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Sam has slashes across his throat, pink jagged lines of scar tissue that draw attention wherever they go. He's stubborn about covering them up, and they've tried makeup but he fidgets with the raised skin there when he's nervous, and it eventually rubs off. He touches his neck a lot, and she doesn't remember him much from before, didn't know him well enough, but she's sure that it's a side effect.
Brigitte doesn't have many visible scars from their ordeal, the leftover line where she cut herself on her palm, but nothing that loudly proclaims, "I survived!" She survived, but most days she doesn't believe that she made it out of that basement room. Most days she has to feel the steady press of Sam's fingers in her shoulder to remember that she's still breathing.
It's too cold to sleep in his van, so they pick up odd jobs in the towns they drive through. One day they're moving furniture, and the next they're washing restaurant floors. They tried finding jobs separately once, but half-way through the day Sam got a panic attack from worry so they don't do that anymore. If an employer can't take them both, they pass on it, even if it means they don't eat that night. That almost never happens, though. Perk of being a werewolf, most people have a hard time saying no to them. Animal magnetism at its finest.
They make enough to afford motels, even if the smell crinkles Brigitte's nose, and Sam can't stand when the noise from too thin walls, and super human hearing, keeps him up at night. The hot shower and pillows make up for it. They sleep in two beds, and neither of them gets much sleep.
They get even less on treatment days.
The monkshood burns like ice shards being pushed through their veins. It doubles them over, Brigitte's teeth chattering as Sam grunts with each wave of new pain. She doesn't say anything about how his hands reach for hers as they shake and tremble, and how his eyes, dilating to nearly entirely pupil, focus on her with such intensity that it's almost worth it to do this every four days just to be on the receiving end of all his attention. He doesn't say anything about it either, just tucks back a sweaty strand of hair from her face and unsteadily stumbles back to his own bed.
Full moon nights are especially hard.
Her body creaks with the feeling of pressure building with nowhere to go. Restless. Angry. Grieving. Through his own misery, Sam's voice shakes with the now all too familiar question.
"Did you love her?"
Too much, and not enough.
"Yes."
Brigitte catches wind of it as they move through a little town called Weston. The smell, like warm dirt, rotted meat, and the sharp tang of copper, drifts towards her, and the grocery bag she's carrying falls to the floor. She leaves it in the melting snow and runs to where Sam is, blocks away at a needle exchange. She ends up colliding with him as he comes around the corner of the alley, and one glance at her wide eyes makes his heart race. Adrenaline spiking, reacting to her distress.
They sprint to his van and get the hell out of Weston, driving for miles, eyes on the rearview mirror.
"Do you think it could smell us too?" Sam asks as he bit at the edge of his thumb nail. Brigitte nods.
"Why else would it be there? What are the chances of us accidentally running into another werewolf?" She fidgets with a button on her coat.
It follows them.
From town to town, even when they make it to a larger city, it hovers on the fringes, terrorizes the dogs in the suburbs, and when it makes an appearance on the football field of one of the high schools, they leave. Neither wants history to repeat itself, and this is their problem, no need to make it anyone else's.
"What does it want?!" Brigitte yells as they open their motel room door to a freshly killed deer. It's not gutted, the trickle of blood at its neck the only sign of struggle. Sam thinks it's oddly arranged, like there was thought put into how the deer might be presented. A gift. Sam doesn't want to know what it means. He fears he already does.
Three different motels, three different moons, three delicately arranged dead deer in the parking lot.
"It's getting worse," Sam whispers one night as he peers out of the dirty curtains, watching for the glint of glowing eyes. Brigitte stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and feels the slight point of her ears.
"We have to up the dose," she says back.
"It's not safe to start experimenting with that thing out there."
"It's not going to hurt us yet," Brigitte pushes her hair back and he sees the delicate point of her ear.
"Shit," he groans, because he knows why it's out there, just as well as she does. It's waiting. For them to turn, for them to be pack.
They up the dose.
He holds her arm steady, the needle settling into her skin, and makes sure to push the plunger slow. They've tried to push it in too fast, and it always leaves terrible bruises. He hands her the next purple filled syringe even though he could do it himself. It's good practice, just in case one of them starts turning.
Sam has nightmares about that. About his spine breaking apart and his body becoming something unrecognizable. He dreams of blood, warm, and wet on a muzzle filled with sharp teeth. He dreams of sinking fangs into that other werewolf's neck, of snapping bone and dragging the body back to Brigitte as a trophy. Those are nightmares he doesn't share with her.
Brigitte starts bleeding five months into her 16th year, the same month that Ginger did. Blood doesn't gross her out, never did, she feels annoyance more than anything else. She tries pads but they make her so self-conscious and uncomfortable that she attempts tampons. Attempts being the operative word. She briefly considers just bleeding over everything as she waits for Sam to get back from the store.
"Your last options are this moon cup or sponge, dealer's choice," he holds out both items as she glares. She grabs the moon cup.
Sam leans his head against the bathroom door and listens to her cursing as she tries to get it in. A half hour in and he clears his throat.
"Are you okay in there?"
She huffs, "Yeah. I think I'm good." She opens the door and meets his eyes. "I think this'll work."
It does work, but he can still smell the blood on her. Sweet and cloying, it tugs at the animal in him, calls him to keep her close. When the next deer arrives, placed on the hood of his truck, he feels a swell of anger that has nothing to do with the blood on his paint job. He washes the blood off but the warning is loud and clear. It's getting impatient, it won't wait much longer.
Brigitte is the one who comes up with the plan. Her brain is always working, quicker than his, observing and calculating. He wonders how much is her and how much is the wolf. She gets the monkshood ready, and he goes to the butcher's for their biggest slab of steak. She hopes that the smell of blood will cover up the scent of the monkshood. They use the syringes to push the poison into the meat, then drive out into the forest.
It's not a deer, but they still arrange the meat, and she puts the finishing touches on it, a few drops of her blood from a pricked finger.
They wait in the van with fogged up windows, and watch the beast emerge. It's bigger than Ginger was, not by a lot, but still. Sam clutches the large kitchen knife he bought, and Brigitte feels the coldness of the syringe in her hand. It takes the meat, slamming it back. The effect is immediate. It starts choking, gagging and shaking its head. Sam gets out of the van first, draws its attention so Brigitte can shove the needles into its backside. She gets a paw to the chest for her effort, the force of it knocking her into the snow. Sam helps her up, blood dripping from his knife. They bury it, and she places monkshood flowers on top of the grave, an offering, and an apology.
There's no deer the next month.
Or the next.
"We need a better plan," Brigitte lays back as the monkshood lights like a wildfire in her veins. Sam is already curled into himself next to her.
"I know," he exhales. "Maybe a plan with a machete."
"What?" She's still not used to his quirks, and is momentarily startled out of her pain.
"I don't want to kill another one with just a kitchen knife. Have to be too close for it to work."
"We could just get a gun then," she twists to face him.
"Hmm," he answers.
"Did I love her?" She asks, the reverse of their phrase. Her teeth clack together painfully.
"Yes."
They settle on a crossbow and work monkshood into the arrows. She gifts him a machete on his birthday, and he laughs, the sound of it almost a bark.
It's not all bad.
They find work at a thrift shop. The owners are a lesbian couple who instantly take a liking to them. They get to spend their days dressing up mannequins, and occasionally helping a person pick out an outfit. Brigitte doesn't have much sense for clothing, but her observational skills kick in, and rarely does a customer leave unsatisfied. Sam likes to work the cash register because it puts him in range to hear Lily and Katherine bicker fondly at each other.
They stay still for the first time in a long time. She's surprised when her birthday comes up again. Even more so when Sam drives them to Lily and Kat's house where she's greeted with a home cooked meal, birthday cake, and wrapped presents. It's almost too much, but Sam is smiling so wide that she feels her lips mimic his.
Their employee discount means they can afford new clothes, and it's such a luxury that they spend hours pouring over their choices. Lily even brings out a couple of bins from the back she'd been saving in case they ran low on merchandise. Katherine shares a look with her significant other as they watch the two of them sift through thick winter coats and cooler tank tops for when the weather turns. They wind up with two bags each of clothes.
A dead deer greets them at their motel room.
Kat cries when Sam tells her they're leaving, and Lily looks just as sad.
"You keep in touch okay? If you run into trouble don't hesitate to call," Lily tells Brigitte as she presses a bag into her hand. In it is the mid-thigh black cotton dress that she'd been eyeing for weeks. It has a scoop neck-line and half-sleeves, and she doesn't know when she'll ever wear it but it's a kind gesture just the same.
It doesn't take them long this time to put down the werewolf that's stalking them. Sam doesn't suggest they go back, and neither does she. Brigitte mails Lily a postcard the first chance that she gets.
They start taking doses every two days when Sam's teeth start sharpening and he keeps biting his tongue. Brigitte absolutely does not laugh at the slight lisp it gives him. At least not to his face.
Craft stores are always their first stop, even though they have plenty of stock for at least half a year, they still browse the shelves of floral arrangement material. Sharp eyes on the look out for distinct purple flowers, seeking out its poison. Their van is full of it, bushels of dried monkshood, from all the different stores they've visited. Craft stores have become their second home. Which is how they meet Lourdes.
She takes one look at their arms full of monkshood and smiles sweetly.
"Oh darlings no, you're not still using dried monkshood are you? How many doses are you at per week with that stuff? Three, four?"
"Four," Sam answers even as he feels Brigitte's elbow in his ribs. He nudges her back, and hears her near imperceptible growl.
"Ouch. It's so much better fresh, come on, put those down, I'm inviting you both to dinner at my house. And I don't take no for an answer." Her warm brown eyes bore into their own tired ones. Sam gives her an appraising look while Brigitte glares. Lourdes just smiles.
When Sam catches sight of Lourdes' backyard greenhouse, Brigitte is sure he's going to cream himself, the noise he makes is vaguely pornographic.
"Brig, look at this, holy shit, she's got the yellow varieties!" Sam exclaims as Lourdes barely contains her laughter. Brigitte doesn't look at the bounty of monkshood, she's watching Sam. His wonderment is infectious, and she genuinely smiles.
They end up staying with Lourdes in her "Wayward Home for Werewolves" as she calls it. Having lost two sons to lycanthropy, Lourdes has done her best to reach out to others who haven't fully turned yet. She manufactures the monkshood serum fresh and sends it out by mail to more than twenty recipients. Her 'orphan wolves' have all passed through her house, and though they've all left, they settled into her heart where she loves them fiercely. She's more well versed in werewolf lore than they are, and she picks up on their tells quicker than Brigitte would've believed. For once, she can breathe easy.
The sleeping arrangements are a bit of a battle. Lourdes has more than enough rooms to house seven other people, but when Sam starts to put his backpack of clothes in the room Brigitte's picked out, she raises her objections. She wouldn't have an issue with them rooming together, but their age difference gives her a lot of pause.
"It's, it's not like that!" Sam stutters as he tries to explain. Brigitte can feel his panic settle into her ribs as if it were her own, and maybe it is, because the thought of being in separate rooms makes her throat clench. She steps in front of him and shakes her head at Lourdes.
"We stay together. Or we'll find housing elsewhere," Brigitte says for the both of them. It's the right thing to say, because Sam settles down behind her. Lourdes sighs.
They sleep in the same bed, a twin bed not made for two people. Sam keeps every part of himself away from her, so careful of accidentally bumping her in the night. He lasts for five days before a deep sleep makes him unaware of his limbs. He's a snuggler. She is not surprised. He tries to sleep on the floor after that, but his pained groans keep her up and she finally just yells at him to just get under the covers already. He makes a fuss but gets in. His arm is pressed up against her back, and his cold feet tentatively touch her warm ones.
"Did you love her?"
"Yes."
Ginger's ghost doesn't haunt her sleep as much anymore.
Sam finds work at a old record store that also sells antique odds and bits. It's right across the street from a bookstore that Brigitte tries out. She likes books well enough, but one of her coworkers doesn't smell right and it keeps her on edge. The fact that she hits on Sam any chance she gets doesn't factor into her smell, but it sure doesn't help Brigitte's dislike of her.
Sam barks out his laughter when she mentions it.
Brigitte finds that she actually enjoys working in Lourdes' greenhouse. Likes the smell of wet earth, and clay. Likes her hands tending to new shoots. Ginger and she had courted death so often, that the promise of life, of living things, pokes at a need she didn't know needed filling.
She gets a job at a nursery, three blocks away from the record store. Her boss, Whitman, is an elderly gentleman that enjoys her morbid wit, and doesn't complain about her lack of customer service skills. He finds her bluntness refreshing. She works hard for him because of it.
Sam walks over to have lunch with her nearly every day. Some days she walks to him.
It surprises both of them when the holiday season comes back around. Two of Lourdes' adopted wolves come up for Thanksgiving, twin brothers who are Sam's age. Pilar and Easton. They spend most nights sharing their experiences, comparing serum doses and side effects. They try to share their losses, but Brigitte turns silent, still too raw even after years have passed. Easton tries to pry, but she stands up and leaves to their room.
"Sorry, man. We've all lost someone, sometimes it's easier to share the burden a little."
Her burden is shared, he doesn't say.
"Not this time," Sam settles for, and goes to find Brigitte.
He doesn't pull away when she clings to him in her sleep.
Sam breaks his arm trying to put Christmas lights on the roof as a surprise for Lourdes. She scolds him light-heartedly even as she ices his arm. Brigitte watches, fascinated as his bone melds back together with a pop that makes him wince. The bruise lasts for a week, and it's sore, but he doesn't need to see a doctor. Pilar laughs himself silly when he hears what Sam was trying to do, and promptly shows him where the long ladders are stored in the basement. They hang up three different kinds of lights.
Brigitte sits next to a heavily decorated Christmas tree and opens a small cardboard box that had been wrapped in newspaper. Nestled inside is a sterling silver crow's skull. She looks across the room at Sam, and sees that he understands exactly what this means to her. Her crow's skull necklace had been lost in the fight with Ginger. She always thought it fitting, but Sam must have noticed how often she still reached for it, only to grasp on air. She doesn't say thank you, merely slips it around her neck, her hand wrapping around it immediately.
Pilar and Easton take Sam out for drinks one night.
"That pack bond has you tightly wound, huh?" Easton asks having noticed Sam's bouncing leg. Sam tilts his head questioningly. "I get it, same thing happens with my brother and I. Aren't too many of us that have another pack member, most of us are solitary, so when we do have someone it gets difficult to be apart." The raucous noise of the bar drowns out their words so they don't have to worry about eavesdroppers.
"Huh. Here I always thought it was the trauma," Sam says before taking a long sip of beer.
"That too," Easton laughs.
"So, what's the deal with you two. I still can't put my finger on it. Are you guys a mated pair or what?" Pilar asks. Sam chokes on his beer.
"A, a, what?" He splutters and coughs. Easton can't keep the smirk off his face.
"A mated pair. You know, together?"
Yes.
"No," he coughs. "She was just a kid when we were turned."
"She's definitely not anymore," Pilar laughs. Sam successfully holds himself back from decking the other wolf. Easton picks up on it and nudges his brother. "What is everyone very blind? She's a gorgeous werewolf. If he's not calling dibs, that means she's free for the rest of us."
"I'm not calling dibs. Just consider her off limits. To everyone," Sam growls out. He slams the rest of his beer down and leaves.
Brigitte is already sleeping by the time he gets home to her.
"Did you have fun?" She yawns and rolls over to give him space. He puts a hand between her shoulder blades and feels her sigh.
"Not really."
"Oh. You missed an exciting rat hunt. Finally found the one that's been eating the tomatoes."
"Did you eat it?" His hand jostles with her soft huff.
"Thought about it, but Lourdes made peach cobbler. And I like peaches better than rat."
"Me too," he agrees.
He doesn't mention the night's conversation to her, and she doesn't notice the wide berth the twins give her after that.
She does notice that he seems to be in better spirits after New Years and once the twins have left.
They thrive under Lourdes' care. They don't even realize that the next full shifted werewolf has showed up until it's dead in their backyard, Lourdes already having taken care of it. Safety isn't something either had thought they would have again, but here, in this place, with each other, it's starting to feel like they can.
Kissa arrives near Valentine's Day, and Lourdes is ecstatic to have her adopted daughter home in time for her birthday.
"It's some type of cosmic joke that I'm a cupid baby," Kissa sighs dramatically, and winks at Brigitte who has smothered a laugh unsuccessfully behind her hand. Sam knows that the strange pain in his stomach is somehow correlated to their secretive looks and linked arms. Brigitte gets along well with Kissa, and even Lourdes is surprised that the surliest werewolf she's ever met has made a friend. Kissa is loud and dramatic, effortlessly kind but strangely amoral. The exact opposite of Brigitte.
This is what it must have been like, Sam thinks as he watches Kissa paint Brigitte's finger nails grey, for her to have a sister. He gets an ache that he's sure isn't entirely his, a sorrow over what's been lost, who's been lost. The sadness in his throat isn't all his, he's sure. The itchiness he gets from watching them interact is though. He doesn't get why something about all the time they spend together puts him on edge.
He finds out why a week later.
"Mama Lobo, we're going out," Kissa calls from the stairway.
"Have fun!" Lourdes answers from her office. Sam pokes his head out into the hallway just as Brigitte walks out of the bathroom. She's wearing the dress that Lily and Kat gifted her, and his eyes fixate on the couple of inches of thigh that flashes between the hemline of the dress and the top of thigh high socks. She pushes loose curls out of her face and smiles at him before turning to leave.
He doesn't eye her ass as the dress sways temptingly right beneath it.
He does. And suffers for it.
He waits for her to come home, and dreads what he's going to smell on her. He works himself into a state of exhaustion thinking about it, and passes out before she's back. He wakes to the dip in the bed and the shuffle of the sheet. She rolls into him, loose limbed and tired, her hand finding his chest. He takes a deep inhale and waits to smell someone on her. He only smells the lingering of her sweat.
"Didja have fun?" He asks as he moves her hair away from his nose.
"Not really my scene. But I won an arm wrestling contest."
"Against a human? Of course you did, that wasn't a contest, that was a massacre."
Her shoulders shake in laughter against his chest. She's tucked her head into the space between his neck and shoulder. He can feel the warmth of her breath. He's only let her get this close recently. He still keeps his hands to himself.
Brigitte gets sick on the fourth anniversary of Ginger's death. Sam wakes to the sounds of her heaving and crying. He's instantly there at her side, holding her hair and offering her water to swish in her mouth. She heaves until there's nothing left in her stomach, and then curls onto the cool tile of the floor.
"Did I love her?" She sobs. Sam settles in next to her, happy to spend the entire day in the cramped bathroom if she needs to.
"Yes," then,"Let me tell you how much," he starts.
When she's nodded off, the stress of crying finally taking its toll, Sam opens the door to find a tray set outside with chicken noodle soup. He eats but the sight of it makes her turn green again so he puts it back outside. They sleep curled up in the bathtub, far away from Ginger's ghost and everyone else.
Grief isn't something they can outrun.
Sam doesn't normally fidget when he's near Brigitte, but she's noticed his restlessness of late. She asks if he's okay, and he insists he's fine, so she drops it. She waits for the dead deer in the driveway but it doesn't happen. Instead she goes to sleep alone one night, the blankets colder without him in them. He gets into bed in the darkness of morning, damp from a shower that does nothing to hide the smell of someone else embedded in his skin. He doesn't reach for her like usual so she stays on her side.
"Brig?" He whispers, as if she's sleeping. She's not. He knows this.
"Yeah?" Her eyes search for him in the dark. She doesn't have true night vision, but if she focuses, she can see him in shades of red. He doesn't look happy.
"I'm really fucking stupid sometimes."
"Duh," she says in comfort. He snorts. He tries to touch her shoulder but she flinches away. "No. You stink." The affronted sound he makes pleases her.
"I just showered."
"Not good enough apparently. Besides, who knows what you did with that hand."
"Jealous?" He's mocking her now. She pushes him off the bed. He gives a satisfying yelp of surprise.
"If I was jealous it'd take nothing for me to track her down and eat her. Lucky for you, there's no need to get jealous."
Sam doesn't ask why not. It's a pointless question. He sleeps on the floor until the scent of someone else fades.
Pain radiates up her arm, blooms beneath her skull with the phantom feeling of bones breaking apart to become something different. Sam is breathing harshly through his nose and she wonders if that helps. Lourdes keeps trying to get them to meditate to help with treatment days, but neither of them can ever quiet their mind enough.
"Maybe one day when I'm seventy, I'll just give in. Let the wolf take me. I'll drive out far into the forest, into a reserve, and hike miles into areas of wilderness that very few people ever see. And I'll just let go. I mean, can you imagine us doing this with arthritis or something?" Brigitte asks.
"I'd turn with you," Sam says unexpectedly. "If we even make it that long. I'd turn with you."
She avoids his eyes.
"It's settled then. When I hit seventy, we'll turn, and we won't look back."
"Deal," Sam says. He means it.
She's newly twenty, and they're watching the clouds darken in the sky with their backs on cold grass. She turns to say something, and he turns with her, anticipating her words, but it's not what spills out of her lips. Instead she winds up kissing him, winds up giving him all of her longing and boxed up want. She pours all of her tentative love and sweetness into him, and he gives it right back to her, sliding his hand into her long hair to slot his mouth against hers better. An ache forms in her stomach, but it's not for food. He's smiling into her mouth and it's so good, why did she wait so long to have this, she wonders. He's hard under her, and it's a rush, to feel him like this. She pulls back, to touch him, and he's looking at her like she created the world. Like she's everything to him.
His hands press love into her skin, and his lips leave affection in her neck, and onto her collarbone where a scrape of his teeth drags his loyalty.
She waits until the newness of his hands on her, of hers on him, fit into her world, and then she fucks him like she's always dreamed of, pressing him down into the bed and listening to him say her name in reverence.
"Sex as a werewolf is so much better," Sam pants on the floor next to her.
"Is it?" She stretches overworked muscles.
"What, don't believe me?"
"Well," she shrugs. All she's ever known is this, and it's pretty damn great.
"Nope, can't have you not believing me. Come on, we have to do it again, obviously you need a larger sample size to be sure." His hands pull her closer.
"What, again? We just did it three times, how can you possi...oh!"
She's still not certain sex is better as a werewolf, but it's definitely perfect with Sam.
She's fifteen, and her sister's blood coats her hands, and her world is falling apart, shattering before her. She has to get out of the house, out from the ruins, and her senses are turning against her, scent too sharp, hearing too strong. She opens the door to leave when she hears it. The sound of another heart beat. It can't be Ginger, no, she listened to her whistle out her last breath. A soft groan comes from the hallway. Sam. Then she's lifting him, stumbling with his dead weight, straining to listen to his heart beat out an unsteady rhythm, but at least it's beating. And it's getting stronger, she can tell. The lycanthropy is healing him, already it's stopped his bleeding.
"Brig?" He asks wetly, his throat wet with his own blood.
"It's over. I'm getting us out," she assures him as she maneuvers him into the back of the van. Her hands are shaking, but she has to drive. She doesn't have time to cry.
"She loved you. Did," he coughs a little, "did you love her?"
Brigitte stills, her hand hovering over the keys, just about to turn them. She killed her sister, but it wasn't really her sister anymore. She killed the monster masquerading in her sister's skin. Was that love? She turns the key.
"Yes."