Author's Notes:
1. Written for queerly_it_is for the Teen Wolf Fall Harvest exchange on LJ.
2. Thanks to fountainxxpenny and htbthomas for their immense help with this story.
Amazement
The night was blacker than usual, with thick clouds smeared over the stars and moon. The air was chilled and damp, balanced between rain and snow, a fine layer of frost tipping the leaves that lay scattered across the ground. No footprints marred the semi-frozen dirt, despite the crushed and broken foliage all around that showed that many people had passed through this area. With the toe of his sneaker, Scott prodded a divot in the packed soil, then peered it as if it could supply desperately needed answers.
Beside him, Isaac's breath puffed out in white billows. "Well?" he asked, after a long moment. His leather jacket was zipped up only halfway, revealing the dark t-shirt he wore underneath. He held himself hunched in as if cold, except Scott knew better. Not that he would say anything. Isaac had made it this far and he wouldn't like having his success at fighting his claustrophobia called into question, especially since Isaac had only agreed to come out tonight because Scott wouldn't drop the topic.
Instead, Scott turned to the map in his hands. The corners of its neon yellow paper were crinkled and beginning to rip from all the times he'd rolled and unrolled it already. On it, the lines were crisp and straight, unlike the path the lines were supposed to depict which was anything but. He took a whiff of air, seeking any clue about which way to go. The acrid reek of burning leaves and smoking wood saturated the night and drowned out the traces of fear and worry from the people who had proceeded them. He let out a long sigh, crumpled the map back up and shoved it in his jacket pocket. "We're lost," he concluded. He tipped his chin down, hiding an inappropriate smile. As much as he'd wanted for tonight to go smoothly, he couldn't deny the thrill that raced through him.
Isaac hunched his shoulders higher and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "I knew we shouldn't have come," he muttered, though it sounded less like a real complaint and more like a phrase of obligation. He kicked at the dry corn leaves that lay scattered across the dirt path, but made no real effort to turn around. "Are you sure we're lost?" His pulse quickened with the question as if he, too, were excited at the prospects, belying the persona of suffering he was trying to project.
Scott turned in his spot. The path behind them bent into the darkness, obscured in a fine layer of fog that was drifting in. The path in front of them splintered into a selection of unknowable possibilities, the route they sought hidden in the confusion. "Yep," he concluded, after a moment. They could go back; retracing their steps wouldn't be too difficult. But, that would defeat the whole purpose. "Definitely lost."
"Good thing that all my other amazing plans for the night fell through," Isaac drawled. Aside from a set scowl—the corners of which twitched like it was taking effort to maintain—Isaac showed no signs of upset at either their predicament or the narrow confines of the path lined with leaves that jumped like reaching fingers.
Scott allowed a small, internal sigh of relief. So far, so good.
A scream cut through the air, its sound yanking both boys' heads up in reflexive panic. Their eyes flared yellow, then faded back to their human colors when they heard the laughing that followed. A second later, the speakers hidden at intervals along the path clicked to life and began playing the first heavy chords of funereal organ music.
"First they make it so we can't smell anything, and now they make it so we can't hear anything," Isaac grumbled. A breeze rustled through the corn stalks lining the pathway, dragging in more of the fog. Isaac scooted closer to Scott, out of reach of the waving leaves.
"Awesome, isn't it?" Scott replied. "I told you this would be fun."
Isaac looked for a second like he wanted to argue the point, his face twisting in a recreation of the dubiousness he'd expressed earlier, then eased into an almost-smile. "OK, fine. It's not exactly Halo…"
"That's… kinda the point," Scott replied. "We can spend any night playing video games."
"I like playing video games," Isaac argued. "Besides, we're still tied 1-1 and it's best 2 outta 3."
Scott rolled his eyes at Isaac's willful single-mindedness. "I thought we could do something else. Video games aren't really the kind of thing people do—" He cut himself off, his eyes widening at his near slip of the tongue. On a first date, he'd almost said. A first date with a person he wasn't entirely sure wanted to date him. There'd been hints, signals. Like right now with the way Isaac was standing way too close, the auras of their body heat twining together. Still, Scott wanted to tread carefully, and a night out doing the kind of thing that just-friends would do seemed like just the ticket.
"The kind of thing people do?" Isaac prompted. "Do when?" He stood up straighter, lording his height over Scott's, as if that would be enough threat to get Scott to say what was on his mind.
"Never mind." Scott shook his head and silenced the question with a wave of his hand. "So, we're not spending Friday night playing video games. We're also not running for our lives," he pointed out. The music around them dropped down a key and slowed, the notes ponderous and foreboding in the dark. Scott grinned at how the music finished the ominous mood that the maze creators had worked so hard to instill. "This is the best kind of scared. We know nothing in here is actually trying to kill us."
Isaac shrugged. "Could change," he said, and for a moment he looked like he was going to press the point. A valid point, too, given the presence of the Alpha pack and the fragile peace with the hunters and all the assorted other things they didn't even know about, but knew had to be out there. His face darkened and a visible shiver ran down his body. Before Scott could offer any solace, Isaac rolled his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug that punctuated his refusal to give more thought to the real terrors in their lives. "You're right. No enemies here." Letting out a sigh, he dropped his hands from his pockets and looked over the selection of possible paths to take, each equally innocuous of its true end. "So, which way should we go?"
"I don't know. I've never done one of these before. The map was supposed to tell us how to go through, but obviously that didn't work." Scott thought for a second. Then, flashing a teasing smile at Isaac, he ducked down a path that looked like little more some earlier passerby's wild attempt to hack a shortcut through the tall stalks. The cold, dry leaves rustled in his wake and swallowed him.
With a swear that resounded over the organ music, Isaac followed him.
Scott ducked through the stalks, leading Isaac on a chase. As fast as he could push the stalks out of the way, new ones bounced at him. The leaves scratched his skin and his feet tripped over discarded husks. From behind him, he could hear Isaac's heart picking up its pace and the tearing of corn stalks being ripped by the root from the ground and tossed aside.
The maze advertised itself as the largest and most frightening one in Northern California. Scott easily accepted the first part when his efforts to push through the field and locate one of the prescribed paths soon turned to the eerie sensation that he was merely fighting with the same stalks over and over. He knew he hadn't veered into the main field, yet so much corn surrounded him, its thick, papery leaves defying his efforts to move through it with any kind of grace or certainty of success.
Finally, he broke through into an open space, half surprised to find nothing for his hands to grasp. He stumbled forward at the sudden openness—and skidded to a stop, a yelp torn from his throat.
He'd come through at the elbow of an L-shaped path. The shorter leg, the one Scott was staring straight down, was occupied. A black caped figure stood with a wall of corn to its back, a stark white mask on its face and a scythe in its hands. Scott instinctively started to lurch forward, his transformation sweeping up from inside. His teeth dropped and his muscles started to rearrange to fight.
Isaac broke through the stalks and tumbled into Scott with a breathless "What the fuck, Scott?" dropping from his lips before he saw the figure. Isaac made a strangled noise like an aborted shout and then he snarled, low and menacing.
A red light flared on at the berobed figure's feet, casting warped shadows upward. Only because of his enhanced vision did Scott see the figure move. One hand slipped inside its cloak while the other slammed the scythe once against the ground. Then a deep, mechanical voice intoned, "Dead end."
Speech done, the figure froze as if its power had been shut off. Despite its facelessness, Scott had the impression of being stared at. A slight click followed, the noise so faint that Scott wouldn't have heard it above the music if it hadn't landed in a slight lull between notes.
Isaac grabbed Scott around the waist and hauled him around a corner and down the path until the red light disappeared from view. "What did you go running off like that for?" Isaac demanded as soon as they were alone. "What if that was-? Don't ever-!" His admonitions tumbled out, each half formed. "You can't—"
Scott recognized right away the very real panic that underlay the reprimands. Isaac's hands were shaking. They were also still wrapped around his waist, and their previous "standing too close" record was now thoroughly smashed. "It was just a person in a costume," Scott protested, now recognizing the click he'd heard as being from a micro-recorder shutting off. The figure really hadn't been a threat, even if he had succeeded in scaring two werewolves.
"What if it hadn't been?"
From this close, Isaac's natural scent overrode the stink of burning leaves from the bonfire outside the field. The familiar smell relieved him in a way that Scott hadn't realized he was missing until he got it back. Though Scott felt his transformation begin to ease, he had to fight not to bury his face against Isaac's chest and take deeper wafts. Instead he reminded Isaac, "We're celebrating Halloween. In a haunted maze. There's nothing in here to really be scared of."
Isaac went still for a long moment before adding, as if Scott needed reminding, "Except us."
With a shrug, Scott conceded the addendum. "Let's not think about that for once. We're here to have fun. Let's have fun."
"Yeah," Isaac replied. "OK." He slid one hand up the outside of Scott's jacket and pressed his palm flat for a second between Scott's shoulder blades like he intended to give Scott a push, only he didn't. Instead, he stepped free from all contact and started down the path, away from the dead end.
They walked together for a few minutes, only the thundering music breaking the silence. Scott shot glances at Isaac as they went trying to figure out why Isaac had given in so easily. There had to be a catch. Then there were the matters of the freak out and the touching. Scott felt his step slowing as he wrestled with how to interpret the signs. He knew what he wanted them to mean, but…
Abruptly, Isaac took off down the marked trail and ducked around the corner. Scott's surprise delayed him by only a second, and then he was on the chase.
Isaac led him down a row where rubber monster heads perched on top of the stalks peered into the maze like displeased judges, then around one corner, and another. A series of rough planks hammered onto posts on another stretch advised all travelers to "Go Back At Once!," "This Means You!," "Beware!."
Isaac ignored them, so Scott did too.
At a T-junction, Isaac pulled to a breathless stop. His blue eyes sparkled as he turned to Scott with his arms spread in a "what now" gesture. A pile of glow-in-the-dark bones lay crumpled on the ground. Isaac gestured to the skull with its empty eyes staring up into the night sky. "Looks like someone else got lost in this maze." He peered in each of the two directions the maze offered them, none giving more clue as to the correct route than the other, then back at the pile of bones, a little more somber, as if they might be a real warning. "I wonder what secrets died with him."
"No one died," Scott reminded him, half-amazed that he could say that, and half-amazed that he needed to say that. He huffed out a laugh to break the tension, the heat from his lungs condensing into the cool air. "And we do have a map." He waved the paper between them for a second before shoving it back in his pocket.
"Which you don't know how to read," Isaac quipped.
"Let's see you try," Scott returned. "It's not as easy as it looks."
Isaac shrugged. "Never said I'd do a better job." He kicked lightly at the pile of bones. "Though, I hope I could do better than this guy."
"If being lost really worries you, we could surrender," Scott said, indicating a thin metal flag pole a few feet down the path. The rope on it knocked against the metal with a tinny chiming noise. Worst case scenario, maze travelers could loft their map on one of the many poles like these scattered throughout the maze—admitting defeat—and a maze worker would come lead them out.
"I'm not quitting now," Isaac countered, as if the mere idea of being rescued offended him. His brows curled in contempt at the idea. "There can't be too much left to this maze."
"OK," Scott said, "So, which way do you think we should go?" The corn looked identical in either direction, and, though the reek of the bonfire wasn't as strong this deep into the maze, it was still strong enough to obscure easy tracking. Scott sniffed the air anyway, confirming that a group of people—at least one of whom was drinking hot apple cider—had been down the path not too long ago. He couldn't tell which way they'd come from, though.
Then he noticed that a different post was mounted right off the path, back among the corn stalks, with a hook on it right about Isaac's eye level. Scott picked up the skull. The rest of the bones followed with the faint clatter of plastic against plastic. As he suspected, a tab on the back of the ribcage allowed the skeleton to be hung for display. Scott returned the skeleton to the post, carefully sliding the tab onto the hook so that the bones could hang undisturbed. Their greenish light cast an eerie glow over the T-junction once the bones were spread to full length.
The finger bones of the right hand had been modeled into fist with only the index finger sticking out.
Scott laughed again. "Looks like all his secrets didn't die, after all."
Isaac relaxed, his posture loosening and the worry draining from his features. For the first time that night, he looked like he might be able to actually enjoy the maze.
As if to validate their discovery, a shriek came down from the path to the right, followed by a young voice screaming, "That's not fair!" and an older one countering with, "Serves you right."
Isaac raised his head slowly to look at Scott, his eyes burning yellow. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his lips. "What do you think about joining the show?"
"No!" Scott snapped. Then, softer, an attempt to soothe the rejection he saw start to crinkle Isaac's face. "No. I mean—" He dropped his head back, frustrated at his lack of ability to say what he meant. "This was supposed to be just you and me, you know? Just doing normal stuff."
"Playing video games is 'normal stuff,'" Isaac countered. Something in the way he said it sounded uncertain, though, like he sensed that he was missing a piece of information that was obvious to everyone else. His eyes faded to blue and he rolled his shoulders in, half turning away. As hard won as it had been, Isaac's enjoyment slipped away with barely a whisper.
Scott's stomach twisted. This is not what was supposed to happen. He'd wanted to enjoy the evening with Isaac, and he knew he was sending mixed signals, but dammit, how was he supposed to know what signals to send? He'd never tried to take a friendship and turn it into something more, much less with another guy. Another werewolf. "It is," he said. "But that's not—"
Scott watched the clouds drifting across the night sky for a moment, how they stretched and thickened yet still held their shape. He forced out a breath and clenched his fists, steeling himself for probably the biggest mistake of his life, and then with more assertiveness than he'd ever put toward anything, he closed the gap to Isaac. He didn't kiss him, despite how much he wanted to. All he did was step so that their body heats once again brushed together and Isaac's scent enveloped him. He tilted his face up and said, "That's not what I wanted us to do."
He heard the hitch in Isaac's heartbeat, even over the thrum of heavy chords. "Us?" Isaac asked. A blush crawled into his cheeks that the chilled night air could explain, but hadn't caused.
Scott nodded and licked his lips, and was unable not to notice that Isaac's eyes widened as they tracked that tiny movement. And then Isaac leaned forward and Scott brought his arms around and they were kissing.
Isaac's lips were soft and pliant. His body molded itself to fit against Scott like candle-warmed wax. Any trace of cold that Scott had felt disappeared and he pulled Isaac closer, crushing their chests together. A soft moan passed between them, slipping from one mouth into the other. Isaac's hand slid up under the back of Scott's shirt, leading a charge of goosebumps from the touch of air, and settled between his shoulder blades like it was fulfilling a promise.
Isaac's leg shifted between Scott's and pushed him stumbling back against the wall of corn stalks. The dried leaves caught in his hair and tickled the boundary of exposed skin on his lower back, sensations lost in the much more persistent pressure of Isaac's hips grinding into his, of Isaac's hardness grinding into his. Scott groaned and pushed back. Not so much a mistake after all, he thought, except that he should have done this much sooner.
"BOO!"
The yell ripped between Scott and Isaac, flinging them apart. Flushed and panting, they turned. A pair of rubber-faced monsters crouched shoulder-to-shoulder, their gloved fingers curled in front of them in a parody of claws.
"Gotcha!" one of them cried, just as the other crowed, "Shoulda seen your faces!"
Before Scott or Isaac could respond, they took off running down the path, alternately giggling and shushing each other.
Scott leaned forward, curling his own claws into his thighs and tried to reel himself back in. "Oh my god," he said. For a split-second between when he'd heard the kids' exclamation and recognized what it was, his reflex had been to attack.
Isaac cocked his head, his mouth twisting into a wry sneer. "That coulda ended bad," he commented, echoing Scott's thoughts. The points of his canines flashed as he spoke.
"We should follow them."
"To rip their heads off?"
Scott shot Isaac a worried look in case the other boy wasn't joking. Isaac looked a cross between amused and put out, which did nothing to assuage Scott's concern. "Because they seem to know where they're going," he said, instead. From somewhere up head, another shouted "Boo!" rang out, followed by a flurry of giggles. "They'll know how to get out of here."
"I thought you wanted to get lost in the maze," Isaac responded.
"Did that," Scott said. He straightened up and started down the dirt path. After a couple of steps, he spun around just long enough to add, "There's something else I want now."
He heard Isaac's gulp clearly, followed by the crunch of rubber soles against dried leaves as Isaac scrambled to catch up to him. It wasn't exactly how Scott had imagined their first date. But, he was okay with how it was promising to turn out.
END