Brian Campo (briancampo) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-07-20 12:42:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | brian campo, nesryn rowan |
That Was New
Who: Brian and Nesryn
What: He's a Bleeding Mess
Where: The Gas Station
When: Present Day, Night
Ratings/Warnings: PG
Drip… drip-drip.
He had been bitten. Rivulets of iron-rich blood rode the length of Brian’s arm from bicep to palm, making a new network of external veins that clung from his index and ring fingers in pendants. The drops hung suspended and then pattered on the ground, a dull, coagulating trail of breadcrumbs.
It had started off ordinary. The moon was at waning crescent. All he had planned for the night was a shift at Lucky’s, maybe an early crash. But that shift had pissed him off to the point that he needed to be a wolf, free of bullshit, free of the bartender who hadn’t shown up for a shift, the mystery of the clogging toilet by the bar, and the bassist of a thrash rock band who got drunk and pulled out his dick to piss on stage. The minute he got cut free, Brian took off, already tugging up his shirt before he passed the last streetlight. He ventured to an outcropping he knew in the hills, dumped his clothes, and let the wolf stretch its legs, even though shifting hurt like a son of a bitch when the wolf clawed at the surface like that.
And that’s all it was supposed to be.
Except he wasn’t by himself. He got into it with another wolf. Brian came out of the gold-tinged haze of transformation shaking with the taste of blood and fur in his mouth. He had sustained a bite at the juncture of his shoulder and arm. The Lucky’s t-shirt covered it, but he needed antiseptic to clean the bite before it healed over. It was a long walk back to town, but he was fortunate not to have taken the bite on a hind leg.
The General Store closed at 9 p.m. That left the gas station. Brian backed in through the glass door and gave the cashier an apologetic look for being a walking biohazard.
8:57pm.
Like a lighthouse beacon, the mustard yellow Kia Soul sat quiet, patiently waiting to guide its driver back into the proper place. In the bright lights of the fuel station the crossover was the only vehicle save for an old Ford pickup lurking in the shadows of pump four. The sound of fuel guzzling into the old tank was nearly the only sound one might hear besides the muffled lilt of muzak flowing from weathered speakers.
Nesryn was perched in the chip aisle.
Her shift had ended at eight forty five and some wild hair told her that a Cherry Vanilla Coke and a small bag of Salt & Vinegar chips was acceptable for dinner. All day it was fried food, home style meals, the tang of metallic coins and body odor. Here it wasn’t much different. Drawn to the place she could satiate the craving for salty food there she stood. Dark eyes would find chip bags - did she want the Salt & Vinegar when Jalapeno flavored looked tempting. Barbecue.
Before she could decide something else caught her attention.
The bottle of Coke in her hand went absently to a shelf as she caught the scent of copper; any gas station was equipped with the capricious little bell above the door and this one was no different. As it resonated, chirping it’s musical greeting at the young man who had entered, Nesryn found herself familiar with the additional scent. Blood. That was blood.
On the balls of her sneakers she would turn, pace quick - nearly at pace with her heartbeat which raced like a rabbit sprinting a marathon - and she reached the end of the aisle just in time to see the scene unfolding. The wolf inside of her was eager. She was salivating at the tang that flowed into her senses.
“Are you okay?” Clearly he wasn’t but that was the first thing that came to mind after the gasp. Brow furrowed as she approached. Think, think. She wasn’t afraid of this man but for him. “Stupid question. Sorry, I saw some medical stuff over there.” A finger would point to a section near the back that had rows and rows of peroxide, bandages, gauze. “Do you need an ambulance?”
The last question came in a murmur. Her distress levels were peaking, and she was catching the other familiar scent of canine coming from this man. It was the last thing on her mind, though, presently. He needed help and fast.
“I’ll pay you not to call an ambulance,” Brian said. “Or the cops.” He hadn’t looked up yet. He was too busy keeping pressure and holding his arm aloft in the hope that the blood would run into his shirt and be absorbed by the material. He smelled the scent of his sweat, dust, and the other wolf on him. Going in the vague direction of the personal care items, which he’d only needed once for a headache he couldn’t kick, he tried not to notice the soles of his Adidas shoes leaving a sticky print on the tiles. God, he felt like shit.
Back at the register, the clerk stress-rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Just take it and go,” Chuck called, waving an arm at Brian.
“You sure, man?” Brian looked at him over the aisle. Plink-plink… Blood landed on a shelf display of engine oil.
“Yeah, just cover me back in beer!” the clerk said.
Brian shrugged. Winced. He checked to make sure the woman who had spoken to him wasn’t inching towards her cell phone. He looked at her face, downward, back up again, a faint line of recognition flickering between his eyebrows. “You saw it back here?” He took another step to where she’d pointed.
Calm. She needed to stay calm. A deep breath and Nesryn asked her heart to stop pounding so hard in her ears that it made thinking challenging. “You don’t have to pay me anything,” she promised, though the depth to her statement meant she wasn’t contacting anyone. They could handle this here, at least for his sake.
There was a lot of blood.
Chewing at her lip she waited for the interaction between Chuck and the stranger to cease.
“Come this way, I’ll show you,” Nesryn said, tossing that short, brown hair in the direction of the shelves. She didn’t wait for an answer and if he wanted to fight her in the middle of a gas station store she would take the blows and keep going. One of her arms would wind around the stranger for support, and she began to lead the way toward the self-care products.
She may have been shorter but her strength was no less as good. And she didn’t care that he may have been bleeding on her, that was the last of her worries.
A quick right turn would put them in the mouth of the aisle. “Sit down, here. I’ll get the antiseptic.” Her command was gentle and her motion would cease, waiting for him to comply.
Brian was caught off-guard by her helping him. Jesus, did he look that bad off?
A quick appraisal of his reflection in the beverage cooler said that yes, he looked pretty rough. How much blood had he lost, anyway? Brian wondered if he had misassessed things. Getting a chunk torn out of him like that wouldn’t kill him, but it could knock him back a day or two. He did a light double-take when the brunette off-shifted some of his weight onto her petite frame and then directed him to sit down. A directive coated in sugar was still a directive. “I think Chuck would prefer if we took it outside,” he said.
Not to mention he didn’t want Chuck -- or the security camera -- seeing what was under the cotton shirt when he took it off. Teeth could make hamburger meat of muscles and skin, and he wasn’t undergoing rabies treatment for the sake of a doctor’s peace of mind. Brian caught the woman’s eyes, then tipped his head at the camera. Not here.
That gesture.
A quick turn in that direction and she understood. Whirling around on her feet Nesryn grabbed up a few things from the shelf - antiseptic, a bit of gauze, and a package of cotton balls - and then she went to his side again. “Okay, come on. Outside.”
She had an idea because of the smells that this was something which needed to be tread on lightly. “I’m in that yellow car there, we will be fine there.” She could take them to a remote place nearby, thankful of the small town feel.
There wouldn’t be exposing anyone, even for the sake of patching up. “My place isn’t that far from here, either.” The latter was breathed in a murmur. There wasn’t any obligation in it, but if he needed to rest - which it looked like he did - there was comfort nearby.
The bell would greet them as they left the store and a few paces would take them to the mustard Kia.
Her eyes noticed the blood splatter, those eerie cast off patterns and the trail leading into the darkness.
“I’ll be fine,” he mumbled, shaking off the injury under a wave of annoyance at himself. Werewolves took bullets, they took claws, and they sure as hell took teeth. He’d done all three. Born therianthropes had a lot going for them, but one thing every bitten werewolf knew was what it was like to be a human chew-toy and come out alive. They were scrappers, rough around the edges.
Brian couldn’t see all the damage. He knew this was a bad one, but he got the feeling he had made it worse by running tired, not taking care of himself, burning the candle at both ends. Brian and the wolf, they were all one body, no matter what it looked like. If you treated one of them like shit, the other suffered for it. When they got to the car, he leaned on the frame.
That smell came to him again. Another wolf. It was close by. He thought he’d wiped all the evidence of what he’d done to the ‘other guy’ off his face, but maybe he missed some of it.
“Not if you don’t let me look at that arm,” she murmured. The lights of the car flashed as she fumbled for the fob and juggled the items in her arms. Atop the car the container of antiseptic would perch, then would go the other things so she could open the door for him. A quick motion of fingers in a gesture for him to get inside and then the items would be grabbed up, taken to the other side.
Before too long she was backing out of the parking space and heading in the direction of her little apartment.
“Try not to stain the seats, okay?” It was mostly a tease, the blood stains would be inevitable. “What’s your name?”
Talking. Talking was good.
It took less than ten minutes and she was coasting into the parking lot. “There are cameras on the outside. Come in, let me put a bandaid on you and you can go.” He could take his pride with him if he wanted to, but at least she would feel okay with letting him not bleed to death in a gas station. Though something told her he would have been alright regardless - that smell was familiar beneath the blood.
Brian had expected her to unscrew the bottle and douse him outside the gas station, not insist on driving him to her place to do it right. He thought about arguing, but she had a way about her, like the kind of person who’d shove kindness at you until you threw up your hands in defeat anyway. He figured he’d skip the middle part. On the way to her home, he found himself looking at her when he thought she wouldn’t catch it, until the car bounced into the lot.
“Got it.” The door handle opened and he prepared to haul himself out before she could do something crazy, like try to open it for him. Then he stopped and stared at her across the console, a random thought coming to him in the unusual circumstances in which he found himself.
“I just realized you didn’t buy anything,” he said. He felt genuinely bad about it.
She had been about to throw her door open to make that mad scramble to get his when she caught his realization. Her mouth dropped open as if she were going to say something - something like what? He was right. And then it snapped closed and color flushed into her cheeks. “I have food inside, I just stopped on a whim.” It was more of a confession. And then she smiled a bit before climbing out of the car.
A moment to gather up the purchase she didn’t make either and the door would be closed with a hip. “Come on, this way,” she beckoned, leading the way.
The door swung open - another bit of graceful maneuvering with items and keys - and Nesryn was leading the strange man into her apartment. She realized he never answered her question but she didn’t bring it up again.
Once her new, still bloody and strange guest was inside the flat the door would ease closed with a foot. “Couch please.”
Items would go down onto the coffee table and Nes tossed her keys onto the floor nearby. Clearly they weren’t as important.
Brian didn’t sit. He’d left enough carnage in his wake. No way in hell was he bleeding on her car and her couch. Instead he stood in the center of her apartment, intent on figuring out which way was the nearest kitchen or bathroom where he could bleed guilt-free. But as he turned in a semi-circle, he noticed that the scent he’d caught earlier became stronger, as if the fragrance wasn’t so much on him as Brian was within it. It wasn’t blood, fur, or pheromones from the wolf in the desert. It was her.
“You’re a wolf... Or you live with one.”
He directed his attention back to her. A dark thought crossed his mind: what if the wolf he’d fought was a were, too, one she knew? No. He’d seen that animal limp off into the dark to lick its wounds, and heard the yelping long after Brian was back to his human form. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t caught onto this in the gas station. What else had he missed on the car ride?
Brian picked up the hem of his shirt and took it overhead. There was no reason to hide what was going on now. It was probably the kind of thing she’d seen before. He made it into a ball to staunch the bleeding.
Before Nesryn could insist, before she could protest, he’d thrown her secret out there like it was nothing. But then it wasn’t much of a secret if you knew about it.
Her posture would straighten, shoulders rolling backward and while she was petite she stood at her full height with what she could make of a neutral expression.
“You are, too,” she stated. “Is that what did that to you?” Her head would tip to the arm. “Bathroom is that way.” The last part was smaller. She didn’t find herself afraid of the stranger, more concerned that other wolves out there may be attacking.
Brown eyes would soak him in and then she made herself move again. If he was still bleeding that badly the cotton balls would be useless. The bottle of antiseptic would be gathered up along with the gauze and she was leading the way to the little bathroom.
For now she ignored the little blood droplets on the floor following them, that could be dealt with later.
“Sit,” she said gently. Wherever he sat was fine, the commode lid, the edge of the tub, as long as she could get to the wound and assess. “Let me see?”
The male werewolf settled on the lid of the toilet and pulled the sticky shirt from his skin. The bite left more of a torn chunk of flesh than tooth marks, which explained all the bleeding. It started at the ball of his shoulder and went around to the scapula. Brian flexed his arm out from the ribcage, easing it up and down. It had a full range of motion. The tendons were intact. ‘Yeah, it was a wolf,” he muttered. “Kind of random.”
As he zoned out on a bathroom towel, Brian pushed through the memory fog and tried to see himself where the wolf had been only a half-hour ago: Growling, teeth bared to the gums, nostrils quivering, and then it snapped and lurched forward. And that was just his part. What the fuck had gotten into him? The pair of animals had tumbled down the unstable landscape, kicking up dust, fur, and strings of saliva where they fought. He wondered if there’d been a female wolf nearby, or the still-viable scent of one.
Brian’s eyes ticked back to her.
He studied her face while she wasn’t focused on his. She was pretty. Shiny hair, wide eyes, freckles, a cleft in her chin. He tried not to look below the neck, not while she was taking time out of her night to be nice to a stranger. “It’s the dirt I’m worried about,” he said. “Bacteria. The rest’ll clear up.” He’d gotten into worse scrapes with members of his own pack on the east coast. Wounds healed fast, but spending a few days with fever in them wasn’t his idea of a fun time.
Finally he was obeying. A sense of relief and a renewed strength flooded through. The exhaustion was beginning to prickle through the adrenaline but she wasn’t going to give up now, not when they’d come this far already.
When he pulled the shirt away Nesryn winced. That looked nasty - instead of shredded muscle and skin there was a literal chunk missing. It would heal, he was right, but she would bet her tips it was painful. It was about to get more painful.
She nodded in understanding. Eyes lifted. “I’m going to clean it for you. I’ve seen bad scrapes before.” Being what she was, what they were, that was unavoidable.
Gently, tenderly, she touched the arm where the skin was still intact. He seemed to have mobility of it which meant no nerves were damaged. That was good. The antiseptic was opened, and Nesryn got a rag from under the sink going through the motions of dampening it with the liquid.
One hand would move to find his and hold it, mostly as a distraction, while the other began to press the soaked rag gently into the wound. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a wince and she mouthed an apology. “I’m sorry.”
He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. “It’s fine,” he said, not for the first time.
The liquid stung. He had to wonder if she’d exchanged it for a bottle of lighter fluid. Brian coaxed his body to relax while she dabbed the solution at the layers of skin. He looked at his jeans, the bathroom tiles, the size of his shoe compared to the one of hers that was nearest to him, the woman’s hand resting on top of his in an unexpected gesture he wasn’t sure how to read. Part of him wanted to shake it off, but when he interrogated the urge, he knew it wasn’t about her. Old habits died hard.
Brian’s thumb fanned across her knuckle, a mental apology for taking something out on her, even if she didn’t know. He cut himself some slack. It was a weird night. Somehow he had wound up stone-cold sober in a woman’s bathroom.
“I’m Brian.” He shifted to see that the wet cloth was coming back more pink than red. That was good. It meant he might not look anemic when this was over.
At his name, Nesryn made herself smile. “Nice to meet you, Brian. At least now I have a name to give to the cops,” she teased lightly. The dabbing never stopped. Meticulously she cleaned the wound to ensure there was no speck of dirt left behind nor a fever onset.
“I’m Nesryn.”
Her eyes lifted to find his for a moment and then her hand would fall out of his. She pulled back the wet, soiled cloth, set it into the sink for later tending to, and the gauze was plucked up. “I’ll have you right as rain in a second. Do you need a ride home?” She didn’t care if he crashed here, either, but he still seemed on the edge of something and she wouldn’t press him.
Round and around the gauze would go, careful but firm until there was none left on the roll. Lithe fingers would secure the binding and she stepped back to give him room.
“Look, good as new. You think they’ll give me a medical degree?” All in jest this was to keep the mood light.
Brian shook his head at the offer of a ride. His legs still worked. He inspected her handiwork and tested how much mobility he had in the dressing. The bandage was tight enough to stay on. “Based on some of the doctors I’ve seen? They might.” He shook open his damp t-shirt. The blood wouldn’t show, especially at night. There was a reason they wore black shirts at the saloon. Granted, the idea was to cover up stains from spills, not so he could walk around town looking less like a murderer.
The werewolf stretched as best he could and stuck his arms in the sleeves, then pulled his head through the neck hole. It was a little tight over the gauze but it worked.
He stood up. Face to face, he was about a half-foot taller than her. If he raised his chin, her head would tuck underneath. Brian rocked back on his heels so he wouldn’t crowd her, but there wasn’t far to go with a toilet behind him. The question was out before he could stop himself. “Have you been running on the south side of town, behind Lucky’s?”
She didn’t expect him to accept but the offer was there. He’d probably had enough of strangers for the night as it was - poor Chuck at the store and now her - and no blame could be lain. She would’ve felt the same way had the roles been reversed.
Nesryn backed up again as he began to pull back into his shirt. The scent of blood was never going to leave her apartment.
Her eyebrows would raise a bit as he asked the question. “Yeah, I run there sometimes.” More often these days than anywhere else.
Nesryn tried to recall if she knew him from there or not, the scent was definitely familiar to her.
Brian’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah. Me, too…” The werewolf idly scratched at a mystery spot inside the neck of his shirt.
Well. That answered one question. The wolf in him had known Nesryn was out there before Brian did. Known it, decided he didn’t like sharing territory with another male, and ripped a couple of gaping holes in the nearest canine. ’Wow.’ It was such a territorial move, the opposite of how he’d act while interacting with the world using two arms and two legs. He didn’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed. How would it be under a full moon?
His mouth opened as he looked at her anew. He was on the verge of saying one thing or another, but nothing came out.
“I should go, Nesryn,” he said. Brian scanned the countertop and patted his pockets to make sure he hadn’t set down his keys, wallet, or phone. “Thanks.”
She didn’t want him to go but she nodded anyway. Her smile fell, tumbling, though she took two steps backward out of the threshold of the little bathroom in an effort to give him the space to go. While she knew neither of them owed the other anything, she knew she would worry about him regardless.
“Sure. Be safe out there.” Maybe that was a lame way to end the night but maybe the blessing of safe travel would be able to see him home and ease a bit of the burden.
There was no doubt she would see him again; the curse of the small town was that you saw everyone at least once or twice in a day and they knew your dirty secrets by name and title. At least most of the secrets, anyway.
Brian saw the crestfallen look on her face. ’Ah shit.’ He didn’t know how to tell her why he was in a rush to leave: that the whole reason he wound up in her apartment might be because he’d maimed or killed a wolf, one of their kind, just because he caught her scent. Like his fur-covered alter ego was marking territory. He didn’t know anything about Nesryn. Not her last name, not where she was from, not whether she was part of a pack, not if she had a mate. Even though he knew it was the domain of wolves to act that way, the ‘I’m still Brian’ part of him kept thinking, ’How messed up was that?’ If he told her, he’d sound like he orchestrated the whole thing.
“You, too.” He slipped past her into the hallway. When he pulled at the front door, he stopped long enough to give her a loose wave, then put the metal door between them. Out in the parking lot, Brian pushed his hands into his messy hair and took a clean breath.
“That escalated quickly,” he muttered.
It was a long walk back to his trailer.