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In the sleepiest hour of mid-afternoon, in the lull before office and school hours end and Sixth Street comes back to life, a gaggle of schoolgirls invades the video store, laughing and chattering. All but one of them are shocked jaw-droppingly silent at the sight of the wolf-headed man in a butler uniform at the cashier, drawing himself up to full attention as they push the door open. The one girl who doesn't look surprised to see the wolf-headed man doesn't say anything either, but the bubble she's been blowing pops loudly in the suddenly deafening silence.
"That's it," one of the other girls declares. "First Ellen has to wear a maid outfit to work here, and now her poor colleague has to dress up as a butler? It's nowhere near Halloween! This store's owner definitely has some kind of servant-uniform fetish! Ellen!! You shouldn't part-time here any more, even if it's just a front for your real part-time!"
"I don't know this guy," the girl called Ellen immediately claims, her shark-finned tail swishing behind her, face turned away. "I've never seen him before. Don't say anything about my grades in front of him. Let's get our movie and go."
The tide of sympathy changes. Ellen's three friends glare at the wolf-headed man, bristling protectively as they take turns pressing her for details:
"What? Why are you so nervous about this guy? You both work here. How come you don't know him? Does he bully you about failing math this entire semester? Has he been mean to you??"
The wolf-headed man's ears flick briefly at the mention of Ellen failing math, but his expression - what can be seen of it through the black mask wrapped over half his face - remains neutral.
"Dear customers, I am not acquainted with this young lady," he says. "I have never seen her before, nor have I ever heard or suspected anything about her abysmal math grades. If you have come to rent a motion picture, however, I am well acquainted with the titles carried by this excellent establishment, and would be happy to assist you in making a selection."
"We need to watch and analyze a horror movie for literature class," Ellen says. "Uh, it was a really sudden assignment, so we're not going to be picky--"
Lycaon clears his throat sharply. "Is it due tomorrow?"
"Day after tomorrow! Please! We're not delinquents. Blame our substitute teacher for last minute pulling this out of his a-- I mean, we literally just got this assignment half an hour ago. I'll wait outside."
She walks backwards out of the store, mouthing a silent apology to Lycaon behind the other girls' backs. Lycaon's expression remains politely professional, with just the slightest arch of an eyebrow that suggests either he or Rina is going to text her with an offer of one-on-one math coaching later. As she turns to look through the window, she sees the store's manager standing outside the window with a magazine in one hand and a disc drive tucked under his other arm, also looking through the window at the three schoolgirls swarming around Lycaon making demands.
"Yo, manager," Ellen says. "What's Lycaon doing here? I skipped this last class because I thought he'd still be at work and I wouldn't run into him. Now I have to remember to pretend that class ends early on Tuesdays."
Wise shrugs. "He showed up five minutes ago to return a movie, although I don't remember him checking it out. He was kind of upset about it, so I didn't ask too many questions."
"Huh." Ellen is pretending not to look concerned. "What movie was it? Maybe it was one of Corin's or mine and he noticed it was due a return. Not like I'd make a habit of returning stuff to you late. Lycaon's just a worrywart. You know?"
"'An American Werewolf in London'. I did think it was a weird choice for him," Wise pauses, "but it also felt like a weird choice for you. Or Corin. Or even Rina, come to think of it..."
"So," Ellen points at the window, "if Lycaon is here to return a movie, why is he manning your front desk?"
"I really wanted to go pick up this order from Elfy, so I asked him to watch the store for a bit. It's usually quiet around this time. Shouldn't you be in school? Are those your friends in there? Bullying your boss? Is he okay with this?"
Ellen puts her finger to her lips. Wise nods sagely and rephrases:
"Why are your friends bullying my poor part-timer? Please make them stop. He's going to ask for a raise and I won't be able to pay him."
Ellen snorts. The door swings open and her girlfriends tumble out, holding aloft a videotape victoriously. Their buoyant mood deflates immediately upoon seeing Ellen apparently conversing with the owner of this store that makes its employees wear maid and butler outfits. To everyone's relief, Ellen reaches out and snags all three girls with her arms and tail and drags them off into the night, presumably to someone's house where they will scare themselves silly watching--
"An American Werewolf in London?"
"It's my fault," Lycaon admits, ears drooping. "They were all speaking at once and I couldn't get a word in politely, and before I knew it they had seized the very tape I had just brought back and made off with it, shouting about making haste and not leaving Miss Ellen alone outside. I apologize for my poor handling of the situation. Please, put the video on my account and reprimand me for my mistake as you see fit."
"Difficult customers will be difficult customers," Wise reassures him gently. "But if you really want to make it up to me, Belle's gone out with her girlfriends and Fairy isn't the greatest dinner companion.. If you're not in a hurry to go home, why don't you hang around and we can go grab some noodles after closing?"
Lycaon isn't the best dinner companion either; he pulls out a stool at the noodle bar for Wise to sit in and then stands attentively some distance away until Wise asks him what on earth he's doing and pats the empty seat next to him. When Lycaon finally, reluctantly takes a seat, he can't stay still in it, busying himself with pouring water and laying the table and trying to origami-fold the little paper towels from the dispenser at the counter into a single big one before giving up and whisking a freshly starched napkin from his pockets to pinch into a triangle and lay carefully over Wise's lap. Then he goes off and stands behind Wise again until Wise, desperately, turns and bids him, "Please, sit," in such a desperate yet decisive tone that Lycaon finds himself obediently taking the stool next to Wise and remaining there, unmoving, hands clasped delicately atop the complicated gleaming metal shapes his crossed knees make.
"Don't you ever just sit and eat with someone?" Wise asks, perhaps sensing that Lycaon needs something to distract him from pouncing back into full table service mode. "With Rina and the girls?"
"No," Lycaon replies flatly. "It would mean eating Rina's cooking, or, worse, perfectly edible takeaway that she decides to add condiments to. My role at our communal meals, whenever we have one, is to keep Rina occupied with various tasks, ideally far, far from the dining table, while the girls feed themselves."
"Well, you weren't always with Victoria Housekeeping," Wise says. "Didn't you ever just go grab a bite with someone before that?"
A long silence stretches between Wise and Lycaon, in which they watch General Chop joyfully assemble two bowls of today's special which he plonks down in front of them. Wise lets Lycaon rearrange the orientation of his bowl and the spoon and chopsticks in it, but when Lycaon is done, Wise leans over and does the same to Lycaon's cutlery, just to, you know, let him have a taste of his own medicine. But as Wise looks up at Lycaon, ready to say something cheeky, he finds his wrist seized in a massive, claw-tipped, white-furred hand that he didn't even see lunging out, and looks up into a glowing red eye at the end of a long white snout which Wise is suddenly, acutely aware is full of very sharp teeth. Wise opens his mouth, but nothing cheeky or funny comes out. Besides, it doesn't even look like this is the Lycaon he knows; this is someone else, someone Lycaon's managed to bury deep behind a black mask and layers and layers of self-discipline and possibly a lot of anger management therapy. Maybe the person he was expecting to see messing with him was someone else, too.
"Hurry up and eat," General Chop admonishes them. "Noodles are best when they're fresh!"
Belle comes home from her girls' night out, high as a kite, to find Wise sitting on the couch in the staff room, watching a video that he immediately turns off when she pokes her head in and asks, "Why are you rewatching Lycaon's agent records in the middle of the night?"
"Refreshing my memory," Wise says. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Is it about girls?" Belle sobers up at the speed of light, head angled at her brother like a hawk watching a mouse tremble in the shadows. "So, is there a girl you like? Do you even know any girls?"
"It's not about girls. What does it mean when you're having noodles with someone and you accidentally, I don't know, hold their hand, for a really long time, without saying anything?"
"Who is it?" Belle screeches, bouncing on the sofa, slapping Wise's knees and shoulders mercilessly. "Which girl was it? Oh, my god, if it was Astra Yao I'll kill you. I'll have Eous kill you. Eous loves me more, you know. Eous will always be on my side. It can't have been Astra, can it? She's supposed to be on tour at the other end of the city tonight. Did you hold her hand? Did she hold yours? I'll strangle you myself."
"It's not a girl," Wise protests, arms raised to defend himself. "I went to get noodles with Lycaon and he wouldn't stop doing his butler thing even at the noodle bar, so I messed with him a bit."
"You held his hand?" Belle's eyes widen. "Why would you do that? What did it feel like? Does he have like, the softest paw beans?"
"I did not get to hold his paw," Wise says. "I mean his hand. I didn't hold his hand. I just messed with his chopsticks a bit for fun, and I thought he was going to sigh and brush me off, but he grabbed my wrist real hard and then he just... froze for a really long time. Like he was remembering something that really bothered him. And when he finally snapped out of it he just apologized and closed off, and I didn't feel like he wanted to talk about it any more, so I just let it be."
"If he grabbed your hand you must have been able to tell whether or not he has paw beans," Belle says, arms crossed, eyes stubbornly shut. "I bet he has. I bet his beans are super soft."
"I feel like he was thinking of something from before he joined Victoria Housekeeping," Wise presses doggedly on, sensing that if he ever lets Belle know exactly how soft and velvety those giant plush pawpads had felt on his wrist, in contrast to the razor-sharp clawtips pressed against his frantically beating pulse, she will never let him hear the end of it. "Don't you want to know more about Lycaon's past? Isn't that more interesting than how soft his paw beans are?"
"So he does have paw beans!" Belle cries. "It's not fair! I want to squish them too!"
"I didn't get to squish Lycaon's paw beans," Wise says wearily. "It was honestly very awkward and uncomfortable and I feel bad that I couldn't do anything to make him feel better. Let's talk about this in the morning when the alcohol or the weed or both have completely worn off and you're a reasonable human being again, okay?"
Noon comes and goes. Wise tends to customers, tidies up the video store's database which he feels is necessary after a wave of kids coming in after school the evening before to check out horror movies, and checks who last borrowed 'An American Werewolf in London'. The name makes his eyebrows shoot up, but Belle's room door remains firmly shut, so he has no one to discuss this new development with. Fairy offers to wake Belle indirectly by raising or lowering the temperature in her room to 'just a degree beyond human comfort'. Wise politely declines.
"Will Second Assistant truly suffer no consequences for threatening to take Master's life repeatedly last night?" Fairy asks wistfully.
"It was a joke. Belle didn't mean it. But," Wise pauses, to let it sink in, "Belle is my sister, so if anyone has both reason and right to kill me, she does. And she might have a good reason. In which case, I'd want to hear it..."
"Ah, the sweet bonds of family," an unexpected voice sighs. "Brings a tear to my eye."
This voice isn't Fairy's; it's extremely pleasant to hear, rich and smooth as cream, every word ringing out clear as crystal. It also makes Wise shiver where he stands, a jolt of revelation and a tingle of dread going up and down his spine all at once. He goes downstairs to find Hugo leaning on the railing at the bottom of the ramp, grinning toothily at him.
"You're so lucky Lycaon isn't on promoter duty today," Wise says.
"Well, it's your store that isn't getting snowed under by a blizzard of wolf fur today," Hugo points out, "so I'd say you're pretty lucky too."
Wise looks at Hugo, at his white teeth and the jewel-like glitter of his enchantingly bright eyes, his elegant long limbs and pale slender fingers against the velvety sheen of his black jacket, and wonders how much of this is new and how much of it was something Lycaon saw too, back when Hugo and Lycaon were together. No, not together. Partners? Partners. Anyway, it's hard to imagine people you've always thought were old, back when they were new.
"You look like you're turning so many thoughts over in your head, manager," Hugo says. "Care to share any of them with me? Actually, on that note, have you ever thought of teaching? Film studies, motion picture history. Feels like that would be right up your alley. Good for business, too."
"No, no," Wise shakes his head decisively, "I like movies. I don't think I'd like teaching."
"What? No! Teaching's fun when you love what you're teaching."
"Have you been teaching?" Wise blanks out for a bit trying to wrap his head around the idea of Hugo in front of a class full of impressionable kids.
"Literature. But I'm just a substitute teacher." Hugo doesn't say what happened to the regular teacher, nor who did it to them. "I should do my own assignment, though. Watch and analyze a horror movie. It's due tomorrow. You wouldn't happen to have a recommendation right off the bat, would you?"
"An American Werewolf in London," Wise finds himself saying.
Hugo tilts his head, one perfectly shaped eyebrow arching, his face the very picture of innocence. "What's that?"
"It's a movie," Wise says. "Someone just returned it, but I was just looking at our records, and that says Vivian borrowed it last week, so I'm a little confused... Do you know if Vivian's managed to watch it?"
"I'll ask," Hugo says. "So would you recommend it for my assignment?"
"I don't know if I would," Wise admits. "It's kind of depressing. It's about a guy who survives a werewolf attack, but his friend doesn't, and the friend, who is now, like, a ghost, keeps telling him he has to off himself so he doesn't hurt anyone because he's going to turn into a werewolf too."
"What's so depressing about that? Sounds like good advice."
"'Fiction's about what it means to be a human being'," Wise quotes. "David Foster Wallace. I really like that quote... Anyway, I guess I don't like how it seemed that the only way this guy could remain human was to end his own existence. I thought the story was about how someone might save him, how he could save himself. Maybe he could live as a good werewolf. But - well, I won't spoil it for you."
"There's no such thing as a good werewolf," Hugo says. His voice feels subdued now, missing its usual flourishes. "I'm not sure there's even such a thing as a good human, either. Maybe there's just a cruel ending, and a slightly less cruel ending, where fewer people die. It sounds like your movie chose the latter. You can't say that's a bad thing."
"Let's not debate a non-existent trolley problem," Wise says. "I'll find you another movie--"
"Actually, I'm really here on Vivian's behalf," Hugo says, "because she can't find the last movie she borrowed and she's absolutely beside herself in shame and despair, unable to summon the courage to face you... I told her I'll just pay the lost tape penalty and get her a new movie to watch. You know, just telling her 'Lord Phaethon recommended this one that he thinks you would like much more' would make her day. But you've gotten me really interested in 'An American Werewolf in London' for myself now. Did you just say someone else returned it?"
Despite Wise trying at least five times to tell Hugo that 'An American Werewolf in London' is, actually, not currently available even though it had ended up, mysteriously, with Lycaon, who just brought it back, and then immediately had it checked out under his nose again by, coincidentally, someone Lycaon knows - Hugo leaves the store with a dozen tapes for Vivian, saying he'll come back later, after closing, to watch 'An American Werewolf in London' in the staff room, because "once I pass these tapes to Vivian, she will be playing them on repeat for the next 72 hours, so I won't have access to a video player otherwise"...
Only when the appointed hour rolls around, and the stray cats are yowling in the back alleys of Sixth Street under the moonlight, and Wise opens Random Play's back door after hearing a knock at the exact time Hugo said he'd be back, and it's Lycaon standing there with the lights from the car park lot dramatically framing his massive and pointy-eared silhouette in the doorway, holding "An American Werewolf in London" self-consciously tucked under his arm - only then does Wise, horror-struck, understand the winning hand he has helped Hugo deal against poor Lycaon. He feels like he needs to apologize, grovel, beg for Lycaon's forgiveness, but what he actually says is, "Belle's not home, but the next time she sees you, whatever she says to you, please don't get offended," and the second is, "Oh no, I'm so sorry, did Hugo ask you to return this so he could watch it tonight?"
Lycaon coughs politely, tucks a nonexistent stray lock of fur back into his collar, brushes down his pristine shirt front, and then finally looks Wise in the eye. It's impossible to guess how old Lycaon really is, especially when all his fur is already white, but Wise feels like for the first time since he's known Lycaon he can see how visibly something weighs on those mountainous shoulders. The burden of the passage of time, memories, confessions unspoken, regrets harboured--
"I apologize if I am a little slow today," Lycaon says. "I was attempting to coach Ellen at math, after a full workday, and it was a great deal more taxing than either of us realized it was going to be. And then she asked if I could review her analysis of this movie, which necessitated that I watch it.. But I was made to understand that another customer had urgently requested it from you, to watch in the store tonight as a sort of special screening, so it seemed efficient that I return the tape and stay for the screening. At least, that is the agreement I negotiated." He doesn't say who he negotiated with, but Wise feels bad anyway. "Might I come in?"
Wise ushers Lycaon to the sofa in the staff room, which turns out is just barely big enough to comfortably fit Lycaon, Lycaon's tail, and one other person.
"Master Proxy is always so kind," Lycaon says. He checks his pocket-watch and huffs disapprovingly at the time - two minutes, maybe, past when Hugo told Wise he'd be back to watch the movie. Wise wonders if it's all right to ask Lycaon if Hugo told him to bring the tape to Random Play so they could watch it together at this specific hour, or if--
"He's late," Lycaon huffs, and Wise sighs in relief, reeling in his imagination before it goes somewhere he might regret, especially if he has to tell Belle about it later.
"Who's late?" Wise asks anyway, just to be sure. He considers sitting on the sofa, but Lycaon and his tail take up quite a lot of space on it, and they're expecting one more guest. Wise, who is always a gracious host, brings a chair over instead. But in the time that it takes him to ask even this incredibly concise question as he is pulling a chair over to the sofa, Hugo appears seemingly out of thin air, occupying the remaining seat at the other end of the sofa as if he's always been there.
"I made a brief detour to get snacks," Hugo says. "As thanks for letting me watch the movie here. You see, I didn't want to bother Vivian, who is still enjoying her Lord-Phaethon-endorsed movie marathon, or distract the two school-age ladies at Victoria Housekeeping from their homework, so I told Lycaon to bring the tape here... I owe you one, manager."
He holds out a striped box to Wise; it's warm and still crackling, and the room is warm and cozy with the smell of hot butter and salt. Wise, jaw slightly agape, looks over at Lycaon, who has his arms folded and his mouth shut in a long grim line, his tail fluffed up in the middle of the sofa as if to force Hugo to remain at the farthest end of the sofa, away from him.
"Why are you bringing a chair over? There's space here." Hugo bats Lycaon's tail out of the middle seat of the sofa and beckons to Wise, who smiling weakly, clutches the box of popcorn the way he might clutch the handle of a roller coaster starting its long, slow upward climb towards its first big drop, trying to think of an excuse for not sitting down. From the corner of his eye he feels like he can spot someone looking at him from the darkened HDD screens, and turns his head very slightly to have a look. At first it just looks like a really boring screensaver, but Wise would recognize Fairy's calm blue-and-black gaze anywhere, even when she's disguised as a bouncing marble ping-ponging aimlessly off the edges of a black screen. Words form on the screensaver:
DO YOU NEED MY HELP, MASTER?
Wise mouths 'yes'.
IS THERE SOMETHING IN IT FOR ME, MASTER?
"How can you negotiate with me and call me 'master' in the same breath?" Wise asks indignantly, and then sighs as he realizes he said that out loud. "Sorry," he says to Lycaon's pricked ears and Hugo's amused smile. "I was talking to my smart assistant, but it wasn't responding very well. I think it's malfunctioning again. Maybe it needs to be rewired so that it gets more power. Why don't you start watching the movie first and I'll catch up later? I'll just be upstairs. Best smart assistant in the world. Gotta take good care of it."
The movie has barely started when Lycaon glances over at Hugo and sees that Hugo seems to have fallen asleep already. He pauses the movie, troubled by the sight of Hugo with his head slumped on his chest, arms limp at his sides, legs kicked out in front of him. It's so eerily similar to the last time Lycaon saw Hugo this quiet and unmoving, tied to a metal chair in a rented storage container in Port Elpis, that Lycaon's lips curl back from his teeth, one hand reaching out for Hugo's shoulder pressed back into the sofa with the same urgency that he'd reached out to desperately shake Hugo - awake, back to life, directly into a fistfight, anything - back then.
But this time, as his hand lands on Hugo's shoulder, he experiences first the vivid memory of the last time he'd reached out to Hugo in that storage container in Port Elpis a couple of weeks ago, and then the much, much older, hazier memory of the last time before that. When Lycaon had still been getting used to his new legs, tottering and wobbling and growling in pain and frustration with every step, and the first place he'd tried to get them to take him had been Hugo. And when he finally reached Hugo and put a hand on his shoulder, Hugo had violently shrugged his hand off and run away, and for the first time ever, Lycaon hadn't been able to catch him.
Neither of those are good memories, so Lycaon refuses to dwell on them and devotes his attention to this moment, in the present, on the couch in the staff room in Random Play. Here, now, Hugo doesn't move - doesn't push Lycaon away, doesn't open his eyes with a shit-eating grin and a smartass greeting. This lack of reaction, out of all possible actions Lycaon has come to expect from Hugo, seems to be the one thing Lycaon hasn't anticipated, can't plan a countermeasure for. All the times he's put his hand on Hugo's shoulder, before Port Elpis, before the accident that crippled him, before Mockingbird was even an idea churning in the labyrinth of Hugo's imagination, before they got old, he's always gotten some kind of reaction. He just never knew if Hugo was going to reach up and casually pinch a nerve in his hand really, really, devastatingly and accurately and painfully hard, or if Hugo would simply let Lycaon's hand stay on his shoulder and sometimes even rest his cheek against it--
Something flutters in the faded corners of Lycaon's vision - a butterfly wandering into their attic, motes of dust drifting in a beam of sunlight, pale eyelashes lifting above a bright blue eye, a flash of a white fang in the corner of a laughing red mouth. The attic in Lycaon's memory distorts, and he finds himself abruptly, rudely back in the present, watching Hugo lift his head from Random Play's couch to look at him with such unbridled, impish, I-got-you-good! glee that Lycaon not only draws his hand back from Hugo's shoulder, but snarls full throttle at him for a second, coming so close Hugo can feel the heat of Lycaon's breath on his face. The straps of black leather across Lycaon's face pull so taut as he bares his teeth that it startles him back to his senses; he withdraws to the very edge of the couch, turns away to compose himself and rearrange the fur on his face. Hugo, to his credit, also pretends to yawn in order to discreetly wipe bits of wolf drool off his cheek.
"Made you jump," Hugo said. "Maybe a little too much. You used to actually bite me for doing far less than that. Hard."
"Not hard enough," Lycaon growls. "Watch your movie. I'm leaving."
"You'd walk out on a movie that your dearest Master Proxy has arranged a special, personal screening session of, just for you? Seems rude to me."
Lycaon stops gathering up his tail, but he doesn't unpause the movie.
"This is all your doing," he says, not looking at Hugo. "No one else would leave a movie about werewolves on Victoria Housekeeping's doorstep. What do you want?"
"I thought I left it on your pillow," Hugo says. "Must be getting forgetful in my old age. Or maybe you're getting forgetful in your old age. Anyway, I thought you'd bring it to me, kick my door down and everything, and we could have a good fight and watch it together after... But I forgot you're on such good terms with our kind video store manager. So I improvised. It didn't take much. Teaching really is a stressful profession. That literature teacher practically talked himself into taking an impromptu vacation."
"If Ellen scores any lower on literature than she did last semester I am going to hold you personally responsible," Lycaon warns him. "You can't do this. You're always doing this. Disrupting other people's lives for your own selfish reasons--"
"What's wrong with being selfish? Yes, I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want, but what if I want what's good for everyone? Shouldn't someone - preferably someone without the burden of having to pay rent and groceries and a nine-to-five job, someone with the resources and connections - shouldn't such a privileged someone, who wants the disadvantaged to be uplifted, and the advantaged to get stuffed, be ruthless about it?"
"You were trying to get me to watch this movie about werewolves," Lycaon says. "I don't see how this is a good use of your time."
"'Fiction's about what it means to be a fucking human being'," Hugo quotes. "A story about a monster seeking to cure himself of being a monster, haunted by the knowledge that his best friend in all the world thinks he should instead put himself down before he becomes a threat and takes another life. Doesn't it sound familiar?"
"I can't relate," Lycaon says tersely. "I'm not a monster." He ends the sentence there, but his mouth seems to be shaping more words, and when Hugo gives him the time to chase after them, eventually rewards them both with: "Neither are you."
"I don't know for sure I'll never become a monster," Hugo says. "I mean, such a fate certainly seems to have taken the main character in this movie totally by surprise..."
"Then promise me. Promise me you won't."
Lycaon's gaze, when it finds Hugo this time, is almost as soft as his lowered voice, and has the uncanny effect of piercing directly through whatever barrier Hugo might think he had cast over his heart. Now Hugo can feel Lycaon's words, their vibrations ringing through the air and against his skin and rumbling in his bones, better than even his sharp ears can hear them. He shudders, breaking character for a fraction of a second, pulling his jacket tight around his shoulders to steady his hands. Lycaon's voice hasn't changed; it's always this deep, always this rumbly, always finds a way, like lightning, to strike him. It's just that, for a long, long, time, Lycaon has not looked at him like this, like a beaten dog still with hope in its eyes, waiting for him to change its world...
Unfortunately, it also reminds Hugo of the last time Lycaon promised someone else he'd do something. And it still burns, acid in the back of his throat, heat smarting behind his eyelids, when he remembers how earnestly he heard Lycaon promise to stop Hugo from becoming a monster.
"I'm not promising you shit," Hugo says. He leans in close to Lycaon to say this, his breath stirring the luxurious tufts of fur lining Lycaon's ears. "You're not even asking this of me because it's what you want. It's always because it's what someone else told you it's what you must do, told you it's what you should want. Jack. The Mayor. It doesn't even make you happy. You're just always so eager to be someone else's dog--"
Hugo anticipates the clawed hand aiming for his throat just in time to dodge it, but not the metallic leg swinging right at him in the direction he chooses to throw himself in. No choice but to take the hit, hissing in pain, because Lycaon won't be expecting that, so Hugo can then successfully dodge the follow-up tail whip, letting it hit the TV instead--
"Fuck," Lycaon says.
"Fuck!" Hugo looks distraught. "Don't tell Vivian I broke Phaethon's TV. She'll never let me hear the end of it."
"Everything all right?" Wise's voice calls cautiously from behind the door. Fortunately, he seems not at all inclined to actually open it and walk back into the predicament he had so harrowingly escaped earlier.
"Yes," Hugo and Lycaon reply immediately.
"Okay. Just checking. That last action scene was a bit loud."
"I'll turn the volume down," Hugo assures him.
"Thanks."
Wise's footsteps fade away, and Hugo and Lycaon allow themselves an unintentionally synchronized sigh.
"There's broken glass in your fur," Hugo says, pointing at Lycaon's tail. "And the carpet."
"I'll get our bangboo on it." Lycaon is indeed already summoning Butler on his phone. "Do you know anyone who might able to deliver a new TV here, at this hour?"
"I'll get our bangboo on it," Hugo says, pulling out his phone. "And -- Lycaon?"
"What?"
"I'm never promising you shit, but this was fun," Hugo says. "Let's do it again some time."
Another peaceful day dawns on Sixth Street. In the staff room, Fairy hums with delight, brimming with so much energy that an alarmed Belle, returning home from spending the night at her friends' heads out again immediately to see if Fairy has somehow managed to rig the electricity meter. Wise sends Eous to check on the visitors in the staff room, which turns out is not only unoccupied but also spotlessly clean, the TV especially gleaming like a brand new machine. To his surprise, the tape 'An American Werewolf in London' is still in the player, paused at about five minutes into the movie.
"Maybe they forgot to turn it off and it played all through the credits and looped back to the beginning," he says out loud as he takes the tape out and puts it back in its cover.
"Who forgot to turn what off?" Belle walks into the room, still looking suspiciously at Fairy bouncing off the edges of the HDD's screensaver. "Wow, it smells so clean in here. Is this Lycaon's work? Did he come over again when I wasn't home? What did he do this time?"
"I don't know and I don't want to," Wise says. "I left him here with Hugo to watch their movie. God, they were noisy. I was so scared the neighbours would complain."
"What kind of noise? Wise." Belle grabs Wise by the lapels of his jacket and shakes him. "What kind of noise. This is so important. Why didn't you text me to come home and spy on them?"
"They were watching this movie really loud. What other noise would I be talking about?"
Belle sighs, but she really doesn't want to start explaining yaoi to her brother when she could be using the time and effort to extract more information from him. "Don't we always have a bangboo in here? Was their camera on?"
"Yea... I guess we could check. But it feels rude to spy on our friends..."
"Don't you want to know if they fucked on our sofa?"
"Belle," Wise says. "I nap on that sofa."
"Exactly."
To Belle's disappointment and Wise's relief, the camera feed of the bangboo in the staff room cuts off soon after Wise leaves the room. "Oh, right," Wise says, "I rerouted his power, so he stopped charging, and his battery's pretty weak so I guess he turned himself off."
"Now we'll never know if Hugo and Lycaon fucked on our sofa," Belle sighs. "Why would you reroute power in the middle of the night? What did you need it for?"
"Fairy, help me," Wise says.
Elsewhere, Ellen and her classmates wearily hand in their literature assignment, only to be told that the flamboyant substitute teacher who told them to do it has been fired.
Vivian, preparing for day two of her Lord-Phaethon-sponsored movie marathon, goes to check if Hugo needs anything before she disappears for the day, and finds him, still fully dressed, dead asleep on the floor of his bedroom, whereupon she puts a pillow under his head, carefully, so as not to wake him from the nice dream he seems to be having.
In Victoria Housekeeping headquarters, Rina also finds Lycaon asleep, fully dressed, in the bathtub, Butler brushing his tail, while an immaculately dressed bangboo peers longingly on through the window. Rina opens the window to let the strange bangboo in, but upon making eye contact with Butler, a fuse blows somewhere in its circuits and it screams, slaps its ears over its face and runs away. Lycaon sleeps right through all this commotion, even though his mask has slipped in his sleep so much his fur is becoming tangled in the straps.
"What a long night it looks like you've had," Rina says tenderly. She reaches out to untangle some of the worst snarls of fur from his mask. As if sensing someone reaching out to him, Lycaon leans his head towards her outstretched hand, looking like he's aching to nuzzle his snout into a soft palm, invite fingers to comb through his ruff. Rina, blinking in surprise, gently pulls her hand back. Lycaon's eye is still shut, and his face is half buried in his jacket and the room is thick with his own fur; she realizes he must think it's someone else reaching out to him, still lost in the scent of wherever he was, whatever, whoever he was with before he came home. So she leaves him to revel in it, for however long he can hold on to it.
As she closes the door, though, she sighs. "Bring him home next time," she tells Lycaon through the door. "I'll make breakfast for everyone!"