Chapter Text
Nicholas Meyers Jr. was twelve the first time he met his father, his biological father. His mamá, a student from Oaxaca studying for her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at UC San Diego, had married Nicholas Meyers Sr. just before his birth, none of which he had known until Meli, just Meli, was waiting with his mamá when he got home from school on the last day before summer vacation.
“Look at him, you haven’t prepared him at all,” the strange man waiting with his mamá said in Spanish as soon as he’d shut the door.
“I’ve prepared him plenty.” Mamá held up a hand and beckoned him nearer.
Mush crossed the room to her side. She ran her fingers through his hair. Mush turned to look at the man. He had long hair, hanging in braids, and dark skin. He was wearing a leather jacket caked with dust and jeans that might once have been blue but were faded to nearly white and more stain than fabric. “Who’s this cabrón?”
The man laughed.
Mamá cuffed the back of his head. “Manners.”
“Maybe there is some hope for him.” He looked Mush in the eyes. “I’m your papi.”
Mush scrunched his nose up. “No, you’re not.”
The man rolled his eyes and looked at Mamá, “Please tell me you didn’t tell him I was dead.”
Mamá sniffed. “I didn’t tell him anything about you. Nick is the only father he’s ever known or needed.”
The man frowned at her, glanced at Mush, and then back to his mamá. “I still can’t believe you named our child after a gringo.”
“Nick is not a gringo, his mother is Chicana.”
“Wouldn’t know it from how he acts.”
Mush still didn’t understand who the man in front of him was, but he knew he didn’t like him very much.
Meli turned his attention back to Mush and looked him up and down. “Well, what do they call you? No, let me guess. Little Nicky?”
Mush scrunched up his nose, he wasn’t little. “I’m Mush, some papá you are if you don’t even know that.”
Meli screwed his face up. “What kind of a name is Mush?”
“I lost a bunch of teeth at once and couldn’t talk very good, so it’s what the other kids called me, also English was hard to pick up.”
“And you let them call you that?” Meli glared at Mamá. “Does he even know what he is?”
She stiffened. “Of course, he knows what he is. What type of mother do you take me for?”
“The type who deprives their child of important information.”
“Being a nagual is forever, I was hoping we’d get lucky and you’d be dead before he could ever hear of you.”
The man chuckled. “Plenty have tried, no one has managed yet. Have you taught him anything else?”
“Everything he needs to know. Every new moon since he could walk we’ve gone out to the dunes so I could teach him.”
“And what does your husband think of that?”
“I told him it’s a family tradition to go and offer worship to Cihuacoatl.”
Meli snorted. “I still think she and old Quetzalcoatl were just a pair of naga who got themselves deified after they died.”
“And I still think that you aren’t Nahua, so your opinion of our gods is irrelevant.”
“Well I’m sorry my people’s lands got conquered by the fucking wolves.” Meli glared at Mamá and she glared right back. He broke first and turned his attention back to Mush. “Well, cub, I’m Meli, your papi.”
Mush looked at his mamá again.
She sighed but nodded. “Biologically,” she added. “Nicholas is your papá in every other way, we met after this alley cat skipped town on me,” She stared at the man, her eyes unblinking. Mush wasn’t sure if she was challenging him to say otherwise or trying to burn a hole in him with her mind.
“Seems to me it was you who skipped town on me,” Meli gestured around the living room.
Mush glared at the man. “If you’re my father, then where have you been?”
“Around, I have responsibilities,” Meli glared at mamá, “not all nagual have the freedom to hare off and study the white man’s science.”
Mamá rolled her eyes.
“Like what?” Mush asked, stepping between his mother and the rude man, biological father or not.
“Your mamá has told you about the seals?”
Mush glanced at his mother and nodded. She’d never hidden the fact that she was one of the werejaguars from him, even if they did have to hide it from his father. He didn’t understand why she didn’t just bite his father but trusted that she had her reasons. She’d always told Mush he’d become one someday though, and had gone over some of their history. As much as he figured she wanted to trust a twelve-year-old with, which was considerably more than Mush would want to trust a twenty-five-year-old with.
“Well, you're going to spend your summer tending them with me. Too few learn the old rites, and I’m not going to let my own son be one of them.”
“Like you don’t have other kids,” Mamá said.
Meli rolled his eyes. “Only one young enough to learn, but poor girl didn’t change on her own and got bitten by a werewolf before I could get to her.”
Mamá narrowed her eyes. “I hope you killed the wolf.”
“Already dead by the time I got there.” Meli didn’t look happy about that.
“He’s twelve, let him have his summer vacation.”
“He’s twelve, he’ll most likely turn next year. If he doesn’t I’ll be by to bite him. It’s time he learned.”
Mush looked between Meli and Mamá, he didn’t want to go, but the resigned look on his mother’s face told him everything he needed to know about how he was going to spend his last summer as a human.
Mush stifled a laugh. Watching Hotshot terrify Morris Delancey was more fun than he’d expected. The man had a flair for drama, which probably worked well for him in court. The only downside was that he wished he could have been the one to make Delancey pee himself, it was the least he deserved for all the times he’d beat Blink up in high school. How dare he ever lay a hand on the boy. He was almost disappointed when Hotshot choked him out.
Hotshot laid Delancey down on the ground. He produced a small bottle and syringe from one of the pockets of his coat and started filling the syringe.
David hopped over the railing and start climbing down the crates to join them. “You carry sedative with you?”
“Not usually,” Hotshot said and pulled the needle out of the bottle. He replaced the bottle in his pocket.
“What is it?” David asked.
“No clue,” Hotshot said. “Jesse made it and told me the safe dosage.” He flicked the side of the syringe to get the air to rise to the top and pushed the plunger in until a tiny drop of the clear liquid came out of the tip.
“Should have left the air in,” Mush said.
David shot him a glare.
“Like you weren’t all for killing him.”
“Because I think it would be safest for us, not for fun.”
Hotshot shoved Delancey’s sleeve up and examined the inside of his arm.
“Revenge, not fun.”
“Murder for bullying isn’t justice,” David said.
“He and his brother terrorized Blink for four years. If he’d been the only gay kid they were bullying he would have killed himself.”
David stopped and frowned.
Hotshot found whatever he was looking for and injected Delancey. Mush didn’t see any obvious change, but the asshole was already unconscious, so there wasn’t much to judge by.
“There’s an Outsider messing around directly with their brains. They may not be responsible for their actions. We’re pretty sure Oscar definitely wasn’t.”
Mush shrugged. “Better safe than sorry, not like this city isn’t filled with a thousand more trust-fund brats.”
David glared at him.
Hotshot rolled his eyes. “Just for that, you get to carry him back.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the bigger asshole, and every minute that goes by gets us further from the full moon and closer to the new moon.”
“Fuck that,” Mush looked around the warehouse at what was available to him. “I’m shoving him in a crate and stealing one of their dollies.”
David looked at Mush and then at the crates. “Better than rolling him up in a rug at least.”
Folding the unconscious Delancey into the crate hadn’t been the easiest thing, the thug was going to be a bit sore when he woke up, and rolling a crate around Brooklyn at 4 am didn’t attract no attention, but, all things considered, it worked out pretty well, better than anything either of the dogs had thought of. They finally reached the abandoned building and he was watching Hotshot fish in his pocket for the keys.
“You don’t seem too concerned about someone watching us,” David said,
“Is anyone looking at us?” Hotshot said, pulling the keys out.
David looked around then back at Hotshot. “They aren’t.”
Mush looked around. David was right, no one was paying them any attention anymore, it was a little creepy. “If you know how to make an attention ward, why didn’t you put one on Delancey? Would’ve made this whole thing much easier if we could just carry him as is.”
“One, it doesn’t work on people.” Hotshot rolled up the security shutter. “Two, I don’t know the spell.” He pushed the door open. “Three, it took Jesse three days and four chickens, so we didn’t exactly have the time or resources on hand unless you have some farm animals in your pants.”
David pulled the shutter down behind them then closed and locked the door.
Mush pushed the dolly to the edge of the basement stairs. He considered just shoving the crate down them, but it might injure Delancey, which was something they weren’t trying to do — for some reason. Would have been more fun to do if the bully had been awake anyway. He set the crate down near the edge and pulled the dolly away.
Hotshot pulled a crowbar out of his coat and started prying the crate back open. David and Mush waited for him to finish and lift the lid before each of them grabbed one of Delancey’s shoulders and heaved him out of the box together.
They carted him down the stairs to where their boyfriends were all waiting, with a large amount of junk food and a number and variety of energy drinks that would have killed an elephant faster than Thomas Edison. Someone, obviously Race, had gone shopping while they were gone.
“Everything go alright?” Graves asked.
“Had to finish cleaning up the site from their earlier escape,” Hotshot glared around the room, “but catching Morris went off without a hitch. Didn’t even realize I wasn’t one of his hired goons until I started choking him.”
Graves sighed. “Did you have to choke him?”
“Nothing worse than he deserves.”
“He’s a student at the university, that makes me responsible for him,” Graves said and came over to examine the boy Mush and David had set down on the floor.
“Have you ever even seen him before?” Blink asked.
“Of course not, there’s something like fifty-thousand students enrolled.”
“Alright, let's get him chained up.” Jack stood up and clapped his hands. “Then we can maybe go home and grab food and a nap before class.”
“I don’t have any meetings today, so I can keep an eye on him,” Hotshot said, “but you all need to come up with a plan to keep at least one guard on him at all times.” His eyes traveled over everyone present except for Graves. His eyes stopped on Blink and then darted first to Mush and then to David, “And for the love of fuck, someone bite Blink. Things are only going to get more dangerous from here.”
Mush made a point of looking anywhere but at his boyfriend. He moved across the room and grabbed a hold of Morris’s arm again. He looked at David. “Let’s get him chained up.”
David spared a glance at Blink before coming over and helping him. It wasn’t that either of them needed help carrying Morris’s weight, it was just that a human body was awkward to move, especially when it was all floppy like Morris was.
They carried him into the abandoned bathroom and set him on the ground near the prepared chains and, were those manacles? He’d been expecting handcuffs at best, where the fuck had Hotshot and Graves gotten manacles? He picked one up, it was forged, good quality steel too.
“Where the fuck did they even get these?” Mush asked, showing the shackle.
David took it and examined it. “I have no idea, it doesn’t look that old though. Maybe one of them is a hobbyist blacksmith?”
“I hope that's it, I hate to think there’s that much of a market for these, outside our circles I mean.” Mush gestured between the two of them.
They bent down in unison and proceeded to shackle Morris to the pipes the others had already prepared. David gave them a few tugs, they seemed pretty damned secure.
“Speaking of our circles,” David started.
Mush glanced at him and saw that David was looking back through the open door. He could tell without looking who David was looking at. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have, but he supposed he had to.
“What do you want to do about Louis?” David asked.
Mush sighed, looked down at Morris to make sure he was still unconscious, and then leaned against a broken sink. “I have no idea. It’s not like I’d really thought that far ahead, somehow I didn’t think you would out me.”
David rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry about that, Sarah didn’t realize—”
Mush waved David’s platitudes away. He knew it wasn’t really any of the wolves’ fault, it just felt good to have someone to blame.
“Even beyond that though, we let you know that he knew about us almost a month ago, so you must have started making some plans.”
Mush snorted. “I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing, I thought I’d have more time, and with Racer,” he gestured toward the open doorway, “trying to break my phone with so many messages, I stayed pretty focused on getting Spot and Oscar back in the right bodies before anyone found out and decided to hunt them down.”
David nodded.
“I just,” Mush raked both of his hands through his hair, “I wish I had more time. I don’t even know for sure how I feel about him, you know?”
“You don’t?” David asked, leaning on the broken sink next to him.
“Look, I love him, but do I love him, love him? Do I forever love him?” Mush shrugged and looked around the room. “I know you all mate for life, but we don’t. My mother can barely stand my biological father, not that I blame her, he’s a cranky old bastard. My step-father is human, he doesn’t even know about nagual.”
David’s eyebrows raised a hair but he didn’t say anything.
“So yeah, not the same as you guys. You and Jack may already be planning your lives together, but it’s different for us.”
David’s eyebrows raised higher. “We aren’t… I mean, I’m too young to take a mate… forever.”
Mush snorted. “You honestly think you aren’t already?”
David opened his mouth.
“Don’t even pretend. I’ve seen the way you two saps look at each other.”
“Fine,” David said, although he looked like it was anything but fine, “what are you going to do about Louis. Hotshot’s right, this is going to get more dangerous and he needs to be able to regenerate.”
Mush raked fingers through his hair again. “Look, I don’t know. If I bite him and then we break up, then I’m leaving a gringo nagual lying around, that’s not going to look good for either of us. If you bite him and we break up, then it might literally kill him if he, what, imprints on me?” He looked at David to see if that was the right word, but the oboroten didn’t have any reaction, he just continued staring at him like he was trying to see right to his soul, if there even was such a thing. “So maybe the best option is if I break up with him now and then you bite him.”
“Then why don’t you?” David asked, his stare still just as intense.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”