We settled down in the little restaurant. It was a fancy one, so I was happy Abel had convinced me to pack something nice. I had a pair of dress pants shoved in the back of my closet from a prom or whatever. And a nice black shirt he had convinced me to buy.
We had gotten dressed separately and when he stepped out of the bathroom, he looked... So hot. He was wearing these dress pants as well, but with an awesome belt, black dress shirt tucked into his trousers. The waves on his head had been slicked back and I had never seen anything like him before.
"Do... Do I look okay?" he asked and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.
"Are you kidding? You look amazing!" I went to him and fixed his collar. "You clean up good."
"You do too," he said softly and unbuttoned my top button, fixing my collar too. "There. Much better, isn't it?"
"Is it because you wanna peak at my collarbones all night or?"
"Hey, I'm the one looking at you, aren't I?" He gently put his hands on my cheeks, getting me to tip my head up further, his thumbs going over my jaw. Then he slowly, agonisingly so, bent down and kissed me so softly.
We went to the restaurant and got our seats. I was a little nervous as I dug through my bag and found the notebook.
"So uhm, I couldn't take any pictures of you and like... I thought you'd still want a memory. So I sketched something. Just something quick. You can like... Throw it away. If it's bad. Or you don't need like a memento from the trip to the reservoir." I ripped the page out and handed it to Abel.
His eyes widened and the black dots changed size several times, going from big to small as he blinked. "I... I look like this to you?" he asked with a small voice.
"Uh, I mean, it's just a quick sketch but uhm... Yeah. I guess."
He smiled then and met my gaze. "Thank you, Gael. You captured Gene perfectly. We'll have to find a frame for it."
"I'm sure we'll find one. But are you sure, you like it?"
"Gael, I love it. I adore it. I've never had anything like this to remember a trip by." He looked back down at the sketch again, gently smoothing his fingers over the paper. "Thank you." He leaned over the table and kissed me on the cheek. "I wish I had known we were doing gifts."
"It was a spur of the moment thing. So don't worry about it. After all, you also paid for this whole thing. So this is like a gift."
He smiled and nodded, looking down at the menu. "I'll pay for dinner too, by the way."
"And here I thought we could at least go splitsies."
He snorted. "Nope."
I didn't want the trip to end. Ever. Maybe when we were done in uni, we could go live in the mountains. Be that pair of gays living in the woods and only showing up at little food markets to sell our own cruelty free honey. It was a nice fantasy. Maybe one that could become reality one day.
Which was dumb. I had bought a house here. I was making it into a proper home. I didn't want to leave it. Maybe I could live out my little cottage core dream right here. Have Abel move in at some point. Despite us spending more time at his than mine. He was just such a homebody, he preferred we stayed at his. Liked sleeping in his own bed.
Maybe my dream didn't have to be a cottage core dream, maybe it could be this fancy loft dream. We'd go for lunches in downtown Imperium. Have coffee at the cafés.
And then I'd go into the woods every month and turn into a wolf or something. Or since this was a fantasy, I'd get a handle on that too. I'd figure out a way to control the shift, like Cal. I'd be happy forever and ever.
Except there were still the murders. And half the community thought I was to blame for those.
I really didn't wanna go back.
"It's going to be good to get home, huh?" Abel asked as he took a right on the freeway.
I made some incomprehensible noises instead of answering him.
"Personally can't wait to not worry about the mugs."
"Right," I muttered under my breath.
"You wanna stay at mine? Or do you wanna go home? Maybe I can stay at yours?"
I glanced up at him and smiled. "You pick. As long as we're sleeping in the same bed, I don't really care."
"Then yours. I still think we should err on the side of caution and your place has all the wards."
I nodded, having blissfully forgotten that not only did parts of the community hate me, they might try and hurt me too.
We turned down my street and stopped at the house. I clenched my jaw as I exited the car. On the pavement in front of it, "bark-bark" was written in big fat letters. With chalk.
"What are they... Kids?" Abel scoffed.
"I don't know. Seems to be lacking in artistic creativity." I shrugged and opened the door to the backseats, letting Dave out. "Dave barks, so I guess it's accurate for him."
"But hey, this probably means they couldn't actually get close to the house and write 'whore' on your garage door."
I snorted. "So, the wards work. They can't do anything but write on the pavement. With something that's going to go away after it rains." I crouched down as Abel got Gary's carrier out of the car. I gently ran my fingers over the chalk. It felt like it was stinging at first. Then I jerked back, my fingers feeling like they were on fire.
"Abel!" I screamed, holding my hand out from my body.
He was by me in a second, picked me up and got me inside my house. He put me on the couch and fished out his phone, calling someone.
I whimpered loudly as large blisters spread across my hand and down my arm, making my skin red at first and then the blisters turned yellow.
Abel was fast to be by my side, wrapping my hand in a wet towel. "It'll be alright, Gael, it'll be alright," he said with a shivering voice. He didn't sound sure.
Maybe I passed out or something because it felt like I had been gone for a while and then knocking on my door brought me back. I was drenched in sweat. Everything was agony.
"Gael," someone said softly. I must've closed my eyes again. I didn't even realise.
I opened them and looked up at Fred.
"Looks like poison. Explain," Fred said.
"He touched the chalk out on the street," Abel explained from somewhere dark.
Nope, I had closed my eyes again.
Fred went away and I heard the front door open. Then she came back like a second later. Could she teleport?
I had probably just fallen asleep again. And then woken up immediately.
"Wolfsbane," Fred said.
"Absolute fuckers," Abel growled.
I opened my eyes and looked up at him. "That part was true. The story books were right."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Yeah, sometimes they're not entirely off."
"I wish they were. This sucks." I groaned the last part as another burning sensation ran down my arm.
"This part is going to suck worse," Fred said as she pricked a hole on her finger and drew some weird symbols on my arm. "Abel, I need you to break it."
"What?" He looked absolutely dumbfounded.
"When I say 'now', I need you to break his arm. I need you to do it as cleanly as possible, alright? A clean break. It'll trigger Gael's own healing ability and the spell will help flush the wolfsbane out of his body. Otherwise, it'll kill him. So I need you to break it."
"I'm sorry, Gael," Abel said, biting down on his lip as he took my arm in his hands.
"Twig arms," I whispered.
"You don't have twig arms."
"It'll be easy to break."
Abel snorted and glanced at Fred. She gave him a nod.
The sound was actually worse than the pain. The sound travelled inside of my body, and it rung out through my skull several times. But then the pain hit the wolf.
I had been laying on my back on the sofa, but I shot up and actually roared. My voice was way darker than usual, and then the real pain started. My fingers felt like they were on fire as claws grew up. My face was burning, as it got into the process of breaking apart.
"Gael," Abel said so softly and pulled me into his arms. He put his hand on my head, running his fingers through my hair.
My pulse was out of control, and it sounded like a storm had taken up residency in my ears. But his voice cut through it all. The pain, the storm... Everything zeroed in on his voice and I felt the wolf almost... Relax?
"There we go. Breathe through the pain. It's going to be alright."
I was panting so hard, but Abel being there just made it so much easier.
"It'll be broken for a while, obviously. Your healing abilities will be focused on the wolfsbane over the broken arm, as that takes priority," Fred said after I had calmed down a little.
"You know a lot about wolves..." I murmured and met her gaze over Abel's shoulder.
He carefully got me down on the sofa again, pulling a blanket over me.
"Yeah, well. We've got a lot of books." She shrugged a shoulder. "And I might've read up on wolves a lot after all this happened. My mum told me how they'd used to plant wolfsbane in the gardens of the wolves who used to live here. So... I read up on how wolfsbane poisoning could be healed. Just be happy you didn't eat it."
I cringed and nodded. I couldn't really imagine how they'd get that out since you can't just break someone's stomach?
"Rest now and then go to the A&E for your arm. Tell them... You fell. Or something. Don't get too creative."
"We went roller-skating and I suck at roller-skating," I said tiredly and smiled up at her. "Thank you, Fred. Don't know how I can repay you for this."
"Repay me in cocktails or something. I'll see yous at school, yeah?"
I nodded tiredly. Abel followed Fred to the door and came back to the sofa after a quick goodbye.
"I think we should just get it over with. The A&E. Yeah?" he asked and gently patted my leg.
"Right," I murmured.