1 – Fighting

Troy Burbank prowled through the dark, no-name, hole-in-the-wall biker bar with ease, on a collision course with his next fight. He was big, and he’d been a non-shifting shifter, stuck as a wolf for thirty-one years, but in the last thirty days since he’d first shifted to a man, walking had been the quickest and easiest skill for him to master. He still loped, shoulders forward, head leading, and he still prowled, feet placed lightly but always deliberately, and he still took incredible care around the young, only recently allowing himself to carry his brother’s twins, but he didn’t worry about running into others anymore. No, he thrust and parried his way through the rock-hard bikers and their tough women with ease, moving on two legs finally as easy for him as moving on four had always been. Stale bar smells came at him and he tried not to sample them.

Troy headed straight for the pair of meatheads Canyon and Timber had said he could fuck with. They both had warrants, which meant Troy could fight them, humans or not. As he walked, he moved his hands to the small of his back and tucked his fingers into the waistband of his jeans, palms facing behind him, adhering to his handicap early.

They were big, the biker on the right surpassing Troy’s 6’3’’ frame by three or four inches and at least forty pounds of biker muscle. His head was bald and shiny with facial hair like ZZ top. Troy had been told his name, but he had already forgotten it. ZZ, Troy named him, smiling what he knew had to be an evil smile, a you’re-about-to-get-your-ass-kicked smile. He memorized the feel of it, so he could look at it in the mirror later.

The other biker had scraggly hair and was leaner, but Troy counted at least three weapons on him. A knife at his belt, brass knuckles in his back pocket, and another knife in his boot, visible by the slight bulge of the sheath’s buckle at his ankle. Knife-baby, Troy named him, hoping he got a chance to use it in the fight. The B’s in the word baby would have been problematic a week ago, but now? B’s were his buh-buh-buh-bitch.

Guaranteed he’s got one more knife somewhere, Troy. Watch yourself, Canyon told him in ruhi, the deep but smooth voice invading his head and interrupting his thoughts in the same way they would have if Canyon had shouted them into his ear. He could shut Canyon out, but he wouldn’t.

If he gets out the knife, you can fight him off with the ‘stache, Timber added, laughing. Always laughing that guy, especially at Troy, but Troy didn’t care. Timber had something coming, something good.

ZZ and Knife-baby hadn’t noticed him yet. They were near the wall, elbows on a circular standing table, heads together as they talked, cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in front of them. Canyon and Timber were behind him, sitting in a booth, doing their job, babysitting him, drinking only lemonade.

Knife-baby’s back was to Troy, his big clodhopper boots way out in the way of foot traffic. Troy kept his smile on his face and tripped right over one boot, jarring Knife-baby, making both bikers look at him.

Troy turned to face them, hands still behind his back, trying to keep the evil smile on his face, but he couldn’t. This shit was too much fun. He grinned instead, knowing he looked like a farm boy fresh from the hay field, but he couldn’t help it. Life as a man was good.

Knife-baby and ZZ exchanged a look. Troy almost laughed.

“Hey look, it’s that guy, you know, the private investigator guy, from Hawaii,” ZZ said, snapping his fingers at his buddy.

Troy grinned wider and snarled a little under his mustache. So nice of you to notice, he thought. “Good joke,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, thinking about the syllables before he said them. ZZ’s lip curled at how slow Troy spoke. Troy didn’t give a shit.

“Nice shirt,” Knife-baby told him, obviously not meaning a word of it.

“Thanks,” Troy replied thinly, gathering his will for his next line. He’d practiced it hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and could almost always pull it off, even though it was long. “Your ‘ol lady bought it for me after I let her suck my dick.” Mom was funnier than ol’ lady and always had more impact, but ol’ lady or girlfriend meant Troy had to say the letter, “M” only twice. His mouth almost never tripped over it anymore.

In the stunned silence that followed, Troy shook a few imaginary creases out of his dark silk Hawaiian-print shirt, pineapples and petroglyphs in rows. Then he returned his hands behind his back and waited to be rushed, grinning like a fucking fool. He knew it. He couldn’t help it.

Knife-baby and ZZ did not disappoint, the taller one coming in high with a jab to the throat and the shorter one coming in low, straight for the gut. Troy bunched, so ZZ’s jab glanced off the top of his head, and he weaved, ducking Knife-baby’s hold, watching those hands for any knives to come out.

The fight was on, and Troy didn’t plan on losing and he didn’t give a shit how stupid he looked throwing down with his hands behind his back. He struck, head-butted, kicked, and threw all of his weight around, as the bar gasped and cried out as a crowd, circling the fight, watching it, delighting in it, picking sides, and yelling encouragement.

Troy fought, the wolf inside him fought. He took a punch to the face, and another, and then caught a blow on his ear. It blew up immediately, he felt it happen, hisss, like a balloon, and his ear was a throbbing lump on the side of his head. He ignored it, catching ZZ in the nose with a head butt, dropping him like a sack of potatoes, then coming round behind him with a kick to Knife-baby’s gut. They were both down. Troy wasn’t even bleeding. Not, bleeding much, anyway.

Troy stood over Knife-baby and ZZ, who were groaning on the ground. He dripped blood on Knife-baby’s boot. Then he stepped over them both, keeping his mouth shut. They’d caught him a couple of good cracks and he wouldn’t rub it in that he was still up and they were down, even if he did love himself some good trash talk. He headed down the hallway to the bathroom.

I can see it from here, Troy. Your forehead is split wide open. We gotta take you to the hospital, get you stitched up. Timber’s voice was gleeful. You know, on account of your “issue”. Troy could hear the air quotes in his head around the word, “issue”. Timber was an asshole even in Troy’s head.

Fuck you, we aren’t going anywhere. Troy shot back, as he pushed into the dingy, dirty bar bathroom. I want to find a few more fights. Did my nachos come yet?

No one answered him. Troy scented, shifting through the hard dank smells of the bathroom. He saw one man inside, human, in the third stall. Troy the wolf would have already had the man’s scent. Troy the wolf was an expert at scenting emotions. Troy the man could still scent emotions and intentions, but could not scent them from as far away or with as much nuance as Troy the wolf could, and he didn’t get them quite as fast. That was the only downside to being a man, his scenting abilities were hampered, and the way people frequently meant one thing and said another made that particular consequence worse than Troy ever could have imagined. In thirty years stuck as a wolf, he’d never once thought to check a person’s expression to measure how they were feeling. He’d only used scent.

Troy made his way to the mirrors, finally catching a bit of the human’s unique… odor. Loser, it said about the man. Up to something, too, Troy thought, eyeing the feet under the stall door. Another fight for him?

Troy stationed himself in front of the chipped mirror to check his damage. Yeah, his forehead was looking a little flappy. He applied pressure with bare fingers, inspecting his face, wiping his luxurious mustache with his other hand, examining it for blood. He stared hard at himself, making up for barely looking in a mirror for thirty years. There’d been no point as a wolf. No one cared what he looked like as a wolf, not even him, but everyone cared what he looked like as a man, even him.

He’d imagined what he would look like as a man thousands of times, but none of them after the age of seventeen, when he’d fully accepted that he would never shift.

But now? There he actually was, Troy the man, in the mirror. He had brown hair, wavy, too long over his face, the sideburns a smidge too low to be regulation. But his hair grew unnaturally fast, he’d had three haircuts in the last month, and he liked it a little wild, not regulation.

Then there was his mustache. Troy stared at it in satisfaction, tilting his chin to catch all angles of it. Perfection. He couldn’t imagine why this look, Tom Selleck circa 1981, had ever gone out of style. Maybe because that beautiful bastard was one of only a handful of males alive who could pull it off. Troy counted himself lucky to be in that group.

His face was ok, he guessed. Ordinary, he thought. Hard around the eyes and the jaw line, but softer when he smiled, which he was trying to quit. His skin, clear. His mustache, perfect. His body was packed with hard-won wolf muscles, which beat biker muscles any day of the fucking week. Women found him attractive, which made getting them into bed dead-easy. Life was good. Life was better than good, and he would do whatever he had to do to keep it that way for as long as possible.

The stall door opened and a douchey-looking dude slithered out. Troy watched him come in the reflection from the mirror, studying his face, trying to guess what Douchey Dude would say before he said it. Troy practiced reading expressions constantly. As a wolf, he couldn’t be fooled, but as a man? He wouldn’t say he’d been completely fooled, but it had been too close for comfort a couple of times in the last month. He hadn’t been naïve when he’d been a pup, and he would not be naïve as a man. So he studied.

Dude had eyes on the ceiling, then he crouched and covered his head with his hands, freezing in place, looking exactly like someone was dumping rocks on his head. But they were indoors, nothing above him but grimy bathroom ceiling.

Dude squealed a little, like a piglet, then tried to cover it with anger. “Fuck, I am over this bullshit,” he said, staring at the floor, arms still locked in place over his head.

“Dude,” Troy said, embarrassed for him. Not really, but he tried to be. That’s what you were supposed to do when someone made an ass of themselves.

Dude lowered his arms slowly, then he shook it off. He came up to the sink next to Troy and pretended to wash his hands.

“Molly?” he said nonchalantly to his hands, like he could be saying anything.

Troy snarled. Fuck no, he didn’t want any fucking Molly, but fuck yes, he wanted some fucking Molly. Troy the wolf had rarely felt a compulsion to do anything more than run. Run and bite, and protect his family. But as a man? As a man his vices were numerous. In the last month he’d sampled every type of liquor sold or stilled in Serenity, and he’d tried weed, acid, cocaine, ritalin, valium, speed, and several kinds of mushrooms, doing each only once, but unable to stop trying new drugs, no matter how much Trevor lectured him and how much Ella worried. Most of them only made him sleepy. He’d smoked for a day, three full packs, walking around in a sick, vomitous daze for most of it, then vowing at midnight to never touch the cancer sticks again. It had been fun. Trevor had not thought so. Ella had asked Graeme to burn the clothes he’d been wearing, refusing to wash them in her washing machine. She’d even made Troy hose down in the backyard before he came in the house to shower. He hadn’t minded.

Troy was also obsessed with women, all women, all shapes, sizes, flavors, and attitudes. He was obsessed with sex. He was obsessed with food, and he was obsessed with sensation, good or bad. If you could fuck it, feel it, touch it, or taste it, he was all about it.

“Feels like?” Troy snarled at dude, not trusting himself any more words than those two. Neither had a W.

Dude shrugged his shoulders. “Molly? It feels like ecstasy, you know. Flying. Sex.”

“Price?”

“$40 a pill.”

“Sample,” Troy demanded. Dude’s eyes got big and he shook his head, but Troy snarled, a real rumbling wolf-snarl. Dude got smart, reached in his jacket pocket and came up with a tiny pill case. He shook out a pill and handed it to Troy. Troy tossed it in his mouth and crunched it, then dry swallowed. More, came the whisper from inside.

Troy dug in his pocket for $160 and came up with his money clip, overflowing, for exactly this kind of thing. He had plenty of money, because Trevor had always been a damn good brother and done all the footwork to ensure both Troy and Trent, their other brother, had always had fair paychecks and many investments, even though both had been expected to live out their lives as wolves, always needing someone else to take care of them in the land of men. “Three more,” he said, holding out the bills.

Trent was still stuck that way and he hadn’t stuck around in Serenity long enough after Troy had shifted for Troy to try to help him shift.

The bathroom door opened, letting in a blast of bar music. Blake came in, Blake, a wolfen officer from patrol, Trevor’s good friend. What in the hell was he doing in this dive bar?

The pills were dumped in Troy’s hand, in Blake’s full view. Troy shook his head once to the side, and tossed the pills in his mouth. He was caught, but he wasn’t guilty. Toss. Crunch. Swallow.

Troy pushed past Dude, nodded once at Blake, and got the hell out of there.