A Wolf And His Man - 6. Flesh Under Influence

Oli blinked softly awake, his body telling him that he was too warm and he should move unless he wanted to be up panting for the rest of the night. He half rolled back onto his belly, but the movement was halted by the shape of the duvet rucked up next to him. Oli started to yawn, but stopped the creak of his jaw as his ears picked up a noise other than the soft breathing of Boris next to him.

The sound of flesh on flesh. Oli froze, every muscle suddenly tense as his sleepy brain picked between Boris’s natural ochre scent, his increased heart rate, and the purplish shameful lust that emanated from him. Oli’s brain stopped, his neurons refusing to fire or think of anything else as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He couldn’t actually see what Boris was doing, but Oli knew that if he’d been cooped up away from opposable thumbs for three weeks, there was one thing he would want to do first too. He hated his predicament, because he could not now move and get up without disturbing Boris, and the other werewolf would know he’d been awake and listening. Oli would’ve died from the embarrassment. On the other hand, staying to listen, even though he simultaneously did and didn’t want to listen, felt deeply illicit and invasive.

Boris panted, and though his heart was racing, his scent was slow and soft, as though he was only just half awake. Oli flattened his ears against his skull and wished he could shake the vision of the wolf with the bright yellow eyes watching him jerk off. Boris had watched him, not just seen him, but watched him. Oli didn’t want to really think about what that meant, good or bad.

Oli felt the pitch of his friend’s breathing change, heard his heartbeat rise and scented the change in him as he reached his climax. For some reason, all Oli could think was that the sheets would be ruined, and Boris almost certainly had no idea how to do laundry. Boris rolled over with a sleepy, satisfied sort of noise and promptly fell asleep again. After a while, Oli slithered from the bed and made his way to the cool and relaxing floor of the kitchen where, after an hour of tossing and turning and overthinking everything that had happened between the two of them, he passed out.

*

“Why do you faint so easily?” Harvey was peering into the medicine cabinet as he spoke. Lines of concentration marred his otherwise perfect features. Oli hated that his best friend could apparently down most of a bottle of vodka and not only feel fine, but continue to look great as well, whereas Oli only had to smell spirits in order to get drunk. “Ah, plasters.”

“I didn’t faint, I passed out.”

“Oh, like that’s loads better.” Harvey rolled his eyes. “You had two drinks, then cut your hand, and fainted.” He began to peel the plaster from the plastic backing. “All these years and you’re still shit with blood.”

Everyone said there was no downside to kitchen parties, but Oli had decided that this was not true when, drink in hand, he had leant back against the kitchen surface, smiling at the joke made by the boy he really rather quite fancied, cut his hand on a super sharp potato peeler which had been left out, and the went slumping to the floor. It wasn’t so much that he was bad with blood, because he’d cut himself plenty of times and been fine with it, it was more to do with the fact that he’d panicked, embarrassment losing the war against anxiety, and the wolf part of his system simply shut down. Oli had quizzed his mother on this, considering that when he was human, he wasn’t a wolf, and she had simply smiled, kissed the top of his head even though he was taller than her now, and told him neither wolf nor man was ever really gone. Even at eighteen, Oli had realised he was not a ‘good werewolf’ like his father was, and that none of what he termed ‘the wolf stuff’ was ever going to be easy for him.

“So how was your chat with Liam?” Harvey arched an eyebrow as he began to smooth the plaster over his friends wound. The cuts were long, but shallow, and had stopped bleeding a short while after Oli had decided to take a nap on the floor.

“It was going well…” Oli scowled. “He’ll have left with someone else by now.”

“You don’t know that.” Harvey chided him gently. “You gave him your number right? Maybe he’ll call.”

“We never got that far.” Oli sighed heavily. “We’d managed to get past the weather and college courses and all of that and actually talk about important stuff when I fainted.”

“Well, you owe me then, ‘cause I gave him your number.” Harvey grinned. “Am I not the best sort of friend?”

“You did what?” Oli stared at him, confused.

“I gave Liam your number. You can thank me later. Come on, it’s late, bed time.”

Oli had told Harvey he was gay on the approach to his fifteenth birthday. He’d had to tell his friend something, because hiding being gay and hiding being a werewolf was just one too many secrets for anyone to hold onto. Harvey had taken it well, in that he had acted like nothing had happened, and when their conversations expanded to take into account boys Oli might fancy, it had been generally without fuss. And Oli had gotten over his latent desire for his best friend. Well, sort of.

Harvey’s parents had bought him a king size bed for passing his GCSEs with such flying colours, and since neither of them had pulled at the party, mostly due to Oli’s fainting trick it was generally assumed that they would share. Harvey usually muttered something about not being bothered to blow up the air bed as an excuse, and Oli was well practiced at keeping to his side of the bed. It often meant he didn’t sleep much.

“So your dad is taking you with him to the conference?” Harvey stripped down to his boxers as he spoke, and Oli did his very best not to look too closely.

“Yeah. It could be fun.”

“Hmmm, yeah, ‘could be’.” Harvey shrugged. “Why don’t you just tell him you don’t want to be a carpenter? He’s been taking you out for trips and workshops with his business since we were fourteen.”

“I know.” Oli hated lying to his friend. His father was very aware that he didn’t want to be a carpenter, but a combination of stories of illness, supplemented with the lies that had kept Oli-the-child and all his parent’s friends placated for the last thirty years, was a fairly sure-fire way of keeping school truancy staff off their backs.

“So did you hear from the university yet?” Harvey had got his letter from Portsmouth a week previously. He was going to go and study film production.

“Yeah. It came yesterday.”

“Dude!” Harvey reached across the bed they were now lying in and went to clap his friend on the shoulder. He missed, and they ended up in a slightly awkward sort of hug with a bit too much body contact for a straight guy. “Congrats.” Harvey backed off and resumed lying on his back, arms folded over the covers. “Halls is gonna be awesome.”

“I’m staying home.”

“Huh? Dear god, boy, why?”

Because I can’t be trusted to look after myself? Oli bit his lip. Because I can’t go and live with normal humans in case they find out, which they would. Because five days a month I am a wolf and reliant on my mother to look after me.

“Too expensive.” He answered shortly. “I’m only going to Brighton, I’ll take the bus.”

“Make your parents buy you a car. Staying home is punishment enough.” Harvey shook his head. “Night Oli.”

“Night Harve,” Oli sighed.

His best friend, still his best friend after so many years when they could have drifted apart, was blessed with being able to fall asleep instantly. Oli thought of him in Portsmouth, three hour’s drive away, and knew that their friendship would never be what it was. They had seen each other nearly every day since they were eleven, spent time in each other’s houses, families, lives. It was never going to be like that again. They were friends against the odds, the fact that Harvey was now super into music and film production and wanted to be one of those people calling out orders and instruction and making other people look good. He dreamt of Los Angeles film studios and pretty California girls in bikinis on the white sand. Harvey cared about how he styled his hair and the clothes he wore and liked going to the gym. Oli could smell the surprise when people met them now and discovered they were friends, because they didn’t seem like they had anything in common.

And except for eight years of shared history, Oli thought, we don’t.

*

When wolf shaped, Oli found that he never slept particularly well, so when he woke at the crack of dawn, he let himself out through the dog flap, skulked along the hedge line and exited through the hidden gap in the back. He relieved himself, and then walked a distance out of his way before fouling a patch of grassy weeds no one was likely to accidentally step in. It was looking to be a fine day, the sky was tinting blue from purple as the sun rose, and the grass was glided gold over the spring green. Soon the grass would be taller than him, and by next month he would be trotting over the short stubble and around hay bales.

His father hated mornings. He was a nocturnal sort of wolf, and adored running in the dark, or in the thick murk of twilight. Oli loved mornings: the stillness, the quiet interrupted only by scant birdsong, the way the light seemed new and fresh and the world seemed calm, peaceful and undamaged. Very early mornings held no traffic, no drunken students, and no sirens, and Oli loved the softness of it all as he padded through the dew-wet grass, his paws cooled even as he picked up speed. Alexander thought his son was a poor werewolf who hated to run, and Oli’s few friends thought he spent a lot of time jogging or in a gym to keep up his excellent muscle tone, but they were all wrong. In the mornings, when the sun was peeking over the eastwards hillside and he was safe and alone, Oli Volkov loved to run.

His paws ate up the ground. His house backed onto a part of the Downs which either grew grass, or housed sheep, and as such the pastures were huge and open, studded here and there with trees, and while not flat, the slopes curved softly up or down and made the whole process easier. Oli walked the paths and ran them on four feet often enough to know which fences he could slide under, jump over, or slink through; which stiles were easier to scramble on and which ones required him to be careful; which fields had the best ground and where the rabbit warrens were that he needed to avoid, lest he twist an ankle and hurt himself. As the morning grew, Oli ran. He bit the air, the breeze created by his passage whistling through his fangs and filling his nose with the scents of the outside. Everything was green and gold in thick ribbons, where animals had been there were patches of fear, lust and hunger, all of them in varying shades of red, ultraviolet purple spaces in the sky showed the passage of birds. Half the colours Oli scented, he didn’t even have names for, but each one of them filled him up and fed the wolf on the delight and variety of the universe until his heart thrummed with joy.

At the top of his run, he stopped in a smaller field populated by cows. Generally, he and the cows got on rather well, but it was spring, and so he watched through the barbed wire and timber fence as the mothers stood and suckled their young. The calves were moon-eyed and soft, and Oli hoped they’d grow up to be strong and beautiful, and ultimately tasty. He drank from their big steel trough through the fence, made sure not to get his fur caught as he walked backwards, and turned to lope back towards the house.

It wasn’t until he got within sight of his house, a thin line of bricks at the end of a long terrace, beyond which lay the city and less and less actual green before one reached the sea, that he remembered today was not like any other first day of the change. He was not alone. The house smelt of ochre and burnt sienna, but as Oli pushed through the hedge he smelt the whole place overlaid by hot spiking red and the chemical neon of fear. Frowning, his ears forward and eyebrow spots furrowed, Oli stepped through the open back door and into the kitchen.

He barked to announce his presence.

Suddenly the door from the lounge burst open and Boris pelt through towards him and with a soft yelp Oli was swept up into the man’s arms, his face pressing into Oli’s thick fur, babbling incoherently. After two minutes, Oli managed to make out the thread of what Boris was saying, and he felt incredibly guilty very fast.

“I thought you’d gone and run away and left me here. I didn’t know what to do and I looked everywhere but I didn’t want to leave the house in case someone saw and I wasn’t sure where you went or if you normally go anywhere, but I just woke up and I was alone again!” Oli wondered when Boris was going to stop for air and so nuzzled very deliberately into his neck and hair, pressing his cold wet nose against the man’s skin.

“I’m sorry.” Boris sniffed, and loosened his grip so Oli could back up and look at him. The skin around his eyes was red and blotchy where he’d been crying. Oli whimpered, ears turned back over his head. “I shouldn’t have panicked like that.”

For the second time, Oli wanted to whisper soft and soothing affirmations to the young man, but he couldn’t. Reading and understanding canine body language was all well and good, but it was no real match for decent human conversation.

“Sounds silly doesn’t it? But I’ve been running away from things and living by myself for nine years, and I still hate waking up alone.”

Oli felt his heart break a little at Boris’s words, and for a long time afterwards the pair were silent and calm, staying in contact as though it could offer some reassurance against the massive weight of such loneliness. Eventually, Boris got up to look for breakfast and Oli whined at him.

“Huh?” He looked down at his skinny, beautifully proportioned body and brushed a hand down the hairs which dusted his chest. “Oh. Clothes.”

Oli nodded.

The sight of Boris standing naked in front of his wardrobe deciding what to wear might have been one of the odder experiences of Oli’s life, which said a lot considering his genetic circumstances, because Boris considered his choices like a man unsure of the outcome of a gun battle. He picked at shirt sleeves and hems as though scared the wool of a jumper might be a snake in hiding, ready to jump out and bite him. Boris probably woke up naked a lot, and Oli figured that he didn’t get a great deal of choice in his clothes. Eventually Oli picked for him, and pulled out a pair of jeans which had always been a bit long on him, and a vibrantly yellow t-shirt advertising a dude ranch holiday riding company in the States that Oli had done promo layouts for once. The colour made Boris’s eyes seem even more other-worldly. Selecting underwear for the other werewolf with his teeth felt incredible intimate, even though the black boxers were Oli’s anyway.

Boris turned out to be three or so inches taller than Oli, though the jeans were OK with bare feet and wouldn’t look too out of place with shoes or flip-flops. Every time he reached up, there was a slice of skin revealed between the hem of his t-shirt and the waistband of the jeans which made Oli’s crotch lurch in an erotically inspired sort of manner. He was also a lot thinner than Oli, despite the fact that they had roughly the same build, and Oli had to find the young man a belt to keep his clothes actually attached to his body. As they walked back downstairs again, Oli noticed what Boris was holding.

“Yeah, sorry.” Boris fingered the thick leather of the collar that Oli had bought for him. “I dunno. Are we going out anywhere today?”

Oli titled his head, thinking. It would be too easy to stay in the house and laze around, but Boris was dressed now, and though Oli normally loved the easy option, he decided that perhaps a trip out would be fun. He barked happily.

They had to find keys, money, and some flip-flops that fitted Boris enough to get him out of the front door, because his feet were a couple of sizes bigger than Oli’s. Oli sat on the mat as Boris patted himself down in the manner that seemed to be genetically ingrained in all men. When Boris crouched to fit the collar, Oli felt himself stir in hot excitement at Boris’s warm breath on his fur. His body was betraying him, and he really hoped the young man didn’t look down and see him peeking.

Oli had to jab his shoulder into Boris’s thigh to remind him to actually lock the door, and as he turned to scan the garden he barked in surprise at the sight of little Oscar’s big round eyes peeking over the fence between the two front gardens. He yapped in surprise.

“BUDDY!”

“Oh!” Boris turned to look down at the small boy. “Hello.”

Oscar stuck out his tongue and turned his head to one side.

“His eyes are a different colour now.” Oli ducked his head too late, and half hid behind Boris’s jean clad legs. Small children were always so incredibly over observant.

“It’s the light.” Boris lied quickly. “Different colours at different angles. Like a prism.”

“OK.” Oscar smiled, revealing the gap between his front teeth. Oli sighed in relief; small children were also easily suggestible. “Where’s Mr.Volkov?”

“Um… He went to see his parents.” Boris grinned. “I’m just…” he arched an eyebrow and smirked at Oli. “…dog sitting.”

Boris hadn’t brought the lead, so they wandered down the road together, Oli trying to subtly lead the way towards town. Boris was just as easily distracted as a human as he was on all four feet, and Oli kept having to circle back to fetch him when he found that his new friend had stopped to read a signpost or examine a flower bed. Oli wished they could chat, make delightful but meaningless conversation as they wandered down the road together. Half the time in Oli’s head, he would slip his hand into Boris’s own, stroke the slightly calloused skin with his own softer fingers. He wanted to ask Boris what he wanted to buy, what kind of clothes he liked to wear, what shoes he wanted. It wasn’t until they got to the centre of town that Oli realised he wouldn’t be able to wander in and out of shops, watch Boris try on clothes and share his opinions on what looked good on him.

They headed towards the trendy North Laine area of town, and even though it was a weekday, there were stalls out in front of a few of the nicer second hand clothes shops: the kind of places which described everything ‘vintage’ or ‘chic’. Boris fingered the hems of the t-shirts which hung on the rail and frowned at Oli.

“I can’t, it’s too expensive.” Oli raised a dark eyebrow-spot, the t-shirts were three pounds each. “And I don’t know what to pick.”

Oli pressed against his leg, then began to nose garments as he moved along the row. Boris obediently pulled out all of them and Oli had to remind himself that homeless runaway orphan boys didn’t get to do a lot of clothes shopping even when they didn’t spend three weeks at a time as a wolf.

“What should I do?”

Oli rolled his eyes, and sat deliberately.

“OK, OK.”

Oli watched his new friend, and realised that he wanted a much better title for Boris than the non-descript ‘friend’ as soon as possible, discard and replace three of the shirts pretty quickly. He didn’t explain why he had rejected them. Then he took the first one, bright green emblazoned with a very faded yellow John Deere logo and held it up across his chest. Oli woofed appreciatively.

“You like that one?” Boris grinned. “Hope it’s longer than this one. I’m taller than you.” Boris had no sooner finished speaking as he pulled Oli’s t-shirt off over his head, revealing his long torso.

Oli was incredibly grateful that he couldn’t blush, and tucked his tail under himself to stop the damn appendage from wagging automatically at the sight of Boris, half-naked in the street, smiling like the sun shone out of his side, his body lean, hairy and beautiful in the morning sunshine. Boris pulled on the new shirt and stood with his hands on his hips, looking proud.

“So what d’ya think?”

Oli could only bark happily and nod.