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"Right," Axton echoed faintly, "Right."
"So," Leander said, "Breakfast?"
Axton helped with the dishes afterwards.
++
Uncomfortably cold, they still worked throughout the day. Initially, Axton actually wanted to
prioritize shoveling the driveway so that driving to town might be a possibility, but it had
snowed so much already that it was a hopeless idea. Even if they'd gotten the car free, there
wasn't a viable surface to drive on. They sealed the windows up the best they could and
hurried to cut down firewood and bring it in, because the radio told them that more storms
were coming. Radio, as it turned out, was all they had: Leander's internet, always spotty, had
gone out some time the day before. The signal he got on his cell phone was weak during the
best of times, and Axton's ancient landline hadn't been working for probably a few months,
maybe a year, not that he'd noticed. It wasn't as if he had anyone to call.
Maybe if he had a phone, Axton mused as he shoveled snow off of the porch, then Leander
would call him. That was worth looking into, wasn't it? He let himself think about it and imagine
the awkward pauses that would happen. Probably he'd spend no time talking, Leander would
talk some, and there would be a lot of silence. Companionable silence? Awkward silence?
Companionably awkward silence? What would the conversations be like--Oh hey, Axton, what
did you do today? Nothing much, scuffled with a stupid bear, took down a moose, changed
back by sunrise, the usual.
No. Axton sighed. A landline to call Leander was not a good idea. There really wasn't a
point. He should just leave the phone disconnected, forever, and resign himself to dying alone
in the woods but not for a long time because werewolves lived long lives. It was a pity. He was
still so young, so there were many hopeless years ahead of him.
"Hey, great work," Leader said, stomping by on his way to chop more firewood.
"Thanks," Axton said moodily. He hated shoveling snow. His wolf shape saw little use in it,
and that disdain carried over even when he was walking around on two legs. Only thoughts of
his eventual death by hermititude had managed to distract him from the tediousness of the
task, and now Leander had disrupted that. Fuck.
It started to snow again around noon, and they retreated back to the cabin to start a fire
and blow on their fingers.
Leander offered to make lunch.
"Do you think I can't cook if it isn't in a campfire?" Axton grumbled, mostly because he was
cold and cranky about it.
"Sort of," Leander said, "Kind of. Yeah."
"Oh." Axton thought about it. "Well, you're probably right." It wasn't like he cooked for
himself. He lived off of raw moose half the time. That was what being a bachelor werewolf was
like.
"If you'd like," Leander said, gesturing towards the kitchen, "By all means. Feel free. But
really, I don't mind."
Axton visibly wavered for a second--the fact that he was thrilled to be fussed over warred
with his deep seated desire to not impose--and then gave the slightest of shrugs.
"You're a lot better at it than I am," he said sheepishly. "Thank you."
"Practice," Leander said. "Nothing gets a certain kind of girl like a romantic dinner you make
yourself, you know?"
"Oh," Axton said blankly, "Yeah. Of course." Of course he knew!
He very damn well did not. And didn't Leander know that by now? It wasn't like Axton ever
had a girl over--or, well, a boy, but Leander didn't know that about him. How would he?
"So, steak and potatoes?" Leander asked cheerfully.
"Yes. Thank you."
"Done how?"
Axton thought of the sweet moment of biting into tender flesh as his teeth flashed in the
light of the moon. Axton thought of the tang of blood on his tongue, of having to lick the fur
around his mouth clean after the kill.
He coughed discreetly and said, "Rare."
++
There really wasn't much to do, except wait as they got progressively snowed in. Axton
came to understand why humans had a word for it--cabin fever--while werewolves did not. If
he could have, Axton would have shifted shapes in a heartbeat, both because as a wolf he
could run around comfortably in the snow, and because as a wolf his body naturally wanted to
sleep fifteen hours a day and that would have helped pass the time. Yet maybe it wasn't the
human shape that was to blame, but his own personal impatience: he was terrified of what
night might bring. Sleeping next to Leander was out of the question. Even if he hadn't been
liable to change on instinct at the wrong dip in temperature, Axton wouldn't have wished a
night of strictly utilitarian bed sharing on his worst enemy. It wasn't so much that he resented
the position without intimacy, though that was a small factor. It was mostly that he knew he
stood to embarrass himself wildly one way or the other. What if he nuzzled into Leander's hair [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]