Burt Hummel sat at the kitchen table, eating a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast. His grandson, his fluffy little pride and joy, sat in his lap licking up bacon grease from Burt's fingers every time he lowered his hand to him. Every so often, as an extra special treat, Burt would tear off a tiny corner of bacon and offer it up to the eleven-pound predator in his lap, prompting Alex to slap Burt's thigh enthusiastically with his tail. Alex's teeth were only just starting to poke through, so it was still too soon to give him a proper piece of bacon. Kurt would have a fit if he caught Burt giving him bacon, anyway. By rights, Burt shouldn't be having bacon either; but what Kurt didn't know, couldn't hurt him. He was still upstairs dressing, so Burt had a while to dispose of the evidence.

Alex went still in Burt's lap; his little ears perked up as he stared passed Burt towards the living room. Alex stood up in Burt's lap, his entire body going ridged as he stared intently. Burt heard a soft rapping on the front door, which was almost immediately drowned out by Alex's emphatic barking.

xoxoxo

David was a very proud person. No one could say with any certainty where David had gotten his sense of pride from – his father was quick to admit when he was in the wrong, brow-beaten by life as he was, and his mother had always been a very humble woman – but that didn't stop David from being proud. That's why it had taken David months to apologize to Kurt for the bullying, well after he began to be eaten by guilt over it, and it was also why it took him a full week to talk to Kurt about their argument.

David could hear Alex barking on the other side of the door almost the moment he knocked. He couldn't be sure why, but David was grateful that Alex had a fairly deep bark and not a high-pitched "yippy" bark. A yippy bark would not be becoming of a werewolf pup. A second voice, a non-werewolf voice, spoke up from the other side of the door. "Leave the mailman alone. He's just doing his job." It was Kurt's dad. Burt Hummel opened the door, probably to collect the mail, and frowned when he spotted David. Burt gave him the once over, and shouted over his shoulder, "Kurt, it's for you!"

Kurt bounced down the stairs, looking as handsome and radiant as ever, but slowed to a stop when he noticed David. Kurt wrapped his arms over his chest and stared down at David. "Alex, get back in here."

David lowered his gaze and saw that Alex had crept passed Burt's legs and was sitting between David's feet, staring up at him, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. His eyes had finally opened all the way and he seemed to be a less wobbly than he'd been the last time David had seen him. David lowered himself to Alex's level and picked him up. "C'm'ere little guy."

With Alex now in David's arms, Kurt had no real choice but to come the rest of the way down the stairs and stand beside his father at the door. Burt moved back to let Kurt through. "Hey, Kurt. Can we talk? About last weekend?"

Kurt looked at his father, who, getting the hint, slowly retreated to the kitchen. Kurt looked back at David and nodded, waving him into the house by way of welcome…if "welcome" bore a connotation of sarcasm and condescension. "Are you going to apologize?"

"I'm not going to apologize for my future profession; especially not if that profession is a legal one that seeks to protect people."

"And hurt others." Kurt sat down on the couch in the living room. David sat next to him, a safe ways away, with Alex in his lap. Alex placed his front paws on David's chest and stood on his hind legs, swiping his tongue at the underside of David's jaw, while his tail flapped happily back and forth.

"I'm not here to fight; I'm here to explain." Kurt, who had his body angled away from David's, looked at him from the corner of his eye. "Do you remember when we were little, and there were a rash of murders and missing person's cases?"

"Yes. The news said it was a werewolf." Kurt turned more towards David so that he could look at his son. "But they never caught him. They just like to blame all the evils in the world on werewolves."

"It was a werewolf."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Based on what evidence? Bodies that were never found? Tracks that were never identified? The testimony of some snot-nosed, ten-year-old k-…" Kurt stopped his sentence short as he looked at David, realizing what David was going to tell him. "Were you…?"

David nodded. "My mother was the last one he killed. I watched him kill her…not just kill her: eat her." David worked hard not to let the tears come, even still, Kurt picked up the tiny hitch in David's voice. "There was a man lying on the side of the road. My mom got out of the car to help him. I watched as he turned into a werewolf, killed my mother, and then ate her insides. I hid in the trunk." He left out the part about getting bit himself. Kurt didn't need to know that. No one did.

"I'm so… sorry." The words felt weak in Kurt's mouth. What was a better word for "sorry"? You were "sorry" when you were late for an appointment. You were "sorry" when you stepped on someone's foot. What word was powerful enough to express the level of sadness, regret, and sympathy you felt for someone who was telling you that not only was their mother dead, but that they had watched them die? "My mother's dead too." David looked up at Kurt; he had been staring at his lap and at Alex. David had always assumed Kurt's mother and father were simply divorced; that was far more common in this day and age than premature death. "She had cancer. I watched my mom die, too. But…at least I got to say goodbye." Kurt reached over and placed a hand over David's.

Alex, not understanding the solemnity of the moment, began pawing at his father's hand, wordlessly begging Kurt to pet him.

"After my mom died, the slayers that investigated the murders kept in touch. I was terrified of them at first; police can be intimidating. But they were people…just people. That's what any organization is; yes, some organizations have bad reputations, but they are made up of individuals, each with their own personality and reputation. I'm not going to candy coat things and say that the slayers are perfect, but I'm more interested in what they stand for. Not what a few stupid individuals have done over the years." It was a blatant lie; David's respect for the slayers was almost entirely predicated on how many werewolves, vampires, gargoyles, nymphs and other unhumans they could destroy. David wouldn't be happy until they'd all gone the way of the dragon: extinct. Alex was the only exception; David didn't want to ever see that precious little puffball hurt.

"You must have hated werewolves after that."

"Still do. Not Alex though!" he was quick to amend. "You won't let Alex get like that."

Still holding David's hand with his own, Kurt leaned into him and placed his head on David's shoulder. "I can't imagine how hard seeing something like that must have been for you."

Seven years earlier

Paul had carried him into the house and to the bathroom. He ran a warm bath for David. Neither of them cared that David was naked. Both were too numb to care. Paul had been through a lot over the years, had seen a lot as a doctor. Losing David after his transformation the night before; finding him in the early, sun-streaked hours of the morning, covered in blood as he wandered unseeing, almost blindly, through the backyard; hearing his son confess to cannibalism…each one of these events was too much for Paul. All of them together? If it weren't for how desperately his son needed him, it would have been too much to bear.

When the water was warm, but not hot, Paul scooped his son back up and placed him gently in the water. Paul washed David as David stared straight ahead, blankly. It seemed to take hours for all the blood to wash away. A ring of sickly pink had even begun to form at the water line in the tub. Finally though, just as David's fingers began to turn blue and his teeth began knocking together, the blood was gone. None of it had been David's. He had no injuries: no scratches, nicks or cuts.

The werewolf had eaten a person, and hadn't even suffered a scrape.

"I'm going to go find you some warm clothes. Stay here, ok?" David didn't so much as nod. When Paul left the bathroom, David stood and walked stiffly to the sink. He emptied a tube of toothpaste onto his brush and began furiously scrubbing at his teeth, tongue, gums, palate, everything the little plastic brush could reach. Nothing could get the taste out of his mouth, the feeling out of his stomach. Sticking the brush too far back produced a gagging sensation, but not enough to make him wretch. David reached for his father's mouthwash. Without a second thought, or really even a first, David opened the bottle and began drinking in long, hard gulps. His stomach immediately began to rebel. David got himself over the toilet just in time to purge his body. When he found he couldn't vomit anymore, he lifted the mouthwash to his lips and began to drink again. Paul had seen this, he had stood in the doorway and watched, helpless, as what would become a disturbing and dangerous ritual took hold of David.

After every change, David would drink as much mouthwash as his body would allow, forcing his body to eject anything the werewolf may have eaten during the night. He would then scrub himself raw in the burning-hot shower, trying to erase all evidence of the woods from his body. David wouldn't stop this self-flagellation, not as long as the werewolf was free do to whatever it did during the nights of the full moon.

They moved away from their beautiful house, trying to escape the memories of the happy life that they could never get back. A tiny house, away from neighbors, bordering the Redzone, was the best place for the two. Throughout most of the month, Paul threw himself into work; accepting a promotion the hospital had long tried foisting upon him. It was a promotion that a happy man with a family would not have accepted; it took too much time, required too much energy. A man who couldn't allow himself any downtime - time in which he might think about his wife and son - gladly accepted. During the nights of the full moon, Paul stayed with his son, holding him until the change came and the werewolf bounded away into the woods. He watched him in the mornings as he went through his manic ritual of cleansing.

The doctor in Paul realized it was horrifically dangerous for him to let his son destroy himself like this. The husband in him was far too deep in mourning for his lost wife to stop David. The father in him felt lost and unsure how to react, what to do.

That's when the chains came.

It was a first, drastic step towards saving David. But the werewolf rebelled every step of the way. The werewolf became violent and uncontrollable when chained. When the werewolf turned his anger and aggression on himself, trying to gnaw off a paw to free himself, Paul had no choice but to accept defeat…this time.

The cage had been a godsend. Getting it had been a nightmare. How to order a large steel cage without anyone noticing? Paul wouldn't let the authorities recognize David as a werewolf. The public registries for unhumans were not for the benefit of alerting the public to the presence of dangerous creatures; they were for the benefit of letting humans harass, taunt, dehumanize, even kill those different than themselves. He had done it though; he had gotten the cage and everything would be all right. And it was, for a while. David stopped purging himself, stopped torturing himself, secure in the knowledge that the werewolf couldn't hurt anyone at night.

It took the werewolf only two months of slamming his body against the bars to find the weak point in the cage. The lock. The creature poked at it with its nose, sniffing over it curiously. Paul sat up in his chair, his hand ready on his rifle. The werewolf reached a paw through the bars, took hold of the lock and began pulling, banging, yanking, twisting, turning. It took a paltry amount of effort for the werewolf to get the lock broken and the cage door open. The beast bounced around the basement, trying to expand his newfound freedom from the cage. Paul, frightened for himself, flung open the basement door, too afraid to use his rifle and risk hurting his son. His son who had to be buried in there somewhere.

When David came home the next morning, rather than going down the hall to the bathroom, he went downstairs to the basement. He silently examined the damage the werewolf had done, casually observed the shattered lock on the floor and wordlessly retreated to his bedroom. Paul went to David's room not long after, a plate of food in hand. The plate clattered to the floor when Paul found David, his face blue, his lips swollen, his eyes bulging as he hung stiffly from the beam in his closet. He was still conscious; thank god for small mercies. It was then Paul began begging, pleading, and praying. Not to God, a being who had so heartlessly tried taking everything from him.

But to the werewolf.

It would be their secret; David needn't ever know. Paul would keep the werewolf's secret, all Paul asked was that he left no traces and returned to the cage by morning. That way, David could never know. Paul couldn't know whether or not the creature understood except through trial and error. So he bought a new lock, a different type of lock that Paul assured David would be stronger than the last. When the change took David away from him, the werewolf stared expectantly at Paul with curious, far too human, eyes. Paul opened the basement door first, then the lock on the cage. The werewolf poked his head out slowly, nodded once at Paul, then bolted out of the house.

The next morning, the werewolf quietly returned to the cage and settled itself down for the second part of the change: the change that would bring David back. When David awoke that morning in the locked cage, he felt the most vague shadow of happiness.