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To call it simply “waking up” would be an understatement. Coming out of his monthly transformation from man into beast is a bit more complicated than that. Mentally, it's like escaping from a bad dream, a horrible dream, the terrifying kind that bleeds from the edges into waking life. The worst part, though, is that it’s real. The light of consciousness doesn't clearly illuminate all the corners of the mind; it only casts more shadows.
Physically, the first thing he feels is the cold. His bare skin reddens, exposed to the air of the woodlands surrounding him -- crisp and fresh but so damn cold. His ears are throbbing from it, his eyes sting at the corners, and each breath hurts in his lungs - that's how cold it is. When he curls and stretches in place, he rustles his makeshift bed of dirt and sticks and dying leaves. He can taste the blood on his breath. He runs his tongue along the ridges of his teeth and feels chunks of flesh still stuck there. He wonders what his last meal was – rabbit, maybe? Squirrel? His stomach lurches painfully. Maybe it was a deer. He coughs and sputters and pushes himself up off the ground.
A brisk breeze brushes by and the hair on his bare skin stands to attention. "And I'm naked again," Josh groans. He's not used to this transformation bullshit yet, can't always predict what will happen. Sometimes his clothes have survived, although mostly they’ve been ripped and shredded into tatters that hung loosely from his frame in ways neither practical nor modest. He thought that oversized sweats would have stood a better chance against his lupine counterpart, but apparently he'd thought wrong.
But the nakedness is merely annoying. More worrying is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; for every move he makes, there is a solid ache somewhere in his body to counter it. He lifts his head and it throbs. He curls his fingers to his palms and they hurt. He runs his tongue over his chapped lips, only to encounter a bloody bump where they've been split. He struggles to stand but his leg is gripped by a sudden shot of pain and gives way underneath him. He crashes back down to the ground, scratching his bare skin all over.
"Holy shit," he whispers. Even with his vision blurred by the tears that spring to his eyes, he's pretty damn sure that's some kind of animal bite on the back of his calf, something nasty. The wolf must have tangled with something a little bigger than usual, something that could fight back, and Josh was the one paying for it now. He can’t tell for sure but it feels like his muscle's been punctured all the way down to the bone. He tries to stand up again, more slowly this time, leaning against a nearby tree so he can test putting his weight on his hurt leg. The pain sears through his leg like a bolt, so strong it nauseates him. His leg can't take much, but he's got to get home somehow, and crawling isn't really an option.
So he stands. And he stumbles. It's slow going, but at least he's getting somewhere.
The overnight shift can be tough, but Aidan prefers it over being out in the day. He's awake and alert, unlike most of his coworkers, and being at work often keeps him out of trouble. Fewer injuries occur overnight. Less gruesome ones. The bloody messes aren't as bloody or messy. Less temptation. When a borderline case comes through Aidan runs his tongue over his teeth and bites the inside of his lip, takes a few deep breaths and he's got it under control. But that's little consolation on nights when the moon is full, and there's someone he knows suffering for it. He thought that keeping busy would help him keep his mind off Josh, but then he walks by an window and a sliver of moonlight sneaks in past the blinds. He's quiet for a moment, lost in thought, as he leans against the counter in the nurses' station.
"Hey Aidan, what's going on with Josh?"
He's caught off-guard. He falters for a moment and turns towards the originator of the question, an orderly (like Josh) whose name Aidan keeps forgetting.
He tries to keep from stuttering when he replies. That would be a tell. Instead he feigns disinterest and hopes that's convincing enough. "Why are you asking me?" he says.
The orderly shrugs. "You guys are friends, I thought."
"Well, yeah, I guess," Aidan answers. He can't deny that they've been hanging out together more and more. They've started caring less about discretion at work. Not that anything untoward or inappropriate has been going on between them - not yet. Josh keeps his distance that way. He's still new at this, this business of being a monster. He doesn't open up easily, he's slow to trust. But he still makes Aidan's blood run in a way he hasn't felt in years. Decades maybe. Centuries. "But I don't know what you're talking about."
"He just called in sick," another person interjects behind him, and Aidan turns and sees the nurse manager shuffling some paperwork from her seat. "Said he's not feeling well at all, but the call came from a 603 different area code. Thought maybe he was just playing hooky."
Aidan inhales deeply. If he cares about his image here at work, if he wants to keep the strength of his feelings for Josh a secret, he knows he should shrug and walk away right now. And any other day of the month, that's just what he would do. But last night was a full moon, and his mind races with all the possible ways things could have gone wrong for a wolf in the dark woods, and he can't help himself. "A 603 area code?" he asks.
"New Hampshire," says the nurse manager. "Does he have family up there or something? A girlfriend?"
"I don't know," says Aidan. Really, he doesn't. There are things he knows about Josh - things that nobody else knows, things that Josh trusts nobody besides Aidan with - but they never discuss family. Or love. Or happiness. Or any of those things they lost in becoming monsters, things they cannot seek out anymore but with each other. So Aidan does what he can to cover Josh's ass. "But you know, he didn't look so good last time I saw him."
"When I saw him day before last," the orderly interrupts, "he did kinda seem out of it."
"Okay, okay, I just thought I'd ask," the nurse manager says, turning back towards her paperwork and mumbling. "Past couple of months there's been kind of a pattern, is all. Got me curious. I was just checking. It's my job."
"Right," says Aidan. He looks toward the clock. His shift is nearly over; then he's got to go find Josh. Not that Josh can't find his own way home - but Aidan doesn't think he has the patience to wait. That fluttering feeling in his stomach has turned into a great anxiety in his gut. He's worried, and if he doesn't do something about it, it'll eat him up from the inside out.
It’s slow going, this process. This thing he has to do every month, this reintroduction to human civilization after a brief, unwelcome jaunt into the world of the wild. It’s a long walk from the middle of the forest or wherever he is, and it’s cold, and he’s naked and hurt. He works his way backwards as best he can, following the splatter of his own blood on the low parts of trees, the broken branches and disturbed leaves and soil on the ground. Every step sent a searing streak of pain up his leg, but he presses on. At least while he’s moving he’s not freezing to death.
And then he stops cold in his tracks. There’s something laying across the path ahead of him. The sudden sight of it makes him sick. A dog, some kind of pit bull, or a mutt maybe - its white fur stands out against the gray-brown of the forest floor, shining in the dappled sunlight coming through the leaves and branches above. But its color is marred by shadow and blood and the bristly fur of another creature, one that the dog was unfortunate enough to encounter the night before. Josh assumes the dog’s mouth is about the same size as the wound on his leg, but he doesn’t linger long enough to double check. Its throat was torn open just under its collar. Josh wipes his own mouth and swallows back guilt. He looks ahead, and within sight is a pickup and a tent or two, empty of occupants. Josh steadies his breathing and listens; he’s almost certain he can hear the echo of voices in the distance, probably calling out for their fallen pet, not yet aware that he died protecting them last night. Protecting them from him.
His stomach turns but Josh quickly reminds himself that he’s a monster, not a human anymore, and he doesn’t have time to feel bad for other people or their pets. He knows if he hurries through the campsite he can find something to wear, maybe a phone he could use. He’s not supposed to be back at work until late in the afternoon but at this rate he knows he’s not going to make it.
The thought occurs to him to call Aidan for help.
He pushes it aside.
Aidan finds him at a truck stop on I-93 on the way up to Manchester. He’s leaning up against a bench, looking dirty and worn-out, and it’s not even noon. “So,” Aidan says, taking the seat beside him. “What the hell were you thinking?” He’s not angry. He’s not upset. He’s just exasperated from worry.
“White Mountain National Forest,” Josh replies flatly. “Twelve hundred square miles or so. I figured it would be big enough for me... for the wolf...”
“Nowhere is going to be big enough, Josh,” Aidan replies.
“Doesn’t matter,” Josh replies. “I didn’t even get there. Took a bus to Manchester and couldn’t get much farther without renting a car.”
Aidan jangles the keys to his own short-notice rental in his hands. “It's a good thing I came,” he remarks. “Otherwise you’d be walking a long way.”
Josh shrugs weakly. “I could hitchhike.”
“Would you want to?” Aida says. He looks over some of the other people who’ve stopped at this particular place. None of them look particularly friendly. The longer he sits, though, the more he becomes aware of the smell of blood. It’s familiar, almost tempting, although this particular scent is tainted by what other vampires would refer to as the taint of dirty dog, a distinctly lupine scent. It has to be coming from Josh. In fact, it has to be coming from Josh's blood. "What happened to you?" Aidan asks, scanning his friend for open wounds. "Are you hurt?"
"Nothing happened.” Josh sighs in a way that indicates he’d rather change the subject. I'll be fine."
"No, I can smell it," Aidan insists. "You're bleeding."
"No big deal."
"You'll have show me later," Aidan says. “I’m taking you back to Boston.”
They sneak into one of the hospital’s hidden entrances, one that’s in an older part of the building, away from the hustle and bustle of the ambulance bay, the emergency entrance, the parking lots that patients use. Aidan helps Josh limp alongside him, one arm slung over his shoulder, and they go down to the hospital basement where they know they won’t encounter anyone. There’s some old equipment there - a couple of gurneys, a few mattresses - and Aidan helps Josh get comfortable before rolling up his pants leg to get a better look at his wound.
"Shit, Josh, this is bad,” Aidan says, hissing. The pungent smell of werewolf blood is overwhelming; it’s all he can do not to recoil. “Maybe not bad enough for stitches, but still.”
“You should see the other guy,” Josh says, but it’s hardly a joke without any humor in his voice.
Aidan breathes deeply, slowly, allowing himself to get adjusted to the smell before he turns his attention back to Josh’s wound. “You can't just... You can't do it like this anymore,” he says. “You could get hurt - I mean really hurt. Other people could get hurt." What Aidan really means is I will get hurt... I will get hurt if anything happens to you; he doesn’t say this out loud, but it’s understood between them.
Josh only looks away and sighs. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.” He’s lying.
“I’ll go upstairs and see if I can grab some things,” Aidan says. He rattles off items in the order they occur to him: “Disinfectant, gauze, tape, a syringe - when’s the last time you got a rabies or a tetanus shot?”
“Tetanus was recent, rabies doesn’t matter,” Josh answers. “It was a dog. Someone’s pet. It had a tag on its collar.”
“The wolf noticed this?” Aidan asks.
“No,” Josh says. “I found it again. This morning.”
Aidan says nothing more before he disappears down the dark corridor; he’s back in ten minutes with everything he needed, plus painkillers. It’s evident that during his absence Josh had been fighting back tears; this is still so new to him, this no-longer-human thing, and it’s a rough adjustment to make. Aidan knows. He doesn’t judge. Instead he gently warns him “This is going to sting a little” as he applies iodine to his wounds with cotton balls. He wraps his leg in gauze, fixes it in place with medical tape. He lets his hands linger a little longer than necessary as he works. He can’t imagine how long it’s been since Josh had someone care for him like this, how long it’s been since Josh has let anyone. Aidan’s hands are cold (always cold), and they’re no replacement for human touch, but it’s all he can do. The way he feels about Josh - it’s protective, it’s familial, it’s... if he’s honest with himself, it’s longing. It’s different than the way he’s felt about anyone else, human or vampire or otherwise. Aidan looks at people and he sees meals; he looks at other vampires and sees killers and monsters. But when he looks at Josh he has to fight away the urge to kiss his tears away, has to quell the need to embrace him, to hold him, to let him rest his head against his shoulder. He doesn’t tell Josh this, he can’t bring himself to - so instead he treats his wounds as best he can.
“Move in with me,” Aidan suddenly says. It’s something he suggested long ago, something that Josh has been resisting ever since. “You know I’ll look out for you.”
Josh chews his lip and looks away. He doesn’t say yes, but it’s understood between them.