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It is time.
It is finally time.
She takes a long breath, lets it out. Then, in one swift movement, she unlocks the door and throws it wide open. Stares out into the dark hallway with her head held high, watching as her bloodthirsty son prowls from around the corner.
Reese’s body has grown so much he has to bend almost in half to fit in the narrow space between the walls.
He tilts his head, his eyes two yellow dots set deep in two black voids. You know exactly what he’s looking at. Your knees feel weak, and the weight of the sleep darts you’re gripping with your trembling fingers is so heavy it drags your entire hand to the floor.
You’re not scared, though. You should be… but you’re not.
“Hand over the tranquilizers, this is our shot!” Doctor Kelly shouts to you, one of her hands reaching back to where she knows you’re standing.
Unblinking, you stare at her open palm. This woman spoke with you, shared her thoughts and fears with you, had no choice but to believe in your common sense, in your willingness to do what’s best. In your willingness to put her deformed beyond any recognition child into deep sleep so that she can later drag him here, to this small room without windows, without an exit, where he won’t be able to harm anyone anymore.
…but she’s wrong.
You glance up at the monstrous form that’s approaching the doorway. A mass of shifting, stretching muscles, bones and skin. So tall, so menacing… and so thin, so malnourished, so neglected it makes your stomach turn in disgust.
She will lock him up here, and then he will wake up here, and he will keep waking up here every single day, day after day after day until he’s finally lucky enough to die. No more privacy of his spacious room in the basement, no more canvases, no more movies, no more ways of expressing himself except for maybe scratching the wall with his nails while he slowly descends into madness.
Or perhaps his mother will be too scared to keep him alive, and one cozy evening she will put him to sleep and carry him out and burn him to a crisp while he writhes in agony.
No. You’re not scared. You’re trembling because you've made your choice, and you’re not about to change your mind.
Your fingers grip the tranquilizers tighter. You take a step back.
Doctor Kelly’s fingers twitch, her eyes looking right at you. For a second you think you see the corners of her mouth rise in disbelief, and then she’s not looking at you anymore, but at her son who’s lifting her off the ground like a rag doll.
Reese opens his maw, and you know what’s about to happen, but you can’t turn away even though you really want to. What you’re about to witness will haunt you for the rest of your days, but this outcome is the result of your choice too, and you won’t let him carry the burden alone.
So you watch. You watch as he tears her apart, biting off her upper part first and then devouring both of her legs, one after another. The room is completely silent save for the thundering sounds of his teeth gnawing at his mother’s carcass, which ironically enough reminds you that this is the first unsupervised meal Reese has ever had since he was locked up in this house.
You think you might be crying. Your free hand raises to your cheek on its own accord and comes away wet, and you rub at your eyes with haste because you can’t allow yourself to be weak. Not now, not when Reese might need you to ground him.
Eventually, the feast is over. Reese’s murderous intent seems to significantly quiet down after he’s done eating, and his body slowly morphs into something much closer to his human form, his muscles and bones shifting and shrinking until they’re set in their proper places. He sinks to the floor, clutching his injured shoulder. Now that he has killed his jailer, his own mother, he seems… small. Fragile. Lost in a way a slave is lost when they’re suddenly set free forever.
“Sorry you had to see that,” he says, his voice raspy, and you just can’t remain where you are.
You drag your heavy legs towards him and fall to your knees in front of him. From up close Reese looks even more shaken, his eyes bright and sad, doctor Kelly’s viscera dripping from the corners of his mouth. He flinches when you wrap your hands around him, and for a moment you fear he’ll push you away, but his hands embrace you instead and press you close to his chest. Contrary to what you saw mere minutes ago, he’s gentle.
You’re not the only one to cry tonight. Reese’s shoulders shake, and he asks for forgiveness once more, something you don’t believe you’re entitled to give, so you press your face to the crook of his neck and nod without uttering a word. You can’t begin to imagine how you’re going to tell him about what his mother shared with you before she died - just thinking about it makes your eyes sting – but you will, later, and you will convince him that what he did was necessary, and if he will call himself a monster, you will tell him that he’s not the only one.
For now, you embrace him. For now, you console him.
When he releases you, you understand what he’s about to do even though he hasn’t uttered a word yet. You drop your hands to your sides and let him run, allow him to get out of his prison for the first time in years. He promises he will find you soon, and you trust him, but it’s difficult to get up and go outside anyway.
That’s how Wayne finds you: sitting on the floor with your arms around your knees, swaying back and forth and staring into the dark hallway. He cocks his head to the side.
“Stand up.”
You stop swaying. It feels like you’re going to collapse if you try standing up, but you force yourself to try. Wayne watches as you stumble to your feet and makes no movement whatsoever to help you, which is probably for the best.
“I’ll walk you home,” he says. That’s probably for the best too – like Reese, you need to get out of here at least for a while, to catch some fresh air and put your thoughts into order. You follow Wayne out of the room and down the hallway, but when you find yourself standing at the front door, a thick, unpleasant feeling settles in your gut.
What if Reese comes back while you’re gone? What if he breaks down, alone, where you can’t reach him? Or worse, what if Wayne decides to finish the job and returns to find him here in his most vulnerable state? You never learned how their fight went while you were fetching the tranquilizers, but you know that Reese’s shoulder is still bearing the mark of whatever the hell crawled out of Wayne’s sleeve. You also know that Wayne is strong, and who knows, maybe your absence will make him much stronger.
Wayne notices the way you lag behind him and turns to look at you.
“Will you try to kill Reese again?” You ask before he has a chance to utter something, your eyes trained on where you think his own are hiding behind the veil.
Wayne takes a few seconds to respond, as if he’s busy weighing his words. You suspect that’s not the case though, as he always seems to have all of his answers ready no matter what you say.
“You’ve gotten so attached to him. What a shame…” He says at last, with no particular emotion intact, and that’s what you were fearing to hear most. “If I don’t put him out of his misery, someone else will, eventually. Your infatuation will fade with time.”
You feel the familiar trembling return, setting deep in your bones. Wayne thinks you’re being driven by some feeble romantic attraction that can be easily discarded, but the true nature of your connection to Reese runs far deeper than that. There, in that small white room, you chose to help him end a life. You chose Reese’s freedom over the safety of everyone else in this town, chose to embrace the beast both mentally and physically.
You chose to become a monster yourself, and bonded with him for life.
You swallow the lump that formed in your throat god knows when, blink away the sting from the corners of your eyes.
“It’s not that simple,” you nearly choke out. “Back there, I… I made a difficult choice. I stuck to what I thought was best – still do – and had to change myself in a way I never thought was possible. So if you go after Reese now, if anyone does… God, if any of you succeed in putting him down, I… I don’t think I’ll be able to live with myself. Not with the price that came with his freedom. Not with how much his existence means to me.”
Wayne is facing you fully now. You can’t make out his expression. Again, he takes his time to answer.
“Please,” you whisper, taking a few steps towards him. “He won’t hurt me. He won’t drag me into trouble. All he did back there was try and keep me safe from people he thought wanted to hurt me. He means no harm, I promise-”
“And how do you know that?” Wayne asks. “How do you know he won’t lose control and snap you in half?”
“He won’t,” you insist with all confidence you can muster. “He doesn’t lose control over his own thoughts or actions when he transforms. He follows his emotions, that is true, but he’s sane, he knows exactly who and what he’s dealing with at any given moment. To make him want to kill me, I’d have to… Hell, I don’t even know what I’d have to do in order for him to hate me enough.”
As soon as the words leave your mouth, silence follows. You stand there for a while, motionless in the night, separated by the doorframe of Reese’s home. You won’t back down - Wayne is certainly clever enough to get that… and in all honesty you suspect that your stubbornness is as plain for him to see as your fear.
He looks away from you. Folds his strong hands over his chest.
“That thing better not make the wrong step,” he says, and it feels like a mountain has fallen off of your shoulders. You almost rush towards Wayne to hug him, but he’s already started walking towards the estate, and the best you can do is catch up and follow. Part of you is still reluctant to leave the place behind because you don’t want Reese to potentially come back and deal with the emptiness of his house without you, but you don’t argue. He promised he would find you, so you trust that he will.
The entire way to the estate is silent and doesn’t take a long time – Wayne’s walking pace is pretty fast and so is yours. Once you’re at the front doors, he lingers by the staircase and suggests checking the rest of the building in the morning when your cousin will be too busy taking care of the strike to watch over you. You nod and thank him, then thank him again for giving Reese a chance (he grunts something along the lines of “One wrong step – and he’s dead”), and then slip behind the door where Tabitha is already waiting for you.
Of course, with everything that happened, you completely forgot that you promised her an ice-cream night. You insist on having one anyway, though it’s a lot shorter than you would have liked. Exhausted, you head to your respective bedrooms, and although your body begs for immediate and well-deserved rest, you decide to take a shower first.
The water is pleasantly warm. You wash away the remains of doctor Kelly’s blood that managed to get on your skin (thankfully, they escaped Tabitha’s attention – or perhaps she’s just used to you getting in all sorts of troubles by this point and was too exhausted to pry). The guilt can’t be washed away that easily, but having clean skin feels nice.
Your stomach rumbles when you’re drying your hair with a towel, and belatedly you realize that having only a cup of coffee and a bit of ice-cream for the whole day was a mistake, especially with how little you’ve been eating this week. Perhaps it would do well for you to take a detour to the kitchen and get a PB&J sandwich before you crawl into bed.
You put on the usual t-shirt and shorts you sleep in, then walk down the hallway, careful not to step on any creaky floorboards that will disturb your cousin’s sleep – though you’re pretty sure nothing can wake her up after the horror that was this day. It only takes a couple of minutes to prepare a sandwich, and you’re about to take a huge bite out of it when you hear a sound. It’s faint, almost inaudible, but it’s there. A sound of tapping… or maybe knocking, you’re not certain.
You grab the sandwich and walk out into the foyer. The sound is gone too soon, and you can’t pinpoint where exactly it came from. You know Wayne is out there and will prevent bad things from happening to you, so an intruder is hardly an option... Maybe by some miracle you managed to wake up your cousin? Or is it Wayne himself wandering inside the estate somewhere?
Whatever it is, you peer into the darkness of the room and strain your ears, listening closely in case the sound will repeat itself. It’s dead silent for a long while, and you almost give up and head back to the kitchen when you hear it again. A soft sound of knocking coming from the front door.
You squint your eyes. You want to believe it’s Reese who’s come to fulfill his promise, but between his fierce wish to run away into the night and the whole strike happening in the background you can’t be sure it’s him. On the other hand, if someone with a malicious intent wanted to get inside, Wayne would get them before they ever raised their fist to knock. You’ve seen him in action, you’re convinced.
Maybe Stella? You weren’t able to locate her today, after all…
Slowly, you make your way to the entrance and press your ear to the cool surface of the door - a bit of caution won’t harm you. As expected, nothing catches your attention, and you open it a little bit to look through the gap.
You don’t see anything out of the ordinary at first: everything seems to be calm and immobile like it always is around here during this time of night. And then… Then you spot a slight movement in the bushes that encircle the stairway that leads directly to you. Something in there shifts, then freezes – right at the bottom of the stairs. Your eyes zero in on it, and you frown, wondering if you should address whatever is hiding in there or retreat into the safety of your home.
“Hey,” you eventually call out, quietly but firmly, and the bushes rustle in response, spreading apart and revealing a mop of messy black hair and then the rest of Reese’s head and torso. He looks… inhuman, you think. Not the way he looked when he was dealing with doctor Kelly, but you also don’t recall his jaw being this wide before he first started to transform, or his canines protruding so much. His eyes are glowing bright yellow too, watching you from the dark.
“Hey,” he says back. Even his voice hasn’t lost its unnatural undertone.
You open the door wider. No matter his looks, he’s always welcome under your roof.
“Want to come in?” you ask, taking in more of his appearance as he carefully steps out from his hiding spot. He definitely hasn’t been back to the clinic yet - or if he has, he didn’t bother to wash off blood or to put on any fresh clothes. Reese’s chest is, in fact, still bare, which can’t be good with the current outside temperature.
“I was hoping for that,” he admits, climbing up the stairs. His limbs are elongated, and his forearms are connected to his sides with thin membranes. The tail is present as well, swaying from left to right behind him.
It’s weird to see him move. It’s like he’s trying to apply a familiar set of patterns to a new frame that wasn’t created with any of those patterns in mind. The most curious thing about it all is that he doesn’t even seem to notice something is off, or maybe he does but can’t figure out which angle to approach it from.
“I couldn’t find it in me to go back home,” he says when he’s standing in front of you. Towering over you. You have to strain your neck to look him in the eye. “And I thought maybe I could come here instead. You did invite me to stay with you, and it felt like you didn’t want me gone after I… you know. So here I am. Sorry about the hiding, I saw the lights were on but wasn’t sure you were the one awake.”
“It’s… okay,” you manage to say. Even after everything that happened, the moment feels surreal. You need to get Reese into the foyer, but if Tabitha somehow comes into the picture and sees him in this state, you have no doubt she will grab the first thing she finds, make an improvised weapon out of it and beat the poor guy with it. But how do you make him devolve to his original form? Do you just ask and wait for him to do it? Can he even change his form at will or does it fully depend on his emotional stability? Is he emotionally stable right now?
Perhaps you should have just said something because by the time you surface from your thoughts, your manners are already dealing with the situation for you. That is, your hand is outstretched towards him, the PB&J sandwich dripping its rich filling right on the porch.
Reese is clearly taken aback by your generosity.
You inhale sharply. He devoured a grown woman less than two hours ago.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m-”
“It’s okay,” you hear him answer from above. You raise your head to see him… smiling. You think. “Thank you. Let’s share?”
“Yeah, of course…”
You break the sandwich in two halves, give him one and keep the other. Surprisingly (but you should have seen that coming), his half disappears before you’ve taken a single bite out of yours. You hurry up and eat what you have left, then take a deep breath before tackling the elephant in the room.
You almost facepalm at that thought.
“I don’t know how to properly bring this up, so I’ll just go with what feels right,” you say, your eyes locked on his. “I want you here, by my side, and I will do whatever it takes to have it arranged, but I don’t think it’s possible with you looking like this. Do you think you could maybe… go back to your human form? Is that a lot to ask?”
Reese tilts his head to the side.
“Do I… look different?” He asks, then hums absently and continues: “I don’t think our height difference is supposed to be this big…”
As he’s saying that, his body starts to shift, the sound of bones popping under his muscles and skin sending a shiver down your spine. He keeps changing, reconstructing himself, and soon you don’t have to worry your neck anymore.
When the process is complete, Reese’s appearance and height remind you a lot of his former self, though the shape of his face and the length of his limbs aren’t exactly correct.
So, he can alter his body structure at will. That’s one question answered.
“Is it okay now?” He asks.
“Well… it’s a start,” you offer with a weak smile. The disappointment that washes over him is immediate and raw, and you reach out to take his hand in yours. “Hey, it’s alright.”
“Is it…? I don’t remember how it’s supposed to fit together,” he reluctantly admits. “I’m not sure I can return to what I used to be, and if that makes you feel uncomfortable around me, I… I…”
You grab his face. Press your palms to his cheeks. They feel strange under your fingers, but you don’t really care.
“You don’t make me feel uncomfortable,” you assure him in a steady voice. If he decides now that you’re scared or unsettled by his appearance, you can only imagine how complicated things are going to get later should you fail to convince him he’s still valid in your eyes. “I don’t care what form you take. I don’t care what others may think. I know you, I care about you, I… For God’s sake, come here-”
You throw yourself at him a little too forcefully perhaps – Reese grunts at the impact and shifts his injured shoulder under the weight of your bicep. You readjust your grip and mumble a faint ‘sorry’, and the next thing you know, his arms are around you, pressing you to his chest with surprising strength. Reese mindlessly grabs at your clothes, twists the fabric of your t-shirt; one of his hands rushes up your back, and his delicate fingers slide into your damp hair. His breath is hot on your neck as he presses his face to your skin and inhales your scent.
His body shifts again. You don’t know how exactly, only that it does, and the hold of his hands around you becomes tighter. The part of your brain that isn’t busy melting from the way he’s breathing you in wonders if he’s just shortened his arms to hold you better.
Then you notice he’s trembling. Your initial thought is that he’s cold – he is half naked, after all - but his temperature seems to be within normal range. Trying to pinpoint the reason, you recall the way he trembled when you were hiding in the closet, and a sudden realization dawns upon you: he’s relieved to have physical proof of your acceptance once again. He’s excited to be allowed to touch you like this once again. He’s still Reese - a victim of forced solitude that lasted years and damaged him beyond repair. Still the man who painted his loneliness and his suffering on countless canvases.
“It’s alright, we’re alright…” You whisper in his ear and gently pat him on the back.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters into your shoulder – for the third time today. His voice sounds softer.
You hold him until the trembling subsides.
Getting out of his embrace is a difficult task for a number of reasons, not really wanting to do that in the first place sitting at the top of the list. But you also can’t keep him outside for any longer. He’s filthy and in a desperate need of a shower, and you should try to get him to sleep for at least a few hours. Preferably while getting some sleep yourself.
“Come with me,” you tell him, attempting to step back into the foyer without breaking the hug. He follows you inside without any protest, and you lock the door behind him.
Tabitha is nowhere to be seen. So is Wayne. You have no doubt the latter is perfectly aware of Reese’s presence, and internally thank him for making good on his word and not stepping in.
“Come on, let’s get you into a bathtub,” you say in a soothing tone. Reese lets you step away from him but keeps your hands linked. You lead him down the hallway, warning him about especially nasty tears in the floor, which he avoids without any trouble. “We’ve got to get ourselves clean. I think I have some spare clothes for you too. Do you mind sleeping in the same bed? I don’t snore – at least I don’t think so...”
“I don’t mind,” his smooth voice responds from beside you. You wonder if he sees through your attempt to keep the air casual so that he doesn’t have to focus on what exactly you’re going to be washing off.
When you enter the bathroom, your hand flies up to the light switch. Reese stands idle by your side for a while, seemingly unsure how to proceed from here, and you nudge him towards the bathtub.
“Come on, get in. Drop your clothes on the floor, I’ll pick them up and wash them with mine later. Towel’s a bit damp but it’s the only one I have. Oh, and be careful not to slip. I took a shower, like, twenty minutes ago, there might still be water on the floor. You don’t want to break your tail. Or anything else for that matter.”
He blinks at you and then looks behind him. The tail has significantly shortened since you met him outside, but it’s still there. Not for very long though, as it takes Reese seconds to make it disappear.
He then begins to unbutton his pants, and suddenly you feel like you’re intruding, though the feeling is not prominent enough to make you leave: you have similar anatomy and a bond that should allow such a level of intimacy. That, of course, doesn’t prevent your heart from doing a flip, and you direct your attention elsewhere so that he can get in the bathtub and draw the barely existent curtain shut.
When the water starts running, you let yourself look back in his direction and can’t help but notice that Reese didn’t even bother with closing the curtain. He sits in the tub, half-covered by its walls, with his neck and back under the onslaught of hot water. His eyes are closed, and his face is as similar to human as you have ever seen it be.
You busy yourself with getting his clothes into a basket and give him some time alone while you search your bedroom drawers for suitable nightwear. Luckily, you took a few extra t-shirts with you just in case. Shorts aren’t a problem either.
“Found some stuff for you,” you announce when you return to the bathroom. Reese glances up at you, and yes, he definitely looks like a normal human being now, as if he never transformed into anything else at all. There’s a mirror on the far wall that he could have used to check the resemblance, but you can tell from his position that he hasn’t left the bathtub while you were gone. Moreover, he hasn’t moved at all.
You recall him saying that he doesn’t remember how his human features are supposed to fit together, so that can only mean that he did this unconsciously - which in its turn means that his default state is this one. You let out a short sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” he says. “Is it okay if I use these?”
He points at a bunch of stuff you use to bathe – nothing fancy, just the essentials. You nod, and while he busies himself with washing off blood and bits of entrails, you walk up to the sink and peel off your stained t-shirt. You’re not as clean as you were before you hugged Reese, but you don’t really need another shower.
As you scrub off the blood, your ears catch a particularly loud splash, and you briefly look back at Reese to make sure he’s okay. He instantly turns his face away from you, but not before you catch a hint of pink spreading across his cheekbones.
“Sorry,” he says, “for ruining your t-shirt.”
“Nothing to worry about,” you promise.
After putting on a new t-shirt, you sit down by the doorframe - it feels like the right thing to do. When Reese is also done (he nearly sinks in your clothes), both of you head upstairs to your room. Aside from Tabitha and Wayne, he’s the first person to set foot in here ever since you arrived, and he’s the first person to be invited. He looks around in excitement, his eyes lingering on the portrait in the middle of the opposite wall, then on the set of unopened boxes piled up in various parts of the room, and then on the bed.
From the way his shoulders tense you gather that he must have just fully realized that he is indeed going to be sharing a bed with you. You want to tease him like you did in that closet or back in his basement, but doing so would be too cruel, as he hasn’t had an opportunity to lie next to another living body for long, long years.
“Are you okay?” You ask instead. “Do you want anything? To talk maybe?”
You’re the one who wants to talk, but you don’t know where to begin and if you should at all. Maybe all of it needs to wait till tomorrow, or later, or… forever. You won’t push him against his will.
“Do you want to talk?” Reese asks, his eyes searching your face. It’s difficult to read his expression, but the fact that he deflected the last question back at you while ignoring all the others makes you think you understand him anyway.
“Honestly, yes,” you admit. “But I don’t want to push you and I don’t want you to talk about something you’re not prepared to talk about.”
Reese sighs and shakes his head with a small, sad smile.
“Stop tiptoeing around me,” he says gently. “I’ve had enough of it. I’ll answer every question you ask as long as I have an answer for it.”
He walks off towards the bed as he’s speaking, then climbs on top of it and sits in the middle of the mattress with his legs crossed. His limbs are relaxed, his shoulders hunching - as if he’s trying to make himself look as open as possible. You follow his example and settle by his side, partially facing him. Your knees touch, and it comforts you.
“So… I can ask whatever I want,” you specify just in case.
“Yes.”
Alright. So…
“How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot to think about. Try asking me in the morning?”
“Sure, okay. Are you tired?”
“…yes, probably, but not enough to fall asleep just yet.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“What do you think…” You trail off for a moment. You need to rephrase this question. “How do you think your digestive system works?”
Reese blinks at you. Takes a while to wrap his head around the question.
“Like it always used to?” He ends up saying. “If you’re asking what happened to Doc’s body, I can’t answer you. I didn’t even notice my own body changed back there, so whatever happened to it during the transformation must have affected her body as well. Which is… weird, I guess, but I don’t know what else to tell you.”
He seems calm. Almost too calm, in fact. It doesn’t fool you though, you’re perceptive enough to catch the slight tremor of his fingers.
“Do you blame yourself for what happened?”
It takes him even longer to respond. He stares at the wall, his lips a thin line.
“Should I? I did what I had to do. If I didn’t, she’d just lock me up in that tiny room, and I’d spend the rest of my miserable life there, facing empty walls every single day. And then she could go after you simply because you’d know. I couldn’t let that happen to me - or to you.”
He takes your hand in his, his clawed fingers brushing against your palm. You open your mouth to talk, but he continues before you’re able to.
“I wish she’d just told me instead of making me think I was dying. Sure, I’m not entirely human, but she… She could have worked with that, with me!” His voice is harsher now, and his icy blue eyes brighten. “She could have taught me to shapeshift at will, taught me the difference between looking like a monster and actually being one!”
You squeeze his hands in yours. At this rate he’s going to transform again, but he needs to get through this in order to keep moving forward.
“…and now I have become both, haven’t I?” he whispers, looking back at you. “And I wish you weren’t there to see that.”
“But I chose to see that!” You argue. “I did! I had the tranquilizers she needed to put you down, and I chose to hold onto them. When you were ending her life, I chose to keep my eyes open and watch every single moment of it. You keep asking for my forgiveness, but you haven’t done anything worth apologizing to me for! Everything that happened in that room was the result of my decisions as much as yours, and I need you to accept that. Can you?”
His eyes are wide open. Whatever he was expecting to hear from you, it wasn’t this.
“I…”
“Please, can you?” You repeat, one of your hands raising to his face and cupping his cheek. “If there has to be a monster, let it be us both. Together. Whatever you are, whatever you look like, I accept it. I want it. But I need you to accept me for who I am too.”
His breath comes out in short puffs. You think you can see tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Your other hand goes up to his face too, your fingers rubbing away the tiny drops. With absolute clarity and utter harmony with yourself you realize that you love this man. Not in a simple romantic way, nor just as a friend, you’re in love with his very being. Whatever life has in store for you, you know that he has already carved his place in your heart, and it will remain his forever. Perhaps this whole nightmare of a week was created to make you two finally enter each other’s lives.
“I think we were destined to meet,” you whisper, leaning towards him.
Unexpectedly, he stops you before your lips can meet.
You open your eyes to see what’s wrong. Something has to have gone wrong for him to stop you now.
What you see is Reese’s flushed cheeks, his lips parting around a shaky exhale. It’s obvious he’s putting a lot of effort into holding himself back, and you can’t begin to understand why he would want to do that.
“What’s wrong?” You ask, and he swallows visibly.
“I… haven’t brushed my teeth since I…” he mumbles in a voice so tiny it’s barely audible. You almost laugh at the absurdity of it.
“That’s it? That’s the only reason?”
He nods, and you grab his head and pull him towards you. He’s physically stronger than you, but he shows nothing but obedience, and both of you fall on the bed, lips locked together. Reese leans to you from above, his heart thundering behind his ribs.
He tastes like death. He tastes like raw meat, like inevitability. He also tastes like PB&J and bread and something unrecognizable and unique, and you dip your tongue into his mouth to get more of it. Reese responds with a low and entirely uncontrolled moan, and if you didn’t already know, it would be a solid sign of him never doing this sort of thing before.
Which, of course, means his emotions will eventually get the better of him. It’s difficult to concentrate with his eager mouth moving against yours, but you try to remember that his body can start to rebuild itself on its own any second now, and he might not even notice.
“Reese-” you try to warn him, but the name gets lost between your mouths and- here it is, the sting you were expecting but hoping to avoid. A hint of blood mixes into the kiss, and while you’re fully aware of it, Reese is not, and he keeps licking into your mouth with unrestrained enthusiasm. His canines scratch the fragile skin of your lip, making you realize that if you don’t alert him soon enough, he may end up hurting you without ever meaning to.
Prying him off of you is a challenge, but you throw all the strength you can muster into your arms and push – the kiss breaks with a wet sound, saliva tearing apart as you force Reese to back away from you. His cheekbones are illuminated by sharp yellow glow. His chest is heaving. He looks terrified.
“Did I do something wrong?” He asks with rising panic. “Did I hurt you?”
You give him the best reassuring smile you’re capable of. “No, but you’ll have to try and keep those canines in check. I think we both want my mouth to stay intact.”
His expression falls even further.
“I’m sorry, I got carried away…”
“No, no, you’re good,” you promise, propping up on your elbows to get closer to him. “Don’t worry. Come back here.”
You press your lips to his, and this time he shows much more restraint, although you can still sense how hard it is for him to keep himself at bay. You let him lower your bodies back to the mattress and explore you as much as he wants.
It’s dangerous, you think, to give him so much control. He’s a creature with supernatural strength and shapeshifting abilities, and that would be okay if he knew about those since day one and trained to wield them... But that is not the case, as his uniqueness was kept hidden from him for a long time, and now he doesn’t know how to measure it. Breaking the kiss was already challenging enough, and you can’t predict what will happen should you venture further than that…
…but the mere thought of stopping him here feels wrong. You don’t want him to stop. You want him to keep going. You trust in his promise to keep you safe, and whatever he ends up transforming into, you don’t really care.
Reese gets more confident with every touch. His hands find their way under your t-shirt, and you let out a satisfied breath which he notices. Encouraged, his fingers move up to your chest, brushing over your nipples, and then slip to your sides to map the outline of your lean muscles - it’s like he’s trying to memorize every little detail of you to later paint it on a canvas.
Your back arches at the idea, and he looks at you with wonder.
“I wish I could draw you like this,” he says fondly. “Save this moment for eternity… But no amount of drawings will ever be enough to express what you are to me, or how you make me feel.”
His words ignite you at your very core. You’ve received a lot of compliments throughout your life, but nothing like this. Never anything like this. And how could anything compare to this, with the bond you two have forged between you?
Warmth overcomes you, and you suddenly feel a desperate urge to have Reese much, much closer. You grip his clothes, tug at him, and he seems to pick up on the urgency, pressing his whole body to yours. You catch his lips in a hard, impatient kiss, and while he’s doing his best to keep up, you reach down to grab two handfuls of his ass. Reese moans into your mouth - a broken, needy sound, and you can’t help pushing your hips towards him.
Everything becomes a blur after that. You rub against each other, embracing and kissing and panting into each other’s mouths. Reese wraps his arms tight around you, then tighter, and your ears pick up a bunch of popping sounds that rise somewhere within him.
His bone structure starts to change. The spare t-shirt he’s wearing threatens to tear at the seams as his torso grows larger and his membranes reappear - this time much thicker than before. He quickly invades your space, and it’s dangerous, but you find room to breathe. From there, all you can do is hang onto Reese for dear life while he mindlessly ruts into you.
The sounds he makes are uncanny. There’s almost nothing human about them. You can’t get enough of them.
“Reese,” you breathe out, and he growls, deep, going harder. His tail creeps up your leg, curling around your thigh and urging you to spread your legs wider, and there’s no way you won’t come from this. There’s simply no way. You cling to him, waiting for it, ready for it-
But then he comes to an abrupt halt. Your hips buck up on instinct, once, then twice, chasing the release that evades you.
“Wh… Wha-? Reese…?”
Confused and helplessly aroused, you crane your neck to see what might have caused him to stop. It’s not easy with his body covering your line of sight, but luckily, he moves up.
Two yellow orbs lock on your eyes from above. You swallow thickly.
“I want more. Can I have more?”
Before you can answer, one of his hands darts down to your crotch. The fabric of your shorts gets ripped open by five sharp claws, but fortunately – or maybe that was intended – he doesn’t damage what lies underneath. You gasp in horror nonetheless.
“Dude! Careful!”
“Can I?”
You look up at him again. His expression is twisted, his hunger unmistakable. The realization that he’s barely keeping himself from overpowering you and having his way with you makes you swallow, makes your cock throb under his hand. He feels it too, rubs you slowly, deliberately – pure torture. You let out a sound that’s uncomfortably close to a whimper.
“I… I would need to… prepare first, for that…” You try to reason with him. If Reese means what you think he means, you can’t just roll on your stomach and let him take you from behind no matter how attractive that idea may sound to you. “I haven’t been eating much these days, so… technically there should be no problem, but… it’s probably best if I take a shower first and-”
“You don’t have to worry so much,” Reese tells you, his hand toying with you and making it much harder to resist. “If you think you’re filthy, just remember that a few hours ago I ate my mother whole. Along with her clothes and everything else.”
“That’s… a point,” you surrender. You can’t argue with that and don’t really want to. “Alright, but at least give me a minute to prepare myself.”
The clawed hand dips lower between your thighs.
“I want to prepare you…” Reese mumbles, but his fingers stay at a safe distance.
“After we’ve clipped your nails, yes,” you promise.
The circumstances aren’t ideal, far from it. You don’t have condoms, which is the least concerning thing: you aren’t carrying any diseases and don’t suppose Reese does, with his mother having watched over his condition up until this evening. But you also don’t have lube or anything that could potentially work as lube save for your own saliva, and what’s even more intimidating, you only know how this works in theory.
But you have already agreed to this. You want this. So you spit in your palm and reach down between your legs, batting Reese’s hand away for better access. Your shorts aren’t an obstacle anymore either – which is a shame, honestly, you liked them quite a lot.
Reese watches as you struggle. If he guessed it’s your first time, he’s polite enough not to mention it. He certainly notices your increasing discomfort, and that makes him frown.
“Here, let me help,” he offers.
His hand returns to your cock and attempts to distract you by jerking you off. He keeps his claws away, which makes the slide of his fingers a bit awkward, but to you they’re mind blowing.
You twist your head up in search for a kiss. Reese indulges you. His canines have grown to a state where kissing becomes very tricky, but you find an angle that works for both of you. The tongue that slips into your mouth feels several times as long as it should normally be, and between its tender caress and the swift movements of his hand you begin to see stars. Even the curl of your fingers inside you starts to feel good.
“Rh-Rhh…” You try, but you can’t talk anymore, words get muffled between your tongues.
Distantly, you’re aware that Reese has busied his free hand with something, and the reason becomes clear when the hot line of his bare cock presses to your thigh. Just the weight of it makes you shiver, makes your mouth water around his tongue, and all the sweet attention you’re getting doesn’t prevent your mind from focusing solely on it. You rush to take hold of it, to squeeze it-
Reese groans in approval and thrusts into your hold. You’re as ready as you’ll ever be, and though you can’t say so aloud, he seems to get you anyway. His tongue leaves your mouth.
“All good?” He asks despite already knowing the answer, and you nod feverishly.
Reese grabs your leg below the knee and raises it for more room. The sight of him aligning himself takes your breath away. Then he pushes in, and you can hardly think about anything else but the intense, overwhelming stretch his intrusion causes.
The pain is not too bad, but it makes you wish you had a better lubricant at hand. As it turns out, spit is hardly making things easier. But at least you’re not doing it dry - you can’t imagine how that would have felt. Reese is very careful with you too, although one glance at his trembling frame is enough to see it costs him a lot not to plunge all the way in.
As he sinks deeper, your body struggles to adapt to the friction. Your fingers dig into the blanket, and your breathing gets uneven and fast. What surprises you is that arousal doesn’t leave you – quite the contrary, the unfamiliar feeling of being filled the way you’re not supposed to somehow makes your skin tingle with excitement. Perhaps there’s something wrong with you, or perhaps you’re delighted that Reese is finally where you wanted him all along… but you’ll have time to figure that out later.
Your hips touch, and Reese stills for a while. His breathing sounds as labored as yours, his eyes trained on your face, glowing with want and something else that feels so intimate it makes you weak in your bones. You reach out a hand, and he takes it in his bigger one as he lowers himself over you.
It feels like the world beyond the two of you has ceased to exist with him so close to you, all around you, inside you - with the sheer size of his form that covers you like a warm, living blanket. Trapped under him, you place your palm on the heartbeat beneath his ribs, and he starts to move, your whole body moving together with him.
Reese rocks into you slowly at first but can’t restrain himself for long. The pace of his hips goes faster and faster, jumps up at erratic intervals until it becomes too much and you can’t hold your voice down anymore. The obscene sounds of your hips slapping together fill your ears, and Reese isn’t exactly quiet either, panting raggedly into your temple and driving you mad with desire.
It’s insane how turned on he makes you feel. So turned on that when he suddenly grabs your jaw and thrusts his tongue inside your mouth for the second time, you accept it with readiness and without a second thought.
As it worms deeper and deeper into your throat, you absently begin to suspect that Reese is trying to make up for his inability to properly kiss you. Or maybe he’s finally lost it and follows his instincts which command him to get as connected to you as he possibly can. Whichever it is, it gets harder and harder to breathe, and your vision swims, your lungs contorting and begging for air that can only come in short, pitiful inhales. On top of you, Reese is so far gone he grows broader, and his maw opens, effectively closing around your jaw.
You feel dread. You feel ecstasy. Your fingers dig into Reese’s chest, clawing at it desperately and begging for him to release you.
There’s a sound of heavy footsteps coming outside of your room.
Just as you're approaching the brink of consciousness, Reese manages to notice something's gone amiss. You must have scratched him enough. The pressure in your throat lifts at once, and you cough as air surges back into you and tears gather in the corners of your eyes.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” Reese gasps into your mouth, sounding mortified, his huge hands darting to your cheeks to rub the moist trails away.
“It’s okay,” you choke out. You knew the stakes, after all. And besides, turns out there’s really something wrong with you because you’re pretty sure you didn’t get any softer throughout the experience.
Before Reese has a chance to back out of this, you roll on your stomach beneath him, planting your chest on the mattress and pushing your hips up so that his cock rests neatly on top of your ass.
“I'm alright, Reese, keep going,” you urge him. Your hips grind against him, and that earns you a low hiss. “Please, I need you, I accept you, I…”
He whimpers at those words, and rocks against your entrance a few times, hesitating - as if he can’t fully believe you mean what you’re saying after what he did. But then, to your greatest relief, he slips back inside and picks up where he left off. His hands rub at your sides in an attempt to further soothe you, then descend to your hips and stay there.
It takes little to no time for him to bring you back to the edge. You have hardly left it to begin with. Reese makes sure not to put your life in danger anymore, though pleasure eventually throws most of his concentration out of the window. Soon he outgrows the complaining bed and has to plant one leg on the floor to keep his balance, but still he tries to wrap himself around you as much as he can. His giant head rests partially on your left shoulder, a single yellow dot watching as you melt under him.
This was his form when he killed his mother.
This is the form that’s making love to you.
Reese snaps his hips forcefully into yours when your eyes meet, and it sends you over the edge. You fall on the mattress with a loud cry as bliss consumes you, twitching and spasming while you come all over the sheets below.
Reese’s hands are the only thing that prevents you from fully collapsing. He grips onto you, relentless, draws your lower half into himself over and over again. From the volume and urgency of his moans alone you can guess that he’s getting close, and he’s so eager to bury himself inside you that at one point he just shoves his entire weight at you. Half of his body ends up on top of yours, and you gasp for air, but all of that is insignificant because he curls around you with a sharp, animalistic growl and holds you so close you can almost feel his release surging through him. It’s an experience you will never forget.
Then he goes rigid, and for a moment you can hear nothing but his deep, exhausted breaths that mix perfectly with your own in the otherwise completely silent room.
Reese gradually comes back to his senses and falls on his side next to you, and you wiggle against him until you’re neatly tucked in his embrace, facing him and with your head resting under his enormous jaw. You lie like that for a while, enjoying the warmth of each other’s bodies before the familiar sounds of shrinking bones and moving muscles make themselves known. Reese shapeshifts right in your hands, becomes smaller, thinner, easier to hold onto.
He leans over you with an intent to kiss you – only to realize he hasn’t yet regained his lips to do so. You find it somewhat endearing and lift your head to give your own little kiss to the corner of his mouth, which makes him frown and attempt to fix himself further. He succeeds in doing so fairly quickly and wastes no time in having his way with you.
“It felt so good,” he whispers after, as he lays his head on your shoulder. “I really wish we met earlier. I wish I didn’t waste so many years living without you.”
“You have me now,” you point out with a satisfied smile. “And we have plenty of years ahead of us to catch up.”
“Yeah. We get to live together,” he agrees. “I just have to make sure I learn how to control this… whatever this ability of mine is, properly.”
There's a hint of grim uncertainty in his voice, so you pull him closer.
“Don’t worry, we’ll have time for that too. But later. As for now, let’s catch some sleep while we can, yeah?”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
“But maybe… Give me a couple more minutes like this. I’m happy. I want this to last longer.”
Reese responds with a soft hum, pressing his face into the fabric of your t-shirt like he’s trying to hide his expression. You glance down and catch a flash of his grin. Your heart soars.
There’s the sound of footsteps again – quieter now, retreating. Entranced by the moment of joy, you don’t pay it much mind.
After spending far more time in Reese’s arms than you originally asked for, you have to crawl off of the bed, get rid of ruined clothes and search for new ones in the drawers. Reese genuinely apologizes for his earlier enthusiasm as you’re tossing him another pair of shorts and a t-shirt to sink in, but you can’t really find it in you to blame him in the first place. You tell him as much before excusing yourself to the bathroom for a necessary cleanup.
The rest of the estate meets you with peaceful darkness: Tabitha is still asleep in her bedroom, and Wayne must have stalked off elsewhere now that he’s made sure you’re not in mortal peril. You hear Reese fall back on the bed with a dull thud, and briefly glance at him through the gap in the door. He looks relaxed, satiated. Happy.
Seeing him like this makes you want to forget about all the bad things that happened today and just let you both have a peaceful week or two, but you know that in truth such luxury doesn’t belong to you. Tomorrow, or the day after, or two days from now, it doesn’t really matter – one of these days something will make Reese angry, or overly excited or scared, and he will transform. Most likely tomorrow and in front of your friends, if the town sticks to its habit of throwing deadly situations in your direction. It’s not like Reese is going to let you wander into trouble without him at your side now.
And even if none of that happens, people will soon start to notice that doctor Kelly has disappeared, and Reese will be the first person they all go to. They will express their confusion, share their fear and then mourn her loss, and no matter where Reese will go, the town will be full of reminders of what he did to her.
Danger. Everywhere.
But all of it won’t happen right away. It will come later. You’ll manage just fine as long as you stick together, you think. As long as you’re there to take half of the blame, half of the burden – like you did in that small, white, safe room.
You’ll be fine.
When you return to your bedroom, turn off the light and slip under the blanket, Reese immediately draws you to his chest. You let his warmth surround you, comfort you, promise you a brighter future.
He presses a kiss to the back of your neck, and you close your eyes.