #wereham au #@me please stop making your followers click through to a 6k fic hosted on your blog. are you a fucking animal

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swan-archive · 7 years

Note

Are there any monster aus in which Hamilton and Madison form an inseparable duo?

aw, anon, i’m sorry—Mads is a difficult one for me, so i haven’t had him as a major player in any of the monster aus so far.

can i offer you some Ham and Mads being friends as a consolation prize?

–

“You ought to be more careful,” James scolds. “You know as well as I how hot it’s been in here these past few weeks. You’re lucky all you did was swoon, with that fur of yours.”

Hamilton shoots him a baleful glare, slightly tempered by the glassiness of his eyes, and tugs on his collar, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. He doesn’t argue, uncharacteristically—his usual gift of words appears to have deserted him for the moment. Thank God. James pushes the saucer of water across the table at him.

“Drink. You’ll feel better.”

Hamilton wrinkles his nose at James. Not puppy, don’t need, he says, with a gruff urff noise and flattened ears. Ah, and there’s that contrary streak. James hates to be so crass, but he doesn’t want to be the one to have to explain to Mrs. Hamilton and her three pups why her husband is dead of heat stroke, so he curls his lip at the man and lets out a low growl that makes several men at the neighboring tables look around in alarm.

Drink. Now.

Hamilton jumps, with an undignified, puppyish squeak. He twitches his ears like he has something more to say, but James folds his arms and presses his lips together in an obvious we’re not discussing this any further move. More out of surprise than anything Hamilton bends forward and laps at the water, careful not to splash any down the front of his shirt. James tuts—finally—but still looks away politely. Can’t imagine Hamilton would welcome another wolf’s staring eyes on him while he stoops to this, not on top of the badly-hidden glances and the not-quite-barbs of the other delegates. He feels for bitten weres, really he does. They’ve a hard lot. He would have asked for a tankard, just out of courtesy, but Hamilton’s face is still more muzzle than anything, and that’s just what James needs to top off this day, to get Hamilton’s snout stuck in a mug and be forced to extricate him.

“What on earth were you thinking?” James asks, fighting to keep his tone something approaching mild, while Hamilton’s too busy with his water to retaliate. “Three and a half hours. Half the delegates in the room were ready to riot by the time you passed out.” And another quarter of them had nodded off and were only awakened by the sound of Hamilton hitting the floor, although James knows better than to admit this. Or to admit that he himself had spent the last several minutes of the speech idly regarding Hamilton’s striking ears, which are bigger than any he’s ever seen on a werewolf before.

Hamilton snorts indignantly into his dish, and then launches into a spluttering fit, having gotten quite a bit of water up his nose. James waits him out.

“H-had—idea,” Hamilton finally says, still rather breathless. He coughs, licks a few stray drops of water off his jowls. “Can’t debate—unless—different p-phh-phhositions—”

“Yes, granted, but don’t you think you went a bit far? You can’t have honestly thought the other delegates would be receptive to the concept of a monarchy, of all things.”

“Elected—”

“For God’s sake don’t start in on it again, I was listening, I understood you the first time.” James pauses. “Although I might’ve been one of the few who did. Full moon is in three days.”

“C’n still talk,” Hamilton grunts.

“Indeed. I can’t wait to hear you pronounce ‘emoluments’ tomorrow.”

Hamilton growls. Mean. You, soon, not talk— he stammers out in disjointed wolf-words, before finally switching back to halting English. “Just wuh-wait. Three days. You’re—like mne, then. Couple of dumb dogs. See how you f-fuh-fucking like it.” He grimaces, dissatisfied with his own lack of eloquence in both languages.

Yes, but the difference is that I don’t try to verbally sketch out a new form of government on my wolf days, James thinks about saying, but catches himself. He’s not going to let himself be drawn into a circular argument with Hamilton, who would sit himself down and talk the ear off a stone if given half the chance; his head is already starting to ache with the stuffy heat of the tavern as it is. He kneads his forehead and sighs. Full moon week’s always hell on his constitution, leaves him sore and wavery and out of sorts. He should be in his rooms, resting up for the next bout with the other delegates, not wasting his energy on—

“Hhrff.” James looks up. Hamilton has bowed his head and is glancing up at him out of the corners of his eyes. “S-sorry. Didn’t—it’s hard. Not to talk. Need to say—and can’t. I get fuh, ffhhrrr—”

“Frustrated.”

“Hah. Yeah. Can’t talk, and it’s so damned hot, and Lansing and Yates—” Hamilton makes a little sound that, if Lansing and Yates were within earshot and understood wolf-speak, would certainly leave them both calling for pistols at dawn. “So. I get nasty. Not, uh, gentlemmranly. Unkind. Sorry. You’re not a dumb dog.” Hamilton lowers his ears to punctuate this, the very picture of a contrite and humble wolf. Sorry, no threat. Me, bad, wrong.

James blinks at him, and feels suddenly very ashamed of himself. What is he doing? Hamilton’s not his enemy. He’s better than snapping and snarling at another wolf, just because he’s in a mood. He lowers his own head in apology.

“It’s… no, I’m sorry,” James replies. “It was thoughtless of me to say those things about your voice. You’ve as much right to speak as any man here. Or any wolf.” He dares to shoot Hamilton a shy, sardonic smile. “And I shouldn’t have nagged you about the heat. Anyone could’ve swooned in that room. Who knows, maybe it’ll be me fainting on the convention floor in a few days. I’m a little surprised I haven’t already.”

“Drink wuh-water,” Hamilton says, with a mocking frisk of his tail, but there’s no rancor in his tone. “Anyhow. At least you understood.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You understood. Didn’t you?” Hamilton widens his eyes with a conspiratorial air. “The sphhheech.”

“I—yes—?”

Hamilton scoffs impatiently. “Didn’t I say. Can’t deb-b-bate unless you’ve got, phhh—”

“Positions.”

Hamilton gives him a look, as if to say okay, the first time you finished my sentence it was cute, but you’re pushing it now. Nods once. “Phh, Phhaterson’s mmnodel. Not, w-won’t hold uphh, not for long. Can’t just ammrrend and hope.”

“I agree.”

“And you have a phhlan.”

“I support Mr. Randolph’s plan,” James corrects him. Careful, careful, mustn’t overplay his hand. Hamilton rolls his eyes.

“F-fine. Randolph’s,” he says, with a little yip at the end. Liar, yours, we know, why hide? “It’s beh-better than Phaterson’s. Stronger. Could last.”

“I would certainly like to think so.”

“B-but, out of ffh. Favor. Mmnake, relevant again. Give you another chance.” Hamilton pulls an exaggerated thoughtful face. “If only—another angle. A crazy one. To discredit Phhaterson, and rattle everyone, and leave room for…”

He gestures at James, bobs his head respectfully.

“…Oh. Oh.”

“At last,” Hamilton says, with an ironic twitch of his ears.

“I—yes. Yes, it would look pretty reasonable if the alternative were something that mad.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“I’ll have to start planning now, I—full moon’s in three days, I’ll need to have made a strong enough case by then for our allies to pick up the thread while we’re indisposed.”

“I can helph,” Hamilton says. “Edit, or give suggestions, if you need. Or wwrrite. Just ask.”

“You really did this on my behalf? People aren’t going to forget you advocated for a monarchy here. Your reputation could be ruined.”

“Of course I did. And it’s all just hyphh, hy—Christ—theoretical, in the end. Can’t tar and ffheather mne for theorizing. Buh-besides, it’s all confidential. Delegates can’t rat mne out. Not honorable. So.” That doesn’t sound terribly convincing to James, but Hamilton’s not done. “And, you’re—you’re—” He fumbles for a second. “You’re—colleague. On mny side. I should helphh, if I can.”

An innocuous statement, but James can hear what Hamilton’s left unsaid, can read the words in his expression and posture. Friend. Pack. James feels an unaccountable warmth in his chest at that. “Thank you, Ham—Alexander. I appreciate it. I really do.”

Hamilton waves a paw airily. “You have good ideas. Anyone can see. Just need themmrr to listen, right?”

“I suppose.” He hasn’t the ears to perk, but he favors Hamilton with a real smile, and Hamilton grins back.

“Mmny ideas—good too, though,” Hamilton adds immediately. “Phh. Phlayed up, a little, so you’d look b-better. Could tone down the rest, for later, when I have—when I can talk phrowrrr—ugh, cor-rect-ly—again.”

“…The rest of it?”

Hamilton cocks his head at James. “Not done. That was only half! It’s just, this heat…”

“Half,” James repeats, with distant horror.

“Although mmn, mmnaybe it’s good—time to revise. Some things I thought of earlier that I fuh-forgot to add. Oh, you think—” Hamilton wags his tail excitedly, looking for all the world like a dog given a stick to fetch. “—you think they’ll let mne finish it tomrr, tommowwrr—”

James groans and puts his head in his hands. “Just drink your water, Alexander.”

#Anonymous #swan talks #wereham au #hamilton for ts #me: i think i will do a dialogue-heavy post set just before full moon in wereham au! that sounds like fun.#me; five minutes later; pounding tequila shots: werewolves were. a mistake #any inconsistencies in alex's diction/the intricacies of ham and mads' political relationship/the depiction of details of the #constitutional convention are not intentional and exist solely because i'm a fuckign dumbass who doesn't know how to research #anyway. i love my ugly dog son

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swan-archive · 7 years

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I lived and died like an animal. If death by arrow, death by feather, death by sweet spot. Heel; rise, red dog. I see now what you’ve been sniffing: wings. What you’ve been licking: all those bright, bright teeth. You said, Angel. I said, Anchor dragging this body. The way the sea is the vein is. The doctors advise, Too late now; you’ve got to live with it in you.

Beth Bachmann, “Arrow”

#poetry #murderfish au #wereham au #also just kind of a nice poem that i didn't want to lose!

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swan-archive · 7 years

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some fig tree wereverse content, nothing much to see here. takes place maybe a month or so after the events of “crawl til dawn on my hands and knees.”

You end up having a lot of mending on your hands when you’ve got a werewolf pup in the house, it turns out. Scuffed trouser knees from going on all fours too early, claws torn through the toes of stockings, buttons torn away from a daring wriggle through a just-barely-wide-enough gap under a fence, you name it, Alexander has done it to his clothes, and with a vengeance. Hence the small mountain of clothes in need of patching lying there on the settee next to Rachel.

She hasn’t been avoiding doing it, not really, not actively, but the task has been picked up and then put down again more times than she can count in the past few weeks. Always some slightly more urgent fire to put out, something that needs her hands on it immediately, until this morning Alex had come out to breakfast wearing breeches with a great rent torn in one leg. She’d been obliged to cut a tail-hole in his last good pair of trousers so as not to leave him wandering around looking like a beggar.

So: this is the emergency that requires her attention now. She pricks her thumb with the needle, curses softly and sucks away the bead of blood before it can stain the shirt in her hands.

At least she has the house to herself, so she can work without interruption. James is off at work, Jamie and Alex are both out playing—the neighborhood kids have finally gotten over their fear of a wolf in their midst and welcomed Alex back into the fold. Thank God. Alex is a bright child, more willing than most to entertain himself with a book or practicing his letters, but Lord, the energy in him now, the way he tears around the house when he grows bored of his lessons. It’ll be good for him to be around other children more. Give him a chance to burn some of that off.

Lost in her own thoughts, it takes Rachel a few long minutes to process the squeak of the side door’s rusty hinge. Someone in the house. She sits up straight, heart kicking into a sprint, but no creak of boots on the floorboards, no intruders appearing in the doorway. She relaxes a little. The house settling, maybe. That’s all.

After a moment, a soft rustle and a scraping sound from the kitchen, like a chair being bumped. Then silence.

…Or maybe not. “Jamie? Alex?” Rachel calls into the back of the house. No reply. She sits still for several seconds, listening.

Another scrape, and then a quiet play-growl.

“Alexander,” Rachel says. “Alexander, you had better not be where I think you are.”

Silence again.

Rachel sighs and rises and walks into the kitchen. She nearly treads on Alex as she steps through the doorway, where he’s lying sprawled out on his belly on the floorboards. He squeaks and flinches away with a look of abject guilt on his face that would put a real dog to shame. “I didn’t do it,” he yelps, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Rachel raises an eyebrow. Looks down at the chair nearest the door. One of its legs has fresh little toothmarks in it, and is still wet with saliva.

“I didn’t,” Alex repeats, trailing off in a pitiful whine. She’s not sure when he picked up the kicked-puppy act, but he performs it to an almost alarming degree of perfection. Even Rachel is tripped up by it, the way it pings the part of her brain that says poor little animal, poor little hurt creature before the part that can analyze what’s actually been done here.

She can’t encourage this sort of behavior, so when Alex starts in on another whimper, she interrupts as quickly as she can. “That’s it, up, out of the kitchen,” she says, catching Alex up and lifting him to her shoulder. He squirms unhappily, and it’s not like holding a child, not this time of the moon; he’s all thick fur and loose skin underneath that, wriggly and roly-poly like a baby animal. His limbs jut out at odd angles, not quite settled into the orientations that will leave Alex stuck on all fours. It’s all Rachel can do to keep him from slipping out of her arms.

“I can walk—I don’t want—”

“No, I am not letting you out of my sight,” scolds Rachel, carrying Alex back out to the front room with her. “What have we told you about chewing on the furniture, Alexander?”

“Not to do it,” Alex mumbles.

“Right. So I think, if you’re going to be in a chewing mood, you’d better stay in here with me, where I can keep an eye on you.” Rachel deposits him on the settee next to where she’d been sitting, and he turns himself around in a little circle before sinking down to the cushions with a sulky expression on his furry face.

“I don’t need…” he begins, but Rachel just looks at him, her no nonsense now, my boy look, and he trails off. Sighs, the heartfelt sigh of an inconvenienced dog, and drops his chin to his paws—to his hands. Rachel suppresses her own sigh and picks up her mending again, keeping one eye on Alex.

It’s getting worse.

Not that she ought to have expected any different, but she’d hoped, maybe, that her son was bright enough and clever enough and special enough to resist the pull of his own body, to stay himself despite everything. Which—no, that’s cruel, cruel to say he’s beyond recognition, and a lie besides. He still has his wits, his stubborn will, that smart mouth that has gotten him in trouble more than once. Still that love in him that astounds Rachel even now with its fierceness. Still the right face, a few days a month, if not right now. Plenty there to make Alexander.

As for the rest, though. Well. He’s her son, her baby, but he howls out the window at the dogs in the street and pisses off the neighbors, digs in the garden, shoves his nose into foul filthy things and makes a mess of the house like an ill-trained pet. Doesn’t understand what’s wrong with any of those things when reprimanded, or does, but too late to make any difference, just soon enough for Rachel to see the confusion and horror bloom on his face as he stands there to be corrected. And the very next day he’s off again. Can’t help himself. The curse is too insidious, the instincts taking root in his brain are too strong.

All Rachel can do is watch them do their work.

This is what comes of thinking you’re a special case, Rachel, my girl, you get your heart broken in the end every time, Rachel tells herself viciously, snipping off a thread like it’s done her a personal injury. How many people over the centuries must have been inflicted with the wolf-curse? When, in all that time, had wishes or prayers or denial or bargains ever done a lick of good to break it? Never. Not once. Stupid, Rachel, stupid stupid stupid.

Alex curls himself up in a ball. Licks at his hands and mouths them absently. And that’s a bad sign, Rachel knows from experience that he’ll chew them raw if he’s not paying attention. She reaches over and taps him on the nose.

“Don’t do that, love.”

“Mmff—sorry, Maman.” He licks the cleft in his upper lip, flexes his fingers. Wrinkles his nose in displeasure, in a way that suggests he’s going to find something else to sink his teeth into in a few minutes. Redirect that.

“You don’t need to stay right there next to me, Alex. We can fetch you your toys, and you can play, but I want you in here with me, okay?”

Alex grumbles something indistinct and curls himself up tighter, comically small. Not interested.

“What were you even doing back here so soon?” Rachel asks, more gently. “I didn’t hear you come in. I thought you were still out playing with your friends.”

“I…I didn’t wanna play anymore.” He tries to give this an air of nonchalance, but he’s even easier to read than he was as a human boy—his ears droop and he glances away from her, caught in a lie. He pouts a little harder at Rachel’s skeptical look. “Well, I didn’t! I wasn’t having fun. Why should I play if it’s not any fun?”

“Hmm.” Something else there, an undertone to his voice that needles at Rachel. Ought to tease that out before it manifests itself in more furniture-chewing. She lays the shirt she’s mending aside and holds out her arms. “Baby, can you come here for a second?”

Alex puts his head up and looks at her with ears pricked suspiciously, but the offer of physical contact is too much for him to pass up, and he crawls over into her lap. Puts his arms around her neck after a moment, as if remembering that that’s how a child ought to cuddle, waggles his tail side to side as he gets comfortable. Rachel runs a soothing hand down his back and feels the tension coiled there, like he’s about to spring at a rat or a bird. No wonder he’d needed to get his teeth in something.

“Do you want to tell me what happened out there, Alex?”

“Nothing! Nothing happened—”

“Alexander.”

Alex will fuss and grouse and put on a brave face until the cows come home, if you let him, Rachel knows this, recognizes her own stubborn pride in that. Where gentling him won’t work to tease out the truth, sometimes a bit of extra firmness will. Show him he’s not fooling anyone, and let his talkative streak do the rest.

It works. Alex huffs, bumps Rachel’s chin with his cold little nose in a last-ditch attempt at the cuteness defense, and finally says, “Nothing happened. Really. I don’t care. It was just a game. It doesn’t matter.” Alex nestles himself a bit closer to Rachel, and adds, in a very small voice, “I’m tired of always dying though.”

“What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“It’s—I—they always make me be the monster. Because I roar better, that’s what Peter said, but that’s stupid, I don’t roar, I’m not a lion, it’s called growling, that’s what I told him—anyway. Um.” Alex swipes at his face. The fur under his eyes a little matted, a little damp, Rachel can tell from this close, scrubbed-away tear tracks faint down the sides of his muzzle. “They made me be the monster again. And I didn’t want to, so I said, I wanna be the knight for once, it isn’t fair, but they told me you have to, it’s not as good when someone else is the monster, you do it best, and besides you can’t hold a sword when you’re crawling around on the ground like that. And then, and then Anders said, he, he said…” Alex trails off, his voice gone inhuman-rough with a snarl of anger and shame. Tears pooling again in his eyes.

“What did he say, love?”

“He said,” Alex chokes out, “well, you can’t be the knight, but maybe you can be the horse. And then he laughed. They all laughed. Like it was a really good joke.”

Oh.

Rachel’s stomach churns, searing rage and cold, leaden pity both clawing at her. How dare he, how dare that child—how dare his parents tell him that was—how dare they treat her son—

She clutches at Alex, who babbles on, unable to stop now that he’s gotten himself going. “And I, I know you said not to get mad at people, because it might scare them, but I got a little mad and I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to growl for real but then Anders’ mom—we were playing in front of his house—she came out and yelled at me and called me a—nasty word, and told me to go away and it wasn’t fun anymore anyway so I came back here. But then I was bored. So.” His shoulders quiver with one sob, another. No kicked-dog whine in his voice now, just the hitching of a hurt child. “I’m s-sorry. Sorry I chewed the chair. I shouldn’t have done it. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Alex, baby—” But what is there to say to him? You didn’t deserve that is true, but it’s cold comfort, Alex has heard it already a thousand times, and the words trip on the fact that he acted out against another child. Not worth the reaction he got, but he should know better, it’s not safe for him to behave like that anymore, what if it had been Anders’ father home instead of his mother, and he’d had a gun—

Catastrophizing, Rachel, she thinks, reining herself in, deal with the problem you have, not the one you’re making up to scare yourself. Not useful. Not useful. Crying child in her arms, and another one out there somewhere who’s seen a monster—figure out, maybe, which of them is hurt more. God forbid it’s the other boy, but she has to be sure.

“Alexander,” she asks, as carefully as she can, “you didn’t—no one was hurt, were they—?”

“No!” Alex yelps, pushing away from her, shocked through his tears. “No, no, I said, didn’t I say all I did was growl? I wouldn’t, I’d never, I promise, I’m not bad, I know not to bite, I’m not like—like him—”

His face twists with horror, and he shakes his head hard, squeezes his eyes shut against the flood of tears, and oh, God, like him. Only one him Alex could be referring to. “No, no, no, Alex, that’s not what I meant, you’re not like that at all,” Rachel says desperately, wrapping her arms around him. Alex bares his teeth, lets out a harsh painful noise that sounds like neither child nor wolf, but in the end has nowhere else to go. He collapses against Rachel with a wail and lets her enfold him.

“I’m not like that,” Alex sobs into her dress. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I wouldn’t…”

“I know, baby, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t mean to growl. I know it was wrong. I know I was bad.”

“Shh. Shh. Later, love. Don’t worry about that now.”

“I’m n-nuh-not…” The rest of the sentence is lost in another wave of sobs. Rachel strokes his ears, strokes the scraggly remnants of his hair, mostly gone to fur by now, and says nothing.

Alex weeps stormily for a while, trembling and clinging to Rachel like he’s expecting her to to shove him off her lap any second. She rocks him like she’d done when he was a tiny baby, whispers little nothings against the tips of his ears. I’ve got you. I’m here. I love you, my darling, oh, I love you. You’re still my baby. You’re still mine. Nearly misses him gnawing at his paws again until he squeaks and twitches with pain in her arms. Sharp white puppy teeth digging into the pad of his thumb, when Rachel draws away to look.

“Alex, what did I say?” She tugs his hand away. He drags it back up to his lips automatically.

“Not to,” he says against his knuckles. An awful note of hopelessness in his voice, eyes dull despite the tears still glistening there. “I know you said not to. But it’s hard. I don’t know how to stop.”

Redirect, redirect, Rachel tells herself desperately. He doesn’t deserve to tear into himself for this, not for a playground disagreement. She’s not a fool, and her baby is hurting. There must be something she can do for him…

An idea occurs. She shies away from it on reflex—no, no, animal, condescending, not my baby, can’t subject him to—but all she’s got right now are bad options, and this is the most palatable. Worth a shot.

“Alex, I’m going to fetch something for you, okay? I won’t be gone five minutes. Wait for me here?”

Alex mumbles assent and permits Rachel to shift him from her lap to the settee again. He splays himself over the cushions, and she gives him a quick rub on the velvety bridge of his nose before hurrying out of the room. Back through the kitchen to grab a clean-ish rag from the shelf above the hearth, and from there out through the side door into the alley. It’s almost comically simple when she looks at it now: Alex has a chewing problem, she’d made a stew just the other day, point A to point B to point C. Still, she wishes she’d thought of it a little sooner, before she’d thrown the kitchen trash out for the neighborhood strays to take care of.

Rachel approaches the garbage heap, and it’s their lucky day, because there are still a couple of chunks of soup bone resting at the top. She picks up the largest one gingerly between thumb and forefinger. Must be a reason it hasn’t yet been carried off, Alex could probably tell her what makes it a less desirable tidbit, but it’s what they have to work with. With a grimace, she dunks her rag in the rain barrel standing nearby and scrubs the bone off as best she can—luckily, it hasn’t been sitting out long enough to pick up a particularly foul stench—and carries it into the house.

Alex perks up immediately when she walks back into the front room, hops down off the settee and lurches toward her on all fours, sniffing the air. Rachel holds out the bone awkwardly and the flash of mute unthinking delight in his eyes cuts her to the core, but he recoils just as quickly from her hand and ducks his head.

“I thought…you said I wasn’t allowed. Not from the garbage heap,” he says, and of course a quick wash wasn’t enough to hide the smell from him. He tugs at one ear, his gaze flicking from the bone to Rachel’s face with the nervous energy of an animal that’s scented a trap.

“We can make an exception. Just this once.” Rachel kneels down to his level and brushes her fingertips against his muzzle. “I’m going to give you this, okay? It’s for you to chew. But I want you to promise me that as long as you have it, you’re not going to go after the furniture, or your own hands. Can you do that for me, Alex?”

“Yes, Maman,” he chirps, nodding hard enough to make his ears flop about, his tail already up and wagging again. “I can, I will, I swear I’ll never ever do it again.”

And how many times has a man told her that particular lie? More than enough for her to know better than to believe it, that’s for sure. Never again. I promise. I’ll never hurt you. Never leave you. Never let you down. This was the last time.

Alex isn’t James, though, isn’t Johann. Isn’t even George. He’s just a baby. Too young for willful malice and too young for the little white lies told to soothe a cut that’s already bleeding. He means exactly what he says in the moment, and maybe he’ll even keep his promise for a while, until the next time he’s bored or hurting or angry and he doesn’t think, he just acts. It hurts a little less, knowing he’s sincere. Just a little less, though.

Rachel could probably extract a better promise out of Alex if she were made of sterner stuff. Scare him into compliance, scold him until his canine brain understands this is not how we behave, not be shaken by his big sad eyes or the face of a baby animal, something that needs to be cuddled and cosseted and protected. Make him safe, no matter what it takes.

But Rachel is already made of, pardon her language, pretty fucking stern stuff. Wouldn’t have made it to this point if she weren’t.

This is the way things are. The wolf demands concessions, one way or another, and denying it the small things now only means it’ll need more from her when she finally caves. So.

She waggles the bone tantalizingly, ignores the twist in her gut. “Go ahead, then.”

With a yip of excitement, Alex snatches the bone out of her hands and settles down on the floor before the settee with it, his crying jag all but forgotten. Easier for him to keep a grip on it, with his stubby fingers and thumbs, than it would be for a dog, but he sinks his teeth in with the same half-starved gusto as you’d see in a stray, rumbles out a happy growl that makes Rachel’s hair stand on end. The growling is hard to bear. Whines and yelps could almost be child noises, and any old hound can bark, but the growl is a predator’s sound, too deep and too wild for a little boy.

Alex puts his head up, cocks it at her, and Rachel realizes she’s staring. She gives him a small wave to cover. His tail frisks, back and forth.

“Thank you, Maman,” he says. “It’s good. Better than the chair.”

“That’s…I’m glad, baby,” says Rachel, forcing a smile. It is good. Really it is. Not such a difficult fix, in the end. She can start saving the soup bones after she cooks with them. No big deal.

Rachel scoots over so her back is against the settee, sits there on the floor with her skirts spread around her like she’s a girl. A girl and her dog. The soup bone creaks a little under Alex’s onslaught, and it might be worth it to fetch the other scraps on the trash heap for when he finishes with this one. Later, though. Later. Alex flashes a wolfish grin at her, his tongue lolling out, and she reaches over to scratch at the side of his neck. Drool on his chin. Rachel ought to wipe that away, chide him for being messy and uncouth. Doesn’t.

With a sigh, she pulls her sewing basket down onto her lap and picks up the half-mended shirt again.

#swan talks #wereham au #hamilton for ts #fig tree #i'm makin this public after the fact so nobody will see it because secret menu #if you have to ask if you can interact with this you probably should not be interacting with it so use best judgment bls #but like. look. look at my ugly baby. isn't he gorgeous. isn't he perfect. holy shit i love my hideous wolf child #this sweet little angel wrecks a LOT of home furnishings tbh #like bless him but those little puppy teeth are SHARP and he hasn't quite figured out that his bite strength #is much greater now than it ever was when he was a human

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the-everqueen · 7 years

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request, if you are interested: some werehams Alex/Eliza fluff?

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

“Oh, I hope a boy.” Alexander gives an exaggerated shiver. “A girl with your looks and my brains? She would be a tyrant. She would terrorize all the boys in town. I had to beg your sister to divide your rule over the camp at Morristown, and what if our daughter has no sisters to keep her in check?”

Eliza swats him with a pillow. It’s been three days since he came back from headquarters, a wolf, tail tucked between his legs. Of course he couldn’t explain his sudden return during the full moon, but he hasn’t said anything about it since he regained his voice, either, just told her General Washington sent him home. She wonders whether her letter had some part in it, and guilt burns in her chest, made worse by the knowledge that she’s glad to have him safe and in her arms.

“Besides,” Alexander says, interrupting her thoughts with an exaggerated snuffle, “it’ll be a boy. I can tell.”

She swats him again, over the head. He yelps and folds down his ears, making a pitiful whine. The glint in his eyes gives him away, but she strokes his head, fingertips brushing the soft velvet along the ridge of his nose.

He settles down in her lap again, noses at her rounded belly. “I hope he takes after you.”

She feels a rolling movement as the baby turns toward the sound of his father’s voice. “Even a fraction of your smile would be enough for me.”

He smiles - and then frowns, his ears drooping. “We know he’ll have my eyes,” he mutters, almost too low for her to hear.

“Alexander -”

“Don’t lie,” and he sits upright in the bed, suddenly tense, “don’t lie and say you wouldn’t rather have our child be human.”

“I wasn’t going to -”

“You want to know why Washington dismissed me? I lost my temper. Growled at Washington like some rabid dog.” He barks a hysterical laugh and pulls away from her to pace around the room. "So much for getting that command, they’ll never trust me around that much blood. I’m a monster. Doesn’t matter that I can write better and argue circles around them, if I’m not a good dog… Can you relish being the wife of a monster? I can’t even provide you the duties of a husband most of the time -“

“Stop.” Wincing, she pushes to her feet and grabs his hand as he makes another circuit. She tugs him back to the bed. He keeps his eyes down, fur standing all on end. “You act as though I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

He sighs.

“I relish being your wife.” She rests her head on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb over the fading roughness of his palms. “You don’t have to prove yourself to me. Look at where you are - a lieutenant colonel, aide-de-camp to General Washington. Could you have imagined being at the center of a revolution when you were a child in the West Indies?”

"I could never have imagined you, my pretty charmer,” he teases. He’s trying to change the subject, but she lets him because at least he’s feeling well enough to flirt.

He nuzzles at her and puts a hand on her belly. “At least he’ll be a born were.”

“Son or daughter, it’s our child. That’s all that matters.” She raises her head to smile at him. “Our pack is growing.”

His mouth twitches, ears perked. He touches his nose to hers. “That it is.”

#*Glazunov voice* words are hard words are hard #does it count as fluff if it ends in dog kisses?#anyway #i have more hamliza to write #(this time with their human and music counterparts)#wereham au #also!#the date of the P Schuy letter is the day of the full moon #so imma mess with the timeline a little and say he wrote that a day earlier in this au #because it's hard to pick up a quill with paw pads

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swan-archive · 7 years

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on today’s thrilling episode of “swan, literally NOBODY asked,” i give you fig tree wereham: origins. i apologize for the length. and the content. and for my general mode of being, which led me to produce this. isn’t she tired. when will she Stop.

Weres are a rare enough sight on the islands that the arrival of one in port at Charlestown is enough to put all the kids in town into a festival mood. A werewolf. A werewolf blue-blood, of all things, not like old Jan Brouwer who lives on the outskirts of town and has a tendency to get into the neighbors’ chicken coop on full moons. No, this is a wolf with a pedigree, a younger son (maybe a bastard son, folk whisper) of some somebody up in the colonies, come to Nevis for his health.

Staying at the Eagle, down by the waterfront says Harry, whose father is a dockworker, so a few days after the creature arrives Alex goes down to the docks with the regular neighborhood crowd, hoping to catch a sight of him. They lurk outside the inn all morning, whetting their anticipation on half-fabricated horror stories. I heard they can’t cross running water. I heard the only thing that’ll kill ‘em is a silver bullet to the heart. I heard when they change, it’s like watching a man be turned inside out.

Alex argues with each and every one of these, as is his wont. If they couldn’t cross running water, how do you think this one got here from the colonies? The ocean’s made of water, after all. And you’d think being shot in the head would kill a wolf just as well as being shot in the heart, wouldn’t you? And as for that last—well. Alex considers, and finds he doesn’t have an argument there. They have to keep their fur somewhere when they’re not wearing it, he supposes. The inside of their skin’s better than no place at all.

“Will you shut up, Alex,” Jamie says finally, mussing Alex’s hair to cut him off and make him squawk. It’s almost noon, and their little band is growing increasingly antsy with the waiting, starting up at every person they catch leaving the inn and drooping when someone inevitably recognizes a face from around town. A few of them turn on Harry and his bad intel; Harry takes it as a slight against his father’s honor and gets in their faces, and Alex and the others gratefully accept this diversion, jeering and shouting as their fellows start to tussle.

They’re so wrapped up in this that they nearly miss the gaunt, dark-haired man who steps out of the inn and blinks in the tropical sunlight. Alex tugs Jamie’s sleeve at the sight of the man, points, and a flurry of interest goes around the group. Do you recognize—? No, I’ve never seen— And that suit, he must be so rich— Look at him sweat, you’d think he’d never been out in the heat before—

It’s him.

In enthralled silence, Alex and the other kids trail the man on the short walk down to the harbor, searching for some hint of his true nature in every little motion he makes. Maybe, something about the easy lope with which he moves, or the way he cocks his head at what Alex imagines is a sound too soft for human ears to hear. Maybe the way he puts his head up into the wind and breathes in. Maybe, maybe…

Or maybe not. Alex watches the man walk out onto the docks, from a safe vantage point at the edge of the street. At this distance, he could be just anyone, speaking with the captain of the ship he’d come in on about some misplaced piece of luggage, coughing painfully into a handkerchief.

Disappointment sits heavy on Alex’s shoulders. He’d expected a monster. This is just a man. An unfamiliar man, but nothing worth following around all day.

A loud crash makes Alex and his companions jump. Someone down the way’s dropped a crate while offloading cargo, if the fluent cursing is anything to go by. They’re not the only ones startled; the werewolf has flinched as though struck. He looks about, uneasy, the quick twitchy movements of his head suddenly seeming very inhuman. And there—Alex catches the barest glint of gold in his eyes as he glances in their direction.

“Forgive me,” he says to the captain, a little too loud, his voice quivering with nerves, “I’m not at my—being in a new place, you see, it puts a man on edge, the smells, you know…”

The captain frowns. Alex does too. How can smells make someone nervous?

The werewolf tugs at his cravat, and the captain collects himself enough to call a couple of sailors to haul the man’s trunk, and werewolf and sailors and trunk disappear into the hustle and bustle of the docks. Alex waits there with the other kids for several minutes more, just in case the werewolf decides to jog back to the ship and transform there on the dock for their amusement, but all that happens is that a handful of sailors curse them out for making a nuisance of themselves when people are trying to work, you cheeky brats, better scram before someone gives you a licking and sends you crying home to your mammas.

Show’s over. Alex hops down from his perch on the sea wall and follows Jamie homewards. He pouts a little at the meager entertainment this has turned out to be.

“Don’t worry,” says Jamie, cuffing Alex’s shoulder, “who knows how long he’ll be in town for? It could be weeks. Months, even. He has to transform at least once in all that time. We’ll catch him, you’ll see.”

“But it’s nearly new moon now,” Alex complains. Knows this, because he stays up reading by the light of the moon through their bedroom window as often as he can, and the pale sliver in the sky the past few nights hasn’t given off enough light for him to make out a single word in his latest book. “It’ll be forever until he has to change again, what if we miss him?”

“We won’t,” Jamie says confidently. “We know where he’s staying, don’t we? We can keep an eye on him. He’s bound to slip up eventually.”

“But supposing he can’t even change when it’s not full moon…”

“He must. He has to know how. You saw him, he’s really a gentleman, don’t you think the high-class wolves’d make sure they can use their—powers—whenever they want? And if you could change, just like that, wouldn’t you do it all the time? So we’ll see him sometime. I know we will.”

“I guess.” Jamie seems awfully sure of himself based on very little. But Alex does want to see a werewolf. A real werewolf, not just pictures in a book, not just Mr. Brouwer dozing on his front step like any old stray, flicking his ears at flies.

Perhaps they’ll get lucky, but Alex is smart, and he knows there’s only one time of month the thing they’re hoping to see is bound to happen.

He can’t wait for the next full moon.

—

A few days pass, and the novelty of the werewolf trickles away. None of the news about him has anything tantalizing about it: he rises late in the morning, like a gentleman of leisure, he takes his meals at the inn, pays his visits and makes his introductions in the afternoons and evenings. A perfectly normal gentleman, like a hundred other gentlemen who have visited Nevis and left either cured of their ailments or pale and short-of-breath and hunting for a more healthful climate. His only obvious strangeness is his habit of taking long rambling walks about town, walking and walking and staring at nothing in particular with his strange yellow eyes.

All this information comes from the older boys in the neighborhood, older than Alex, older than Jamie, even. They’ve taken over the task of watching the werewolf at his rounds. They’re sharper-eyed than Alex’s cohort, and sharper-tongued too; Alex has heard them cat-calling him, trying to tease some sort of reaction out of him. Mongrel, filthy cur, can’t you hear us, we’re talking to you, you stupid animal, and nastier things besides, things that Alex daren’t repeat within Maman’s hearing for fear she’ll box his ears and make him wash his mouth out with soap.

It’s lucky Maman isn’t around, then, when Alex and Jamie and the neighborhood kids run into a posse of boys tailing the werewolf up a sleepy street. There’s safety in numbers, and the big boys fold Alex’s group into theirs with a ready will, all the better to make a racket with. Alex still has the stick he’d been using as a sword in an earlier game of pretend, and he rattles it against a fence; a few other children shout and curse, blushing and grinning at the swears they copy from the older boys; and the boldest ones stoop to pick up stones that they pitch at the werewolf’s heels. Come on. Come on. Change for us. Howl at us. Look at us. Do something.

The werewolf continues on his way. Alex would almost think him deaf to the din if it weren’t for the tension in his shoulders, the way his fist curls and uncurls at his side.

The bigger boys start getting mean. They insult the werewolf’s parentage, and when this gets no response, they go in on how he spends his nights. Yah, bet you fuck the strays in the alleys, bet you make ‘em howl all night, bet you’ll be leaving litters of puppies all across the town when you go, you sick fuck, you nasty son of a bitch. Alex’s ears burn with the invective. He looks up at Jamie, and Jamie gives him a wince and a shrug—yeah, it’s bad, but what can you do? They’re bigger than us.

The rocks are flying thick and fast now, clattering against the cobblestones, and the werewolf actually twitches at one that bounces past his foot. The bigger boys cheer, encouraged, and spur the rest of the kids on—the werewolf is walking so quickly he’s nearly running down the street.

One of the boys flings his rock a little too hard. It traces a long arc through the air, tumbling end over end.

With a dull thwack, it connects with the werewolf’s head.

The werewolf cries out in pain, a horrible, strangled noise like an animal being beaten, clutches at his temple. Crumples to his knees. Alex thinks for a second that the rock’s staved his head clean in, that they’ve killed him, but no, he’s rising, pushing himself up on his hands—

No. No, those aren’t hands. And he’s not standing up on two legs.

Alex watches in horror as the werewolf’s frame twists and writhes hideously, in a way that even under his clothes makes Alex’s stomach heave. A crunch and a crack of breaking bone—the werewolf’s shoulders hunch and push up against his jacket, tearing through the fabric. He wails in something that might be pain or might be delight, Alex can’t tell, and oh, oh, that’s not a human face, it’s wrong, nothing should look like that, nothing should move like that.

A final spasm—a final shriek—and then the creature is standing on four paws, shaking itself free of its ruined clothing. It looks at the band of children, frozen and staring at it, then throws its head back and howls. The cry of a hunter who’s scented its prey.

“Run,” says Jamie. “Alex, run!”

Without waiting for an answer, Jamie catches Alex by the arm and drags him into a dead sprint. The rest of the children scatter in every direction, the lucky locals darting into their own homes, the others, like Alex and Jamie, just running, running as hard as they can, in no particular direction but away. They’re blocks and blocks from home, Alex knows, but maybe if they’re fast enough, they can at least get to shelter, or maybe the wolf will get tired of chasing them, find something else to go after.

Behind them, someone screams. Not the wolf, not an animal sound. A human scream.

“Alex, no, what are you—” cries Jamie as Alex slows, stops in his tracks. One of the other children has fallen, and instead of rising has curled up in a ball, sobbing in terror. The werewolf advances on him, teeth bared in a mockery of a smile, hackles raised.

“Alex, come on!”

He tightens his grip on the stick.

“ALEX!”

Alex tears away from Jamie and pelts back toward the werewolf, skids to a stop a scant handful of feet away from it, close enough to see the slaver on its muzzle, the white ringing its irises. It doesn’t seem to notice him, too intent on the fallen child to consider more mobile quarry.

“Hey!” Alex shouts, his voice very shrill in his ears. “Leave him alone!” The werewolf freezes, puts its head up, and looks straight at Alex. Takes one step forward, then another. Alex raises his stick like it’s a sword and stares the werewolf down, as boldly as he can, like a knight before a dragon. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the other boy uncurl a little and start to inch away. If he can just keep the werewolf distracted a moment longer, then a moment after that, surely someone will come, surely there’ll be someone to—

The other boy’s foot slips on a loose stone, and the werewolf’s ears prick. Its lip curls. Growls like the worst nightmare Alex can imagine. Worse, because they’re not going to wake up, because no one is coming to save them.

A wave of white-hot courage rises up out of nowhere and seizes Alex, and without hesitation, he darts forward and swings his stick at the werewolf’s face.

A sharp noise, half a snarl, half a whimper, and then the creature has really and truly whirled on him. It pounces, quick as a flash, knocks him to the ground like he weighs no more than a feather. The stick flies out of his hand and bounces away across the ground.

Alex has a brief impression of pale gold eyes burning feverishly in the wolf’s face, fangs gleaming with spittle, before it lunges forward and sinks its teeth into his shoulder just below where it meets his neck. Shakes him like a doll. And Alex is brave, Alex isn’t a baby, but it hurts so much, so much, and he screams.

Crack of a gunshot, and the creature’s jaws slacken on Alex’s shoulder. It raises its head and looks to the side. Crack-crack-crack, echoing and resounding off the walls of the houses all around, and the creature’s whole body shudders. “Oh,” it says, just like a person, and then it crumples to the ground on top of him. Golden eyes gone dull and flat like clouded glass. Alex’s blood on its teeth. Alex crushed there underneath it, barely breathing, unable to make a sound.

A thunder of footsteps against the street, a forest of legs in his vision. “Get that thing off of him, get it off,” orders someone. Strong hands lift the body clear, heave it to the ground like it’s nothing but garbage. A crowd gathering around Alex, a few men with guns who must’ve, must’ve just—and people filtering out into the street, and the kids from earlier emerging from wherever they’d hidden themselves. Eerily quiet. Expressions of shock and horror on every face. All of them looking at Alex.

Alex rolls over a little, sees the wolf’s body, sees the wound in its neck where the bullet went through. We were wrong, thinks Alex, absurdly, it didn’t need to be shot in the heart after all. The neck was fine. Was it a silver bullet? No way to know. Nothing of silver that he can see, just gray fur and dark blood, dark blood gushing out onto the ground, a great splash of it across Alex’s own chest, soaked into his shirt. Impossible to tell if it’s his own or the werewolf’s, all of it the same sticky warmth, the same smell of copper and salt.

“Did he,” says Alex, in a ragged, hoarse voice. He coughs, and tries again. “Did he get away?”

A soft murmur goes around the crowd. “Out of his head,” someone mutters.

“Did he get away,” Alex repeats. It seems very important to him all of a sudden that he know. “The boy, the other boy, the wolf was about to get him, he would have died, is he safe, is he okay, I saw him get up.” He can’t seem to stop talking now that he’s started, and he looks around at the gathered people, willing them to understand. “That’s why I came back, because he fell, and I couldn’t just leave while he was there, it would have eaten him, did anyone see him go, is he okay, it could have killed him, is he, is he…?”

“Alex,” says Jamie’s voice, from very far away, high-pitched and scared like he’s a baby younger than Alex. Alex thinks maybe he should go to him. Apologize for running off. But he just lies there on the ground, trembling so hard that he can’t even stand. Lies there, and stares at the werewolf’s body, and babbles out could have killed him it could have killed him over and over again like a half-wit. His shoulder searing with dull red pain.

“You’re safe, son,” one of the men says at last in a terribly gentle voice, picking Alex up and setting him on his feet, holding him up when his knees buckle. “You did fine. It’s dead now. It’s gone. It can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

But it’s too late for that, isn’t it. Already far too late.

—

Don’t worry, says Maman, it’ll only hurt for a little bit, just for a day and a night, and Papa says how brave you were, getting it bandaged, you hardly cried at all, you’re my brave big boy, and they stroke his hair and cosset him and smile and smile and it’s all fake.

Alex knows it’s fake, because he listens, and he heard the doctor they’d called saying no cure and he’ll start changing straightaway and you’ve seen his eyes.

Not that the doctor had said this to his face. The doctor had lied too, told him he’d be right as rain before you know it. But when Maman and Papa had gone out into the hall with the man, leaving Alex lying there on his side in bed to keep the weight off his shoulder, he’d heard the truth as clearly as though it had been shouted in his face.

I’m sorry, but there’s no getting around it. Your boy’s a wolf now. And Alex doesn’t like that at all, he’s not a wolf, he’s not an animal, he feels just the same as he always has. He’d shout at the man, but he’s gotten in trouble before for being out of bed when he’s expected to be in it, and that was just when he’d gotten up to play because he couldn’t sleep. So he’d better just stay quiet and ignore the conversation and get his rest, hadn’t he.

How can he, though, when they’re talking so loud?

Just tell me, says Papa, over a rustling noise like fabric rubbing between fingers, just tell me, is he going to—I mean, what are the chances he’ll go—

James, snaps Maman, in a voice that even whispered and through the wall makes Alex’s hair stand on end.

Well, one never knows, when there’s the bite to consider, says the doctor. But it’s still close to new moon. It’s easier when the change goes slow, they say, this way he’ll have time to adjust. And he’s very young. Resilient. He might very well avoid—

Alex clamps the pillow over his ears, but even so can’t block out Papa’s voice saying But it was a mad wolf. He was bitten by a mad wolf. The pulse thunders in Alex’s wound, and he stuffs his knuckles in his mouth to keep from crying out like a baby in pain and fear.

He’s read enough books to know about the wolf curse, about full moons and the passing of the condition through bite and blood. But now he thinks about it, it’s always been unclear just what happens to someone bitten. It’s something bad, that much he knows, something ugly, something grown-ups don’t speak of above a nervous murmur. He hears rumors, of course, of monstrosity, of madness, but they all seem very insubstantial now that the issue is immediate.

Bitten by a mad wolf. Is that it, then? Is he going to go crazy? Is he going to lose his mind, and hurt someone, and get shot in the street like a rabid beast?

No. No, no he won’t, he thinks, biting down harder on his knuckles until they sting brighter than his wound. He knows who he is, he is Alexander Hamilton and he’s the same as he’s always been minus the bit taken out of his shoulder and he will not go mad and he will not be a monster and he will not, not, not, not die with a bullet in him.

After all, he’s only six. It wouldn’t be fair.

Alex makes to roll over and yelps so loudly at the jolt to his shoulder that Maman and Papa and the doctor stop talking and rush back into the room to see to him, check his bandages and wipe his brow and offer him medicine to ease the pain. Alex takes this last meekly and, deep down, feels an ugly little surge of satisfaction that he managed to get them to shut up.

The noises don’t stop, though, not even once the doctor’s gone and Maman and Papa have tiptoed out of the room to let him rest. Alex can hear the mice in the pantry, nibbling away, even from all the way down the hallway here. Can hear the words in the stray dogs’ howls when they start up after dark, my territory and keep away and be my mate and it hurts. Can hear people talking in the houses on either side of theirs, even if they’re using their inside voices, can catch every bit of their conversations if he closes his eyes and listens hard.

Can hear Maman, sitting at the kitchen table, crying very quietly when she thinks Alex has fallen asleep. Can hear Papa, standing there in the room near her, the floorboards creaking under his boots, not saying a thing.

—

Two days after Alex is bitten, Maman finally takes down her looking-glass from where she keeps it safe atop her vanity and lets him examine himself in it.

It’s not so bad, he thinks. He still knows that face. A little strangeness in it, but that could almost be because of the glass itself, some flaw in it, something warping the reflection. Small tufts of dark fuzz starting to sprout at the tips of his slightly pointed ears, but again, that’s easy to miss next to the black of his hair. The eyes are harder to square away—they’re too bright, a wildness there that sends a chill down his spine—but they’re not bad. Not unpleasant to look at. They’re sort of interesting, maybe, the more he considers them. Unique. After all, what other kid in town has golden eyes?

He tells Maman this with a broad grin. She goes pale, flinches, before she manages to return it and tells him you’ve always been unique, cherie, even without the eyes.

It’s not until the looking-glass has been put back in its place and Alex has been given some sums to puzzle over that he thinks to prod at his teeth with a finger. They’ve changed as well. Too long, pointed at the tips.They were never so sharp before, were they?

He remembers Maman’s face before and tries to smile again, wracked with a sudden, ridiculous fear that he’s plain forgotten how to do it. Curls the corners of his lips up, bares his teeth. There, he thinks, relieved. A smile. Just a normal smile.

But it feels—wrong, now, somehow. The shape is the same, but there’s a jagged edge in his mind that catches on it, gives the expression a new significance.

It feels like a threat.

A soft growl rumbles its way up out of Alex’s chest.

—

“You look like a giant bat.”

“No, I don’t! That’s stupid. Bats have wings. I’m not gonna have wings.”

“You won’t need them, not at the rate your ears are growing. You’ll be able to flap them and fly right off into the sky.”

Alex screeches in outrage and slaps at Jamie, who laughs and scuttles off down the street, perhaps to find more interesting playmates than his little brother. Alex sulks there on the front step. Stretches his legs out and drums his heels on the dirt of the road.

He’s bored. Out of his sickbed for days, and bored, bored, bored. His own playmates have vanished into thin air, leaving him to tag along after Jamie for entertainment, or to make his own, which after his confinement sounds as appealing as being shut up in his bedroom for another half a week.

Well—he backtracks a bit. Maybe vanished isn’t the right word; he still catches glimpses of the neighborhood kids his age, from time to time, watching him from a distance. They mutter under their breath to each other, point and stare and giggle when they catch his eye or spot him coming up the street. He’s seen a few of them cup their hands around their ears, waggle them and screw up their faces all teasing. They’re just jealous, probably. None of them can really wiggle their ears. Alex twitches his, showing off to himself, perks them and sits as still as he can to listen to the sounds of the neighborhood.

And, Alex tells himself, it mustn’t feel as nice for them to have their ears scratched and stroked either, not with how small they are, how devoid of velvety fur. Maman pets his at night, now, when he can’t sleep because he’s sore and achy and out-of-sorts. That’s been happening a lot, lately. Not from the wound healing wrong, not just an ache in his shoulder, but all over, for no reason he can tell.

My skin’s the wrong size, he tries to explain to Maman, it’s too tight, it itches. My face hurts. My legs feel like they’re going to fall off. That last gets a reaction out of her, but it’s not the one he wants, she gets scared, and he has to start over again. It’s not that they feel like they’re going to come off, exactly, he’s not really in pain, but it’s hard to put into words—all his joints feel tender and loose, and Alex imagines that if he prodded at them hard enough they’d bow and stretch and warp like bread dough squeezed in his fist.

He doesn’t do such a great job of explaining this to Maman, either. She looks even more worried, but pulls him into her lap and scratches oh so gently at the base of his ear, in a way that sends shivers all the way down his neck and back, down into his legs, making them tingle and flutter-kick. It feels wonderful, relaxes him like nothing else, sends him drifting off to sleep even with the aches and pains, even with the nighttime racket of the frogs and crickets and Jamie’s quiet breathing bearing down on him. He can’t remember something so small ever feeling so good before.

So, sure, he’ll take the ears. They’re a small price to pay for the comfort they give. And once the other kids stop being silly, and start talking to him again, they’ll see that too. Maybe he’ll even let them pet his ears, if they’re nice enough and say please. He has no doubt they’ll want to. They’re very soft, after all.

He shakes his head, heartened by this thought, and his new ears go flop-flop-flop. The one on the left droops down rakishly, until he tweaks it to make it stand straight.

—

“Look, Papa,” says Alex, laughing, “look, I have a beard like you.” He runs his hands over his jaw, where a soft dark down has started to appear, finer than the scruff on Papa’s chin. Unrulier, too, creeping up over his cheeks in patches, down his neck all the way to the wound on his shoulder, which is nearly healed now. The torn flesh smoothed over with reddish scar, like it’s been there for months instead of a bit more than a week. “I’m just like you, Papa, look.”

Papa swallows hard. “So you are,” he says with a twist of his lips that Alex can’t read as happy, no matter how he tries. “My little man.”

“Does this mean I get to shave like you?” Alex asks. Papa forces out a laugh.

“Don’t think that’d do much good, kiddo. You’re, uh, you’re pretty hairy, you know? It’d take forever to clean you up. How would you ever get anything else done?”

Alex giggles at him. Silly Papa. Of course it would take forever if he shaved all the hair he’s growing. Because it’s not just his face and neck, it’s his arms, too, and his chest down to his belly, and a little trail down his spine that he can feel if he reaches back as far as he can stretch. But his face, just his face, that wouldn’t take so long, would it?

He says as much to Papa, in hopeful tones, and Papa does that fake laugh thing again and pats Alex on the head, between his great pointed ears. Stiffens, all of a sudden. Jerks his hand away like he’s been burned, and looks between it and Alex a couple of times, a dull flush rising on his cheeks.

“Papa?” says Alex. He cocks his head, perks his ears up, listening for something to explain this reaction, but can’t detect anything but the strangled noise Papa makes when Alex’s head tips to one side. They sit there for a moment, staring at each other.

“…Hadn’t you better go bother your Mama,” Papa grits out at last. Fists clenched on the table, white-knuckled. Alex recognizes that tone. It’s time for you to leave now. He scuttles off to look for Maman.

—

Alex goes with Maman to the market. It’s less fun than it used to be. Maman’s friends used to smile at him, talk to him, give him little treats and ask him about his lessons and if he was being good for his Mamma and Papa. Now, they glance down at him and look away quick and don’t ask him anything at all. A few of them smile, still, but it’s painful and wrong and they look away even faster than the ones who don’t smile.

The market itself is worse too; much louder than it was before, loud enough to make him tug at his ears and wince. Too many smells all piling on top of each other, briny reek of fish from the fishmonger’s and dry smell of sawdust and cloying sweet scent of ladies’ perfume. Alex’s head spins, and he shakes it hard to try and clear it, but the smells keep coming. Lantern oil leather raw meat molasses rum garbage bruised fruit warm earth sea breeze sweat—

Alex’s nose twitches. He snaps to attention.

Cat.

Alex doesn’t even think. He jerks his hand out of Maman’s as she enquires after the price of flour and, with a ringing bark, takes off after the gray tabby lurking in the shadow of a grocer’s stand.

“Alexander!” shouts Maman, but he hardly hears her. Little animal, little animal running, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away if he wanted to, he has to chase, he has to get it. He weaves through a knot of people, ignoring their cries and curses, takes a tumble after he clears them, rolls to his feet, and sprints onward, the cat’s one white paw flashing bright in his vision as it dashes ahead of him.

He’s fast. He couldn’t run like this before the bite. He barely even seems to touch the ground. His heart leaps in his chest, and he pants hard, not bothering to wipe the drool off his chin. Yes, he’s fast, he’s strong, he could run forever, he can outrun little animal and he can catch it and he will bite it and that is right and that is good and that is—

The cat darts into an alley, hoping to lose Alex, but he’s too quick, although he skids a bit making the sharp turn and has to catch himself with his hands. Easier not to pick himself up all the way, so he lopes on all fours down the alley and, wonderful luck, the cat is cornered, its back to a wall. It lets out a dreadful caterwaul, its pupils blown out with fear, and Alex growls back at it. Stares it down. He’s bigger, and stronger, and he will not be intimidated. Yes yes yes hunt catch bite yes prey yes.

He makes his move, hands outstretched to grab and teeth bared to bite, but the cat yowls and swats him across the tip of his sticking-out nose. Claws snag on his skin. It hurts, and Alex staggers back with a yelp. The cat scampers around him, leaps and perches atop a wall for a moment to hiss and spit down at him, and vanishes.

“Alexander!”

And suddenly Maman is there, her shoes tap-tap-tapping on the cobbles as she strides down the alley. She picks Alex up off the ground, takes him by the shoulders, and to his shock shakes him hard, like she only does when he’s been terribly naughty. “What were you thinking, Alexander? You don’t run off like that, do you understand me?” she scolds, her eyes wide with fear. “You could have been lost, anything could have happened, do not leave me, don’t you, don’t you—”

“I’m sorry, Maman,” Alex gasps, all at once becoming aware of how hard he’s breathing, how hard his heart is pounding away behind his ribs. He snuffles and touches the tips of his fingers to his nose. They come away dotted with blood, and he whines softly, low in his throat.

“Oh, Alex—”

Maman pulls out a handkerchief and dabs at his nose, wipes the spittle off his face. Her lips are pressed together so tightly they’ve gone pale. Alex stands there, trying not to whimper at the sting, and feels quite stupid. Why did he do that? It was just a cat. Just a silly cat. Just like a hundred other cats he’s seen before. Nothing worth going out of his head over. But here he is, with a scratched-up nose and dust on his clothes and a voice in his head that sounds very much like his own whispering prey hunt run catch prey yes.

He feels sick.

“I didn’t want to,” he says out loud. “I didn’t want to chase it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what I was doing.” The words taste of a lie the instant they leave his lips. He did want to, he realizes, he wanted to chase that cat, it was exciting and it made him happy and the idea of biting down and tasting the cat’s blood sends a surge of wild joy leaping through his veins. And that’s—wrong, isn’t it? That’s not a normal thing to think. Biting, he can’t tell Maman about biting, that’s how everything went wrong in the first place, a bite where it wasn’t wanted.

Maybe Maman won’t notice the lie, though. He tries to make his face sincere, look her right in the eyes, but it’s very hard, makes him feel weak and shivery and nervous. Maman lets out a long painful sigh. Something brittle in her expression.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Maman,” Alex manages, and at least that’s honest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Maman pushes a lock of her curly hair out of her face, then says, “We’re going home, Alex.”

“No, Maman, no, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to, I won’t do it again, promise, I’ll be good, I will—!”

“Alexander. No arguing.” Maman’s voice sharp, but not with anger, or not entirely with anger, at least. Her eyes still wider than usual, her hands trembling a little, and her smell sweat-soured and sickly. Alex thinks of a feline yowl and staring eyes, back to a wall and claws bared.

Afraid. She’s afraid.

Alex’s stomach lurches. Afraid of him? But all he did was chase a cat. Even if he wanted to bite and tear and hunt, he didn’t hurt her, he would never, never hurt her, she must know that. No, that can’t be right. Then what—?

Maman interrupts his thoughts, asking if he’s hurt anywhere else, and he turns his palms up to her. The scuffs there aren’t as bad as he’d thought they would be, though; the skin there feels thicker than it used to be, tougher. Maman dusts his hands off with her handkerchief anyway, and Alex wonders at the strange, muted touch of it, before she takes him by the arm and leads him back out into the noisy street.

Less noisy, it seems, than it had been when he’d run off. Conversations peter out into silence as Maman steers him past, and everywhere Alex looks, there seems to be another pair of eyes glued to him. Threatening. Threatening. He shrinks down against Maman’s side.

Should keep that creature on a lead, someone mutters. The voice is too soft for her to notice, but not for Alex, and the shame wells up in his chest, burning him, choking him. He ducks his chin, his face burning from the blood rushing under his skin and the hot tears soaking their way into his fur. But he’s a big boy, so he doesn’t sob out loud, doesn’t make a scene. He behaves himself.

See, see. He’s a good boy. He can be good.

Alex clings to Maman’s skirts like a baby, stays there until they’ve made it back to their own street, away from all those stares, all those sneers. The only eyes on him from the familiar sidelong glances of the neighbors. A few of these linger a bit more than usual, faintly curious at the air of disgrace in Alex and Maman’s retreat, and Alex scrubs at the matted fur on his cheeks, trying (and failing, it feels like) to disguise his distress.

What happened to it, do you think, he hears a young woman whisper to her friend. I mean—to him. Tried to hurt someone, maybe? Should they let him out in public?

All in all, he thinks, kicking a rock into the grass at the edge of the road, it might’ve been a better time if he’d just stayed home.

—

Alex goes to sleep with an awful shooting pain eating at his back, and wakes up in the morning with a tail.

It’s not much to begin with, a stumpy little ratlike thing sticking out of his back just at the base of his spine, dusted with sparse black hairs. Over the course of a day it lengthens, fills out, limbers up. By sunset it’s handsome and bushy and dark-furred, and Maman has had to cut a hole in the back of his trousers for it to poke through.

It’s a funny thing, always waggling back and forth, and Alex can’t help but glance back over his shoulder at it, turn in a circle trying to get a better angle. He snatches at it, but it twitches away like it has a mind of its own. Alex giggles, reaches for it again, misses again. Spins and reels about in the middle of the room.

“Don’t do that,” says Jamie at last, an edge to his voice that Alex doesn’t like. “You look like a crazy person. Cut it out.”

“Why?” demands Alex, “What do you care, I’m not hurting anyone, I’m just trying to look at it. It’s mine, after all. My tail.” That feels odd to say. He tries it again. “My tail.”

Jamie makes a face. “Fine, it’s—yours, but do you have to chase it like that? And do you have to wag it like a dumb dog whenever someone comes through the door?”

“Don’t call me dumb!”

“I didn’t, I never said you were—”

“And it’s not my fault, anyway, I’m not making it do anything. I just get excited when Papa comes home from work. Or when I smell something I like. Or when there’s someone I don’t know walking down the street, and I want to know who they are. Don’t you? You just don’t have a tail, so no one can tell when you’re excited.”

“Normal people don’t get excited over smells, Alex.”

“That’s not—I mean, I know that, but—” Alex trails off, confused. Normal people. Right. Normal people, like how he used to be, before all of this.

It’s strange, though, to think that there was a time he couldn’t smell the differences between each of his family members, or that the scent of kitchen garbage used to be unpleasant to him. More and more, it feels like remembering one of Maman or Papa’s stories about when you were just a baby. Something that happened before he was himself.

“Anyway, I’m just saying,” Jamie continues, when Alex can’t string together a retort, “if you act like an animal, people are going to treat you like one. That’s all.”

Alex goes very still. His breath comes short, like someone’s squeezing the air out of his lungs.

“I’m not an animal,” he growls, not even bothering to iron the grit out of his voice. He can feel his tail fluffing up with anger. “Don’t you call me that. Don’t you dare.”

“Alex,” says Jamie, sounding very like Papa in his exasperation, “that’s not what I said, all right? I’m trying to help you, dummy. You’re like this now, so you have to watch yourself. Have to be more careful. That’s what Dad says. I’m just looking out for you.”

“That doesn’t mean you can call me those things, though,” Alex says, his voice rising. “You’re mean. You’re being mean. It’s not my fault I’m like this. I didn’t ask to be a—a werewolf. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know at all.”

Jamie rolls his eyes. “Fine, Alex! You’re right, I don’t know. I’m sorry I said anything. Do whatever you want. Wag your tail, stick your nose in the trash heap, see if I care.”

“I will. And it’s none of your business, so there.” Alex folds his arms and lifts his chin defiantly, before he registers what exactly Jamie’s said to him. That’s not a good point to end the argument on, he thinks. “And I don’t stick my nose in the trash heap,” he tacks on.

“Sure you don’t.” Jamie’s picked up his book again, is avoiding Alex’s eye in that aggravating older-brother-knows-best manner he has. “You don’t do that, and you don’t eat out of it either.”

“I—I don’t—”

“You do. I saw you, just the other day. You didn’t bring whatever-it-was into the house, but I saw you go hide in the bushes with it and you didn’t have it when you came out.”

“It was just a bit of gristle,” Alex says. He can hear the whine in his own voice. “That’s all. No one was using it. No one wanted it. And I could smell it, and I thought, I just thought—I didn’t eat the whole thing. Not all of it. I buried the rest.” He looks at Jamie, ashamed, beseeching. What’s the harm? It was just one little scrap. Just one little slip-up. That’s not so bad, is it? Is it?

The expression on Jamie’s face says otherwise.

Jamie catches himself after a second, grumbles “Crazy,” under his breath, gruff-teasing, and looks away, but Alex has eyes in his head. Saw the disgust there, the pity. The righteous outrage pounding behind his ribs evaporates, leaving nothing behind but a cold queasy hollowness.

Something twitches at the bottom edge of his vision. Alex looks down, partly to see what it is, partly for an excuse to look away from Jamie not-looking at him. Tuft of dark fur there, poking out between his knees. The tip gives a pathetic twitch.

Alex turns abruptly and shuffles out of the room, his tail between his legs.

—

“Maman, am I ugly?”

“No, sweetheart, why would you—who’s been saying that? Who said that to you?”

“Just. Peter from down the street. He called me, he said—um—”

“What did he say?”

“He, he called me an ugly mutt. A mongrel. And he told me I couldn’t play with him and his brother anymore, because they might catch my ugly, and—”

“You listen to me, Alex. Listen. Those boys are wrong. You are not ugly, and it’s cruel of them to say those awful things, just because they don’t understand what’s happening to you.”

“How do they not understand? They know what happened to me. And they can’t catch what I have just by playing with me, they know I’m not going to bite them, unless they’re stupid—”

“Alex.”

“—I mean. Um. They know how it works. Don’t they? They must.”

“It’s…it’s complicated, Alex.”

“I can understand it if you explain. I’m sure I can.”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“…Maman, are you crying? Don’t cry, Maman, I’m sorry, you don’t have to explain if it makes you sad.”

“No, no, I’m okay, Alex. I’m—ah!”

“Sorry, Maman, I just, I didn’t think—”

“You’re fine, love, just—say something before you lick, all right?”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“Shh. You just surprised me, that’s all. Come here. That’s right. You’re fine. You’re fine.”

“I’m not a baby, Maman.”

“I know you’re not. But it would make me feel better to hold you. Is that all right?”

“I guess. Umm.”

“Hmm?”

“Can you, can you scratch just here…?”

Silence, for a little bit.

“Alex.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I just want you to know, whatever the other kids say, you are not ugly.”

“Even if my nose is too big?”

“I think your nose is lovely, sweetheart.”

“And even if my teeth are—Caty said they were scary, the other day.”

“Different isn’t the same as scary. Someone should remind Caty of that.”

“And even if my face is all…um. It doesn’t look like a beard, does it. It really, really doesn’t.”

“No, sweetheart.”

“And my ears—”

“It doesn’t matter one bit. You are my Alex. My good, smart, brave, beautiful boy. Nothing can change that, not your ears, not your fur, not your tail. Nothing at all.”

“Okay, Maman. Okay.”

Alex lets her wrap her arms around him again, and decides she doesn’t need to know the rest of the story. Doesn’t need to know that Peter had called him a bastard on top of everything else, ugly mongrel son of a whore, and Alex had bared his teeth and snarled at him so loudly that he’d run off crying.

Doesn’t need to know that he’d asked Papa am I ugly just before he’d come to her, and Papa had blustered and told him not to let people treat him like that and to toughen up. You’re a big boy, aren’t you, Alex, you ought to be able to take care of yourself when people talk smack, and Alex had looked at his toes and nodded and said I’m sorry, Papa, I’ll do better.

Doesn’t need to know that Papa hadn’t answered his question.

—

Alex’s shoe won’t go on, no matter how he tries to force it. He yanks as hard as he can, but no luck, his foot’s grown too long and too narrow to fit, even if he pushes his toes all the way down into the very tip so they curl up and ache. Papa will be angry if Alex wrecks a pair of shoes before he’s grown out of them, so he kicks the shoe down onto the floor. And isn’t it just his luck—he’s put a hole in the toe of his stocking with one of his claws. Perfect. He peels his stocking off too and glares at the offending foot. His fur’s grown to cover every inch of the skin, top and bottom, aside from the parts that have thickened into leathery pads.

Well, nothing for it, he’ll just have to go barefoot. Surely Maman and Papa won’t mind, they haven’t wanted him to stray out of sight of the house lately anyway. He rises from his chair, and his knees buckle, so he has to shuffle to the wall quick and lean against it to keep from falling over. His balance is off, his weight doesn’t sit right on his heels like it used to. Alex is smart, though, he can work around this.

Bracing himself carefully on the wall, he stands tiptoe, leans forward a little bit to keep his balance. He takes one dainty step forward on his toes, another. Manages not to topple over. There, that’s done it, more or less. He glares down at himself, impatient with his own clumsiness.

He blinks. It’s not just his shoes that don’t fit. Seems like while he hasn’t been paying attention, his body has been getting up to all sorts of mischief: his shoulders hunch forward now, his spine slopes and his legs bow and something about the shape of his torso isn’t right in a way he can’t quite put into words, to say nothing of his tail. His clothes hang on him ridiculously, too tight here, too loose there. He looks a mess. He really does look like—

Alex grabs his ear by the tip and yanks so hard he squeaks. Shut up, Alex. It’s not like that, it’s not true at all, so don’t even think it.

But now you know, don’t you, why they don’t have dogs wear clothes, says a nasty voice smirkety-smirking in his head, before he can silence himself all the way.

I’m not a dog. I’m not. I’m not, thinks Alex desperately, uselessly. Stares down at his feet—no, he can’t even call them that. At his paws. Wolf paws sticking out of the legs of his breeches.

Alex fists his hands (and those are paws too, aren’t they? Just look at those claws) in the fabric of his shirt, where it hangs loose over his belly. Dreams, for a wild moment, of tearing his shirt off, throwing away his breeches, getting down on his belly and crawling away somewhere warm and dark and secret where he’d be able to hide, where no one could see him, where he could wait for this all to be over and for everything to go back to normal.

He doesn’t do that. He can’t. He’s not a dog, even if he looks like one. So he doesn’t have to act like one, not if he can help it.

Alex grits his teeth, stands up as straight as his legs will allow, and trots downstairs to breakfast. Papa makes an awful face when he steps through the door. He ignores that as best he can. At least he didn’t ruin the shoes, right? That would have been much worse.

—

“Mmmn. Mmmmah—”

Alex puts his tongue out as far as it’ll go, pulls it back in, opens and closes his mouth a few times, but nothing changes. Still that odd awkward feeling of stiff jaw and leaden tongue and immobile lips. The words clot in his throat.

“Mmnnnnaahh—”

He tugs mutely at Maman’s skirts.

“Alex? Are you okay, baby?”

“Uh. I can’t t-t-t—it’s h-huh-harrrd—”

“Oh, dear heart.” Maman strokes his ears comfortingly. “I know, love, I know. It’s frustrating. But it’ll only be a few days, okay? Just a few days. And then you’ll be able to talk properly again, I promise.”

I know, I know. Alex wonders angrily how everyone he talks to seems to know how he feels, when none of them, to his knowledge, have ever been werewolves. How can they possibly know? “I d-don’ like ith,” is all he can choke out for now, in a low slurry groan that sounds nothing like his own voice. “I can’thh—I don’ wrrr—”

“Shh. Shhh. All we can do is wait right now. You must be patient.”

Alex doesn’t want to shush. Alex doesn’t want to be patient. He wants his voice back, and he tries to say so, but can only come out with a dreadful garbled wail. Like a dog he’d heard once who had been trampled by a clumsy horse, its leg crushed and bleeding and bending in the wrong places. Not his voice, not his voice at all, and he clamps his hands around his muzzle in horror.

(His face sticks out far enough that he can do that, now.)

“No, love, no, don’t—” Maman’s hands brush over his, but he just goes mmmmnn and flinches and clutches harder at his own face, the fur all over his body standing on end in panic. She pulls away from him. Don’t go, don’t leave me, Alex wants to shout, but he can’t bear to hear his own hurt-animal noises, or to feel his mouth tear the words to pieces. All he can do is stand there in silent terror, only half-seeing Maman as she flits about at the other end of the room.

How will he go without his voice? How will anyone know what he’s thinking? How will anyone know who he is anymore? Wrong body and wrong voice and wrong brain and wrong everything. He might as well be an animal. Might as well just go and live in the woods and never come back.

“Alex.” Maman is taking his hand in hers, gentle but firm, and pulling it away from his face. She sets something in it. A nub of chalk. Alex stares numbly at it for a moment, and then Maman holds out the slate he uses for his lessons. “Alex, love, I know it’s hard not to have your voice. I know. But you can still write. You can still talk to me like this, okay? Can you talk to me now? Anything you like. Tell me.”

Maman pushes the slate at him encouragingly. Alex rolls the bit of chalk between his fingers, gets a good grip on it so his claws won’t be in the way. i hate it, he scrawls. Not Fair. He underlines the last two words for emphasis.

“You’re right, love, it’s not,” Maman says heavily. Alex erases his writing with a swipe of his hand. Chalk dust turns his fur to ghostly gray. He carefully scratches out another line of words, in the neatest handwriting he can muster. Looks at Maman for some sort of reply.

Maman says nothing. Nothing at all. She just stands there, as silent as Alex, her eyes wet with tears and flicking back and forth as she reads and rereads his message:

i want to be Ner Normel again.

—

Alex’s back hurts, and his hips twinge when he tries to stand up on two legs, so he drops down onto all fours as he walks out of the bedroom that morning. Papa tucks his feet out of the way as Alex passes so Alex won’t trip, so that Alex won’t brush against him and leave dark hairs clinging to his trousers.

Papa won’t look at him.

Alex can’t shape words anymore, so he begs for attention in little grunts and whines and barks, because it’s quicker than writing down every word trapped in his head, and better than not being heard at all. Jamie rolls his eyes at Alex’s insistent noises, finds a ratty leather ball amongst the toys in the bedroom, and bowls it down the hallway for Alex to fetch. Less fun than their games of pretend, maybe, but at least it’s something. Alex scampers back with the ball in his mouth and deposits it at Jamie’s feet. Jamie kicks it away again.

Jamie won’t look at him.

Alex’s hands have gotten clumsy, the fingers too short, the thumbs set too far back to button his shirt or tighten his laces. He tries his best, but in the end all he can do is hunt down Maman and gesture unhappily at his half-dressed body when she asks what’s wrong. Maman kneels and does up his buttons, straightens his ill-fitting coat as best she can, smooths his fur back.

Maman looks at him with such sadness in her eyes that Alex almost wishes she wouldn’t look at him at all.

—

One day to full moon.

Alex can still manage to walk on two legs a little ways, if he concentrates hard and doesn’t try to go too fast. He drags a chair into Maman and Papa’s bedroom while Maman is occupied. Climbs up on it, with his wobbly knees and awkward paws, swishing his tail for balance, and reaches down Maman’s looking-glass, careful not to let it slip through his stubby fingers. He looks hard into it, leans so close his nose leaves a wet smear on its surface. Dark fur on the face of an animal. Golden eyes and pointed ears and jagged teeth.

Nothing he recognizes there. Nothing at all.

Maman comes running when she hears the glass shatter against the floorboards.

#swan talks #hamilton for ts #wereham au #fig tree #body horror cw #although quite frankly i never know anymore. it's not that bad i'm just trying to cover my bases #neither the werewolf nor the kid alex goes back for are anyone in particular because that's just how things shake out sometimes #not everyone gets to be somebody and not everything is interconnected. sometimes things just happen and it's just dumb bad luck #and sometimes that dumb bad luck ends up with a little kid turning into a wolf #anyway you guys have you seen my son?! my son is cute and gorgeous and he's doing his best #considering that his body is casually trying to turn itself inside out every day of his fucking life #it's tough to be a baby werewolf :(

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swan-archive · 7 years

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I hesitate to ask because it makes me sad, but have Were Ham or Manticore Ham ever been muzzled?

Alexcat has been muzzled. it was a bad time for everyone involved.

as for Alexpup, courtesy of the most recent chapter of sbos:

“…and I can take care of my own meals,” says Alex, standing up as straight as he can (which is to say, not very) and endeavoring to look the innkeeper straight in the eye. He’d lay his head to the side and perk his ears, but it’s not the right time of the moon for that; maybe in about a week it’d work in his favor, but for now the charming-puppy act is like to get him more horror than sympathy. “I don’t need feeding, all I need is a spot to sleep for a few days, and I can do whatever you need, wash, tidy up, I can even check your accounts for you if you like…”

The innkeeper grunts suspiciously, and Alex shrinks down a little. Bad call. Mustn’t look like he’s working an angle here. “Anyway,” Alex continues, groping his way back to safer ground, “I don’t need much space at all. And I’ll do whatever tasks need doing as long as I’m here. I’d be much obliged for your help, sir, whatever you can offer.”

“Why not just sleep out in the woods?” says the innkeeper. And somehow, Alex thinks, that would be less painful to hear if the man were being nasty on purpose. As it is, his tone is precisely as it’s been for this whole conversation: gruff and irritated, like he has a hundred things he ought to be doing that Alex is keeping him from. He’s not trying to make Alex cry or snarl with his suggestion; he simply doesn’t care what Alex does, as long as it’s less trouble for him. Alex digs his claws into the palms of his hands where the fur is coming in and bids himself to be silent. You must be patient, Alexander, you must think before you act, says a deep, steady voice in his head. What good will it do you to pick a fight with this man?

What does it matter, I wasn’t going to, anyway, Alex snipes back reflexively, before he realizes that a) he’s arguing with a made-up version of Colonel Washington in his mind, and b) that the innkeeper is looking more and more impatient with him every second. Right, the man asked him a question. And he supposes the imaginary Colonel is right, it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to get in a fight at this juncture.

“I’m waiting for someone,” Alex says. “A gentleman who’ll be passing through town soon. And if I take…other lodgings…he might not be able to find me, when he comes. So if I can stay in one place, if at all possible, that’d be best.” He tries to give this last sentence the sort of confident finality that he imagines Washington would deliver it with, this is how it’s going to be, so you may as well go along with it. The innkeeper doesn’t seem wholly convinced, but his frown eases ever so slightly as he considers.

“You’d take care of your own meals, you say,” he muses. “You a mouser, kid?”

Alex’s stomach twists with shame—the Colonel would be disgusted with me—but he nods as enthusiastically as he can. “Yessir. I used to watch the storerooms for, um—some businessmen of my acquaintance.”

“What businessmen are those?”

“A Mr. Beekman and a Mr. Cruger. Of, um. Of Christiansted. In the Antilles.” Alex waits for the innkeeper to make some sort of joke, long way from home, aren’t you, but the man stays silent and continues to regard him over the counter with an expression that gives nothing away. “They always said I was a good mouser,” Alex blurts out, because he has to say something, “I’m a hard worker, and I’m quick, and I kept the cargo safe while it was waiting to be shipped out—a lot of cargo, they did good business, so one building like this would be nothing for me to keep clear…”

Shut up, Hamilton, Alex scolds himself, babbling like an idiot, you’re going to make him think you’ve got something to hide, but the innkeeper’s gotten a thoughtful look on his face. “And you can catch ‘em like this?” he asks, with a careless little gesture that encompasses the whole of Alex’s misshapen body.

“I can. Any time of the moon,” Alex replies, biting off and you can take your like this and shove it up your ass before it can sneak out and ruin everything. A thought occurs to him—a bit risky, but he decides to chance it. “And—full moon’s coming up, I’ll only get better at it the closer I get to, er. The wolf days.”

“Hmm.” The innkeeper drums his fingers on the counter, clearly doing the math in his head. Alex holds his breath, willing the man to say something, willing things to work out in his own favor for once—

“All right,” says the innkeeper at last, in an ungracious tone. “You sweep. You do the washing-up. You keep my establishment free of vermin. You see to your own meals, and don’t show your mug to my customers any more than you can help it, and you can kip in the back room.”

“Yes, sir,” says Alex, “thank y—”

“And,” interrupts the innkeeper. “One more thing. Wait here.” He stumps off into the back room, leaving Alex standing there by the bar, alone and with people starting to stare at him.

Alex bounces nervously on his toes and ducks his head, avoiding the eyes of the other patrons. Few enough people would willingly tangle with a werewolf, even a scruffy little one like himself, but you can never be sure, and he’s starting to realize that this place is seedy. He can smell at least one other wolf somewhere in the room, and even the human patrons are a motley lot, each one more unsavory-looking than the last. If the Colonel were here, he’d drag Alex out by the ear, and no doubt treat him to an excruciating lecture before making him promise never to set foot in such a dreadful place by himself again—

But the Colonel isn’t here. And Alex has already broken one such promise to him, broken it as badly as he possibly could. So he’s stuck making the best of a bad situation until he can set things right with Washington. No point in being a baby about it.

If only his tail hadn’t decided to come in a day or two early this month, Alex thinks, reaching down discreetly and drawing it out from between his legs. Bad enough that he invites so many stares without showing everyone who looks that he’s as scared as a pup during a lightning storm. Which he’s not, he adds hastily, it’s just that his stupid body seems to think he is.

After several long minutes, the innkeeper finally emerges, holding something in his hands. Even from the other side of the bar, Alex can tell that it smells of dog, and his nose twitches. The innkeeper tosses it on the counter and pushes it across to Alex. “Last thing. You wear this while paying customers are here.”

Alex blinks down at the tangle of wire and worn leather. It’s not immediately apparent what the thing is, but he picks it up and a few crossed wires fall into place and it takes on the shape of a—

“Sir, please, no,” says Alex, too loudly, a whine grating at the edge of his voice, “I don’t need a muzzle—I’ll behave, this isn’t necessary, I can be—”

“You wear it, or you find somewhere else to sleep,” says the innkeeper. “I’m already going to have enough trouble explaining why there’s a mangy wolf lurking around my inn without having to worry if he’s going to bite someone. You can take it off while you’re going after the mice, after folks have gone home, but otherwise I want it on. We clear here?”

No, no, we’re not, Alex wants to scream. I shouldn’t have to be muzzled, I’m helping you, and you’re treating me like this, it’s not fair, you’re being unfair. But, really, who is Alex to talk about unfair or not? Fair would be a shallow scrape dug out of a hillside and whatever he could unearth from the trash heaps around town, that’s about as much as a cowardly, faithless animal like him deserves.

At least here, he’s guaranteed something to eat, as long as the vermin aren’t too canny.

Hating himself, hating the innkeeper, hating the entire world, Alex picks up the muzzle and carefully straps it on. It was clearly made for a dog, and even fitted as loosely as it will buckle it squeezes uncomfortably at the back of his skull and digs into his jaw. He tugs at the wire, hoping in vain to adjust it to his face, but no luck, his snout’s too short and broad yet for the muzzle to sit right. The innkeeper is watching him expectantly, so Alex drops his hands and lifts his chin and does his best to look meek and tame.

“That’s right,” says the innkeeper. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “Go on back to the kitchen, then, there’s plenty of work for you in there. Tell the maid—you can talk with that thing on, can’t you?”

“Yeshh,” Alex grits out through his teeth. Can’t bring himself to tack the sir on to the end there, oddly enough.

“Good. Tell the maid Josiah sent you, and ask her what needs doing. I’ll come and fetch you when the bar clears out so you can start in on the mice. If I hear you’ve been scaring people, or making trouble, you’ll be out on your tail.”

Alex nods and shuffles off toward the smells of cooking food and dishwater. Pulls a lock of his hair out from where it’s tangled in the straps of the muzzle. Lucky that won’t be a problem for much longer, his hair will all have gone to fur in a few days. And anyway, by then, surely the Colonel will have seen his advertisement in the paper and will come to find him, take this horrid thing off his face and give Alex a chance to apologize and explain himself and, and…and then everything will be made right.

Somehow.

Alex has to admit to himself, he can’t really envision a happy ending to this sorry state of affairs that doesn’t sound like an absurd fairy tale. But he hopes all the same. He’s getting very, very tired of being a lone wolf.

He sighs, and steps into the kitchen, and mentally begins sketching out a plan for introducing himself to the maid in a way that will minimize the screaming.

#Anonymous #swan talks #hamilton for ts #fig tree #wereham au #okay and after this i'm rly done with wereham au like for real i'm just. dfjsl #i just like to show these kids a horrible time ya dig

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swan-archive · 7 years

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well friends, i have now watched 1776: the musical: the film twice now, both times willingly and without coercion, and i’m still hugely baffled by nearly every artistic choice made therein, but there is one upside to this upsetting state of affairs and it is that John Adams is now a bitten were in wereham au, thank god

#swan talks #wereham au #praise jesus hallelujah it was about goddamn time #he gets bitten we think sometime during his attempted diplomacy days hence why the whole diplomacy thing goes badly for him #(it also goes badly because he's.....what's the phrase i'm looking for.....ah yes 'obnoxious and disliked')#when he and ham have it out after the war it gets extremely ugly and extremely scary and it's great #also adams is super jealous of the fact that ham has functional thumbs for most of the lunar month #it did not shake out that way for him and it drives him fucking bonkers #also the actor who plays rhl is on a level in my head with jeff goldblum #in that i have NO idea what either of them are trying to do but i DO NOT like it one bit and i'm very scared #i forgot that he fucking SCREAMED WITH JOY as he rode back into philly i want to die DON'T LET HIM SAY WORDS OR NOISES #i'm going to gently not say all my thoughts on this trainwreck here in the tags but boy has my life been changed on this night #and not for the better

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swan-archive · 8 years

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@the-everqueen is i’m guessing the only person who will enjoy this, if you’re not her maybe...probably don’t even bother clicking through to the rest of this tropey bullshit

TL;DR: PSA for pet owners! alcohol is extremely toxic to dogs, even in small quantities, so keep those PBRs away from your furry friends unless you want an emergency vet trip in your immediate future!

“To another battle survived, gents, and another day working our asses off in service of this fair country!” Tilghman announces, smiling around the campfire at the assembled aides and raising a flask of something-or-other in a toast. “And may I just say what a real pleasure it is to see you here with me this evening, all your limbs still attached and no bullet holes in your skulls. Cheers.”

“Not for lack of trying,” grumbles Alex, digging his elbow into John’s side. “I can’t believe you attacked a house with nothing but a sword, you idiot.”

“Come on, take it easy, I’m wounded—”

“Yeah, in your other shoulder.” Alex lays another jab to John’s ribs. “This is what you get for being reckless and ignoring orders. Accept your rightful punishment.”

“I liked it better when you weren’t talking,” John complains, shoving Alex away with his good arm and fussing with his sling. Alex sticks his tongue out at John. It’s not a look quite suited to his features as they are, but Alex just seems happy to be able to access human facial expressions again, so John makes no comment. After the hell of these past weeks, it must be a great relief for Alex to feel his muzzle slowly shrink away and the fur on his face thin and recede. Not that it’s done so very much, yet—Alex still looks rather like the misbegotten offspring of a stray dog and a gargoyle—but John has caught him running his fingers over his face with hope in his eyes more than once in the last couple of days.

For John’s part, and despite all his protests, it’s simply good to hear Alex talk again. Barks and whines and yelps don’t suit him. He should have a real voice, even if all he’s doing with that voice at the moment is harassing John.

“Laurens, you in?” asks Tilghman, walking over to where John and Alex are seated. He offers his flask. John accepts it with good will, takes a nip, passes it back. The drink goes down smooth, and John says a little prayer of thanks in his head that Tilghman hasn’t been so well blacklisted by his bloody Loyalist family that he can’t still get his hands on stuff like this to share.

“How about you, Ham?” Alex looks up in surprise, and Tilghman shakes the flask, holds it out to him. A faint trace of guilt on his face there, but nothing malicious. “You made it out alive too. Worth celebrating.”

Alex hesitates, then reaches for the flask. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I will. Cheers, Tilghman.” After a last you-sure-this-is-okay glance up at Tench, he tilts his head back and takes a long swallow. Splutters. His tail bristles.

“Okay, okay, don’t drink the whole thing, greedy, we gotta make this stretch,” says Tilghman good-naturedly, and Alex coughs and passes it back.

“Khh—fuck—what is that?”

“I have a friend in town, he hooked me up. It’s good, right? Not that cheap shit they have at the commissary.”

“Good, sure. Jesus. Your friend’s trying to poison us, man.”

“Lightweight.” Tilghman moves on around the circle, and Alex shakes himself. Licks his chops where the alcohol has dribbled into his fur. He flattens his ears and perks them back up, a gesture that John is starting to recognize as the canine equivalent of a little frown.

“Did that stuff smell weird to you?”

“No? I mean, it was a little strong, sure, but it was just booze. Nothing unusual. You have got a better nose than me, though. Maybe you’re just not used to the smell yet?”

“That could be it. I guess I haven’t had the chance to, ah, indulge, not in a second. Not since the battle, and before that was full moon, and before that there was all that work I was trying to get done, and before that was, well…Schuylkill.”

“You’re overdue for it, is what I’m hearing.”

“Definitely overdue.” Alex nods decisively. The firelight dances on his face, and for a moment John can discern the vague shape of his smile as it used to be.

The flask makes another half-pass around the circle before being pronounced empty. A bottle of wine is produced, as well as a surprisingly large amount of rye whiskey, the provenance of which Harrison will not expound on outside raised eyebrows and a conspiratorial wink. John is drawn into a game of cards; Alex, in classic form, offers loud criticism on every move made without apparent allegiance to any player, until John gets up and offers his seat on the grounds that well, if you think you can do so much better, show me. Alex plunks himself down confidently, takes up John’s hand, promptly loses several dollars, and swaps out again just in time for John to make a spectacularly bad play and be subjected to a hearty swig of the rye whiskey. It really does taste like Harrison’s been distilling it under his bed. Alex cackles at John’s distress.

“Oughta make you take a shot, too, Hammie,” says Harrison, “you were the one who screwed him over, throwing away all his good cards like that. Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?” He ruffles Alex’s fur and John tenses, because Alex does not appreciate that sort of treatment from people who aren’t John most of the time, but Alex leans into the touch, albeit with his nose wrinkled in disgust at Harrison’s suggestion.

“No thanks,” says Alex, cocking his head to give Harrison a better angle, “I’ve heard the horror stories about the shit you bring to parties. Just wondering, have you ever consumed anything a human being could actually drink?” Harrison shoves Alex and calls him a little shit and Alex shoots back motherfucker and John would normally join in at this point, but his throat is still burning. He lets out a sad wheeze.

“What’s that face for?” says Alex, abandoning Harrison and poking his snout at John. “You getting weepy already? Because I am not going to hold you in my arms and pet your hair while you bawl about how one time your daddy bought you the wrong color horse and it ruined your life, not until—what time is it—until at least eleven.”

“Shut up,” John manages.

“Okay, ten-thirty, but that’s just because it’s you, John.”

“Will you fuck off,” says John, and Alex snuffles playfully at John’s cheek in that way he has now, canine signifier for just kidding, man, it was only a joke. John feels a little hot under the collar. The drink, right. Alex draws back with a grimace.

“Eurgh, Christ.”

“What’d I do now?”

“Nothing, just—ugh.” Alex looks up furtively, sees that Harrison has moved away, then says, “I didn’t wanna be mean to Harrison, but that shit he made you drink smells like death. You’re lucky you don’t have my nose right now. And don’t,” Alex adds quickly, “do not make a joke about the size of my nose, now or normally, I’ve heard ‘em all and they stopped being funny when I was about six, so.”

“If that was you being nice to Harrison…” Alex makes a grumpy not-quite-growl noise. “Duly noted about the nose though. It is dainty and beautiful and that will be my final word on the matter.”

“I’ll accept it,” Alex says, with haughty magnanimity. “God, I can’t wait to have a proper face again. You know how much of a headache it is trying to focus on the General’s stupid squiggly handwriting down the length of this fucking thing? If I end up needing spectacles before the end of this war, I’m sending him the bill.” He prods at his muzzle. John swallows down the just a couple more weeks and it’ll be gone that wants to come out, which Alex must have heard enough times at this point to render it completely meaningless.

“Well, you don’t need to think about the General’s correspondence right now,” he says instead. “Or for the rest of the night. Come on, you wanna see if Tilghman’s got anything else to drink that isn’t, fuckin’, lantern oil or whatever?”

“I,” says Alex, “am pacing myself. Enjoying myself in moderation, as it were.”

“Ahh, he was right, you lightweight! You get all in my face about being a sad drunk, but three drinks’d knock you on your furry ass, admit it.”

“It’s not the booze! It’s—” Alex frowns. “I’d just be careful about whatever that stuff is, that’s all. I feel a little. I don’t know. It must’ve been cut with something. Just...”

“Don’t trust Tilghman and his sketchy friends. Got it. Come find me when you’re ready to stop being a pissbaby, though, yeah?”

“Fuck off, Laurens,” says Alex, baring his teeth in a not-quite-grin, and John smirks and makes a rude gesture at him and saunters toward a likely-looking knot of colleagues.

The drink continues to flow (luckily supplemented by individuals other than Harrison), and the gathering starts to take on the air of a decent party. Alex drifts back toward John eventually. Whatever malady he’d been complaining of has been forgotten, and he’s high-spirited, almost silly, and he pants happily as he drapes himself over John. The smell of liquor is heavy on his breath. Good, thinks John, means he found something he could stomach, and he scratches at Alex’s ribs through his jacket and waistcoat to show no hard feelings.

“Hoooow stands the glass a-roooound, me boys,” croons McHenry at a lull in the conversation, standing and spreading his arms like he’s the lead tenor in an opera. Someone chucks their glove at his head; several other someones fall in on various harmonies. Alex joins lustily on the middle split while John trips along above, trying to ignore Gibbs’ cheerful tone-deafness. They’ve made it into the second verse, the bit where people start forgetting the words, when Alex tilts his head back on an ascending line and breaks into a ringing howl. The melody wavers with a series of titters.

“OooooOOOOOwwwhhhhyy, soldiers, why,” bellows Tilghman in a clownish imitation of Alex, and Alex redoubles his efforts in apparent appreciation, his howl taking on the shrill wailing quality of a coyote’s. Soon half the aides are trying to out-howl Alex, not that he appears to notice; whenever he pauses for breath he simply lays his head to one side and frisks his tail as if listening to a pleasant tune. And then he’s off again, howling at a pitch so piercing they must be able to hear it behind British lines.

The song limps to an end, somehow, met with general rowdy applause. “And another round for our prima donna!” says McHenry, gesturing grandly, and Alex stands and executes a very wobbly bow, his tail wagging in delight. He collapses back into his seat next to John, fixes him with a wolfish grin, leans forward and licks him from chin to hairline. The other aides hoot and holler in glee and John goes argh and wipes at the slobber on his face with his sleeve. This does not appear to deter Alex, who comes after him and tries to lick him again on the ear.

“You’re fucking drunk,” says John, pushing Alex away with a snort of laughter.

“Noooooooo,” says Alex, still with that stupid grin on his face. “Definitely not drunk. Nope. Only had one.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m not lying! Ask Tilghman, ask anyone, you know, you were right next to me the whole time. Only one. ‘S the truth.” Alex burps, shudders all over as with a sudden chill. “Cold out here tonight, yeah? Or is that just me?”

“How are you cold? You’ve got all that fur under your jacket still and you’re sitting right next to the fire.” Alex mumbles something and goes for another lick, but John puts his hand in Alex’s face before he can get too touchy-feely. Flinches at the cold wetness of his nose—no, not wet, the leathery skin there cool but unusually dry. He’s panting very hard despite that, John notices, hard enough for his tongue to loll out and his chin to dip forward slightly with each breath.

Alex shakes off John’s hand and sits there, just panting. “I don’t feel so great,” he says at last.

“Well, take a break, then, huh? We still have to work tomorrow, can’t have the General catching his best aide hungover.”

“Mhm.” Alex barely seems to have heard John. He stares glassy-eyed at the campfire for a long minute. His panting takes on a different tone, further back in the throat than before, and his ears are pinned. He coughs once. John feels a little twist of worry in his gut.

“Okay, you know what, Alex, up, come on, let’s get you some air,” he says, hauling on Alex’s arm. Alex rises to his feet, swaying.

“Wher’goin’,” he mumbles.

“Just away from the fire a little bit, get you out of the smoke. That’s it.”

“I’m—don’t—” Alex stops dead in his tracks. Licks his muzzle. Pants and pants and pants.

“Alex…?”

Alex doubles over and vomits at his own feet.

John leaps away with a curse, as do a couple of the nearest aides, and Alex crumples to his knees, still retching. “Can’t hold his liquor!” shouts someone from the other side of the campfire, to a lively chorus of jeers.

“Christ, Alex, I thought you said you only had one drink!” says John. “Here—McHenry, help me get him up before he pukes on someone.”

“I did,” slurs Alex, letting John and McHenry set him on his feet and steer him away from the campfire. “Just one. From Tilghman.” He goes huuurgh again, and John and McHenry drag him over to a convenient tree so he can lean on it and empty his stomach without dirtying anyone’s boots.

“Are you gonna tell him he’s not fooling anyone, or should I?” says McHenry, rather loudly.

“Just one,” Alex repeats, as though he’d never stopped talking. He makes a token attempt at straightening up. “Not drunk. Can’t be. It doesn’t feel, it hurts, it—” He staggers hard into John with a groan that has a real edge of pain to it. John catches him clumsily, one-armed, and McHenry grabs the back of Alex’s jacket before the two of them topple over. Alex clutches at his stomach in abject misery. “I said, didn’t I say it was poison?” he wails. “Tilghman’s trying to kill us.”

“I…do not think Tilghman is trying to kill us,” says John, in a brave stab at a reasonable tone of voice.

“Gonna kill him.”

“Do not kill Tilghman.”

“I’m gonna do it, fuck that guy, I’m gonna…” Alex takes several steps in the approximate direction of the campfire before gagging and losing steam. He sits down heavily on the ground, puts his head between his knees. Lets out a couple of wet coughs.

“Ham?” McHenry asks.

“…I would like to go home now,” says Alex in a small voice.

“Takes a while to get back from the Caribbean from he—oof!”

“Not funny, Mac.” John removes his elbow from McHenry’s stomach. “Yeah, probably for the best. Come on, let’s get you in bed.”

Alex looks up at John with the most piteous golden puppy eyes John has ever seen him deliver, fists his hands in the fabric of his waistcoat. “Hurts,” he whimpers. McHenry giggles.

“I know, Alex,” says John.

“…It was only one.”

“Jesus, I know, you said it a million times!” Alex folds his ears back and whines, and John checks himself, lowers his voice. “I…sorry. Sorry. But you’ll feel better if you get some rest, promise.”

“You good to get him back there on your own, Laurens?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. We’re good. Come on, Alex, stand up.” Alex makes another tragic face and tries to scuttle off on all fours with his tail between his legs, but John manages to pull him to his feet. “Here, lean on me—no, Alex, headquarters is this way—there we go…”

They’re barely out of sight of the campfire when Alex has to pull over and throw up again. Just this morning he’d been all excited that his fur was starting to grow out enough to make a real queue; now, John does his best to hold the scraggly strands back and glumly imagines the mess Alex (and by extension, John) will have to deal with tomorrow morning.

I attacked a goddamn house with a sword two days ago, John thinks. Alex makes a noise that John can’t even begin to describe, heaves and drools. There is no way in hell I am qualified to be the responsible friend right now.

—

“I could have told you that it was too close to the full moon for you to be drinking,” says Lafayette severely.

Alex whines and pulls the pillow down over his head. “All right, I get it, I did wrong, won’t do it again, now can you please stop talking so loudly?”

“I will not. Not until you promise me you will make a study of what you ought not to be eating on your wolf days.”

“It’s—urgh—it's just a hangover, Laf.”

“It is not! You are more than half a wolf still, and there are things we can’t—the drink, it’s too strong for us, it doesn’t make us properly drunk, it makes us sick. Could bring you near to dying, if you had more than one at the wrong time of the moon.” Lafayette pauses. “Not that…not that I know this from experience. It is simply what I have heard.”

“Oh, yes. Our dear friend Gilbert, who is the very picture of self-control and common sense,” says John sweetly. “Wouldn’t dream of accusing you.” Lafayette flaps a hand in poorly-concealed embarrassment.

“Whatever, whatever, it doesn’t matter, but if you die in so stupid a way as this, I swear to you, Hamilton…” Laf trails off, wrinkles his nose in disgust. “And it reeks of vomit in here.”

“Alex threw up on himself,” John supplies helpfully.

“Traitor, why’d you tell him that, he doesn’t need to know,” Alex moans from under the pillow.

“You had better get down to the river for a wash, then. It takes forever to get a stink like that out of one’s fur, and since you can’t even change to get some relief from it—”

“Yes, thank you for the reminder that I’m ugly, this is an angle that I had never considered before, certainly not every time I look in a goddamned mirror.”

“Who said anything about ugly? Did I?”

“You did not,” says John. “Someone’s just a little sensitive, sounds like.”

“Shut up. And you were thinking it,” grumbles Alex. He lifts the pillow just enough for the tip of his nose to poke out from underneath. “If we’re all done lecturing me, then…”

Lafayette jabs a finger at Alex. “If I catch you poisoning yourself again before new moon week, I shall bite you so hard—”

“Yeah, someone beat you to the punch there, not a great threat,” says Alex, with an ironic waggle of his tail under the blankets.

“I will tell the General you’ve been making an ass of yourself—”

“What is he, my dad?”

“I’ll—I will—he—you—” Lafayette lets out a truly terrifying snarl of frustration, turns on his heel, and storms out of the room. John can hear him cursing to himself all the way down the hall. It’s a testament to how bad Alex feels that he doesn’t even snicker at having gotten a rise out of Laf, just whines quietly to himself.

“I can go tell the General you’re, uh...indisposed,” John offers after a while.

“I’m not indisposed, I’m gonna be fine just as soon as I—urk—” Alex sits bolt upright in bed and claps a hand over his mouth. John scrambles out of the line of fire, but the nausea apparently passes after a few seconds, leaving Alex to drag his hand down his chin and pull a ferocious scowl. “Unbelievable. Unbe-fucking-lievable. What kind of world is this, where I can’t even get a stiff drink for half the month without almost killing myself? I’m going to find the wolf that bit me and tear him to pieces.”

“So dramatic,” says John, half-joking, half-nervous; it’s always a little uncomfortable to remember that Alex could actually tear someone to pieces now, if he put his mind to it. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I promise I’ll take you into town for drinks once you’re good for it again. My treat, even.”

“The catch being…”

“I mean, it’s not like it ever took you more than one drink to get sloppy anyway.”

Alex groans and flops back down onto the bed. “I hate you.”

“No you doooooon’t,” John coos, scratching under Alex’s chin. Alex swats his hand away.

“Cut it—you don’t get to use that against me, asshole, not today.” Alex tucks his chin down against his neck and curls up into a ball to ward off further attacks. Doesn’t get very far; his spine’s starting to be the wrong shape for it. “This is bullshit. You shouldn’t be allowed to be conscious and out of bed and functional before me. It goes against the natural order of things. God’s gonna hit HQ with a lightning bolt for this.”

“You could at least say thank you for not letting me puke myself to death last night, John.”

“…Thank you for not letting me puke myself to death last night,” says Alex grudgingly.

“And for getting me back to bed safe.”

“And for getting me back to—yeah, okay, actually thank you, though. I was in a bad way, everything was all fuzzy, I couldn’t think straight. You saw me, I didn’t even wanna stand up and walk like a person. I thought Tilghman was trying to assassinate me, for Christ’s sake! I could’ve done any number of stupid things in that state. Fallen in the river and drowned, or wandered into camp and gotten myself shot. So. I owe you.”

“You remember all that?”

“Yeah. ’S how I know I wasn’t drunk. It sucked, but I remember every second.” Alex uncurls enough to grimace ruefully at John. “…Sorry I kept trying to lick you. It made a lot of sense at the time.”

“It’s fine. It wasn’t so bad until you were doing it after you’d already been throwing up for half an hour.”

“I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t bring that up.” With a long sigh, Alex pushes himself out of bed at last, stretches himself down to his tailtip, and starts gathering up the scattered pieces of his uniform and pulling them on. “Okay. I’m going for a bath. Get this filth out of my fur so Laf doesn’t spend all day glaring at me.” He pauses with his trousers half pulled up. “And if you see the General, yeah, go ahead and tell him I’m indisposed. Make up some story. Tell him it’s a wolf thing, he usually backs off for those. Gets all weird and grim. Er, weirder and grimmer than usual, I mean.”

“Doesn’t sound very convincing to me.”

“Then help me think of something better. If I have to sit through a lecture on moderation and self-control and manners befitting a gentleman and an officer right now, on top of everything else…” Alex pulls his tail through the hole in the seat of his pants, scrubs at his face to unstick the worst of the matted fur. “Anyway. If I’m not back soon, assume the headache didn’t go away and I decided to put myself out of my misery.”

“Dramatic,” says John again. “Don’t drown yourself.”

“Can’t make any promises.” With a last parting frisk of his tail, Alex steps out into the hallway. John hears his toenails clicking on the floorboards as he makes for the stairs. The noises stop partway down the hall.

Alex retches audibly.

“Really, Alex?”

“Shut up!”

#swan talks #hamilton for ts #wereham au #look i like....i have lost all objectivity with this. i'm sorry.#it's ridiculous and bad and i just don't CARE anymore i just do not CARE #Let The Werewolf Get Drunk And Do Not Bother Me About It For I Am Merely A Husk Of A Woman

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swan-archive · 8 years

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@me would you perhaps like to stop being obnoxious?? would you like to shut up for one SECOND of your life????

[listens intently for several seconds]

she said no, have some stupid-ass modern au wereham tropey fluff

John’s not here.

Alex thinks maybe at some point he’ll get used to the way he wakes up now, all at once and with instinct screaming at him before his higher brain functions kick in. Not tonight, though, and he jerks awake and sits up in bed staring stupidly around at the empty room before he catches the sound of a chair scraping against the kitchen floor and notices the light shining through the slightly-ajar door. Chill, Alex, he tells himself, take it easy, he’s just getting a glass of water, he’s allowed, and curls back up on the bed.

John persists in his absence, though, and after several minutes Alex gets tired of waiting. He glances at the clock on the bedside table. 2:48 AM. Not like John to be up and about at this hour. Boy likes his sleep. And now Alex is wide awake, so he pushes himself out of bed with a groan and shuffles into the kitchen on his bandy legs.

John’s there, sitting at the table, scrolling through his phone with that blank look on his face that means he’s genuinely upset. Doesn’t hear Alex as he comes into the room and leans against the doorframe.

“So, bad dream, or…?” John jumps and slaps his phone down on the table.

“Shit! Alex, don’t sneak up on me like that!” says John.

“I literally walked right through the door in front of your face, but sure, let’s go with sneaked up on you.”

“You’re quiet on your paws,” John grouses. “And not all of us have your hearing.” His fingers flutter nervously over his phone. Alex cocks his head.

“You waiting for a call or something? At three in the morning?”

“No, no, uh, it’s just…” John looks at his feet. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all, and I didn’t wanna wake you up tossing and turning. Brought the phone out with me so I could at least catch some Pokemon while I sat here. Really, that’s it.”

“Okay, first of all, you’re a worse liar than I am, second of all, I know for a fact you haven’t touched Pokemon Go since, like, November, and even if you did this apartment complex only spawns Pidgeys.”

John grimaces. “Am I that transparent?”

“An open book, Mr. Laurens.” Alex taps the phone with a claw. “Can I?”

John presses his lips together. “Nothing to see,” he says.

“Gotta be something.” Alex picks up the phone, unlocks it (with some difficulty; touchscreens tend not to like his paw pads). Blinks down at the screen. Text backlog, “Dad” at the top. The most recent text from Henry is something about John’s sister Marta. Apparently her soccer team is doing really well this season.

“Yeah,” says John dully, as if that explains everything.

“No, not ‘yeah,’ I don’t get it. Your sister plays soccer, and that’s…bad, somehow?”

“Check the date stamp.” Alex does. A bit more than two weeks ago.

“Two weeks ago, that was…oh. Oh.”

“Yeah. Just before he found out about. Um.”

“About me, right.”

“And he hasn’t, he hasn’t—not that I’m, I shouldn’t complain, it’s not like we were ever on the best of terms anyway—maybe it’s better like this, he always gets up my ass for not responding to his six million texts a day, but…”

“But. Oh. But he hasn’t been talking to you.”

John nods. Feeling sick at heart, Alex scrolls down to the bottom of the text log. A series of texts from John, over the past two weeks, ranging from a multi-paragraph explanation starting with Dad, I’m sorry we scared you the other night, but I just wanted to let you know what the deal is with Alex, it’s really not as bad as you think… down to a sad little one-line i’m sorry. please call me.

No expression on John’s face. “It’s, I think he’d been looking for an excuse, you know? Like, it looks bad if he cuts his gay son off entirely, so he has to pretend he’s cool with me being the way I am, but the second he has a convenient excuse—”

“Like me?”

“—he can just go ahead and call me sick and disgusting with impunity and drop me without feeling bad…” John catches sight of the look on Alex’s face. Cuts himself off. “Shit, Alex, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, it’s. I just figure I’d be a pretty convenient excuse, if that’s the case.” Alex scratches at his own furry chin with what he hopes is a nonchalant air. He’s more or less where he’d been when Henry last came a-calling, which is to say, objectively hideous. Not exactly not even a little human, but human enough to turn one’s stomach. No wonder Henry had lost his shit. Alex probably would too, if he found out his child was dating the love child of Chewbacca and were-Michael Jackson from the “Thriller” video.

John’s starting to get an expression back, and that expression looks an awful lot like guilt, so Alex decides to head it off. “Look, I know I’m—ugly, don’t argue with that, it’s true, but you didn’t do anything wrong here. And your dad’s not stupid—”

“His political views beg to differ.”

“…Okay, he has some wrong ideas, but he loves you, John, I know he does.” Alex sets down the phone, takes John’s hand in his. “He has to figure it out. He has to know that he’s the one being awful to you for something that is not your fault. And once he’s done throwing this, I don’t know, this tantrum, he’ll get over himself. And it’ll be fine. And if that means I have to make myself scarce for a while, that’s fine too.”

“That is not fine. I’m not breaking up with you because of something this stupid.”

“Did I say that you should?” And, okay, Alex had heavily implied it, but hearing John say that, even to deny that it would ever happen, makes his heart start racing with panic. He covers his tracks. “All I meant was, I stay away from him except for new moon, let him get used to the idea of me. He’ll come around. People do. Eliza did, right?”

“Eliza had a crush on you. Not the best sample size.”

“R-right.” Alex’s ears droop. “Uh. Still. He’s your dad. My point stands.”

“He’s stubborn.”

“So are you. I seem to recall the two of you got into a fight over whether you were going to vet school or to study poli sci. Which of you won that one, again…?”

“Okay, okay, I get it.”

“And, by the way, I’m stubborn too. The two of us can outlast him. Yeah? We can, John.” John picks at his phone case and declines to agree. Stubborn, right. Close the subject before John can get an argument together. “Anyway, staying up and worrying about it isn’t gonna fix anything.”

“The irony of you trying to tell me that is kind of incredible.” Alex decides to let that pass without comment. It’s a good sign that John has brightened up enough to be sarcastic.

“How about I make us some tea? Help you relax. You know, I was so pissed when you threw out the coffee, but after our, uh, our little adventure with it I’m really starting to warm up to the idea of some nice herbal brews. And it’s nice for when you can’t sleep, right?” Alex walks over and opens the spice cupboard, peering at their selection. “What’ll you have? We’ve got chamomile, mint, lemon balm, rooibos, um…since when have we had nettle tea?”

“Oh, yeah. The lady at the co-op talked me into it when she saw me looking at non-caffeinated tea. I tried to tell her no thanks, but she was really excited about it, and I kind of felt bad, and apparently nettle’s okay for dogs…”

“Huh. Nettle, like stinging nettle?” Alex pulls the lid off the tin and snuffles at it. “I honestly would not have thought you could make tea out of that stuff. Wouldn’t it hurt your throat to drink it?”

“Yeah, uh. I think I’ll stick with chamomile for tonight.”

“Probably a good move. Save the culinary adventures for another day.” Alex putters around the kitchen, filling the electric kettle and fetching mugs and carefully picking two teabags out of the box. Keeps watch on John out of the corner of his eye. John’s phased back into obsessively checking his phone. Call logs—text logs—call logs—text logs. Alex knows he’s just offered to keep a low profile around Henry, but at the moment the idea of, not tearing his throat out necessarily, but shaking him up at least a little bit, is sounding pretty good. He stops himself when he feels a growl starting to rumble in his chest.

Not useful, Alex. Not human, Alex. He glares at the kettle and takes deep breaths until the water boils, pours out two mugs and dunks the teabags. John looks up from his phone for a moment when Alex sets his mug down on the table in front of him, but gets wrapped up again, this time in what looks like the archive of Facebook Messenger messages between him and Henry. The likelihood of there being anything useful in there is vanishingly small, but Alex doesn’t have the heart to scold just now, not when John looks the way he does.

Alex laps at his mug of tea, burns his tongue. Decides to let it sit for a while. He brushes his knuckles against John’s, and John sighs and at least switches his phone to his other hand so he can run his fingers over Alex’s paw pads. Alex chuckles a little.

“Well, isn’t this disgusting.”

“What?”

“Look at us. Sitting here, holding hands, drinking tea in the kitchen at—” Alex glances over at the microwave display, “—at 3:05 AM. We’re like a stereotype of a couple. I’m gonna throw up.”

That teases a flicker of smile out of John. “It’s pretty bad,” he allows.

“Well, as long as we’re being gross and couple-y—” Alex reaches out and snags the phone out of John’s hand.

“Hey!”

“No, no, I’m doing a thing,” says Alex, holding the phone away from John at arm’s length. He finds Spotify, taps in a quick search, selects. Soft brass starts playing out the phone speakers. John raises an eyebrow.

“Really, Alex?”

“Yeah, come on.” Alex stands up and executes a little sashay around the kitchen, his tail swishing back and forth. “Frank Sinatra’s a national treasure. Up, John. We’re dancing now.” He holds out his hand, pulls a meaningful face. John rolls his eyes, but allows Alex to pull him out of his chair and into a clumsy spin.

“You’re an awful dancer.”

“Shut up, I’m amazing. Yes, you’re loooooooove-ly, with your smile so warm,” croons Alex, hooking an arm around John’s waist and waltzing him around. “No, I’m leading now, let me—hm, hm, nothing for me but to loooooooooove you…”

The smile in question lights up John’s face properly, and Alex trails off, his heart suddenly feeling far too big for his chest. Three in the morning, John’s hair is a horrible bird’s nest, he’s wearing a shirt that Alex can smell he grabbed off the top of his hamper, and he’s beautiful. Beautiful. And Alex is—slightly more than half a wolf. He ducks his head, careful to fold his ears back so they don’t hit John in the nose.

“What is it?”

“It’s a joke, see,” says Alex, striving to keep his tone light, “because the way I look tonight is, uh, really fucking bad.”

“Alex.” John tilts Alex’s head back. Alex expects him to go off on one of his you are beautiful just the way you are speeches, but all he does is kiss Alex, just where the cool leathery skin of his nose meets velvety fur. Alex sniffs a little, shakes his head.

“Um. You wanna, you wanna lead for a little bit?”

“Sure.” There’s a moment of shuffling hands around, and then John steers Alex into a much more graceful two-step. His hand drifts down to Alex’s hip, and he strokes his thumb against the fur poking out where Alex’s t-shirt has ridden up. Alex feels his tail start to wag, and wills it (unsuccessfully) to get ahold of itself.

The song slows to its dreamy finish, and John actually dips Alex, looking at him through his eyelashes and smiling oh so tenderly. It’s quite romantic, until Alex’s paws lose purchase on the linoleum and he scrabbles for balance, clinging to John to keep from falling over. John rights him, and they both burst into laughter.

“Sorry, Fred Astaire,” Alex says, grinning. “Get yourself a better Ginger Rogers if you’re trying to do the fancy stuff.” He moves to disentangle himself from John’s arms.

“Hey, wait a second, don’t run off just yet. You chose the first dance, so it’s my turn to pick, isn’t it?” Alex shrugs and gestures, go ahead. John grabs his phone and queues up another song. It starts up, all echoey guitars and whispery alt-pop vocals.

“This doesn’t sound like a jazz standard to me,” Alex complains.

“Oh, shush. You never said there were rules to this. Now come here.” John reaches out and pulls Alex close, wraps his arms around Alex’s shoulders and buries his face in Alex’s fur. Alex sighs and relaxes against John’s chest. He’s so warm, and he smells so good, smells like home and smells like mate and smells, above all, like John.

“When you say I love you…” John sings softly into Alex’s ear. He’s a much better singer than Alex. He lays his hand on the back of Alex’s head, strokes at the thick not-quite-fur not-quite-hair there. Alex grips him a little tighter. Yes, Alex loves him. Alex loves him, and Alex needs him, and Alex would let him go in a heartbeat if John wanted something more than dancing barefoot in his kitchen with a mangy werewolf.

Would let him go, even though Alex knows to do so would surely kill him.

“I love you,” Alex whispers against John’s neck. He should say more, I’m sorry about your dad, I’m sorry I’m like this, I’m sorry you’re saddled with me, but he can’t quite manage to choke it out. “I love you.”

“Yeah, that’s the song,” John teases. He toys with Alex’s ear, and Alex whines and melts a little more. “But I love you too.”

Alex pulls back just enough to tilt his chin up and kiss John. Proper kiss, not a doggy lick or a nuzzle. Ever so careful to keep his teeth out of the way. John says mm and leans into it and holds Alex, holds him, holds him, and for a while it doesn’t matter what Alex is. He’s loved. That’s all he needs right now.

The song has a long outro, but Alex doesn’t care, and John doesn’t seem to either. By the time it fades into silence, they’re not dancing so much as swaying together, not to any particular rhythm, just enjoying being close. They stand there for a long moment in each others’ arms.

Then, John yawns so hard Alex hears his jaw creak.

“Tired?”

“Hmm,” says John. He swipes at his eyes. “Yeah. Finally. Come to bed with me?”

“Our tea, John.”

“Oh. Yeah. ’S fine. We can spare two bags. We’ve got more.” John pulls at Alex’s hand, and Alex lets himself lean forward and lick John’s cheek.

“Okay, bossy. Bedtime.”

They switch off the kitchen light and Alex, with his superior night vision, leads John back into the bedroom. John hums under his breath as they climb into bed.

“Lovely,” he sings, almost sighs, pulling the covers up. “With your smile so warm...” He traces a thumb over Alex’s lower lip. “And your cheeks so soft...”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Alex grumbles, before John can start mussing the fur on his face. He rolls over so John can spoon up behind him—makes him feel safe to have something at his back. “Go to sleep, Sinatra.”

“Alex?”

“Hmm.”

“I do think you’re beautiful. I really mean that.”

“You’re right. I’m pretty sexy at new moon.”

“No, I—you’re beautiful. You are. Doesn’t matter when. Just wanted you to know.”

“Oh.” There’s a joke in there, somewhere, something about furries and DeviantArt accounts, but Alex can’t bring himself to make it. A protest in there too, I’m not I’m not how can you say that please don’t lie to me just tell me I’m hideous. Can’t put that one out there either. “Good night, John,” is all he says, around the tightness in his chest. Squeezes John’s hand in his, runs his other hand over his own face, the fur there already finer than it had been when he’d gone to bed. Breathes slow.

Drifts off, warm arms around him and soft music in his ears.

#swan talks #hamilton for ts #wereham au #don't.....look.....at this........please

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