other monsters
Written for Spooktober 2021, Prompt: Monster. Could be Gen, could be Pre-Slash, could be Established Relationship. Might come back to this at some point, but leaving it here for now. Comments and kudos would be awesome. Enjoy!
Wolf nights are always rough on Jimmy.
Last night was no exception. In fact, it was even more difficult than usual without Bo around. The wolf always seems more on edge when the other boy isn't nearby and last night he'd had plans – a cousins wedding, out of town. As much as he hadn't wanted to, Bo had had to go, and Jimmy had been left with an unruly wolf and an abiding sense of dread.
He didn't know what he expected to happen – even without Bo, the wolf is well behaved enough for a night spent in the woods, gnawing on the scraps and bones he'd dumped out for himself before he'd turned. What could go wrong?
Turns out, everything.
Bo gets back to town a little after sunset, goes straight to Jimmy's house – where he's sleeping off his less than restful night. Jimmy senses that something is wrong as soon as he hears the familiar rumble of the Camaro's engine. Bo smells… off. He's acutely aware of the other boys scent and now it's just all wrong. Some things are still there, the scent of his body wash, his shampoo, his cologne… but under all that, the scent that was just purely Bo, is just gone, leaving a weird nothingness left in its place. Even more alarming, his sensitive hearing tries to pick up on Bo's heartbeat but that, too, is absent. What the fuck?
He flings the door open before Bo can even knock, "What happened?"
But Bo doesn't answer. He's staring at the threshold of the doorway. "Don't let me in."
"What?"
"Do not," he says, "invite me in."
Something clicks. Oh. He's done enough research to understand. He'd happened upon all sorts of lore in his search for information on werewolves, he's seen enough horror movies, read enough scary stories. It stands to reason that if werewolves are real, those other things might be, too. Still, though, he doesn't listen to the warning. "Get in here."
Bo braces his hands on the doorframe, nails digging into the wood until he's left half-moon indents in it. He's resisting. Jimmy reaches out, grabs a fistful of Bo's shirt and hauls him inside. Bo crashes into him and he can feel the coolness leeching off of Bo's skin through his shirt. Bo, though, seems incapable of breaking away from Jimmy's natural warmth, and before Jimmy really knows what's happening, Bo is wrapped around him like some sort of overly clingy octopus.
"What happened?"
"Something bit me," Bo starts. From there, Jimmy coaxes the rest of the story out of him. How one of his asshole relatives had started making snarky comments about Bo's lack of a girlfriend (especially after a bartender at the wedding had sort of flirted with Bo) and he'd stormed off. How he'd only been gone a few minutes, only wandered a block or two away from the party, stopped in an alleyway to cool off before he did something he'd regret. How a monster had appeared out of the shadows and changed him into a monster, too. At least he'd been left instructions.
"What do I do now?" Bo wonders, "I can't… I don't want to live like this, Jimbo."
It is a stance Jimmy can certainly understand. He'd felt similarly when he'd realized he was stuck as a werewolf after Jake's death. And Bo had helped him through it. It's time for him to return the favor.
"We figure it out," he promises, willing to do whatever it takes to keep his word. A werewolf and a vampire. "Together."