Last Dance At Yoko's (Part 2 of 4)

Charlie rolled onto his back and continued to lie there, staring at the ceiling, for half an hour.  When that half hour came to an end, and he had failed to wrap his head around what had just happened, he sat up, walked into the kitchen and began to make himself some beans on toast.

“I’m going to have a word with Twig,” he muttered to the beans as he stirred them in their pan.  “God only knows what was in that stuff he gave me.”

The clock on the kitchen wall informed him it was approaching seven in the evening.  Charlie had left his new acquaintance Janelle’s home at around quarter past ten.  Which meant that he had spent the entire day hallucinating.  And had, at some point, made it back here safely.

Charlie ate his beans straight from the pan (there was no bread to make toast), then made a cup of excessively sweet tea and retired to the sofa that he must have somehow fallen from earlier.  It was the only explanation for the collision with the floor that had ended up waking him.  As for the dream itself, Charlie wasn’t too sure he felt like dwelling on it.

But dwell on it he did, as he lay in bed that night, sleep evading him at every toss and turn.  It was perfectly logical, he decided, as midnight melted into one, then two, then three.  He had been thinking about Alicia that morning, and then he’d suffered some ill effects courtesy of Twig, or Dr Clarke, or both.  It was only natural that his subconscious would throw up that night at Yoko’s to tease him; the last time he had ever seen Alicia, and they had fought.

That had been three years ago.  Three years in which Charlie did very little except go to the pub with his mates from home, the ones who hadn’t gone to uni.  Until one by one they started getting girlfriends, and jobs, even kids in some cases.  Three years passed, and everybody was busy living, except Charlie.

He’d thought about Alicia often, of course. Constantly, in fact.  First bitterly, licking his wounds, then more tenderly as time went by.  He wrote letters that he could never quite bring himself to send, picked up the phone a million times but always succumbed to his own cowardice.  He’d called her a cold bitch that last night in Yoko’s, before walking out and leaving her there.  That was what he relived every time he considered making contact, and the shame always stayed his hand.

And then eventually, of course, it didn’t matter if he wrote or not, because Alicia Solomon died.  Killed in a car accident along with her new rugby player boyfriend.  In fucking Australia, no less.  Charlie couldn’t help but think that Alicia would be pleased with that last part.  When friends and family spoke of her years from now, she would be remembered as the tragic, beautiful girl who died before her time… in Australia.

That was why he had been taken back to Yoko’s, Charlie decided as the night sky began to pale outside.  To him, Alicia had never left the nightclub.  She’d stayed where he’d left her.  Simple psychology, really.  As Charlie finally succumbed to sleep, he resolved to steer clear of Twig, and refrain from taking Dr Clarke’s pills again.  He could do without the guilt.

It didn’t dawn on him until his doorbell rang that evening, stirring him from his bed, that today was Friday.  Charlie didn’t have much in the way of a routine, or any real notion of structure in his life at all, but Fridays meant one thing and one thing only: Kat.  A former colleague from one of the brief periods where Charlie had held down a job, she was almost but not quite old enough to be his mother, but that had never got in the way of them being mates.  And, ever since the day that Kat had made it painfully clear to Charlie that he would never get into her knickers, very good friends was just what they had been.

When Charlie had first heard the news about Alicia, his mother and father had been sympathetic, as had most of the friends from whom he had drifted apart.  Everybody knew what she had meant to him.  But as the months slipped away and Charlie refused to make even the slightest move in the healthy and expected direction, people began to lose patience.  Mates returned to the vacuum from which they had appeared, and his parents rang every so often to make sure he hadn’t hanged himself. But, for the most part, Charlie was left to his own devices.

Except for Kat.  It had mystified Charlie at first, why she insisted on darkening his door every Friday with a takeaway and a bottle.  Her intentions were far from romantic, and Charlie had never done her such a kindness that it needed returning.  In the midst of his greedy, all-consuming grief, selflessness was something Charlie couldn’t conceive of.  A few Fridays had passed before he started to suspect that Kat might know a little something about what he was going through.

“Tell me about Alicia,” she’d said to him that first Friday, after helping herself to his best weed.  And so Charlie had told her, not realising until hours after, when he went to sleep, how much he had needed to talk about her, how saying her name aloud had almost been enough to conjure her back to him, so that she was part of his world again and not forever dying over and over in a car with a rugby player on the other side of the world.

They had never been what one might call an obvious match, by anyone's standards.  While Charlie would fret over whether the Gallagher brothers were going to see past their differences long enough for Oasis to produce another album, Alicia would be busy extolling the virtues of her favourite Sugababes line-up.  Nothing that Charlie owned looked like it cost any more than the spare change which solely occupied his wallet.  Alicia, on the other hand, was partial to expensive, close-fitting dresses.

It wasn’t anything as clichéd as “opposites attract”, thank god.  More an example of how being utterly, spectacularly drunk can bring two people together in an unexpected and serendipitous way.  For a short and blissful time, they were perfect for each other.

Kat would say nothing as Charlie rambled on for hours about Alicia and Carrow (because the two were forever intertwined), every film they had gone to see together, every shit student party, every argument and every reconciliation, everything but that last evening.  She would just listen, drinking wine and ever rolling another joint.  So yes, she must have known.  Must have lived her own version of Yoko’s at some point.  One day, when Charlie was less of a catastrophe, he intended to return the favour.

Tonight she had treated them both to a fish supper.  Charlie began to roll a joint in preparation for after the meal, while Kat hunted through his cupboards for ketchup.

“Have you actually ventured inside a supermarket this year?”  She called out from the depths of his fridge.

“They’re overrated,” he shouted back.  “Now get in here and eat your chips before they get cold.  I have a story to tell you.”

They sat cross-legged on the rug in the living room, eating straight from the masses of crumpled newspaper in their laps.  Between steaming mouthfuls, Charlie told her all about his experience the day before.

“You’ve taken all sorts in your time,” he said, when he had recounted the entire tale.  “Has anything like that happened to you?”  It was the first time he’d mentioned anything to Kat about that final night in Yoko’s, and he could see her storing that away for further exploration later.

“Who’s to say it didn’t happen for real?”  She asked, seemingly serious.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well?  Is it really so preposterous?”

“I’d say so.  Maybe we should give the bud a miss tonight.”

“Think about it.  You loved Alicia more than you’ve ever loved anyone.  You still do.  The human mind is capable of some pretty amazing things.  Even more so the human heart.  Sure, there’s the rules of physics and everything that keeps the sky up top instead of down below, but what if you’ve found a way around all that?  What if, somehow, through sheer force of want, you’ve found a way back to her?”

Charlie stared at Kat, aghast, for a full minute before she cracked up.  A few seconds later, he was laughing along with her.

“On the other hand,” she snorted, “what a load of bollocks that would be.”

“You are awful,” he admonished.

“It made you laugh, didn’t it?  I was seriously thinking I’d have to shag you in order to put a smile on that sullen face of yours.”

“That may still be necessary,” Charlie grabbed a handful of thigh and gave it a playful squeeze.  Kat responded with a swift, painful jab to his left kidney.

“Fuck off,” she grinned, as he doubled over in pain.  Then, rather more sweetly: “Would you happen to have a lighter?”

~

To Be Continued

Read Part Three

Last Dance At Yoko's (Part 1 of 4)

The first time Charlie Gillespie found himself in the past, he blamed it on the drugs.  A curious mix of Bell's whiskey, the red and yellow caplets prescribed for anxiety by Dr Clarke, and a couple of slightly less legal party favours purchased from his old acquaintance Twig in the pub.  Of all the possible side effects, travelling through space and time was not one he had been particularly prepared for.

It started on a Thursday morning.  Like a lot of mornings recently, Charlie woke up hungover, in a bed that was not his own, next to a girl he only vaguely recognised.

“Morning,” she whispered in his ear.

“Morning…” he mumbled back, trying to decide if he needed to be sick or not.  Her name was... Shit, what was her name?  He wanted to say Jor-El, but he knew that was the name of Marlon Brando’s character in Superman.  Janelle.  That was it.

“…Janelle.  Morning, Janelle.”

She was a good looking girl.  A damn sight prettier than some of the women he’d found himself waking up with in the last six months.  As she got up from the bed and covered herself with a robe, Charlie spotted a rose tattoo on her left shoulderblade.  Was that why he’d gone home with her last night?  Because that tattoo had been visible in her revealing dress?  Her dark skin and hair were a factor too, he supposed.  Not forgetting those gold hoop earrings.  Little things that might have made her look enough like Alicia to fool him in the hazy stupor of karaoke night at The Crown.

Alicia.  The one and only girl Charlie had ever loved.  Not that he ever told her, mind.  He’d thought himself exempt from that kind of sappy gesture, even when it really counted.  And now it was too late.  Alicia was gone, and here he was, trying to get high enough to fashion a decent simulacrum out of some random girl in a bar.

“Breakfast?”  Janelle asked from the bedroom door.  Charlie shook his head and tumbled from the bed, reaching blindly on the floor for his clothes.  A look of understanding formed in Janelle’s eyes.  She was disappointed, but far from surprised.

“I have to get to work,” Charlie offered, lamely.  She didn’t even need to believe the lie if she didn’t want to.  He dressed quickly and was soon out of there.

The morning that greeted him as he left the building was bright and unforgiving.  Charlie pulled up the collar of his jacket and retrieved his iPod from the pocket.  One of these days he was going to lose or break that thing, and he dreaded to think what the walk of shame would be like without it.

Charlie lit a cigarette and put the player on shuffle, hoping to blast away some of the cobwebs before he got home.  He could feel the ill effects of everything he had taken last night waiting for him just out of sight, like an albatross.  Biding their time to hit him when he least expected it.

A song came on that he didn't remember adding: "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor".  Old enough now to qualify as a classic, which meant it belonged on an entirely different playlist.  Charlie couldn't hear this song without thinking of uni, of how he had gone from loving it to hating it as the DJs played it to death.  And of course, like everything else at the moment, it made him think of Alicia.

The moment her name entered his head, the moment he began to picture her face, Charlie felt the albatross swoop in.  The cigarette dropped from his fingers.  The Arctic Monkeys suddenly sounded very far away.  The edge of his vision frayed into darkness, as if he were about to faint, and then it happened.  Charlie felt a jolt, a pang in the pit of his stomach, and the world around him vanished. 

For a split second, he was terrified.  He thought he was dead.  Then, in the blink of an eye, he felt something solid under his feet, and the world came rushing back in a surge of colour and sound.  Charlie promptly dropped to his knees and vomited.  He felt hammered.  It took him a few moments to scramble to his feet and realise that the pounding he could feel wasn't in his head - it was the rhythmic thump thump thump of a nightclub.  He looked around.  The walls weren't closing in on him like he'd first feared; he was simply in a toilet cubicle, standing next to a small puddle of sick.  With aching, trembling fingers, Charlie slid back the bolt on the cubicle door and stepped out into the room

The sight of urinals filled him with relief; he hadn’t blindly stumbled into that sacred territory marked “Ladies”.  It looked like any gents lavatory in any club.  He could be anywhere.  Charlie couldn't remember the last time he'd blacked out so completely. It was a small miracle that any bouncer in their right mind had let him come in, the state he was in.  Charlie rinsed out his mouth at one of the sinks, then stumbled out of the toilets and into a red, tunnel-like hallway.

An oft-cited cliché tried to form on his tongue, but he struggled to get the words out.

"Toto," he rasped.  "Kansas."

He was dreaming.  He had to be.  The garish pop art on the walls, the sticky floor, the smell of aniseed and cigarette smoke...  There was no mistaking it; he was in Yoko's. 

"Impossible," he said, clearing his throat.

"You what, mate?"  A young man leaning against the wall looked up from his phone.

"Is this Yoko's?"  Charlie asked.  The man laughed.

"Had a bit too much have we?"  He finished texting, then met Charlie's eye again.  "Yeah, we're in Yoko's."

A dream, Charlie decided.  Definitely a dream.  Because Yoko's never opened in the day. Yoko’s was miles from here. Yoko’s closed its doors for good almost two years ago.  And yet…  He couldn’t recall ever having a dream this vivid.  The smells, the sounds.  Most of them quite unpleasant.  Charlie wandered further down the red corridor, towards the music.  Déjà vu did not even begin to describe what he was feeling.  Already seen?  Already lived, more like.  He had spent longer than he cared to mention in this smoky corner of Carrow, off his head when he should have been working to achieve something other than a third class degree.  It had been a second home to him… and her.  Always her.

Charlie emerged into the club itself, where the Arctic Monkeys were blearing from the sound system, almost as if to greet him.  “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.”

He needed a drink.  Or a dose of anti-psychotics.  But he’d settle for a drink.  Charlie made his way through the sparse crowd to the bar, and ordered a double whiskey.  He knocked it back before realising he didn’t have any money.

“Fuck,” he muttered, patting his jacket and jeans knowing full well he would find nothing there.  He smiled uselessly at the barmaid, a skinny blonde with a hard, thin mouth, while trying to think up some excuse or platitude.  Before he could come out with anything, he saw a slender hand push a ten pound note across the bar in the direction of the blonde girl.

Charlie knew that hand.  He knew those polished red nails, the white gold pinkie ring, and the tiny scar on the thumb (from an incident involving lots of wine and a noble attempt at making bacon sandwiches).  Charlie looked up at the owner of the hand.  She smiled, and then she slapped him.

“Where the hell have you been?”  She asked furiously.  “I’ve been waiting here like an idiot for over an hour.”

His cheek burned where she had struck him.  Definitely not a dream, then.

“Alicia,” he said, “I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to understand?”  She asked.  “We arranged to meet here at nine and you didn’t show up.  Again.”  She signalled to the barmaid for another shot and then necked it, wincing slightly.  Neat spirits had never agreed with Alicia; she was a rosé girl at heart.  She slammed the glass down on the bar, as if to punish it for the vile taste of the whiskey, and then returned her glare to its rightful recipient: him.

Charlie remembered this row.  He remembered this whole evening.  It was the last night of university.  Tomorrow, they would both leave Carrow; Alicia would go home to London and Charlie would go back to Bristol, and they would never see each other again. 

“Alicia,” Charlie whispered, and then he said something that could not be heard under the din of the club.

“What?”  She asked, leaning in.  Charlie repeated himself, but she shook her head and held her hand up to her ear, sidling ever closer. 

“You’re dead,” Charlie shouted into her ear.

The beat stopped.  The bar that Charlie was leaning on vanished, and Alicia disappeared along with it.  Charlie fell into darkness, grappling for a hold on something, anything, before colliding with something hard and flat.  It might have knocked him out cold, or he might have awoken straight away – he couldn’t be sure.  All he knew was that when he opened his eyes, he was lying face-down on the living room floor in his flat.

~

To Be Continued
Read Part Two

I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus

 I saw Daddy kissing Santa Claus.  That was this time last year.  I don't see much of Daddy these days.  Mummy made sure of that, with something called an injunction.  I can't say I'm 100% sure on what an "injunction" is, but it sounds painful, and I think it involves needles of some kind.  Now it's nearly Christmas again, and I've been really good this year, so I’ve written a second letter to Santa with a very special request. 

I asked if he and Daddy could come down from the North Pole where they live together, and have Christmas dinner with me and Mummy.  I haven't told Mummy about the letter, as every time I mention Daddy she starts throwing around the word "migraine" and then I have to go and play in my room.  I think it is best kept a secret, for now at least.  After all, everybody is nicer on Christmas Day - surely if Daddy and Santa show up, she'll have to make them welcome?  We did a whole play on it at school.

Tonight is Christmas Eve.  Mummy has laid out a carrot for Rudolph, but she refuses to leave a mince pie or glass of milk for Santa.  I feel the beginnings of doubt in the bottom of my stomach.  What if she goes into one of her very grown-up strops tomorrow?  I know there is nothing to be done about it now, so I let her tuck me in and kiss me goodnight, then squeeze my eyes shut.  I can't get to sleep straight away, so I occupy myself by trying to remember all the names of Santa's reindeer.  There's Rudolph, of course, but I always struggle with the others.  Donner.  Dancer.  Prancer.  Dasher?  Cupid and Blitzen.  The other names evade me as I drift off.

I wake up early the next morning, and run into Mummy’s room, shaking her shoulder until she opens her eyes and grumbles at me to put the kettle on.  I carefully make a cup of coffee, like she showed me, and take it up to her in bed.  She gulps half of it down and then smiles at me mischievously, reaching under her pillow and retrieving a small red box with a green bow.  She hands it to me and I rip it open – it is a new bicycle bell. 

“Your bike will look good as new with that snazzy new bell,” she says, finishing her coffee.  I force a smile and I say thank you, even though I feel a little crushed.  I’d asked for a brand new bike this year.

We go downstairs together and Mummy makes us both cheese toasties for breakfast.  When I have eaten mine, and washed the crumbs from my hands, I am allowed to choose a present to open from my stocking on the hearth.

It is a book.  I smile and say thank you again, slightly less convincingly, and then I give Mummy her present, the one I have spent the last few weeks working on.  I’ve made her a photo album.  I have avoided putting in pictures of Daddy, so mainly it is just photos of Mummy and me, padded out with pictures of Mummy’s brothers and sisters and Granny and Granddad.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mummy says, tearing up.  “I love it.  Thank you.”  She hugs me so tightly that it hurts a bit, and kisses me on the cheek, leaving a wet lipstick print behind.  I wait until her back is turned and rub my cheek furiously with my sleeve.

The next present I open is a bookmark.  To go with the book, I suppose.  I can’t help sighing just a bit, and immediately I feel the room go cold.

“Sorry, darling, if this isn’t quite up to scratch,” Mummy says icily.

“No,” I protest, “it’s fine, honest.”

“Fine?  Oh, it’s fine?  Well maybe if your pervert of a father hadn't decided to up and run off with Pere Noel, we'd be able to afford better presents.  But he didn't.  And we can't.  So you'd best like it or lump it, my little prince!"

I apologise, and Mummy calms down.  I am starting to seriously rethink my genius plan when the doorbell rings.  It can’t be them, can it?  Daddy and Santa?  It’s too early!  I look at the clock and realise I must have woken up later than I thought – it’s nearly noon.

“Oh no,” I whisper under my breath, and as Mummy leaves the room to answer the door, I think I might be sick.

“What are you doing here?!”  I hear her shriek from the hallway.  “And you brought him with you?  What were you thinking?”

“We thought you knew,” I hear Daddy say, calmly. “We got a letter…”

I don’t hear the rest of the conversation, but I am familiar enough with the stern, adult tone they are using with each other to know that I am in serious trouble.

When Mummy re-enters the living room, she is followed by Daddy and Santa.  Santa isn’t wearing his uniform, which surprises me at first, but then I imagine he must be shattered after his night shift.

“I think you have some explaining to do,” Daddy says to me, but I am just so happy to see him that I begin to tear up, and simply run into his arms.  Suddenly, the loudest thing in the room is Mummy’s silence.

“Please let them stay,” I plead into Daddy’s jumper.  “Please can they stay?”

I don’t have to be able to see Mummy to sense her exasperation as she sighs and reluctantly agrees.

“Thank you,” Santa says quietly, clearly embarrassed by the whole thing.

For the next few hours, Mummy busies herself in the kitchen preparing lunch, clutching a glass of white wine like a good luck charm, leaving Daddy, Santa and me in the living room, playing with the toys they brought me.  I am so grateful to have them there that I don’t dare ask Santa why I didn’t get the bike I asked for in my first letter.

When the four of us sit down together, Mummy insists on carving.

“After all,” she declares, “I’ve become the man of this house.  It was a desperately deprived role.”

Dinner is eaten in near-silence, and I start to feel rather foolish.  This is far too much like the Christmases we had before Daddy moved in with Santa – quiet and tense.  I finally understand that grown-up expression “an atmosphere you could cut with a knife”.  Maybe things would have been best if I hadn’t written my letter at all.

But it is good to have Daddy around again, even if it is only for the day.  I hadn’t realised how much I missed him until I saw him come through the living room door earlier, holding Santa’s hand.  I think Mummy has noticed too – that this is the Christmas present I wanted more than anything, even more than a bike.  I keep seeing her from the corner of my eye, watching me and Daddy.  I wonder if this means she will let me see him more. 

Over Christmas pudding and custard, it strikes me that I’ve been rather selfish.  I wished and wished for what I wanted for Christmas, when I should have been looking for a way to make Mummy less sad.  I decide that my New Year’s Resolution will be to cheer her up properly, so that she’ll be the way she used to be.

After dinner, everybody avoids looking at me when I suggest we play a game.  I think Mummy wants Daddy and Santa to go.  Santa tries to shake her hand as they leave, but all he gets in return is one of her famous frosty glances.  Daddy at least gets a hug, before he sweeps me up into a huge kiss and cuddle.  Then they are gone.

I thank Mummy as she closes the front door behind them.

“You’re welcome, my little prince,” she says.  “He’s your Daddy; I never should have made him stay away.”

“So I’ll get to see him more?”  I ask.

“Yes.  As much as you like.”  She replies.

“And might I be able to go and stay with him and Santa, up at the North Pole?”  I continue, hopefully.  Mummy freezes.

“We’ll see,” she says, finally.

~

Changeling

So quiet is the night that her footsteps can be heard long before she appears.  As the girl makes her way out of the black woods, into the sheer white of the outside world, no footprints mark the snow behind her.  She is thin and pale, and her hair is so fair it is almost white.  If anybody were to see her, they might mistake her for   ghost, or something like it.  Something not quite of this world.

She carries a woolen bundle in her frail, skinny arms.  A soft breath coos up at her from its depths.  She attempts to ignore it.  If she avoids looking down at the tiny creature, she thinks this will be easier.

The white road brings her to a village.  Only a handful of houses, it would appear, all of which sit still and silent under their snowy blanket.  One house seems to beckon to her.  She moves towards it, pulled closer by instinct and a deeper knowledge. 

She stops at a ground floor window.  Her breath on the glass turns to a glittering frost.  Using her one free, frail hand, she opens the window and climbs inside.  A crib stands before her.  The walls are decorated with various birds and farmyard animals.  A colourful plaque hangs from the wall over the crib:

Zachary.

No noise comes from the cot.  The pale girl knows why.  Death took this child, took its breath and its soul, earlier this night.  She felt it from her home beyond the woods, and she sensed an opportunity. 

With her left arm she scoops up the still, cold babe, and with her right she leaves another child in his place.  He stirs as she lays him down, his tiny fists tighten, then he goes back to sleep.  The pale girl’s icy breath catches in her throat.  Her beautiful, forbidden child. 

This home will have a new Zachary.

She whispers words that would be inaudible to human ears; words that creep out into the stuffy bedroom air and settle on the infant in the cradle.  They are words to dull the brightness in his eyes and flatten the sharpness of his delicate features.  His pointed little ears become fatter, rounder, more human.  To this boy’s new parents, he will be the image of their own child.

The pale girl leans forward to kiss her baby’s warm brow, and his skin glistens for a moment in the darkness where her lips touched it.  She climbs through the window as silently as she entered, and slides it shut with one hand. 

"I will see you again,” she promises, although even she is unsure.  She turns away from the human house, holding their own lost boy to her chest, and she goes back the way she came.

Her wails can be heard for several hours after she vanishes back into the woods, but if anybody is woken by her unearthly cries, they will simply turn over in their beds and think it is the wind.

~

"Changeling" is taken from my Kindle anthology Sweet Tooth.

Nobody's Cub

 Once upon a time there was a young bear cub called Freddie. He belonged to nobody, and nobody belonged to him. He used to be very nonchalant and Holly Golightly about this, but if he's honest with himself (and he rarely is), he would like nothing more than to be able to point to somebody and say to a stranger "oh, they're with me", or "I'm with them", or some such lark.

He tries to get out there, to look for love as if a thing like love can be found on a map, X marks the spot and ever after, but for one reason or another his efforts are as empty and as fruitless as his cold, dinner-for-one lair. While others go on the prowl, Freddie stands by the wall, lonelier than a Smiths song, and when he eventually does pluck up the courage to follow the sign that says Bears Upstairs, all he can think is how much like a bedtime story it sounds, or a TV show for children. The Bears Upstairs.

Freddie's knees tremble as he ascends each step, anxiety creating blurry panic in his head and chest. What if his fur isn't as shiny as that of the other bears? Will they laugh at his small, non-aggressive growl? Are their eyes browner, their claws sharper?

As it turns out, the bears upstairs are no different to the other animals. When they laugh it is with no joy, all they care about is milk and honey. Freddie groans, a bear with a sore head, and once again heads out into the night alone.

Except something about tonight is different. On his way home, Freddie meets a man who calls himself Luke. His hair is flecked with silver and so are his eyes. Certainly not a bear, and Freddie doesn't know how he feels about having a daddy. But it is a bitterly cold night, so Freddie lets Luke take him by the hand and take him to his lair. His grip is firm, warm. It feels to Freddie like lying in a warm bed while a storm rages outside.

When they reach Luke's door, the man takes the young bear's coat like a gent and shows him inside. The man's house is cosy and warm, which is perhaps why Freddie allows himself to relax. A small fire entertains itself beneath the mantle, casting shadows that he doesn't notice straight away. It is only when he and Luke have sat down, when Freddie cracks a poor joke and Luke laughs, grinning widely in the process, that he realises.

"My," he finds himself saying, "what big teeth you have."

Then he sees the shadows of large, pointed ears cast by firelight against the wall, and he forces himself to look closer at Luke. At his pale eyes, and prominent nose... not Roman, but a snout maybe. Freddie has never had reason to keep track of these things, but he suddenly, strongly suspects that if one were to glance outside tonight, the moon would be full.

"Wolf!" He cries, and Luke flinches as if Freddie has sworn. Freddie throws himself off the sofa, grabs his coat with one hand and the doorknob with the other, but then something makes him turn around to look at the wolf in designer clothing.

Why, then, does the young cub not run?

Because when Luke laughed, Freddie heard the genuine mirth in it, the joy. Because his grip had been firm and warm, and because there is a fire in the hearth.

Freddie looks at Luke, but that joy is gone.

"I understand," says the wolf. "Go back to your people."

The coat slips from Freddie's fingers, and he returns to sit with Luke.

"We're all animals underneath," he says, and kisses him. Luke grins wolfishly, and this time his giant fangs do not fill Freddie with fear; rather, something akin to desire. And who is to judge? Everybody wants to be loved; it is the nature of the beast.

"Besides," Freddie adds between kisses, "I have spent enough time in the company of bears."

... And they lived happily ever after, if you like.

 ~