A Wolf And His Man - 14. Awkward Coupling

“I can’t believe your mum knows,” Oli couldn’t much believe it either, but he was more than happy to let Boris play out the conversation as they travelled home on the almost deserted bus, “I mean, she knows what he’s doing and she’s… OK… with it?” The young man gathered the wolf up into his lap and hugged him tightly. Oli nuzzled him back. “How long have you known?”

Oli looked up at him, the weariness clear in his big brown eyes.

“That long? She’s not that old. He started screwing her when she was…” Boris gulped and didn’t finish the sentence. “Oh babe, it must’ve been horrible for you.”

No one had quite known what to say after his mother’s cool and collected reaction to Boris’ outburst. Oli had eaten the beef and horseradish biscuit his mother had given him and after that, he’d had Boris make their excuses. They’d ended up standing at the bus stop in the dark for twenty minutes, not speaking, both shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“I can see why you don’t really get on with your father,” Boris scratched behind Oli’s ears, which never failed to make his tail wag automatically, “does he really think Ana is higher up in the pack than you? I mean, you’re his son, you’re a werewolf, and he’s treating her like she’s your sister…” Boris looked like he was about to throw up, “OK, I’m kinda wishing I hadn’t gone there.”

Oli pushed his forehead against his boyfriend’s chest and Boris locked his hand around the wolf’s collar reassuringly.

“Kinda explains why you didn’t want to… the other night when I was in my fur,” Boris sounded sad, “you realise what we do doesn’t make you like your father right? I am perfectly capable of giving informed consent, unlike that poor Alsatian.”

Oli closed his eyes and pressed his face into Boris’ chest. The young man hugged him back, but Oli would have rather not thought about what had happened.

*

Oli blinked awake in the soft light of the rising sun. He had ended up on his parent’s kitchen floor, even though he’d started out the night in Ruff’s old dog bed. Yawning, the young wolf pulled himself up onto four slightly unsteady paws, stretched out all his joints with a series of clicks, and padded towards the door. His mother had shut it, because she had deemed it unsafe for a young werewolf not even two whole years into his change to be out on his own, but Oli was by now well practiced at the art of doing human things with his paws. Unlike his father he showed no interest in hunting rabbits or stalking pheasants during the full moon, but had instead mastered the art of turning the pages of books so he could keep up with his school work. Balancing on his hind legs to push down the lever handle of the back door was not a problem.

Oli trotted out into the morning sun, rolled in the short grass, and crossed over into the slightly rougher land beyond the house and garden. There was one field before the Downs started properly, which due to some agreement Oli’s father had come to with the farmer, had no fences on their side and only ever grew corn and field beans. Oli skulked across it, feeling only very slightly guilty, but as soon as he reached the steep grassland beyond, he began to run.

Oli didn’t really want to tell his father, but with the fine golden light of the winter morning on his fur and the cold frosty-dew beneath his paws, he loved to run. He pounded up the hill, scattering his father’s intended prey back into their burrows, and crested the long ridge already panting, sucking down the cold morning air as though his lungs were burning. It felt wonderful to be alive.

The young wolf rolled in the frosted grass, rubbed himself and his scent all over the old mill post which stuck out of the landscape, and snuffled around in the undergrowth, exploring the morning world with his nose. He heard the feet padding up to him, and turned to find himself nose to nose with a very happy looking black and white spaniel. The dog grinned at him, floppy ears cocked, tail waggling from side to side. Oli wagged back, scenting the dog as they watched each other. Suddenly the spaniel sprang away, paws down, tail in the air. Oli recognised the pose, Ruff used to adopt it whenever he wanted to play, and Oli yapped happily, put his own tail in the air, and the two of them entered into a protracted game of tag and chase, tackling each other to the ground, barking and running off, tussling and rolling over until they were a field’s width away from where they had started, panting and happy.

Oli took a last tackle at the spaniel and pinned the other dog underneath him. Rather than roll over, the liver and white creature wiggled underneath him, and all of a sudden Oli managed to put a name to the hot and hungry sensation in his crotch. For a moment he was motionless; frozen between decisions. The spaniel squirmed against him, obviously very happy to acquiesce to his desires, and Oli panicked. He backed off, barking incoherently, tail tucked between his legs. The previously happy spaniel whimpered, brow furrowing, clearly wondering what it’d done to anger the more dominant canine. After another second of indecision, Oli turned and fled.

All the way home his mind burnt, something in the forefront of his brain twisting in anger and shame. He’d wanted to pin the happy spaniel down and do… something. And at the same time the idea of taking advantage of the dog filled him with an awful horror he could not name. Oli ran home, shut the kitchen door and crept silently up to his room. When his mother called him for breakfast, the young wolf pretended to be asleep, and didn’t answer her.

*

When Oli woke, it was still too early to be decently awake, the sun was only just up and turning the world gold and he wanted to go for a run. Since the last time Oli had skipped out for his morning exercise and scared Boris into thinking that he’d been abandoned, they had come up with a signal. On Oli’s desk was an old playing card with a picture of Oli running out of the dog door, grinning. The wolf picked it up in his teeth carefully, and placed it on the bed next to Boris’ hand. Hopefully he’d be back before the beautiful young man even woke up.

He didn’t meet anyone out on his run, taking the hedge line out towards the sea until all that separated him from the beach was the main road, then tacked around the outside of the golf course. There was a solitary man walking a black Labrador, but they were on the other side of a field, and Oli ducked through a hedge and headed across a field of oats, scattering magpies and pigeons as he started to head home. It was shaping up to be a beautifully warm day.

Boris was just on the verge of waking up as Oli got back to the bedroom, and instantly the wolf jumped up onto the bed and slipped under the covers. He set about nuzzling and licking his way up Boris’ chest before coming face to face with the man he loved.

“Well, good morning to you too.” Boris kissed his muzzle and ruffled his neck fur. He smiled like the morning sun, yellow eyes shining with love. The air in the bedroom was thickly woven with the scents of them both, all overlaid with soft love and hints of desire. Oli felt his muscles sag after his morning run, and he draped himself across his boyfriend’s torso, relaxing against him until their heartbeats were bumping in sync with each other.

“You went for a run?” Oli nodded. “So, what do you want to do today?” Oli nuzzled into Boris’ hairy chest. “You wanna stay in and snuggle?” Boris arched an eyebrow and smirked, “I can live with that.”

Oli rolled his eyes and kissed his boyfriend softly, then licked his cheek with a grin. Staying in was good, but he could feel his stomach gnawing at his insides, and while Boris was excellent when naked, Oli really did like watching him take his clothes on and off. He wagged his tail happily, and Boris getting up turned into a play fight, involving tickling and licking, which lasted twenty minutes or so.

During the three weeks when Oli had been human, he’d gone online and found other jeans and shoes in Boris’ size, so the young man spent a little while giving the wolf a little fashion show of each item. After the button down shirt and the thin not-cashmere sweater Oli had got on sale in preparation for the winter, he decided everything-but-everything looked good on Boris. For his part, Boris was modest and wonderfully provocative about asking Oli his opinions, pouting in the mirror and pulling up the front of his shirt to show off his rangy torso.

They went into town, to the same set of vintage and imported second hand clothes shops, and Oli discovered that it hadn’t taken much for the shy, quiet young man to develop a slight exhibitionistic streak. Boris glowed with happiness and pride as he held shirts up against himself for Oli’s approval. The scent was all ochre and terracotta run through with rivers of bright gold, and the colours sparkled in Oli’s inner vision whenever the young man looked at him. Boris told Oli that he loved him before he went inside to pay, and the wolf watched his own colours pass through pink and red and into shining hues he could not name.

“I love those comics you draw of us,” Boris spoke between Reece’s Pieces as they walked home. Imported American candy was another thing the werewolf had completely missed out on in his upbringing. “You always draw us the same shape though, I kinda think it would be fun to draw us as we are, y’know? We could call it The Adventures of Oli and Boris!” Boris waved a hand at the sky as though gesturing to their names in lights. “You could detail all of my cooking disasters… maybe not,” Boris leant down to touch where Oli’s new collar met his fur, “maybe just the story of us, eh Bud? I like our story,” he smiled warmly, “it has a happy ending.”

It was too warm to stay inside, so the pair of them took to the back lawn, Oli with a new meaty-stuff filled marrowbone, and Boris with a book. After a little while, Oli looked up from his treat, and realised that hidden within the end pages of Call of the Wild, was one of his sketchbooks. He padded over to where Boris was ‘reading’ and whined softly.

“Once upon a time, there was a dog,” the young man reach out a hand without looking up and pulled Oli against his side, “he was a good dog, smart and beautiful and with a heart full of love. His mother told him he would find a person who loved him; because he was smart and beautiful and his heart was full of love.” The sketch on the page was a doodle Oli had drawn sometime in the previous week: just Buddy, curled up on the lounge floor, with his glowing heart on show. “But the young dog did not find that person,” Boris flicked through the sketch books until he found a lovingly detailed drawing of him running on the beach, “he searched far and wide for someone who would love him. People were scared by the size of the love he had in his heart. No one could give him the same amount back. So he ran up and down the country, searching towns, cities, fields and beaches,” Boris tapped the page, “looking for someone to love.”

Oli whined, because Boris had stopped. The young man ruffled his ears and found the first sketch of them that Oli had done, with himself wrapped around the injured wolf on his sofa.

“One day, the young dog happened to trip and fall. While he was lying there, feeling sorry for himself, a wolf came along. The dog was not scared of the wolf, because he was a brave dog, and when the wolf said he would help him, the dog went with him. The wolf wrapped his wound and gave him food, and as the sun went down they curled up in front of the fire to sleep. The dog knew that he had come home at last.” Boris glanced up at his canine companion. “I think it would be nice to tell stories.” He rolled over, abandoning the books and scratched at Oli’s fur. “Good marrow bone?”

Oli licked his face and smiled. Boris might have happily changed the subject, but the wolf dwelled on what he had said. The story was imperfectly crafted, but then the sketches hadn’t exactly been a cohesive set. Even so, Boris’ little tale made Oli’s heart glow, just a little. The idea of Boris narrating their life together was saccharinely sweet.

*

“Darling…”

“No! He should do something useful with his time,” Alexander’s voice was tight, and either he didn’t care if Oli overheard them, or he was too annoyed to be using his nose properly, “not prat about with drawing.”

“How can you say that?” Andrea shot back, “you’re a carpenter Alex.”

“And I know how little money even a good skill like carpentry can bring in. He wants to draw pictures for a living? That’s not a job.”

Oli could hear his mother getting frustrated, because the next sound was a saucepan landing on the cast iron hob just a little too hard.

“Our son has skills!”

“But will they earn him money?” Alexander sounded derisive, and Oli could well imagine the look on his father’s face. “You had to work for us to survive. No one is going to be there to support him like that.”

“Alexander, darling, please don’t ever think you made me do anything. I love my job. You couldn’t stop me working if you tried.” She had obviously turned back to the stove again, there was the sound of vegetables being chopped and added to the pan. “And you don’t know that there won’t be anyone there for him.”

“Because he and that Liam kid will last much longer?” His father’s words made Oli clench his fists hard enough to leave deep half-moon marks in his palms. “Our son is not going to find someone to marry and settle down with like we did.”

“He might,” even Andrea didn’t sound wholly convinced, “he might not be able to get married yet, but that doesn’t stop lots of people.”

“Darling, please, you’ve done more research than I and you know what gay culture is like, especially in the city. He’s nineteen years old. There won’t be one person out there for him, not for a long time,” the fact that his father was discussing his perceived promiscuity made Oli shudder all over as his stomach tried to tie itself into a knot, “we must encourage him to do something more stable.”

Oli didn’t stay to hear the rest of what they said, but wandered back up to his room. He took the acceptance letters from his desk and then sat, all curled up as he could, in Ruff’s old dog bed. As far as his parents knew, he had only applied to one university. The closest one happened to have an excellent arts reputation and the illustration course was excellent, there were also expansion units in media, advertising and business to help round out the ‘artsy’ course to something Oli was sure his father would approve of. When Oli had been discussing universities with his mother, she had encouraged him to stay at home. Home was safe. At home, he could be in the house as a wolf and his mother would be there to look after him.

But Oli had put together a second portfolio, another application, and one day when he’d told his parents he was hanging out with Liam, he had gone for a very long train ride and an interview. The letter from Anglia Ruskin was printed on thick glossy paper and said his name at the top, shortly followed by the words ‘Congratulations! Following your recent interview, we are delighted to offer you…’ Oli had loved Cambridge, the smell of the river, all blue and murky, and full of fish; the bright kind of purple sound that people’s shoes made on the cobble stones; the sense of learning, the ancient buildings; the art supplies store that had been housed in a building older and more lovely than some stately homes, where the old man in tweed who ran it had shown him paintbrushes made of mouse and squirrel hair with olive wood handles. Oli had been unable to resist buying one, a detailing brush, which had cost him a very large chunk of money from his everyday account. When he’d been there, and in the months since as his relationship with Liam had started to dissolve at the edges after his boyfriend had gone away on the camping trip, Oli had started to convince himself that he would actually go.

But it was expensive, and it was unrealistic in more ways than one. Not only was the course pure fine illustration, the kind of thing Oli loved and dreamt of, but it was also hours and hours away. He wouldn’t be able to travel home to change every month, which would mean finding whole new lies to tell his friends and housemates, and having to shift shapes out in the wild somewhere and spend his days scavenging food and trying not to get picked up by animal services. It was a pipe dream, and nothing more.

Oli put the acceptance slip to Brighton, now signed, back in its envelope and left it on the downstairs table in the hall to go out to the post the next morning. Then he sat down at his desk with the Anglia Ruskin letter and a large selection of art materials laid out in front of him. He took up a super soft number nine pencil and began to sketch.

Oli drew lightly, he always had, but his first lines were always pretty accurate, which is why ink pens and biros had become one of his favourite media to work in. But this was not so. He pencilled in the outline, then switched to his lighter set of oil colours and used a couple of small round tipped brushes to add in colour, shading and detail, beginning to render the smooth wood of the pipe with tiny, almost imperceptible wood grain. After that he took watercolours, a broad flat brush, and washed in the background, then sponged on a darker blue in the rough ‘s’ shape of the smoke. He did the smoke in a combination of grey Chinese ink and white chalky pastel, opening out the stream of pipe smoke into curling clouds which filled much of the back of the letter. Once the painting was done, Oli took his very best lettering pen filled with India ink and wrote in his best approximation of René Magritte’s hand writing ‘Ce n'est pas un rêve la pipe’.

It was a good painting, for all that it was done on the back of a letter, and Oli left it on his desk to dry when his mother called him down for dinner. He ate chicken with mushrooms and caramelised vegetables without entering into any arguments with anyone, and afterwards, he went back upstairs to collect the painting.

The house always seemed quiet to Oli. A dog, especially a large dog like Ruff, could never really go unnoticed, and in the years since his passing, Oli had always felt that his house was quiet in a way it had never been before. Being a werewolf, being able to… stomach, the company of his father on the full moon, was not a good trade-off for the loss of love and companionship which Ruff had brought into his world. Buying Ruff for him had been the nicest thing his father had ever done for Oli, but it was not enough to make up for all the things he hadn’t done.

Oli took his new painting and carried it out into the garden. He found a couple of old bricks by the wall and made a little hard platform to put the painting on. He weighed the heavy paper down with a small round stone in one corner, and then set it on fire. Oli stood in the garden watching his pipe dream burn gently, the oil paints helping very much to brighten the flame, and realised that lots of people would have no idea why he was upset. He had been accepted to a good university on a course both artistic and practical, his parents were supporting him, letting him remain home without paying rent, and he had a bright future ahead of him in a part of the world renown for both its gay culture and artistic heritage. He had nothing to be upset about.

But Oli Volkov watched the last fragments of paper burn, obliterating the smoke he had lovingly painted, and cried.