WHO: Billy Sinclair and Rose Logan WHAT: They go out for a run as wolves, they chat a bit, and then they decide to go hunt something down and eat it. Yep.
Sometimes Billy just needed to be dragged out by the scruff of his neck and allow himself to be an animal. Rose Logan practically was one and she completely approved of his feral instincts and his desires to be less than human. She treated him like a protective older sister or a very affectionate mother figure, batting him around, racing him, and eventually pinning him down so she could lick his ears and bite at his fur. No one else really understood the way they saw the world quite as well as the other one did.
Though she would have happily wandered around naked in the middle of November, Rose did remember to bring along a backpack full of their clothes to change into once Billy was exhausted. They ended up in the woods by the lake, where Billy had taken Luka the first night they were together, with Rose in a hoodie and some sweatpants. Barefoot, though, shoes were a pain in the ass.
“So. You got older, how did that happen?”
No one else got it. Billy’s own mother didn’t get it; she was too busy fighting “the wolf” as a second being to know that Billy felt more animal than human half the time. He could run around with her and be rough with her, fighting and playing. He did it with Lizzie, but it wasn’t the same. He communicated with her on the surface but she wasn’t like him, obviously.
Billy would have happily stayed in his full-wolf form, curled up like a pet at Rosie’s feet, but he didn’t really talk this way. Instead, he was in his natural form, somewhere between wolf and human, with an oversized sweater thrown on. “Everybody got older,” he insisted.
“Everytime I go away, everyone’s different.” It was her own fault for being gone so long, but things changed fast around here. It was easy not to put down roots when they were like that. Rose leaned over and sniffed him, getting a whiff of the scent on his clothes along with everything else. “You made new friends.”
“Define new?” Billy asked. There were only a couple of people here who had his sense of smell. Rose was probably on par with him, and Jack came close.
“Last year you usually smelled like Mark. Now there’s Brön, a lot more Annabel than there used to be. Owen Rogers, but that’s faint.” Another sniff. “And someone I don’t recognize. New kid?”
“Mm?” Billy lifted his head, ears twitching. “I don’t know. There are so many people here.”
“Smells like pheromones.”
“Okay.” Billy shrugged. “It’s probably Luka. We play board games in the library sometimes.”
“Luka... Romanov?” Rose scrunched her face. She didn’t know the current NYC royalty very well.
Billy snorted and pawed the ground. “Yeah,” he said, like it was obvious. Rose hadn’t been here when Luka arrived, after all. “He’s a teacher.”
“A sexy teacher? Who’s … sick, am I right?” Only Billy (or Jack) wouldn’t find that a little creepy, but people just had a scent when they were ill, and it was all over Billy. It might not have been Luka, but Billy would tell her if it wasn’t.
“Very,” said Billy. “Very sexy, and very sick.” Luka’s scent was all over that sweater. “You’ll get to know him. He’s usually busy working.”
“Too busy working to be sexy with you?” Rose’s voice was skeptical, but only just so. It was enough that it wasn’t clear if she disapproved or not.
Billy lifted his head, then looked off toward the lake. “Like I said, he’s too busy working.” Rose would smell it, it was impossible to hide, but that didn’t mean he had to confirm or deny anything with words. His tail thrashed against the ground, brushing leaves aside.
Rose watched him for a few moments, nostrils flaring. “Okay.”
Billy nodded and pawed the ground. “It’s cold, we should go in.”
“It’s not that cold, but you can go in if you want to. I’ll probably get something to eat before I go.”
“...You’re going to hunt?” Billy asked. His ears perked.
“There’s no Taco Bell in the woods, so yeah.” If Rose had been around when Billy took down a squirrel, she probably would have praised him. It was a lot cheaper to live a nomadic life when you were comfortable tearing apart woodland creatures with your teeth.
Billy made a little whining noise and rolled over onto his back. “I killed a squirrel,” he admitted. “And an opossum.” As embarrassed and horrified as he was, he was also a little bit proud. He was a natural hunter. He relied on his instincts. It was kind of cool.
“Did you eat them?”
“I... no.” Billy sighed heavily. “I dragged them home for Brön,” he said. “I was... enthralled. I didn’t have control over what I was doing. I thought he’d like fresh meat for dinner.”
Rose nodded like she wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Great. You ever hunted for yourself?”
“No,” Billy admitted. “It grosses me out, to be honest. The fact that I want to hunt grosses me out, too.”
“Why? It’s normal. You’re built for it, there’s no reason not to enjoy it if you want to do it. It’s not great when you still have a human mouth, but it’s not like it tastes bad if you’re hunting as a wolf.” People liked to make things so complicated. For Rose, life wasn’t clean or simple, and that was fine. She was better with nuance than she usually let on.
“It just... you know. I don’t want to be disgusting, or be known as the kid who kills squirrels with his teeth.”
“So kill something else.”
“The kid who kills anything with his teeth.”
“Who cares, though?”
“I do!”
“Why?”
Billy faltered. “Because,” he said. “Because it’s... high school.”
Rose made a face. “High school is stupid.”
Billy sat up, pulling off his sweater. In all technicality he was naked, but when he was in this form and covered in fur it really didn’t matter. “Take me hunting,” he said firmly. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t cry,” she warned, stripping out of her hoodie. They’d be furry in a moment, and she really didn’t care if he saw anything. “And don’t judge.”
Billy averted his eyes. “Don’t judge?”
“You heard me. Don’t judge. First time’s probably going to get a little gross because that’s how it works. Our ancestors didn’t give a damn and dug right in, and so should we.” Rose kicked off her pants and went about stuffing them and her jacket into the backpack.
“What about... fur? And blood? And...” Billy was trying not to be squeamish. He liked his meat rare, he didn’t care for sweets, but he wasn’t sure he could take down a deer and just eat it.
“You’ll tear through it. Just let your instincts take over for once, will you? You spend too much time trying to be like these people when you’re not.”
Billy lifted his head, looking up at her again. “What do you mean?”
Rose looked at him over her shoulder, reaching for his sweater to shove it into the bag. “You’re not as human as they are, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You go out of your way to look like them and act like them, and you hope they don’t notice that you’re different, even though everybody knows. Fuck that. They won’t change for you like you change for them, and you’re not letting yourself be comfortable. It doesn’t make sense, so you shouldn’t do it.”
“That’s not true,” Billy insisted. “But when I looked like this all the time I was barely allowed to leave the house. I was sheltered. Looking human lets me move around in the world without being treated like a freak. I don’t think it’s unfair to want that.” He had to look away again, despite his instinct to make eye contact. She wasn’t wearing clothes, after all.
“Sure, everywhere else, but here? Don’t let other people decide what your boundaries are. Even if that boundary is your face.” Rose shrugged it off. “Anyway, I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
Billy shifted again, his humanoid proportions changing into lupine ones. He barked a response and clawed at the tree before dashing off into the woods, feeling free and alive and like no one understood how good this felt.