Work Text:
Before lifting the next wooden beam, Travis mopped his forehead with a flannel sleeve, then rolled the fabric up over lean but well-muscled forearms. Laura couldn’t help but glance over—under the guise of surveying construction, of course.
Her ogling turned into—not a gasp, but the playful comment she was preparing died on her lips.
Travis’s tanned arm is spiderwebbed with pale scars, but the biggest, ugliest one is right in the middle, in the meatiest part just below the elbow. While the others are pale and flat, this one healed red, and raised in places, while dipping hollow in others, as if something had tried to tear a chunk out of him with jagged teeth.
Because something had.
Laura.
“Don’t,” Travis said gravely.
She realized she was staring, and not being subtle about it, either.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Sorry,” she said, quickly finding somewhere else to put her eyes.
They landed on the organized piles of lumber, wire mesh, and tools that would become the newest aviary for the North Kill Wildlife Rescue and Sanctuary. Max had wanted to call it the Rescue Association for Wildlife Rehabilitation for the funny acronym, but Laura said calling it RAWR made it sound like an AOL Instant Messenger chatroom for anime nerds. Then Max said she was insane for going back to Hackett’s Quarry and he wasn’t going to help her get killed. She said she didn't want him there anyway. And that was that.
Going back wasn’t as strange as it sounded.
Travis and Laura were a team. Maybe he had stolen a summer of her life and left her with scars the werewolf infection couldn’t heal as easily as a missing eye. Maybe she had killed his niece, mother, brother, and gotten his only surviving family thrown in prison. But for that one night, they had been an unstoppable team.
They stood together under the full moon and ended a curse.
So when Travis invited her to use his family’s land to open the wildlife rescue she had always dreamed of, it felt right for them to partner up again. After the bloodbath of that summer, and with no one left to run it, the camp closed its doors. But Hackett’s Quarry still had so much space—acres and acres of pristine forested landscape, with unused buildings in various states of repair.
When she saw him again for the first time in four years, SUV tires crunching on gravel as she parked in front of the run-down lodge, he waved, and his smile lit up so brightly Laura hardly recognized him.
Travis must have been so alone with all that space to himself. It’s too much for one person. And the taxes didn’t pay for themselves… unless it became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Wildlife rehab was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
“Really,” Travis said. “It’s fine. Six years hunting werewolves, I’ve got plenty of scars. You know how it is working with dangerous critters.”
“Still…” She placed her palm over his scar without thinking, and sighed.
Goosebumps ran up his arms at her touch, and didn’t stop until they were zipping up and down his spine.
He said it was fine, but that wasn’t what he meant.
The truth was, of all the scars he carried, the deep, red, mangled one on his forearm was his favorite.
If his arms had shocked Laura to silence, he trembled to think what her reaction to the rest of him might be. There were twelve full moons per year, times six years, times three werewolf family members. Do the math.
He didn’t have to mess up often. Just once too slow with the needle, too gentle with the restraints. Add to that his appendix scar, the time he’d hit himself in the leg with an ax when he and Chris were kids running around the camp collecting firewood… Normal life stuff. It all added up. Live as long as he had, you end up with scars. Live with werewolves for six of them, and…
His family had always lashed out at him with their claws. At the time, he’d felt lucky—he never got infected, so he could always remain the one to take care of them. Protect them during the full moon. That was his job as the big brother.
But the scar Laura gave him was different than all the others.
He thought it was luck, until he felt Laura’s fangs sink into his flesh. Then a small voice in the back of his head, one he’d almost forgotten, sighed: “Finally.”
Finally, a wolf wasn’t trying to rend him with claws meant to eviscerate and kill. She wasn’t trying to kill him.
Finally, someone wanted him to join their pack.
No matter how far away she traveled, he could look at his arm and think of her. Part of her was always with him, her bite indelibly etched into his body as deeply as the mark she left on his soul.
He covered his teammate’s hand with his own and squeezed. Her eyes widened, as if suddenly becoming aware that she had been touching him now that he was mirroring her intimacy. An adorable tint colored her cheeks. She didn’t pull away.
“Quit yer dawdling and grab the nail gun. Haven’t got all day.” He gave her a light shove.
She snorted with surprise then marched off toward the power tools bench, twisting as she went to throw him a mocking salute. “Aye aye, officer dickwhippet!” She grinned.
The nickname made his lips want to curl into a scowl, but he’d learned that sometimes when Laura insulted people in that way, it wasn’t actually to insult them, but to indicate they were close friends.
He let her.