A Wolf And His Man - 7. Bad Genes Suck

“You always try on clothes for your dog?” Both of them turned to the speaker, a sales assistant who was hanging jeans and denim dungarees on another rail. “I’m not sure he can give you the best opinion. Turn around.”

Oli frowned as Boris obeyed the instruction, and turned in a slow circle. To be fair to the young man, he looked just about as confused as Oli was.

“Oh yeah, that’s a good fit on you. Is there anything else you need?”

Is his experience, Oli had found that vintage and second hand stores tended to be the ones where people left you alone to browse, but the girl was polite and charming and very resourceful in going to find things for Boris to try on, which was a good thing. Like most men, Boris didn’t have a clue what he was doing. In a moment when she had vanished to find some decent jeans for him, Oli nosed at Boris’s foot.

“Huh? Oh… shoes.” They didn’t sell them at that particular store. “You know where to go right?”

Boris ended up with a large brown paper carrier containing a couple of t-shirts, two pairs of jeans and a checked shirt. All the way down the road, Boris tutted over the receipt and apologised for spending so much of Oli’s money. Oli didn’t care, but they were nearly out of cash and Oli would have to show his friend the PIN and find a cash machine. He deeply hoped that Boris had absorbed enough of human life to remember how to use one. Even though Oli’s human contact while he was a wolf was strictly limited to his mother and a handful of people they would see from across the Downs while out walking, he knew how easy it was to tune out human conversation and simply focus on the things that were going on around you in nature. The world at wolf level was so much more interesting and complex, even in town.

Oli couldn’t find a shoe shop with an outside section, and he wasn’t allowed in, so he sat looking through the plate glass window as Boris walked inside. He was served by a pretty girl with bright pink hair, and sat down to try on a pair of All Stars and another pair of Vans skate shoes. Oli laid his head on his paws to wait.

He had no proof that Boris was gay, none. And he wondered what sort of a sense of sexuality the guy had, spending most of his days on four legs. Did he find humans attractive? Did he prefer dogs? Did he, and here Oli screwed shut his eyes in a failed attempt to block out the image and knowledge of his father and the Alsatian, have sex with dogs, other strays or pets that had run off in the park? Could they breed? Oli shuddered. Various legends told that the first werewolves were the result of unions between women and wolves, and while Oli agreed with his mother that these tales had probably been invented purely to use against women of whom society disapproved, but there was no smoke without fire, and no one he knew of had ever actually studied werewolves in the proper sense to know how their genetic line had come about. And now Boris was chatting to the sales assistant and smiling, and Oli wondered if the whole thing, nameless, shapeless and colourless between them, had all been in his head.

Yes, Buddy had watched him jerk off, more than once, and yes, Oli had lain in the bed and listened to Boris doing the same, though whether that had been deliberate or not was still up for debate in Oli’s head. He had no proof Boris liked him beyond his gratefulness at having somewhere to stay.

Except that he called you beautiful, Oli’s inner voice said.

No, he said I was ‘perfect and lovely’ he was just being nice. Oli huffed to himself. He raised his head to look through the window and snarled softly.

There was a man, good looking, clean, possibly a student, chatting to Boris, both of them holding shopping bags containing shoes from the store. Oli watched in rising, irrational anger as the stranger laughed, his hand landing on Boris’s bicep before he smiled appreciatively. Boris was smiling back at him, and if anyone had wanted a good definition of ‘flirting’ they would only have had to look through the window.

“Momma look!” A small girl, young, but old enough to know better, ran over to where Oli sat and her hand landed on Oli’s head without warning. He turned and snapped. He was nowhere close to actually biting the girl, but it was definitely enough to scare her off. He barked loudly. Boris was with him in a moment, his calm ochre scent touched with purplish worry like bruising.

“You OK buddy?” Boris knelt on one knee and stroked his head. “It’s alright.”

“That dog is not safe to be around people!” The mother was clutching her little girl, now snivelling, glaring at Boris. “He tried to bite my daughter.”

Oli growled. Most dog ‘attacks’ were caused by humans being stupid or by outright cruelty to an animal. Lots of nice family pets would have done the same thing, especially if they were distracted.

“You should train her not to stroke strange animals. I’m sure you taught her not to stroke strange people.” Boris stood, and gathered up his bags. “C’mon bud.”

They walked down to the beach and wandered along the promenade in the vague direction of home. Oli’s house was about a mile in from the coastline itself, but it was an easy enough walk up through the back end of town, along residential roads littered with families and artists. There were no students living quite so far out from the centre of bustling city life. Oli walked in front of Boris, scenting the grass as they went. The green of nature was overlaid by a thousand city smells. The air tasted of salt. The population thinned out the further they got from the city centre, and Oli stopped when Boris said his name.

“I’m sorry.”

Oli frowned and laid an ear back over his head.

“I shouldn’t have just left you outside like that. You’d never do that to me,” Boris glanced down into the shopping bag, “I got the red ones by the way,” they walked on in silence for a little bit, “and I didn’t really like that guy. He was nice, but shallow,” Boris ran his fingers through his over-long steel grey hair, “do you think I need a haircut?”

Oli cocked his head to one side and rolled his eyes. Boris had gone from not really realising that he was naked to being concerned about the way he looked in the space of half a day. There was a street corner barbershop three roads up from the seafront, and the barber was a dog-lover. The well groomed man spent half an hour chatting to Boris about ‘Buddy’, with Boris lying as quick as his brain could form words and send them to his tongue, and Oli sitting on the pavement, practically purring under all the fuss as he was stroked and petted. After that Oli was able to lie on the vinyl bench seat in the barbershop, reading the free newspaper that had been left out by another client while Boris got the first professional haircut of his adult life.

Every time Oli looked up, Boris was watching him in the mirror, smiling softly before glancing up when the barber asked him questions. In his head, Oli smiled and blushed and ducked back to looking through the classified at horseboxes, exotic pets, and old electrical supplies. Boris had made a hash of whatever shave he’d tried to have in the shower that morning, and so the barber lathered and cleaned him up and little bit, and when Boris’s hand touched his fur, Oli found himself looking at a young man who, apart from being slightly underweight, was everything he ever dreamt about.

“Ready to go?”

The barber waved them off with a smile and a dog biscuit for Oli. There was so much Oli wanted to say to his friend, but he couldn’t, so instead he settled for walking with his shoulder pressed against Boris’s knee, pressing against him. He wished he were taller, because Buddy stood high enough that Oli could trail his fingers into the wolf’s fur while they walked together, but with Oli being slightly shorter as a wolf and Boris being taller than him, that contact was no longer possible. But it was nice, even so, to walk with company, to feel Boris’s pulse through the place where they touched. His new housemate smelt familiar now, like being safe and warm.

They spent the rest of the day in the garden, Oli lay chewing on a rawhide log he’d been saving for his time of the month, and Boris gathered up a fallen copy of the weekly news digest and lay on the grass, turning the pages very slowly. When Oli was about a third of the way down his toy, holding the dry end between his paws and grinding with his back teeth like a canine with a mission to get through as many inches as possible before sundown, he looked up and watched Boris reading. His finger was guiding him along the row of words, and his lips moved, forming the shapes of the words, and then sometimes, the individual letters. Oli abandoned his toy, and went to stand over Boris’s shoulder. It was the world political section, with a world map and highlighted countries picked out in red, each linking to a separate short piece about a recent event there. Boris was tracing the section about some kid in Round Rock, Texas, who had been arrested for owning enough marijuana oil to be classified as intent to sell. Oli remembered reading the article the previous week and dismaying at how unfair it was that, one state over, the substance was legal and the kid would’ve been cleared. Boris on the other hand, was reading at a snail’s pace.

Oli woofed softly, and Boris turned to look at him, the angle was awkward, and Oli shifted, tripped on Boris’s back, and ended up standing over him, front paws on one side of his shoulder, hind feet on the other near his hips. He pressed his cheek against Boris’s temple quickly, sort-of but not really hoping that the young man wouldn’t comment on it. Boris smiled at him, and then glanced back to the magazine.

“I don’t know this third word,” his forefinger pressed over ‘marijuana’, “but I know that ‘hash’ is weed, so it’s the proper name for that?” Oli nodded quickly. “I’m not a good reader.”

Boris abandoned the paper and rolled over, remaining in the cage of Oli’s legs. Oli found himself looking down at the young man lying on his back, looking soft and innocent and like he’d never been hopeless or abandoned at all. Oli was seized by the desire to simply adjust his position and lie down on Boris’s chest. He could feel the heat of the man through the space between them and the air around them was full of happy yellow ochre tones and there were soft pink hints of love and companionship. Whatever else either of them was feeling; they were both content to be close to each other.

“I missed a lot of school,” Boris sighed heavily, “I mean, obviously I missed a lot of school. I missed everything after the spring of year eight.” He ran his fingers over the lawn until his hand touched Oli’s foreleg. Oli blinked softly as Boris’s fingers stroked his fur gently. “Whenever it gets to full moon I try and find things to read, even if it’s only street signs and newspapers. I try and make conversations with people, as much as I can without getting beaten up or arrested. My vocabulary blows,” Boris stroked up Oli’s leg to his shoulder and the wolf leant into the touch, “I expect after I ran away, all my teachers and the carers at the children’s home will have talked about my ‘wasted potential’: I was a smart kid, I think.”

Oli whined gently; he didn’t ever like to hear anyone belittle themselves, and Boris sounded so despondent. He couldn’t resist the desire to comfort his friend, and pressed his muzzle onto Boris’s chest. Instantly Boris’s hand landed over his ears, fondling the velvet fur gently. Oli purred happily, and sank the rest of the way onto Boris’s chest.

“You’re heavy.” Boris smiled softly. “You’ve got loads of books in your house. Can I read them all?”

Oli nodded.

“Will you teach me to cook? I mean, once this week is up and you have hands again. And use the washing machine?” Boris took his paw, stroking his toes and the pads of his feet. It was a strangely intimate gesture. “I hate feeling so useless. I’m the worst houseguest, huh? I just sit around on your couch and eat all your food.”

Oli arched an eyebrow spot. Boris also slept in his bed and used all his towels too: but he didn’t mind. Oli shifted his weight, but Boris wrapped his spare arm around Oli and held him tight for a few seconds before pushing his arm under his head to support his neck.

“Stay here?”

Oli nodded. He wanted to ask Boris what he knew about why he was human right now, why he was a wolf the rest of the time. He thought of everything his mother had ever told him about werewolves and genealogy and remembered what he’d said, aged fourteen and resenting his father with every fibre of his being. ‘So I have bad genes. That sucks.’ His mother had tried to convince him of the opposite, but the werewolf-ness was carried through his father’s genes, and his paternal grandparents had both been werewolves. As far as Oli had been concerned, it had been Alexander’s fault. Oli wondered which of Boris’s parents had been werewolves, and how on earth he had ended up with his genetic signals switched. Oli must have made some sort of noise, and Boris must’ve been reading his mind, because he started speaking on about the same lines.

“I never had any clue about my parents. None. And neither did anyone else. All they left me with was a first name. Boris. It’s all I’ve got. They gave me a last name at the first orphanage, Connor. It’s alright I guess, but I haven’t used it since I was a teenager.” Boris frowned. “Street people don’t have last names. And neither do stray dogs.

“About a year after I ran off, I met another werewolf. He was like you, I mean, he was normal. He wasn’t like you. I met him just before the full moon, stayed with him over it and a day or so after. Caleb was not a nice guy, and I didn’t wanna stay. I don’t think he wanted me to stay either. I was just a kid and he was some hard headed goth who wore a lot of black. But it was the first time I’d met another werewolf. He’d met others, plenty, and told me stories about them – enough for me to know that whatever I was, I was not normal.”

Oli whimpered, nuzzling Boris’s neck and chest. His scent was changing, his natural ochre struck through with darker undistinguishable colours that leaked out from his memories.

“That’s not the important thing. Caleb hadn’t ever heard of a werewolf like me, you obviously haven’t either, or you wouldn’t have fainted.” Oli couldn’t tell his friend that he had a history of fainting easily. “But being a werewolf is a genetic thing, right? So one or both of my parents was a werewolf. So if this switch thing is a genetic condition, like um… cystic fibrosis or…Downs Syndrome,” Boris paused at Oli’s questioning whine, “I was still in school when we covered genetics in biology. So if it’s a genetic condition, one of my parents had it too. Which would go a long way to explaining why I got dumped on the steps of the hospital: hard to raise a human child when you’re a dog most of the year.”

As the sun dropped they went inside, and Oli ate his dinner from his bowl while Boris fought and won with another tin. He had beans on toast, burnt the toast, and the egg that he tried to fry ended up stuck to the bottom of Oli’s favourite frying pan. Oli sighed, and hoped that Boris had at least learnt the fine art of washing up. Afterwards Oli lay on the sofa and watched as Boris scanned through his bookcase until he came to the long row of DVDs. If there was one thing Oli wished he could do, it was learn to operate the television without thumbs.

“You own more films than I’ve ever seen. Literally,” Boris turned to stare at him, “I haven’t seen a whole film since two years ago when I got a spot in a homeless shelter over Christmas.” Oli remembered that year; spending Boxing Day eating cold turkey with Anastasia and his father in the kitchen while his mother went out to visit family and friends. “It was… something about Santa’s son? There was a space ship or something, and elves. It was weird.” He went back to browsing. “So what do you wanna watch?”

Oli slunk off the sofa and over to the bookshelves. Luckily, his favourite box set was always sitting on the edge of the shelf and Oli nosed it gently.

“Firefly?” Boris looked puzzled. He flipped it over. “Space cowboys? I’m so in!”

It took a little while for Oli to show him, mostly with prods of his nose and little warning growls when Boris was about to do something stupid, but eventually they got the television on, the DVD loaded, and both of them settled back on the sofa in time for the opening credits. Boris leant into the corner of the sofa, one leg arched against the back of the sofa, leaving his lap open. Oli felt he should curl up on the other end of the coach, but he wanted to snuggle with Boris, and when the young man smiled and patted the space between his thighs, Oli lie on his belly with his front feet over Boris’s leg and put his muzzle on his paws.

“Ohh… who’s that?”

Mal. Nathan Fillion. Oli grinned happily. Boris smiled at him.

“Yeah, I know. I talk to myself a lot. Wow, who is that guy?”

Oh that’s Jayne… Oli snuggled further into the heat of Boris’s body. He liked Jayne Cobb very much. Big muscle bound gun toting hunks weren’t exactly his type in real life, but sometimes it was fun to dream.

“This is insane, how on earth does that kid Kaylee keep that duck shaped thing in the air? God this is good.” Oli looked up at his housemate; it was easy to see where Boris was still a bit like a young teenager. “You have good taste in television.” Boris glanced forlornly at the bookshelf between scene changes. “I feel bad for not reading.”

Oli shrugged. They could read tomorrow.

Four episodes later, both of them were yawning, and Boris turned off everything in the lounge before he went upstairs. Oli went outside, and then sat in the bathroom doorway watching Boris brush his teeth. He licked his own fangs, hating the feeling of light fuzz over the enamel. Apart from taking a shower, the other thing he did before passing out after changing back was brush his teeth really, really well. Boris met his gaze in the mirror and grinned through the froth of the toothpaste. Oli paced into the bathroom and put his paws up on the edge of the sink.

“You wanna do your teeth?” Boris arched an eyebrow. “I should really buy another toothbrush, huh?”

Boris finished brushing his teeth, spat in the sink and rinsed out his mouth, then held the toothbrush out to Oli. The wolf huffed.

“Oh right.”

Oli gritted his teeth and bared his fangs, allowing Boris to brush freely. His mother had done it for him once or twice, and Oli opened his mouth wide so that Boris could get to the back molars. It was oddly fun, and even though Boris was human and he was wolf shaped, it felt very much like brushing his teeth with a lover before bed. Not that he had much experience with that either. He rinsed his mouth out under the shower head, stood while Boris dried his face with a towel, and hopped up onto the bed before Boris had managed to pull off his shirt.

“So you’re joining me now?” Oli instantly froze, sudden panic gripping his heart. “Hey, wow… C’mon Oli, I didn’t mean it like that.” Boris peeled out of his shirt and Oli stared at his body again. Somehow he couldn’t get used to how lovely he looked, and how surprising it was to have a beautiful man getting naked in his bedroom without there being any alcohol involved. Boris stripped as though being naked was perfectly normal, and slipped under the duvet.

“I never want to leave this bed.”

Oli barked, stamped down the duvet, and lay along Boris’s side, his head on the man’s shoulder. Boris tickled his belly and grinned.

“Sleep well pretty-wolf. See you in the morning.”

Oli watched him fall asleep, Boris’s muscles going suddenly slack as he fell from consciousness. He couldn’t remember ever being so happy in his whole life.