"Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night;
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." - The Wolf Man (1941)
There was fire raging to the east, heavy and thick on the air over the city. Not close enough that you could push anyone into it, you know, take out a bit of trash while you were at it, but plenty close enough that the sky stank with it. Jimmy wrinkled his nose as a fresh gust carried all that directly into his already stinging eyes.
He'd seen the projected fire path on the tv earlier, passing by the electronic store; most of the Beautiful People had probably already charted a jet up to Oregon just to get out of the smoke, but Jimmy and the rest of the nobodies down here in line for the bus would probably be alright (said the TV), only wheezing a little harder than usual.
Jimmy was standing there, minding his own business (Minding! His own! Business!) when a gaggle of hicks came strolling on up to the stop. The one closest, bandana knotted over his mouth, spotted Jimmy hunched under the awning of the bus shelter and made a noise of sheer stupid delight.
"Well hey," said Hick #1, green eyes glittering over his stupid skull and crossbones bandana, "lookie what we have here."
Jimmy pulled his shoulders up around his ears and muttered, "Oooo lookie what we have here ."
"Huh? What was that?" Hick #1 said, sidling closer with a hand up to his ear. "Were you saying good morning to me, faggot? You musta been saying good morning, on account of you being so polite."
The gaggle behind him leered and sniggered. Jimmy grit his teeth and kept his sneer of loathing pointed at the concrete. Where was the fucking bus, anyway?
"You enjoying the weather?" Hick #1 said to him, leaning in close enough that Jimmy could smell the beer on him, even through the weather. It's ten in the morning, asshole.
"Not particularly," Jimmy grit out.
"Nah?" Hick #1 put on a stupid innocent look and leaned in. "Well you'd better get used to it, 'cause you'll be sucking in worse than that when you're down in hell with the rest of your fairy faggot friends, and you got a long, long time coming til judgment day."
He leaned back, his teeth flashing. Jimmy hated the fucking bible bangers especially, out of every bigoted asshole in this sweaty creavasse of a city. They were always so smug.
Jimmy flicked a bit of lint off his black pants. "Hey man," he said, "if you want me to suck your dick so bad, you just had to say so."
The flash of freckled forearm, and then Jimmy was jerked around by the collar of his t-shirt, with stinging hot rugburn against the back of his neck.
"The hell did you just say to me?" Hick #1 said. He wasn't smiling anymore.
"It's really a shame for you, though," Jimmy went on, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "Since I don't blow guys if I've already blown their dads, like I did yours last night."
Jimmy felt red, and saw black.
When his head stopped ringing, he was cheek down on the concrete wincing as a gaggle of workboots stalked away. Someone had gotten a good kick into his ribs when he hit the ground, although he didn't think anything was broken inside all that ache, and his face was already throbbing in that hot telltale way that said he'd have a black eye tomorrow. Could've been worse. If it was later in the day, it probably would have been.
"Hey," said a voice. "Are you alright?"
Jimmy paused in the middle of scrubbing concrete grit off his cheek and looked up into the mild and concerned face of
Oh, he thought faintly, is that what angels are supposed to look like?
Maybe it was just the concussion throwing halos through the smoggy sunshine, but the man peering down at him looked like something holy, sublime, with those soft brown eyes and those high cheekbones and that smooth clear skin that Jimmy would absolutely kill a man for, but not this man, he was too beautiful, it would be a sad sad waste of a perfect face.
"Immmuh?" said Jimmy.
The beautiful man bent down and touched the stinging skin under Jimmy's eyes. Jimmy hissed involuntarily, and the man made an unhappy noise. "Look at that," he said, "what a bunch of neanderthals. Can you get up?"
Jimmy's aching, pounding side said "no," but Jimmy overruled it. He'd do anything this beautiful man asked him to, and all his bones and organs could get with the program.
Jimmy managed to wobble to his feet, mostly by holding on tight to both the man's hands and levering himself off the ground. He staggered forward at the last second, and fell into the man's chest. Skinny, like his own—their rib cages nearly bounced off each other.
"Steady now," said the beautiful man. Jimmy wobbled a little more on purpose when he tried to pull back, so that he wouldn't let go.
"I'd call the cops, if it'd do us any good," the beautiful man muttered, in the voice of someone who was well aware of whose side your average cop would take, between a fag in guyliner and a choir of good christian boys in fishing shirts.
Jimmy's euphoria soured a little. "Don't bother," he said. "Fucking bible bangers."
The beautiful man's expression pinched and then grimaced. "We're not all like that," he said, in a quiet tone. "Some of us probably have more in common with you than anyone else, you know?"
Jimmy blinked. The man was looking away, with that tight downward curl to his mouth, a long way off, and the sky was silver behind him and all Jimmy could think was: you? You're like me?
His head was full of clouds. He couldn't tell which way was up. Like me, he thought. Like me. You.
Finally the man let him go, and Jimmy was too busy being dazed to pretend to stumble again.
The man reached out and tapped him companionably on the shoulder.
"Keep your chin up, right?" he said. "They'll get what they're due eventually."
—
The beautiful man was named Edgar. Edgar Vargas.
That was the name on his mail, and on the paper cup that Jimmy had fished out of the trash at the bougie cafe near the office where Edgar Vargas worked as an accountant. Edgar Vargas. It was the name of an artist, sort of dignified, old fashioned. Jimmy let it sit in his mouth, sounding it out over and over, while he lay on his mattress on the floor staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
Edgar had this gentle and reserved way of doing everything. The way he opened his car door, the way he took his change from a cashier, all of it, endlessly interesting to Jimmy. The faces he made at rude people when they turned their backs. The way he read paperback books under the tree outside his office every day, during lunch, absently stuffing bites of cold leftovers into his mouth as he flipped pages.
Once Edgar left his book alone on the picnic table for fifteen minutes before remembering to return for it. Jimmy darted up and flipped it open to the page that Edgar had marked with an old receipt.
A man who's pure of heart and says his prayer by night may still become a wolf
Jimmy flipped it over. Oh, it was a horror novel! Oh, he loved horror, wasn't it fate that they both liked this stuff? So perfect, they were so perfectly in sync, it was definitely fate!
He fished the swiss army knife out of his pocket and with extreme care, carved into the surface of the picnic table under the book: here / what howls for you
He had a shift to get to, so he couldn't hang around to see what Edgar thought of his note. He sighed dreamily through the whole rest of the afternoon, tracing crescent shapes on the countertop, thinking about Edgar's fingers on his carvings in the silvery wood. Customers had to bang the bell just to break his daze long enough to get help.
After that it was as if a dam had burst inside him, notes pouring out of him in bits of paper and pen and eyeliner, whatever he could get his hands on when the words bubbled up in him. Into the mailbox, if he was near Edgar's house, or under his windshield wipers, occasionally tucked into any bag or book Edgar left unattended. He'd scrabble for something to write with, pour out the disconnected scrap of thought
until i wrap myself inside you
And look for somewhere to slip it, and dart away, and spend the rest of the day in a warm pink fog. He hoped Edgar liked the attention. He seemed so solitary. Maybe he was lonely. Like Jimmy was lonely.
He imagined Edgar in his little church—whatever seat, Jimmy wasn't so sure, but he'd slipped inside and taken a walk around one night last week—under the gold and blue windows, fingers folded so tight they pinched. Wouldn't that be lonely? With the sea of hard unfriendly eyes on every side, head bowed, friendless in the lion's den.
Everything he did was perfect and endearing and wonderful, and Jimmy never tired of watching him. Between shifts at the CD Cesspool, Jimmy drifted across the city like a compass drawn north to wherever Edgar would be. Edgar was so pleasantly predictable. It only made Jimmy's frustration when he couldn't track the man down more livid.
Saturdays were the trickiest. Edgar ran errands on Saturday, but it was never a sure thing which ones or in what order. If Jimmy managed to catch him before he left his house, he could ride out the rest of the day in ease, trailing behind Edgar wherever he went.
Only once did Edgar deviate from the usual roster of grocery stores, banks, and utilities offices: Jimmy followed him up to the door of an agency whose sign read, to Jimmy's sinking heart, real estate.
Jimmy hovered around the office long after Edgar had gone, until some bitch in a pantsuit came out and told him to scram or she'd call the cops. He thought about breaking in afterward, but he didn't know what he was looking for.
Edgar moving? Where was he moving? Was he moving away? To - Los Angeles, or San Diego? Further? Somewhere Jimmy couldn't follow?
But he couldn't go, not away from Jimmy, who after all was the only one in this sunbaked hell who loved him properly - they couldn't be separated, it was unthinkable, it was not how things were supposed to be.
Whoever answered the phone at the real estate office seemed like she didn't really believe he was serious about buying a house (possibly because "How much for the, uh, the white thing on Appleyard, you know, with the trellises?" was not how you were supposed to Do A Sale) but she helpfully listed the sale price to him and let him know she already had other interested parties. She asked him whether he wanted to do a Viewing. He said no, he'd already seen it, that was why he was calling. Man. What an idiot.
Afterward, he paced the length of the floor, boots scuffing the planks, scowling. So Edgar was going. But he couldn't go! And yet, what could Jimmy do about it?
Jimmy paused, toe against the edge of a warped floorboard. What could he do about it?
—
Edgar Vargas was an unhappy sleeper.
The lock on the old house had broken quietly enough, and Jimmy had let himself into the shadowed and holy realm which he had only witnessed through blinds and glass before tonight. It was pristine, clean, the old fashioned fixtures on the walls dustless under his fingers. There had been a sort of weird sterile feeling to it, each object placed in such a way that you got the impression it hadn't been moved since 1929.
Even the bedroom had an oppressive feeling to it. The big fourposter took up most of the floor and spired up into a bare canopy structure, like a cage. In all of it, Edgar lay like a prisoner in a tower. Like a treasure in a lockbox.
Jimmy watched him curl his fingers against the pillows, frowning, underneath the window with its heavy curtains half open.
His face was so pale in the darkness. All the warm summer brown stripped out of it, pale like the face of the moon, radiating cold light. Jimmy reached out with wondering fingers, stretching through the gulf between that sleeping body and his own thrumming, hot edged one, and just barely dared to touch the pinched brow.
Soon he'd never have to sleep alone again. That'd be good, Jimmy thought. He was gonna fix everything.
Edgar hardly stirred when the cuffs clicked around the first wrist. Another silver flash in the darkness, the cold metal warm from being held against Jimmy all the way up to the bedroom. But then Jimmy had to get the other wrist, and Edgar twitched at the shift as Jimmy started to lift his arm -
Jimmy froze with Edgar's wrist clutched in his sweating palms, and watched the rapid flicker of movement behind the closed eyelids. Nothing happened. After a second more of chewing his lip and waiting, Jimmy painstakingly guided Edgar the rest of the way into the cuffs, and snapped them closed as if he was in the last moment of defusing a bomb.
He let out a deep, deep breath and then wiggled into bed, under the comforter and sheets and into the warm curve of Edgar's rousing body, tucking his leg against Edgar's legs.
Edgar jolted fully awake, blinking at Jimmy with total incomprehension.
Jimmy bit off a length of duct tape and popped it over Edgar's mouth. There was some thrashing as Jimmy squirmed into his chained arms. The tight squeeze felt like heaven.
Even all wide eyed and breathing hard through his nose, Edgar was just the prettiest man. Jimmy nuzzled into his neck.
"Hey," he said.
"?" Edgar said. "!"
"Hold that thought," Jimmy said, and administered the ketamine.
—
The world swam into focus for Edgar Vargas. Like it was being filtered through a prism: glittering, out of focus, a little too saturated. It was a rose-colored room, lit by an odd collection of candles along the floor and table and the single long black shelf, their warm yellow glows making stretched half moons up the walls.
His body felt heavy. Distant. Like a thing his mind was picking up and hefting, like a stone in a palm. He was still blinking up muzzily and trying to get his bearings when the door cracked open and through the yellow light came a gangling shadow.
He thought— Creature . Then he thought— Boy?
It moved across the floor, like ink through Edgar's slipping vision, and then crawled up the end up the mattress, and up close now it was the half familiar face Edgar felt like he'd been seeing everywhere lately. The freckled red-spotted face, bright eyed, hair too dark for his skin and shining with that uneven tone of a home dye job. A strange scarecrow of a boy, patchworked, his hands depressing the burgundy fake silk of the comforter as he crawled closer.
I'm having a nightmare, Edgar thought. And yet, he didn't feel as if he was going to be hurt. The peril was more indistinct, a wisp of shadow like the boy climbing towards him.
"Hey, baby," the creature cooed. His oversized t-shirt hung so loose that Edgar could see down his clavicle and through to his stomach through the gap. "You waking up?"
"Who…?" Edgar managed. His voice creaked.
"It's me, babe, it's Jimmy," the so-called Jimmy said, in such a way that it was like he expected Edgar to know already and was a little pitying that Edgar had forgotten.
Edgar's head was propped up on a pillow, but his body was still too limp and heavy to move much—Jimmy crawled up over him, looming over him, coyote-eyed and hungry. His black-tipped nails stroked Edgar's cheek with almost maternal tenderness.
Edgar shuddered.
"You're so pretty, tucked in like this," Jimmy said. "All cozy in my bed, just for me."
Edgar was dizzied for a moment as he tried to process that. His bed-? Pretty-?
Confused heat crept up Edgar's neck and cheeks at the intensity of being complimented by anyone, especially someone so close he could feel their breath, someone looking down at him with those silvery wet eyes. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had called him— anything good, with sincerity.
"You've been asleep for a minute," Jimmy went on, "I mighta overdone it with the special K. You seem fine now though. You feel fine?"
For a second Edgar just stared at him. Then he said–with great effort of focus– "No."
Jimmy tsk ed. He settled his weight down on one forearm and ran his left hand up Edgar's neck, pausing to feel his pulse throbbing sluggishly in the vein. His fingers were cool against sticky hot skin. Edgar wriggled, suddenly aware of how uncomfortably warm he was, until Jimmy slipped a hand under the sheets and helpfully pulled them back.
Edgar gasped with relief, and then only too late noticed that his damp skin was prickling bare under the cooler air.
"You took my–?" he said, looking down himself with distant dread.
"Hm?" Jimmy followed his gaze towards the haphazard black sheets bunched over apparently bare hips. "Oh, well I had to rinse you down earlier, drug stuff, don't sweat it, it's all under control now. And anyway, we don't have to be shy with each other, do we, baby?"
The pale hand trailed down Edgar's stomach, disappearing under the sheets, and confirming Edgar's fears with the soft drag of skin against bare skin. Jimmy's nails traced absent little shapes over his hipbones.
"Don't gotta be shy with me," Jimmy assured him. He ran a line up and down Edgar's thigh. "No more hiding, baby, not with me. Not from the monster who loves you."
Edgar's head spun.
"You're a dream," Jimmy said, with a winsome little smile that softened his jagged features. "We're so lucky we found each other, aren't we? You're my handsome moon, and I'm your perfect little monster."
Edgar wasn't sure if Jimmy was actually speaking nonsense, or if it was just the lag in his brain turning everything the boy said into soup.
"I've wanted you so long," the boy sighed, nuzzling into Edgar's throat. His nails scratched little lines as he kneaded the top of Edgar's thigh. "The moon for which I have to howl…"
He smelled of listerine, like a teenager nervously getting ready for a first kiss. It occurred to Edgar that he actually might be that, it was hard to tell, but he seemed… young–
"I'm not mad about you moving away anymore," Jimmy told him, fingers drifting more and more inward by centimeters. "It was a sign, I get it now, this was meant to be now, not later…"
His lips pressed sucking little kisses beneath Edgar's ear, sending shivers through Edgar's body. The whisper of warm air against his earlobe, and then a shameless wet lick up the delicate edge—heat throbbed in his stomach of its own accord, the back of his neck prickled—it was a little gross, and so close, and so warm and so soft.
It felt good. Edgar hated that it felt good. He hated that he wanted more.
"J, Jimmy," Edgar tried. "Don't–"
"Shh, call me baby, will you? You're my baby, and I'm yours." He kissed the soft skin behind Edgar's ear again. "You like that?"
Edgar made a strained sound of protest. He couldn't. The terror rose up in him. It wasn't even about Jimmy—Jimmy's ghoulish tenderness had nothing against the ground-in terror of being heard, being seen, being found out.
"I told you, don't be shy," Jimmy coaxed him. "I already know what you are. You told me yourself. You're like me."
Edgar's throat nearly closed up. Laid down like a layer on top of the dreamlike dread there came mindless animal fear—someone knew , someone knew, and the background terror of his life crisped into sharp focus: the spitting, the violence, the banishment he'd seen so many other men go through from so far away, after their secrets were stripped bare.
Jimmy saw him stiffen. Probably saw the whites of his eyes blown out, too.
"Shh," Jimmy said again. "You're safe here. I'll take care of you. Don't you worry about a thing. Nobody's gonna hurt you ever again, baby, not while I've got you."
Edgar hadn't been hurt—not personally , no, but somehow that made the prospect of hurt more terrifying, and if his soul was a wound he would have clutched his hands over it and curled away to hide the raw flesh.
Jimmy petted his throat, thumb going up and down the panicked windpipe until Edgar finally slumped and let the murky rainwater fear drain out of him. He felt strangely hollow, with it gone. He couldn't begin to say how long he'd lived in the background radiation of it. Forever, it seemed like.
Jimmy gave a happy little hum and let his fingers drift to a stop just barely resting on Edgar's bare cock. Sharp-cold pads of fingertips lighted against his hot skin, beneath the sheets. Edgar realized his breathing had started to come harder, and he couldn't quite seem to get it under control.
"Who–" Edgar started to ask, but no, he'd already asked that, that wasn't the right question. He swallowed thickly and said, instead: "Why me?"
Jimmy laughed. "Why not you?" he said, like he was teasing Edgar.
Because I'm no one, Edgar wanted to say. Because I've never been anyone, because I'm not handsome, because I'm not pretty either, because–
"You can't possibly want me," Edgar croaked.
"Shh, hey, of course I do," Jimmy said, stroking his cock like it was supposed to be soothing. "I don't want nobody but you, babe, it's alright… shh…"
Dizzily, Edgar bit his lip and twisted against the pillows as the stroke of fingertips started to go to his head.
"You were meant for me," Jimmy said. "Fate brought us together, and I won't ever let you go." He leaned in and sucked a sharp pop of a bruise into Edgar's shoulder.
"But–" Edgar gasped, "no–"
"I won't let you go," Jimmy promised him, terrifying-tender-sweet. "Never, ever."
His hand closed around Edgar and gave a slow lingering pull from base to tip. The weight of ketamine on Edgar's limbs, the hot whisper of kisses against his neck and cheek, the glitter of candlelight in Jimmy's silvery eyes—in the rose-darkness Edgar lay pinned and helpless beneath him like a sleeper under a nightmare, a painted figure cosseted and cuddled by ghouls.
And all the while his body ached, not with exhaustion but with a skin hunger that had been starved down for so long he'd forgotten it was there. Every place Jimmy's mouth or fingers had touched was left tingling and desperate in his wake.
"I was made for you," Jimmy sighed. "All yours, every little bone, right down to the tips of my teeth." And saying so, he dug the edge of them into Edgar's shoulder and bit down.
Edgar choked on a shout, his better senses all muddled up in pleasure and pain. His spine lit up; the tips of his nipples buzzed with untouched sensation. Jimmy licked the bite mark, soothing the harsh ache.
"Stay with me," Jimmy mumbled into his skin, wet lips and scraping teeth. "Stay with me. You won't ever have to go back."
The candle moon darkness spun in Edgar's vision, and the wet rapture of Jimmy's mumbling, and the tea-stains and the clean alcohol smell, and the terrible relief of being finally, finally beyond recovery.