2 – Troy and the Three Fs

Troy stepped out into the heat and sweat of the bar. Knife-baby and ZZ were gone. The bar had gone back into bar mode, “Country Girl (Shake it for Me)” was booming from the speakers, and mostly-drunk people danced and flirted everywhere but the dance floor. Troy wound his way back to the corner table where Canyon and Timber sat, Canyon alone, but Timber with a curvy blonde on his lap. Troy’s nachos were just arriving. Jackpot.

The waitress cleared the area, and Troy stepped up next to the table. When the woman on Timber’s lap saw Troy, she bounced up and stepped in close to him, touching his arm. Troy shivered, resisting the urge to let his eyes roll back in his head at the blissful feeling. Troy rarely had been touched in his life. As a pup, sure, but not much after his mother had died with everyone else’s mother, and not since then. Ella had touched him sometimes, a friendly hand on his neck when she was talking to him or sitting next to him on the couch. He and Trent wrestled and lay near each other. Trevor had occasionally touched him. None of it had prepared him for what it felt like to be touched as a man.

“T-ster!” the woman cried, kissing him on the cheek. Behind the woman’s back, Timber shot him a dirty look. Troy nodded at him and returned it, but his look included that evil smile he’d forgotten to look at.

“Hey, Babe,” Troy said. He searched his memory for her name. Riana? Rhodendra? Rhonda! He remembered she had, Cowgirl Up, tattooed above her ass crack. The memory made him snarl and she smiled at it, her smile going dreamy and coy like she knew what he was thinking.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, leaning in close, wrapping her body around his, whispering in his ear. “Want to get out of here?”

Troy smiled at her, but shook his head sadly. He spoke slowly, and still tripped over the w. “Sorry, Cowgirl, this rodeo is closed until further notice.”

Rhonda pouted and tilted her head, but her eyes were focused on a friend in the crowd. She kissed him on the cheek again and ran off.

Troy lifted his chin at Timber. “De nada.”

Timber only growled at him and helped himself to a handful of Troy’s nachos. Troy considered punching him in the side of the head, but held back. Timber was a big fucking baby about getting punched in the head.

Troy shoved in next to Canyon and pulled his nachos in front of him, curling an arm around the plate, staring Timber down.

Timber crunched deliberately on what was already in his mouth and flipped him off, then laughed and asked him a question. “You’re missing an F tonight, Troy, what gives?”

Troy replied in ruhi. Too many Ws. What F? What are you talking about?

Timber held up a fist. He leaned forward for effect. “You know, the three Fs, what you’re all about for the last few weeks.” He popped out his thumb. “Food, but don’t think no one has noticed you are only eating shit you don’t need silverware for.” His index finger. “Fighting. That’s self-explanatory.” His middle finger. “And of course we can’t forget everyone’s personal favorite, fucking.” He dropped his hand to the table, slammed it, really, making Troy grin. Timber always talked like a camera was on him. The Timber Show, starring, you guessed it, Timber. “You just turned down the third F, Troy, the favorite F, the best F, the mother of all the fucking Fs so I gotta know, what gives?”

Troy grunted as he ate, not bothering to speak out loud. Mind your own fucking business, he told Timber, suddenly wondering the same thing. Why had he turned her down? He was as horny as he’d been when he’d first shifted to a man and then seen a female that wasn’t mated to his brother, but for some reason, he didn’t want… Troy thought for a moment, his thoughts diverting. What he really wanted was to go to a different bar.

He nodded across the table at Timber. Take me to Mugshots.

“Can’t,” Timber said, waving a hand at Canyon. “We’re banned for life. If we ever go back the owner says he’ll get a restraining order against us. We’ll get fired. It’s this whole big thing. So no, we aren’t going to Mugshots.”

Troy shoveled in the last of his food. Just me, then. You go home.

Timber shook his head. Canyon spoke in their heads in ruhi. You’re not going by yourself. Forget it. You have babysitters for a reason.

Troy was set to go anyway, even half-rising from his seat, when Blake showed up, putting a hand on his shoulder to push him back down. Blake looking at Timber, pitched his voice low, and said, “Troy took Molly in the bathroom.”

Timber groaned and threw his hands in the air. “Troy! How many fucking times do I have to tell you, no fucking drugs! You’re a fucking adult!” He leaned over the table close to Troy and hissed, “You’re a fucking cop. You can’t fucking take drugs.”

Troy shrugged. He’d forgotten about the Molly. So far, nothing. Another bust. He yawned. Swayed a little in his seat. He did feel tired. Shit. His mind floated. His wolf leaned in close. From all around him, Canyon and Timber and Blake talked about him like he wasn’t even there.

Voices floated with his mind.

“…. falling asleep. … . get him out of here. help .. grab his shoulders, Canyon, you get … feet.”

“…not shift..”

“humans…”

“Crew says…. strong will… not sleeping. Only way his wolf … come through…”

Troy dropped his head onto the table, clunking it there, feeling nothing at all. He drifted.

He slept.

…

He scented his brother.

Trent, he called in his darkened sleep-mind, plunging headlong toward the scent in a semi-dark that revealed little detail.

Wait, that was a man. Troy stopped running, knowing what he knew, taking the time to mark this occasion in his mind. It was his first look at his brother, Trent, shifted into a man.

Trent the man was tall and broad with a clean-shaven face, a cleft chin, and dark, neatly-trimmed hair. Troy grinned, joy suffusing him at seeing his brother this way. Being a wolf for his whole life, with a man stuck inside, was different than the other wolfen thought it was. It hadn’t been hard, it hadn’t been sacrifice, at least not since he’d accepted it. It had just been who he was. But it wasn’t who he was anymore, and he didn’t want to go back. Did Trent feel the same?

Trent was wearing dark work khakis and boots, a gun strapped to his side, a badge hanging on his chest from a chain, but not a Serenity PD badge. He was at the very edge of a cliff, whipping small rocks onto something below. As Troy focused harder, more of the landscape appeared, in the way of dreams. There were two wild catamounts next to him, both about the same size, one male with two canted lines for a renqua, one female with no renqua. As Troy watched, the male catamount knocked a rock off the cliff. The catamount next to him snarled to show she was pleased, then she lay down, her big claws hanging over the edge of the cliff, regal head up, belly heavy with young, surveying some foggy vista Troy couldn’t see.

“Trent,” Troy called again, hauling his ass that way. “You shifted. When? Where are you? Why haven’t you answered me for the last month?”

Trent still didn’t answer him. He acted like he didn’t hear Troy. Troy ran faster, not getting any closer. “Trent! I’m telling you, Trevor is having kittens out of his own man-gina. We’re heading into the Canadian backcountry next week to look for you. We haven’t caught you on a trail cam in days, and I can’t hold anyone off anymore. They all think I’m crazy and that I’m wrong about you not wanting us to follow.”

“I’m not there,” Trent said, still facing away, his voice echoing like they were talking across a canyon. He turned to look at Troy. Troy kept running toward him. Trent rippled, shifting from man to wolf like a dream, perfectly, starting with the front of his body. Clothes morphed into black fur, nose to muzzle, upright posture to a wolf’s forward animal prowl.

Troy stopped, dumbfounded. He’d slept through his only shift, and it had been from wolf to man, but he’d seen his other brother Trevor and the rest of the wolven shift from man to wolf many times, and they always looked like they were trying not to die. Trent looked like he was stepping out of the shower.

“Then where are you?” he shouted at his brother. “Give me something to go on.” Troy had dreamed of Trent most nights since Trent had left, but this dream was different. In this dream Trent was shifted, and Trent was talking to him.

“Are you ever coming home?” Troy asked, still getting no closer to Trent, even though Trent was standing still, a black wolf with a winding white renqua on his left shoulder, against a backdrop of windy, dark nothingness. ‘A figure eight,’ Trent said his renqua was. ‘An infinity symbol,’ Troy said it was. No one else had ever cared. Troy and Trent had always been personas non grata to all the Citlali but Wade.

“I am home,” Trent said in ruhi, his fur rippling once. He turned and loped away from Troy, until Troy could barely see him anymore. Only occasionally, did Troy spot him in the hazy, vast distance. Troy tucked in his elbows and ran faster, but could not catch up with his brother. If he shifted…

The real world swam back to Troy all at once, harshly, in the way of reality. He opened his eyes and sat up. He was in a vehicle with a cloth that smelled like Timber wrapped around his head. Urgent, hushed voices came to him, then Canyon said, loudly, as if to a concerned passer-by “Nah, he’s fine, we’re good. Thanks.”

Troy whipped the cloth off his head and stared at it. Timber’s shirt. He looked around. He was in the backseat of Canyon’s truck, Canyon and Timber and Blake were standing outside and all were shirtless.

What the fuck? Troy snarled, kicking Timber’s door with the heel of his boot one time, then Troy pitched all their shirts out the open window.

“Calm your mustache, asshole,” Timber growled at him quietly, scooping up the clothing and parceling it out. “You were starting to shift in your sleep. That’s what the fuck. We had to wrap you in our shirts so no one saw your Teen Wolf impression.” Timber lifted his shoulders and pulled his arms in close to his body, twisting them towards each other, tilting his head up like a tortured soul and snarling in a pathetic way, then he snarled in a real way at Troy and pulled his shirt over his head with a flourish. Troy tried not to laugh at the stupid fucker, but as he thought about what Timber had said, the urge to laugh fell away.

“Impossible,” he muttered, ready to change the subject, aware that his forehead no longer felt flappy, but not willing to admit it, especially not to Timber. Only Trent would understand.

Troy’s body tensed, his mind went silent, and his wolf leaned in, whispering what was coming. Hold on to something, Troy growled inside all their minds. We’re about to go for a ride.

The ground rolled underneath him, tossing him around a bit in the back seat. Timber grabbed at the side of the truck, then backed away, crouching, eyeing the too-tall trees on the side of the parking lot.

Canyon set his feet. “Earthquake,” he said.

Blake’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground like he’d been dropped.

“Blake,” Troy growled, scrambling out of the truck over the rolling ground to get to him. He looked unconscious. The earth beneath their feet went calm, and the second it did, Blake’s eyes opened. He groaned and held his head. Troy, Canyon and Timber helped him to his feet.

“I haven’t felt an earthquake in…” Timber stopped for a second. “In never,” he continued. “Do we have earthquakes in Northern Illinois?”

“No,” Troy said. “Only when Khain pulls some bullshit.” They all looked around, but the night was still, except for the drunken yells and shouts from the bar. No one’s phone rang. Trevor didn’t call anyone in ruhi. Neither did Wade. Maybe it had been a non-demon related earthquake.

“You ok, Blake?” Troy asked quietly, slowly. The night felt off, suddenly, but the feeling was fading.

“Yeah, good,” Blake muttered, but he looked like he’d been run over by a truck.

“You got a seizure disorder?” Timber said peering at him.

Blake held his head and stared at the ground. “I just fell down,” he said. “I’m going inside. Find my ride.” He disappeared into the night.

“Good,” Troy said, heading across the parking lot in the other direction. He switched to ruhi.

I’m off to Mugshots, he said. Tell Trevor you couldn’t control me, he won’t hold you responsible for whatever I do tonight.

Timber groaned. “Troy, it’s almost two in the morning. Mugshots is closing any minute. You might be thirty years old going on sixteen, but the rest of us are thirty going on AARP, so cut us some slack.”

Troy didn’t care what Timber was whining about. He picked up speed, jogging a little, remembering his dream, remembering what his brother had looked like as a man.

Troy ran down the sidewalk in the cool and quiet night air, enjoying the breeze on his face. A lone car went by, full of women who wolf-whistled him. Troy nodded to them. A vehicle approached from behind him on the street next to the sidewalk, moving slow. Troy turned around and jogged backwards. It was Canyon and Timber in the truck. Timber flipped him off and they paced him. Troy grinned and turned forward again. Mugshots was only a mile away, he wouldn’t even break a sweat.

But a few minutes later when he got close, Canyon and Timber still trailing him, he saw people standing around on the sidewalk outside of Mugshots, and realized they had already closed. Troy stopped running.

“See, you stupid mutt,” Timber called to him from the window of Canyon’s truck. “Get in here and we’ll take you home.”

Troy ignored him, glad when he heard Timber tell Canyon, “Look, there’s Conri, getting into his truck. Drive over there.”

Troy didn’t spare them a look. Something was pulling him toward Mugshots. It was a cop bar, but one the KSRT normally did not go to. Troy had never been inside as a wolf or a man.

Troy loped through the group of people on the sidewalk, feeling like he was looking for something. For someone. A scent stopped him in his tracks. Peppermint. Cool. Fresh and sweet, like Junior Mints in his mouth. He wanted to suck on them. Troy’s mouth watered as his brain confused what he was smelling, making him think of sex, not food. He drifted back and forth on the sidewalk a few times, turning and pacing, trying to catch that scent again.

Until something hit him from the side. Timber in a flying tackle. Troy tumbled onto the ground, ready to kick Timber’s ass, no handicap needed, when Conri dropped onto him from the top, in the manner of a bear, driving all the air out of his lungs and all the fight out of his spirit.

“Conri… traitor…” Troy wheezed, as Conri helped Canyon and Timber scrape him off the sidewalk and carry him to Canyon’s truck for the second time that night.