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Tim has a routine for full moons.
It starts with the softest pair of sweatpants he owns, the ones worn almost threadbare on the knees and ass. When the itch starts under his skin, they bother him less than jeans. He has yet to find a shirt that does the same, so he usually forgoes one entirely. It’s not like there’s anyone around to see him. Full moon nights are, in his experience, best spent alone.
The lavender candle on the coffee table is part of the routine, too. Tim’s not sure he buys into the whole “lavender is calming” thing, but he was burning one the first month he managed to successfully control the shift, and he’s developed some sort of Pavlovian response to the scent. It helps. Or he thinks it does, at least, which is just as good.
The snacks vary, but they’re always present. Chewy things satiate something in his hindbrain, the same part of him that starts to whine in favor of the shift, but he doesn’t let himself think about it too much for fear that he won’t be able to stomach Red Vines anymore.
Coupled with the Alien movies, it’s not a bad way to spend a night.
Admittedly, the whole routine is still a work in progress in a lot of ways. It’s only been six months since he returned from his last tour with a bandaged bite wound on his neck and a once-monthly tendency to grow fur. Adjusting to lycanthropy isn’t exactly what he thought would be at the top of his to-do list once he was stateside, but he’s getting there through trial and error.
All that to say—he’s prepared for September’s full moon (the harvest moon, according to a brief but intensive research spiral he went down when he first realized what was happening to him). He settles in with Aliens and a 24-pack of fruit roll-ups, plus this month’s addition to the routine, which is the fluffiest blanket he could find at Walmart.
And it’s great. Until Mark’s text comes in around midnight.
Heyyyyy, you busy?
Yes, Tim thinks, curling his bare toes into his blanket. He is busy. Except Mark won’t understand it, even if he explains. Mark doesn’t know about the bite, about Tim’s lycanthropy, about the precise way he smothers the urge to shift every time the moon is full in the sky.
All he does know is that Tim never, ever tells him no.
Mark doesn’t wait for a response. Almost immediately, Tim’s phone vibrates with another message, I’m at the bar and need a ride popping up under the first. Tim grimaces. It’s not the worst thing Mark could have asked him for, but it’s not the easiest thing, either.
Another message: Please?
Tim’s already pushing himself to his feet, blindly typing out which bar? as he shoves on his boots, not bothering with socks or the laces. He grabs a shirt off the top of his laundry pile, and then he’s out the door. Mark has sent the name of the bar by the time Tim makes it down to his truck, and he spares a brief moment to be grateful it’s the one on his side of town before starting the engine and cranking up the heat.
One rendition of “Cowgirl & the Dandy” later, he pulls up outside the bar. Outside, he texts Mark.
He waits a full ten minutes before turning the car off and getting out. The end-of-summer midnight air is cool on his skin, and, almost directly above him, he can see the moon, full and bright. He feels the tug under his skin, gentle but insistent, the shift calling to him in a way he’s started to grow familiar with.
He runs his tongue over his teeth, their dullness providing an odd sort of comfort, a reminder that he’s human, if only for the moment.
When he pushes open the bar door, he immediately scans the room for Mark. He doesn’t spot him on the first sweep, or on the second, and he can feel irritation building in the pit of his stomach as he does spot one of Mark’s…associates. Julian, or something like that. Tim resists the urge to grimace, making a beeline over to where the man is sitting.
“Where’s Mark?” he asks. Julian startles, his beer spilling over his knuckles as his whole body jerks.
“Shit, man.” He shakes his hand off before wiping it on his jeans, and the grimace ends up on Tim’s face anyway. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
If Tim were the sort to believe in a higher power, he might pray for patience. “Mark,” he repeats, exasperation coloring his voice. “Where’d he go?”
Julian takes a drink of his noticeably emptier beer. “He left,” he says, making a vague gesture back towards the door. “Hooked up with someone, I think. I don’t know. Why’s it matter?”
Tim takes a breath, and then, slowly, he lets it out. “It doesn’t,” he says quietly. “Thanks for–”
“Hey!” comes a gruff voice, slurred around the edges by alcohol. It’s accompanied by a rough push to Tim’s shoulder that shoves him into the bar, hard enough that he knows he’ll have a bruise across his ribs in the morning. “Hey, your buddy owes me money.”
Tim feels the shift under his skin, all but begging to be let out. He shoves it down as violently as he can, setting his teeth against the urge. It’s harder to ignore when he’s biting back annoyance and anger, too, but he can manage. He just needs to leave as quickly as possible.
“Don’t see how that’s my problem,” Tim says under his breath. He turns, eyeing the guy who shoved him. He’s got a good six inches on Tim, and who knows how many pounds; he dwarfs Tim in a way that might even be funny, for someone on the outside looking in. “I’m just his ride, not his bank.”
The man shoves him again, and the itch turns into a burn, an ache that Tim can feel in his fingertips and his teeth. “You’re here and he ain’t. So you’re the one I’m asking.”
The man is clearly drunk, his movements sloppy and his grin a little too wide. Belatedly, Tim realizes there’s no talking himself out of this, no reasoning with six plus feet of belligerent redneck. “Touch me again and lose the hand,” he grits out, taking a pointed step back. He realizes his mistake before he’s even completed the motion, knowing that, from the other man’s perspective, it’ll look like fear, like a retreat. Fuel to the fire of an overgrown bully’s ego.
This time, the itch rises even before he’s pushed again. The ache spreads, growing now in his knees and behind his eyes. A warning in bright, bold red letters, telling him that he’s reached his limit. He turns, because he doesn’t care if it looks like he’s running—that’s exactly what he’s doing.
When the beer bottle shatters against the back of his head, the world goes red.
When Tim comes back to himself, the scent of blood is almost overwhelming.
He’s covered in it, can feel it dripping from his chin as his chest heaves, each breath laced with the taste of iron and salt. His hands, when he looks down, are red all the way up to his elbows—which he can see, because the shirt he was wearing when he walked into the bar is gone.
All his clothes are gone. He’s standing naked and blood-soaked in the middle of the bar, and his one fucking consolation is that there’s no one alive to see it.
He laughs, though it comes out sounding more like a sob, a sound that burns in his chest and aches all the way down to his toes. It’s helplessness and misery and anger and regret all rolled into one, and he hates it. He hates it.
It takes him far, far too long to notice the man sitting in the corner booth. He’s got a cowboy hat tipped down over his eyes and an empty whiskey glass on the table in front of him, and he’s…alive. Tim can see his chest rising and falling under his flannel—steady, but not steady enough for him to be passed out. And, if he pays attention, he can hear the steady thrum of the man’s heartbeat above his own, thundering pulse.
“Get that out of your system?”
The man speaks in an easy drawl, like he’s discussing the weather. Like Tim’s not standing there twenty feet away from him, covered in blood. Like he didn’t just watch Tim kill a dozen men as a fucking wolf.
Tim goes to swallow, realizing just in time that it’s blood in his mouth, not saliva. He turns and spits, his lips curling in disgust, before reaching up to push his fingers through his hair. Everything is wet and tacky with blood, and he can already feel the sensation getting under his skin, making his shoulders crawl up around his ears.
“Fuck off,” he says, though his voice comes out weaker than intended. Two shaky steps forward get him back to the bar, and he ends up having to lean against it to stop from going to the floor. Coming out of the shift always puts him on edge, makes him hyper-aware of the way his muscles tense and coil, the way air fills his lungs. His legs feel wrong, too long and too stiff, which he’s come to realize is normal. His body never feels like it’s his after a shift, and it won’t, not until moonset.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the man get to his feet. Tim scoffs under his breath, reaching for the somehow unmarred glass of whiskey that still sits on the bartop. “Door’s that way,” he says, gesturing with the glass before downing it.
The man pauses, just for a moment. “You think it’s a good idea to leave a witness?”
As he leans over the bar to grab a bottle of whiskey, Tim snorts. “Who’s gonna fucking believe you?” he asks, twisting the stopper out. He goes to pour some into his glass, thinks better of it, and brings the bottle to his mouth instead, taking a long pull.
The mirror behind the bar is mostly shattered, but Tim can see the man pointedly not making his way towards the door. He feels hackles he doesn’t have in this shape rise. He doesn’t like having people at his back, and neither does his wolf. It’s one of the very, very few things that’s consistent, even on nights like this.
He takes another swig—and then suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder, spinning him around. Tim snarls, feeling the shift rise to the surface, and then–
And then the man grabs him, his palm pressing firm against the back of Tim’s neck, and shakes him once with a low, emphatic, “That’s enough.”
The shift pulls back faster than Tim’s ever felt it, leaving him reeling. He’d stagger if it weren’t for the hand on him, somehow holding him still and holding him up.
Danger, screams some instinct inside of him. This man is dangerous. And Tim might listen, if any of the instincts that came with his shift were ever helpful. Historically, all they’ve ever done is cause him trouble.
“What’s your name, son?”
Tim licks his lips, immediately wincing as his tongue runs over the blood drying there. “Tim,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead, like it would take a monumental effort to just shrug the man’s hand off the back of his neck. Like it’s not worth it even to try.
Even being concerned about this new development seems like more effort than it’s worth.
“Tim,” the man repeats. “I’m Raylan.”
Tim glances up, and the first thing he notices isn’t the color of the man’s eyes (hazel, bright like stained glass) or the easy tilt of his mouth—no it’s the long, silvery scar that runs along his cheek. Tim’s seen enough scars, given enough, that he knows that would have been nasty as a fresh wound, jagged and tearing. Not from a knife, then.
“If I let you go, you gonna try to get your teeth in my throat?”
Tim blinks, the words unexpected. “No?” he tries, but he can feel his wolf clawing at his throat, eager to be let out. “I–” He takes a breath, his eyes falling shut. “I don’t know,” he says, sounding more defeated than he means to. That’s the feeling welling up in his chest, though: defeat, bitter like blood on his tongue.
“All right.” Raylan’s voice is easy, like Tim didn’t just confess to being a loose cannon. “You mind if I keep a hold on you, then?”
Tim gets the feeling that Raylan wouldn’t release him, regardless of whether he minded or not. But still, he shakes his head. “Think I killed enough people tonight.”
For a moment, the grip on the back of his neck softens, enough that Tim’s gorge rises in his throat, along with the awful feeling of his control slipping away. Then Raylan’s fingers tighten a little, and the feeling dies away.
It’s only then that he realizes that, along with the urge to shift, the feeling of wrongness in his body has disappeared. He still wants to crawl out of his own skin, but it at least feels like his skin again.
“This your first full moon?” Raylan asks, and Tim shakes his head—carefully, so as not to dislodge Raylan’s hand.
“Been back for six months,” he says quietly. “Thought I had a handle on it.”
Raylan doesn’t ask where he’s back from, and Tim is suddenly, pathetically grateful. He doesn’t want to talk about that tour. About being attacked. About being bitten and changed. Instead, Raylan just hums softly, understanding in the sound despite the fact that Tim hasn’t said much of anything at all. “Yeah, well, Darryl Crowe would have been enough to break anyone’s self control. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Tim snorts, a harsh, disbelieving sound. “I saw the star on your hip,” he says. “Feels like you should maybe be a little more concerned about the laws I broke here.”
Raylan’s grin goes a little crooked. “Who’s gonna fucking believe me?” he asks, and the joke is enough to knock loose a jolt of startled laughter from Tim’s chest. “Don’t know how it is where you come from, son, but shifters aren’t exactly public knowledge here in Harlan.” Raylan gestures at the rest of the room. “Might be hard to explain how your run of the mill human killed eleven people who were all armed.”
“Former Army Ranger. Not exactly your run of the mill human,” Tim corrects, and it’s worth it for the way interest sparks in Raylan’s eyes. “You a shifter too?”
“No.”
Tim gestures at where Raylan is still holding onto him. “But you know about them.”
Raylan hesitates, something flickering across his expression. “I had a friend a while back,” he says eventually. “He got bitten. Between the two of us, we figured out what works. What helps. What doesn’t.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, once you’ve shifted, there’s only a few ways to ride out a full moon.” He keeps the pressure on the back of Tim’s neck, but his thumb shifts, stroking lightly over the flutter of Tim’s pulse. All of Tim’s focus zeroes in on that sensation, on the way it makes his eyes want to close, makes his limbs feel heavy. A touch, he thinks, shouldn’t be this intoxicating. It’s unfair.
It takes him a moment to realize Raylan’s been talking, and Tim has no idea what he’s been saying. “Sorry,” he says, wincing as he interrupts. “Could you repeat that? I’m–” He waves a hand, like that explains anything, but out of the corner of his eye he sees Raylan nod.
“Scruffing can do that,” he says, and there’s something almost apologetic in his tone. “Especially if you’re not used to it.”
Tim blinks, trying to force his disjointed thoughts into some semblance of order. “Is that what you’re doing? ‘Scruffing?’”
“Well, it’s usually a little more…more,” Raylan says awkwardly, and then his nails dig into the skin on the back of Tim’s neck.
Tim’s knees go out, and he doesn’t give a single fuck when they hit the ground. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t give a fuck about much of anything, anymore. It’s not quite bliss that’s radiating down his spine, but it’s quiet, and it’s calm. It’s a feeling he could sink into if he wanted to, let it overtake him, and just…float.
He’s vaguely aware of the prick of Raylan’s nails disappearing, though the weight of his hand stays. “Sorry,” he hears Raylan say. “It’s hard to explain. That is scruffing. This is its close, slightly less potent cousin.”
Tim swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. When he forces his eyes open (and when did they close in the first place?) he sees that he’s on his knees on the bar floor, with Raylan crouching at his side. There’s real concern in the man’s expression when Tim manages to drag his gaze up that far, and Tim would laugh, except for the fact that the reality of the situation is hitting him.
Raylan knows how to reduce Tim to a limp pile of nothing with no more than a touch. That’s so very far beyond dangerous that it’s laughable. And, at the same time, it’s so relieving that Tim wants to cry. Raylan has a handle on him. Raylan can stop him from hurting anyone else.
Raylan’s thumb moves again, not to dig sharply into Tim’s neck, but to smooth over his pulse, the same idle gesture from earlier. When his grip shifts, panic wells up in Tim’s chest, instantaneous and overwhelming, but when he looks up, all Raylan’s done is leaned back to grab one of the chairs now scattered over the floor. He drags it closer and rights it before taking a seat. “Come here,” he says, and there’s no accompanying pressure on the back of Tim’s neck to make him obey, but he does so anyway.
Heat rises in his cheeks as he shuffles closer, the position familiar in a way that makes arousal and something like shame rise inside him in equal measure. But Raylan doesn’t pop the button on his pants or spread his knees—instead, he gently guides Tim’s head down, until his cheek is resting against Raylan’s denim-clad thigh.
It shouldn’t be comfortable. The floor is hard under his knees, and the blood on his skin is becoming itchy, and the smell in the room is already starting to get nauseating—but Tim feels himself relaxing anyway, something about the heat of Raylan’s body combined with the pressure on the back of his neck making him go lax.
“Better?” Raylan asks softly, and Tim makes a wordless sound of agreement in the back of his throat.
“Don’t usually put out like this ‘til the third date,” he says—which is an all-around lie. Tim’s easy, and he’s not ashamed of it. But it makes Raylan laugh, low and warm, and the sound settles something in the back of Tim’s brain, like scratching an itch he wasn’t even aware he had. When he speaks again, his voice is looser, more relaxed. “You said there were a few ways to ride out a full moon like this?”
“Three, really,” Raylan says. “Option one: I chain you up somewhere and let your shift run its course. You’ll be sore and exhausted in the morning, but you’ll be alive, and you won’t have hurt anyone else.”
A chill wends its way down Tim’s spine. “Please don’t chain me up,” he says, and he means for it to be dry, more like annoyance than anything else, but his voice just comes out…small. Timid, in a way it hasn’t been since before he shipped out to bootcamp. He hates it, and the urge to bare his teeth is almost painful. He has teeth, now, something inside him reminds him. He’s not helpless.
Raylan seems like a pragmatic sort of guy, so Tim expects something along the lines of I’ll do what I need to do to keep you from ripping out anyone else’s throat, but that’s not what he gets. Instead, Raylan’s thumb strokes over his pulse again, slow and soothing, as he says quietly, “All right. No chains.”
Just like that.
Tim shudders, resisting the urge to do something stupid like press his mouth to Raylan’s thigh in thanks. He swallows. “What else?”
“Sex.”
Tim’s head jerks up at that. Whatever expression is on his face, Raylan clearly doesn’t like it, because he raises his free hand in mock surrender. “I’m serious. You don’t so much have a ‘fight or flight’ mode as you do a ‘fight or fuck’ mode. It’s all instinct. Whoever ends up in bed with you will probably have some nice new scars as souvenirs come daybreak, but that’s all.”
Tim’s gaze is drawn to the scar on Raylan’s cheek, the long silvery line that extends from the corner of his eye all the way down past his lips. He wonders, briefly, how many other scars the plaid shirt and denim pants are hiding. If they’re all from the ‘friend’ Raylan mentioned earlier, with the last remnants of fondness in his voice.
And it’s not that the idea isn’t appealing. It is. Raylan’s the kind of guy Tim would seek out for himself, given half a chance: a little cocky, a little firm, a little dangerous. And not too hard on the eyes, either.
But the thought of adding to Raylan’s collection of scars, after everything else he’s done tonight—it turns his stomach.
He’s trying to figure out how to say it, how to...Christ, how not to offend the man who’s the only thing holding him together right now. But before he can get his brain and his mouth to agree on what to say, Raylan coughs.
“Or,” he says, “we can just stay right here until sunup.”
Tim blinks at him, before casting his gaze to the room around them. “Here?” he asks. “How does that–”
Raylan squeezes the back of his neck, and Tim’s words trail off into nonsense. This time, his eyelashes even flutter, the sense of relaxation permeating through every thought and bone in his body. “Oh,” he says, though it comes out more of a sigh than anything else. “Right. That...that’ll work?”
Raylan hums softly. “It’s not ideal, admittedly. Getting comfortable’s gonna be hard, and there’s still a lot of night left. But it’ll work to keep you out of your shift.”
Tim swallows, anxiety curling in the pit of his stomach, dark and amorphous. “And you’d be…willing?”
There’s a pause where Tim’s heart just about gets stuck in his throat, and then Raylan nods once, his gaze searching in a way that makes Tim feel a little splayed open. “‘Course,” he says, softly, like it’s a given. “I’ll get you through tonight, Tim. Whatever that looks like. You have my word.”
It shouldn’t make him feel so relieved, the word of a stranger. But Raylan’s got no reason to lie to him—none that Tim can see, anyway. He’s got Tim at his mercy, quite literally in the palm of his hand, and all he wants to do with all that leashed power is, apparently, get Tim through the night.
“I’ll pick door number three,” Tim says. “This is…nice.” He winces at the word, because it’s not nice. None of this is. But Raylan’s hand on the back of his neck is strong and comforting, and Tim just wants to lean into it.
“All right,” Raylan says, in that same unaffected tone. “Then we’ll stay right here, just like this.” His thumb moves again, and Tim knows he’s quickly becoming addicted to that motion, but he can’t help it. It’s the most soothing thing he’s ever experienced, and to have it offered so easily, so freely…
Freely.
Maybe he shouldn’t be worried about what this will cost him. Maybe he should just be grateful that someone is willing to help him at all, and take the rest as it comes in the morning. Maybe he should allow himself to assume that this is a kindness, and hold onto that hope until he’s proven wrong.
Tim swallows. “What’s the going rate for a night of…scruffing?”
When he looks up, he sees Raylan tilting his hat back on his head, shifting so he can look down at Tim with an odd sort of expression on his face. If Tim didn’t know any better, he’d almost say it was amusement wrinkling the corners of Raylan’s eyes, hidden there in the curve of his mouth.
“Between you and me,” Raylan says after a moment, “we’ll just say you owe me one. That work for you?”
A different kind of relief slides its way down Tim’s spine. He’s never trusted altruism when he encountered it in the wild. Maybe it’s a pessimistic outlook, but it’s served him well thus far, and he sees no reason to change it up now. He can deal with reciprocity, with give and take, with transactional relationships.
Kindness, in his experience, comes with its own set of costs and expectations, ones that he’s never felt truly comfortable with. But this? A favor for a favor? That’s familiar.
This time, the relaxation comes without Raylan having to squeeze the back of his neck. Tim lets his eyes slide shut, lets himself lean a little more heavily into Raylan’s leg. “Sure,” he murmurs. “That works for me.”
The morning, Tim knows, will bring its own problems—among them, what to do about a room filled with corpses. Tomorrow, he’ll have to worry about this stranger who now knows his secret, and the other shifters that are supposedly in the area.
But tonight, all he’s planning on thinking about is the way Raylan’s thumb feels stroking the side of his neck. For now, that’s all that matters.