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"Ah, I’m so tired!" Bennett screamed at the top of his lungs, rendering him deaf for a solid second. "But it was so much fun!" And with a content grin, he flopped to the ground next to Razor, almost squishing him with his weight as he sat down.
Razor didn’t budge, resorting to a simple glare instead. "Too close," he muttered, without being heard.
He sighed. Aside from some early difficulties, he was now accustomed to Bennett being somewhat touchy , always finding a way to sit a little too close, or to have their shoulders brush together as they walked. Razor shrugged it off as him being starved of physical contact, with very few people sticking by his side, and usually cast aside by his own teammates. That’s why he had never once mentioned his annoyance out loud, letting him do as he pleased, too scared of hurting his feelings. And, with time, it had stopped being a bother.
But one day, he had started to feel weird.
Razor wasn’t an expert in human emotions (quite the opposite, if anything), yet it didn’t take a genius to realize something out of the ordinary was going on inside his heart. His cheeks caught fire whenever their hands accidentally touched, his fingers burning and tingling as if run through by static electricity.
He wasn’t repulsed by it, simply… perplexed. One rare time, when he had the chance to accompany a wounded Bennett to get his medication done at the Cathedral, he had presented his doubts to Barbara. She had blushed and laughed at him in an affectionate way, leaving him with even more uncertainty than before.
And so, he suffered in silence, carrying that confusion locked up inside his heart, secretly enjoying the warmth in his chest upon touching Bennett, especially after spending hours playing in the snow, his nose about to fall off from the freezing cold.
This moment was different, though. As dusk made way for the night, the noise of their laughter fading into tired silence and a sudden calm embracing them, the sound of his heartbeat became far too unbearable. He felt weak having Bennett’s body so near to his own, and he thanked the heavens for being sat down, his legs trembling, waves of pure heat irradiating from the spots where their skins touched.
Maybe he was sick.
Quietly sighing to himself to shake off his discomfort, Razor tried his best to keep his mind off the matter. He started thinking, although using his brain at such late times wasn’t his specialty, fueled by the beauty of the moon in the starry sky. And as soon as he let his thoughts trail off, they immediately chased after their memories together— the fun times spent adventuring through continuous accidents, the clutching of his chest whenever Bennett showed his sweet smile to someone else, the pride that filled his heart every time he brought him some good luck, temporarily winning over his misfortune.
Bennett laughed often, but rarely with his eyes. Only since they had met and spent days together, Razor had started to see some sincere smiles curving his lips, keeping him happy from morning to night. And the thought that he might be the cause of his joy, even if perhaps only partially, made his soul tremble with an inexplicable thrill of bliss.
With the image of his smile in mind, Razor slowly fell asleep, huddled close against Bennett, as the campfire crackled at his feet.
A heartbreaking noise awoke him all of a sudden.
His mind dashed to his worst memories, to the day he saw his Lupical being harmed, their pained hollers ringing through his ears. His eyes snapped open, immediately sobering up from the misty haze of sleep, as he sat up and quickly scanned the area around him for danger. It was still deep in the night, the fire starting to fade off in ashes and embers. Bennett was curled up on himself, his knees hugged tightly to his chest, apparently motionless. The first thing Razor could think was that he might be hurt. With his usual bad luck, who knows what might have happened as he was fast asleep, his guard irresponsibly let down.
He moved closer to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. And that’s when he noticed he was crying.
"Bennett?" he called out his name.
The boy jolted under his touch, brought back to his senses. He lifted his face from his knees, his cheeks and eyes reddened by the tears, and wiped his face dry with his glove. "Oh, Razor!" he said, in an obviously fake surge of happiness. "I thought you were sleeping!"
Razor glared at him. Did he consider him so dumb as to not see through his extremely bad acting?
"Why crying?" he asked.
Bennett gulped and averted his gaze, losing his focus in the vaguely shiny remains of the fire. "Who, me?" he said. "It’s nothing, I had something stuck in my eye! It happens often, you know, camping in the woods and..."
Razor didn’t even bother replying. He stared at him in the most annoyed way he could manage, in total silence, until the weight of his gaze became enough for Bennett to feel uneasy, and to face him again. Razor’s chest clenched in pain upon seeing all that sadness in his green irises, and he wondered how long he had been secretly crying for, in the dead of night, all alone.
"You don’t have to worry about me," he said, in a soft whisper. "I’ll be fine."
Razor didn’t know how to react. Seeing Bennett in such a pitiful state hurt him, much more than he’d have ever thought. He couldn’t quite understand why (he had seen him injured and wounded a thousand times, so why did an emotional scar hit in such a different way?), all he knew was he had to do something. He wanted him to smile.
"Want to talk?" he asked.
Bennett bit his lower lip. A few heavy minutes passed, and Razor thought he wouldn’t open up his heart to him, and even considered the idea of surrendering. He could survive without understanding the reasons for his suffering, after all he didn’t need reasons or excuses to cheer him up.
But then, Bennett spoke, in an untypically shaky voice. "Honestly, I should be used to this," he said. "It happens every time. I should be aware that people hate me, by now."
Razor tilted his head in confusion. "I don’t hate Bennett," he said. He couldn’t follow his abstract reasoning, but he knew that simple, sincere truth at least.
"I know," Bennett said, shaking his head, "I know you don’t. But for some reason, when I meet an old teammate I feel happy about our reunion… forgetting that no one actually wants to see me."
Razor quietly moved closer, wrapping his arm around his shoulders and pulling him towards his chest. Bennett hesitated at first, abruptly stopping his narration, but quickly reacted to his display of affection, nuzzling against the base of his neck.
"Yesterday, I went on an adventure with the Traveler," Bennett explained, his voice now a mere whisper, as his breath tickled Razor’s skin. "We got stuck inside the ruins. You know, my bad luck… And after fiddling around with a mechanism, we locked the door by accident and heard a cry for help."
Razor’s heartbeat was out of control. He feared that even Bennett, with his ears so close to his chest, could hear it drum inside his ribcage. But although it was embarrassing and it made his cheeks flush uncomfortably, he didn’t want to push him away.
He knew nothing about cheering people up, or comforting others. All he had been taught was that, when it rains on your face and in your heart, the best thing to do is to hide in a hollow tree and sleep against the fluffy fur of a fellow wolf. There was no tree and no soft mantle for Bennett to cling onto, but Razor hoped that was enough— holding him tight, petting his back with his hand to calm his crying fit, allowing him to let words flow freely out of his lips.
"We went to check what was wrong," Bennett continued, his muscles relaxing ever so slightly under Razor's comforting touch, "And we ran into an old member of my adventure team, Royce. I was so happy to meet him after years, but he..."
His voice cracked. Razor looked down to him, and saw him bury his nose in the fabric of his hoodie, as tears flowed down his cheeks. "He was so upset about seeing me. He said it was the worst , and… he remembered all the accidents that happened to my teammates overtime, and..."
Razor knew what he meant. He had heard the story a million times, and also experienced some of his bad luck on his own skin. But he cared about him, and no matter how many accidents he’d face, he was ready to handle everything if it meant staying together.
Bennett’s huge sense of guilt wasn’t typically voiced out loud, but rather hidden in his actions, behind his people pleasing attitude, in his low self esteem and lack of trust in any bond he formed. He considered everything to be fleeting, as happiness and serenity rarely stuck around.
"Not your fault," Razor said. He wanted to be different. If the entire world were to team up against Bennett, then he’d be the one to stand by his side, and cheer him on.
"But… Royce is right," Bennett brushed him off. "When people spend time with me, they get injured or even worse, risk death. I shouldn’t be allowed to have friends."
Something in those words cut him deeply. He was torn between his will to comfort the boy, clearly so hurt throughout his entire life, and his need to smack his head to slap him back into sanity. How could he say that in front of someone who loved him so much and had been by his side for all those years?
"Bennett," he said, irritated, in an attempt to halt that river of self deprecation.
"I should stop being an adventurer," Bennett went on, completely lost in his rant and not even paying attention to what he was saying, "So the world is gonna be free from my curse."
That was far too much. Razor didn’t sit well with him talking down on himself to such an extent. It was painful, almost as if the insulted person was him and not someone else. Someone who was so precious to him, the only human to ever make him feel something special.
A better idea flashed in his mind. Even though he had no direct experience in relationships of any kind, he had been observing people for a long time, and knew something that would make Bennett cease that undeserved verbal self beating.
"Look at me," he said.
Again, no luck. "You know what I am?" Bennett’s voice was starting to turn into a high pitched, desperate scream. "I’m a useless, dangerous hazard and a—"
"Stop." With this simple word, Razor brought his hand to Bennett’s chin, lifting his face just enough to press their mouths together, like he had seen couples do whenever they hid in the forest, a bit too close to his hiding place. It felt terribly goofy, and he was quite sure that’s how it looked to Bennett as well, his lack of skills turning it into more of a brushing of lips rather than an actual kiss. But it did indeed serve its job of shutting the boy up for the time being— and in a way that, he hoped, would be less harmful than any other method he had learned from his Lupical.
Bennett blushed deeply, the red of his cheeks shining even brighter in the pale light of the moon, as he clumsily kissed him back.
It was warm, and far from unpleasant. His heartbeat might have been out of control, but Bennett’s was just as fast, drumming loudly against Razor’s chest. Displays of affection between humans were fairly unusual for him, and extremely different from what he was used to. But he didn’t find it uncomfortable at all— if anything, Bennett’s lips felt so soft that, when they parted, he wished he could immediately dive in once more.
"Razor..." Bennett whispered, breathing heavily against his mouth.
"Bennett is not useless," the grip of Razor’s fingers on his chin grew stronger, and he gently shook his head to furtherly prove his point, almost as if the gesture could help him engrave the words into the silly boy’s memory. "Bennett is Lupical."
Bennett’s eyes grew wide in shock, and silence fell again. They didn’t need to speak any further— Razor didn’t know what to add to make him feel more at ease, or to detail his confused emotions towards him, and Bennett was too shocked to answer his sudden confession (if they could even count it as an actual one). It was the comfortable kind of quiet; all they needed was to be close to each other, and that was definitely more than enough.
Bennett cried more, that night. He cried and cried, letting all of his pain stream out of his eyes, his face pressed tightly against Razor’s chest until his tears soaked the collar of his shirt, his nose turning into a red running mess. Until the moment when, lulled by Razor’s gentle pats on his back and sinking in the warmth of his body, he fell into a deep sleep.
Razor followed him soon. And the lukewarm feeling of hugging his favorite person to sleep, the snow angels they made that day being their only witness, was the closest thing to love that he had ever hoped to feel.