Work Text:
Lionel Fusco isn’t really a dog person.
John Reese isn’t really a person.
It happens like this:
Fusco’s already having a bad time. He wakes up in the dark with Bear standing on his back, chunky dog claws digging in enough to sting but not enough that he can justify complaining. As it is, he’s just glad his term of dogsitting is finally over and it’s a little bit of sugar to help him choke down the medicine that is driving all the way down to Jersey so he can meet Coco Puffs under a bridge. She hands him a suitcase he’s not supposed to open - “Not if you know what’s good for you, Lionel,” she tells him cheerfully - and he helps her load Bear into the sidecar of her motorcycle, which would be funny if he wasn’t so fucking tired. Then she and the dog speed off, leaving him standing in the damp, chilly pre-dawn with nothing but a forbidden suitcase, half a thank you, and a long-ass drive back to New York in rush hour traffic ahead of him. He limps up I-95 at a snail’s pace, suffering in the knowledge that he could turn his lights on and sail right past all of this if Glasses hadn’t specifically told him not to make a scene.
The dawn wears on into a wet, bright, unseasonably hot October morning spent standing around in Times Square with the busy commuters and costumed freaks for over an hour, which Fusco’s almost positive is where they’re gonna send him when he finally dies and goes to hell. Eventually, a sinister, off-brand, busted Cookie Monster approaches him from behind and murmurs, “Pardon me, detective,” way too close to his ear and anyway, once he’s done having a fucking heart attack, he hands the suitcase off to Finch.
He was kinda hoping he could recover a little at the precinct, but there’s no chance, ‘cause John’s on edge. Which should be normal, by the way. He’s always tense at the station, visibly reminding himself all the time that his name is Riley and he’s a cop and he works here. This guy , Fusco has thought to himself many times over while watching the muscles in John’s jaw twitch, must’ve been a subpar spy. This is how he got so good at killing people. He kept fucking up.
But it’s not normal. It’s not John’s usual brand of discomfort. There’s something snappish about it, something fevered. Like he’s furiously angry and it’s taking every ounce of his self-control not to lash out at passersby. Or like he’s in a lot of pain. Fusco knows better than to ask - John won’t answer - but he looks him over surreptitiously, piece by piece. Is he favoring one side over the other? Is he concealing bloodstains on his crisp white shirt?
(Is it his blood?)
There’s no obvious cause that Fusco can see. John has bad days sometimes, aggressive days, and Fusco doesn’t always know why. He’s happy to keep his distance for now, to watch and wait and intervene if he needs to. If John takes a swing at somebody, Fusco’s ready to step in. He’s stepped in before.
But John doesn’t hit anybody today. Not at the precinct, anyway. He’s in and out, following his own sneaky clock. Fusco’s fine with it. He spends the day diligently chasing all the leads John won’t have the time to follow up on and filling out all the paperwork John won’t learn how to do. If it wasn’t so boring, it’d be a relief. He’s almost thinking maybe he can play out the rest of his day right here - tired and ragged, but blissfully normal - when the dark shape of John coalesces in front of his desk.
“No,” Fusco says, without looking up.
“It won’t take long,” John whispers.
“No. Fuck off. My shift’s over.”
He looks up to find John casting an accusatory eyes from him to the clock. “ Lionel. ”
“It’ll be over in five minutes,” Fusco amends. “C’mon. I’ve been up since 4. I had to go to New Jersey today. Get out of my face.”
John’s eyes go shiny like they do sometimes, but not with malice. Softer. Pleading.
“No.”
He grabs Fusco by the wrist, squeezes gently. “I need your help.”
So Fusco’s working late tonight.
In a dilapidated warehouse, their backs braced against some long-abandoned crates with their labels all worn away, John wordlessly dumps a gun in his lap.
“What…?” Fusco hisses, scrambling to stop it from clattering to the dusty floor. “What the hell?”
“Just hold onto it,” John whispers. He’s staring straight ahead. His hair’s plastered to his forehead with sweat; his eyes are glassy. He looks sick. “Just for now.”
Fusco examines the gun in the meager light trickling in through the warehouse’s high and dirty windows. It’s an old-ass gun, an honest-to-god six shooter. The kind of gun you use to murder a cowboy. But it’s cared for: clean and well-oiled. A reproduction, maybe, if not a true relic. He leans closer to John, their shoulders brushing. “You beat up Wyatt Earp for this gun, bud?”
John’s threatening whisper floats through the musty air. “Shut up. Just hold onto it.”
“What am I using it for? Are we assassinating Abraham Lincoln?”
John squeezes his eyes shut tight, takes a deep breath, opens them again. “You use it...if things go out of control.” He finally turns to face Fusco. His eyes have a funny, feverish glow to them. “If things get strange.”
Hell of a thing to say to a man who just helped you sneak into a warehouse that appears to be occupied by between fifteen and thirty heavily armed men who are planning to do...something Fusco’s not clear on, all so you can...thwart that plan, whatever it is, probably. It’s all strange. All of it is strange. Fusco doesn’t even know why he’s here. He just asks, “You feeling OK pal?”
John shakes his head. “Use it. You’ll know.”
“Sure.” Fusco leans further back against the crate. “For the record, I brought my own gun.”
“You don’t have the right ammunition.”
That piques Fusco’s curiosity - what’s this antique pistol got that he don’t got? - and he flips open the cylinder. The chambers on the six shooter are all filled. The bullet he tips into his hand is smooth and curiously bright. He slips it back into the chamber, puts the cylinder back into place. The gun’s got an awkward, long-barrelled shape to it, best suited to some kind of dumbfuck cowboy holster. But Fusco doesn’t have a dumbfuck cowboy holster, so he shoves it into his coat pocket and it sits there, awkwardly.
When he turns back to John, John is already staring at him with a kind of intensity that could peel back Fusco’s skin and show John all the terrible things inside him. As it is, it makes his neck hot.
“M’sorry, Lionel,” John whispers. His voice is hoarse; his breathing is strange and ragged.
Something’s wrong. “Are you OK?”
“I was hoping I’d get this…” he gestures vaguely to the warehouse in general, to the ceiling above and there’s something strange about his fingers, but Fusco can’t tell what, “...finished earlier in the day. I didn’t want to involve you.”
That’s a first. “Well, I’m involved. Listen, pal, do you need to call in sick? ‘Cause you look…” He lays a hand on John’s shoulder and is surprised to find that it’s hot, even through his coat. “I think we have to leave.”
John’s just panting. He bends forward, sinks down to his elbows and his knees, presses his head to the cool, concrete floor.
So, not a huge help, but at least the way forward is clear. John’s too sick to be here - that’s the only thing Fusco’s sure of - so the best thing to do is to get him out of here through the back door they came in. And if John won’t work with Fusco...well, it won’t be the first time Fusco’s had to drag him somewhere. Fusco wraps his arms around John’s middle, tries to haul him to his feet, but Fusco can hardly move him. He’s so heavy and it’s like his shape is all wrong, like he’s too big and too skinny and too bendy and too rigid all at once.
“Lionel,” John murmurs, his voice all slurred. “You have to leave.” His head’s still drooping but even like this Fusco can tell there’s something wrong with the familiar set of John’s jaw, like it’s coming dislocated. Is this a stroke? Is this a new, terrible way a stroke can look?
Push it away. Push it away. “Shut up,” he snarls right against John’s ear, holding John tight to his chest and pulling him up with all his strength and somehow barely managing to lift him off the ground, “and start walking.”
John begins to tremble uncontrollably, this horrible bone-deep shudder that makes Fusco almost drop him. He lowers John back to the floor as gently as he can, shoves his hand underneath John’s head to stop him from smacking it against the concrete floor, holds tight to his too-warm, wrong-feeling body as he works through the shudders.
Then there’s this crack. This loud, horrible crack like a bone breaking, like every bone breaking, and John’s body jerks in Fusco’s arms, twists and splinters and finally is still except for the horrible, gasping breaths. After a few seconds, John exhales very slowly, nuzzling his head into Fusco’s palm.
“Hate that part,” John mumbles.
“Oh my god,” Fusco whispers. He doesn’t know what else to say or what to ask. He just wants to be out of here. He just wants a fucking ambulance.
“Lionel, you need to leave,” John says, weakly pushing his way out of Fusco’s grip. “It’s not safe for you here.”
“It’s not safe for either of us and I’m not leaving you here so let’s…”
John turns, rolls to face him, and Fusco practically shoves him away because it’s too fucking strange, because his face is wrong, because his mouth has too many teeth. He seizes Fusco by the front of his shirt and John’s fingers are too long and his nails punch straight through Fusco’s cheap shirt and draw blood when they scratch against his chest. “Then you’d better...” John says, but it’s not a voice anymore so much as it’s a sound he’s making and the sound is shaped like words, ”...stay out of my way.”
“Hey!” shouts this loud, completely human, stupid voice from right behind them and all Fusco can think for a second is oh, these fucking twerps . “How the hell did you get in here?”
Fusco puts his hands up, turns around real slow to face the moon-faced, be-crewcutted, wannabe militant nobody currently sticking a rifle in his face. “Listen, pal,” Fusco says, trying to sound confident and loud and like he belongs here, like this guy’s the one wasting his time, “I’ll answer whatever stupid questions you have later but I think something’s seriously fucking wrong with my friend here and I need to get him to a doctor right goddamn now, so…”
The nobody lets his eyes flick to John, then back to Fusco, and then, with some trepidation, with some real fucking horror, back to John. “Oh, what the fuck…” he mutters, taking a few steps back.
“Yeah, exactly, it’s real bad, so if you could help me haul him to an exit…” and that’s when the nobody shoots John, just fires two shots right into him and John lets out this awful, awful cry. Before Fusco can do anything, before he can go for his own gun or his stupid cowboy gun, the nobody hits Fusco in the face with the butt of his rifle. Fusco’s teeth strike wood, his skull strikes concrete, and the world is spinning, spinning and the floor is wet. John is still making that awful choking, sobbing noise. Or maybe that’s him now.
Fusco’s just lying there, feeling hot blood roll across his forehead, watching the nobody silhouetted against the light of the moon, nervously reloading his rifle. He can’t move. He’s too dizzy to move. He’s too dizzy and John’s hurt. He can feel him moving, thrashing on the floor beside him, hear this hideous, guttural moan, hear the sound of fabric ripping.
The nobody aims his rifle again, from John to Fusco and back again, like he’s trying to decide who to hit, and that’s when John throws himself at him.
At least, Fusco thinks it was John.
He blacks out then. What else is new?
When he comes to, there’s screaming. That’s new.
He rolls onto his side with a moan, clutches his head. Everything seems to be intact. Nasty goose egg forming on the back of his head and he’s sure the inside’s a fucking horrorshow, but nothing’s bleeding, nothing’s broken, and everybody’s alive so let’s just count our blessings a second.
Is everybody alive?
Fusco braces himself, tries to push himself up, immediately slips. Not his fault, he discovers. Floor’s wet. Blood. A lot of blood. His own blood? ‘Cause that doesn’t seem right. Fusco’s no expert - he’s only a homicide detective - but he’s pretty sure if you lose that much blood, you shouldn’t be awake. Or alive, even. And he’s both of those, so what gives?
Fusco blinks hard, takes a moment to straighten his head out. Takes a deep breath, breathes in a familiar smell, hot and metallic and nauseating. He shuts his eyes tight.
When he opens them again, he sees a severed arm lying on the floor.
Fusco takes a quick personal inventory.
Someone else’s severed arm.
A series of gunshots ring out. They end in a ragged, horrible cry.
Everything about being awake is really bad, so far.
Fusco forces himself to sit up, groans as the world shifts and his head throbs. OK. OK. He’s in the warehouse still. But John’s not with him anymore. There’s blood on the floor beside him, there’s shreds of what might once have been a suit beside him, but no John.
He checks his watch - the face is cracked but it’s still counting off the seconds - and finds that he can’t have been out for longer than fifteen minutes.
There’s an arm on the floor now that wasn’t there fifteen minutes ago.
Fusco steels himself, reexamines the arm. It’s pale, wrapped in the ragged sleeve of a camo jacket. Not John’s arm, then. He lets out a sigh of relief that doesn’t feel earned. John’s been shot, John’s sick, John’s clothes are lying on the floor in shreds.
He has to find him.
Fusco struggles to his feet, sways drunkenly, but stays upright. He braces his hand on the crates until the world stops spinning. He spots the rest of the nobody lying sprawled a few feet away, recognizable only because of the gun lying beside him.
The stock is splintered, like somebody crushed it.
He hears more gunshots.
Cautiously, Fusco peers out around the crates.
There are three men, similarly decked out in camo and similarly clutching rifles, standing in the middle of the warehouse. They’re whispering furiously to each other, two frantically exchanging ammo while a third keeps his rifle trained on something up above, on the catwalk over Fusco’s head.
Fusco looks up too. Not much to see from his vantage point, but he can hear the steel of the catwalk clanking slowly, deliberately under the weight of massive footsteps.
“Just take the shot,” one of the men hisses.
“We shot this thing like twenty times,” the guy who’s aiming the rifle says. “I wanna make it count.”
“So shoot it in the fucking head .”
“Almost,” he mutters.
The third whispers, “Fuck it, I’m running,” and suddenly bolts for the door.
“You idiot, don’t -”
Up above, the catwalk groans as whoever’s stalking around up there breaks into a full-on gallop, dashing along the catwalk with almost impossible speed. It cuts a corner by leaping between the catwalk and the stairs, bounding down them five at a time in a massive, silver streak and oh fuck, oh fuck, what the fuck is that thing -
And like that, it’s chomping down on the runner, shaking him like a ragdoll until something snaps and he falls limp. It drops him and stands, still and quiet for a moment.
For the first time, he sees the wolf.
Fusco has never seen a wolf before, not in real life. Movies and TV and nature documentaries only show you so much; they don’t put the wolves in the living room with you. In your head, you kind of imagine they’re like bigger, more dangerous dogs. But you also allow for that wiggle room, that horrible knowledge your prey hindbrain whispers about: they’re bigger than you think .
This is for sure too big.
It’s almost as tall as he is, just standing there on all fours. He can see how fucking terrible and strong this thing is from all the way across the room just from the ease with which it tosses the runner aside. The wolf opens its mouth, shows its pink, lolling tongue, its teeth like knives. Its fur is thick, a beautiful silvery gray, but its muzzle is soaked bright red.
The remaining two men shoot at it.
It’s complicated, what he feels in that second, because the wolf seems to be hunting down the guys who were going to kill him without a second thought, and Fusco’s always been a big believer in the notion that one good turn deserves another. And something about how it’s a big weird beautiful thing that doesn’t belong here makes him want to see it live. But it’s also, you know, a fucking monster, and it maybe ate John along with all these other sons of bitches, so let’s shut up about the beauty of nature for a second.
Anyway, the reigning feeling winds up being fear, because this thing shakes off bullets like Bear shakes off water from a spray bottle. It lunges forward, bites the throat out of one guy, tackles the other to the ground and starts ripping into him.
Fusco sinks back behind the crates and waits for the noise to stop. It does, after a time.
Finally, it’s just Fusco and the wolf.
He has this wild hope that it doesn’t know he’s there. Maybe because he slept through the worst of it, because he never tried to shoot at it, the wolf won’t pay him any notice.
But when he finally chances a peek around the crates, the wolf is already watching him. It’s panting, its jaws dripping. It licks its lips. It advances on him, slow and deliberate.
Fusco saw what good guns did the other guys, so he’s not dumb enough to think his service weapon’s going to make much of a distance. In a moment of desperation, he reaches into his pocket, makes a fist around the unfamiliar shape of the cowboy gun. If things get strange. Fusco guesses this qualifies.
Fusco steps out from behind the crates. The wolf stalks toward him, its head low, its steps deliberate and prowling. He draws the gun, fumbles with the unfamiliar action, aims.
He can’t quite make himself fire.
It’s the eyes, he thinks. He couldn’t see them before. He hadn’t been thinking about them, but if somebody had made him guess he would have said red or black or golden brown, like how animal eyes often are.
But the wolf’s eyes are a deep, stormy blue, soft and curious and horribly familiar.
It sows this crazy thought in his head, that maybe this thing didn’t eat John.
So instead of shooting, he says, “Stay,” in Dutch.
The word is “Blijf,” which is an absolute nightmare to say. Or, not really, not anymore, but the first time Fusco saw it in his Dutch phrasebook, his mouth immediately gave up. He can kinda say it now, well enough that Bear will listen.
The wolf doesn’t listen. But it does seem taken aback. It pauses, one paw paused in midstep, head tilted to one side. Its tail wavers ever so slightly.
Its eyes shine like it’s smiling at a bad private joke.
“Oh, you son of a bitch,” Fusco sighs. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
The wolf takes a few steps forward, its nails clattering on the floor.
“I don’t know how it’s you,” Fusco tells the wolf as it advances, “but it’s definitely you. You’re the only person on the planet who could freak me out this bad. And let me tell you this...” he says, circling around the wolf as it trots forward, always staying just out of its path, “...if I find out that you knew , that you had any idea this would happen, and you didn’t tell me, I’m gonna kick your ass. It’s not gonna be easy. I’m gonna have to work at it. But I’m gonna find a way, because - NO ,” he snaps as the wolf lunges at him and, without thinking, he dodges and shoulder-checks it hard.
The wolf stumbles, more surprised than anything, and backs off a little, resuming its slow, sharklike circling.
Fusco wonders for a brief, fearful second if he’s wrong, if he’s just a crazy man yelling at a wild animal, if he’s about to be ripped apart like the rest.
“Like I was saying,” he continues, “before you interrupted me: if it turns out you invited me to this stupid warehouse raid just so I could have a panic attack watching you turn into a big dog, I’m going to gather the greatest minds of the age together and find a way to kick your ass, because that’s a fucking dirtbag move. And -”
The wolf lunges again, but this time he’s ready and the shoulder check takes the wolf down to the floor. It hits the concrete hard and rolls onto its back. Lies there with its belly exposed, wriggling playfully while staring up at Fusco, tongue hanging out the side of its mouth.
Fusco just keeps talking, breathless, angry, unable to stop. “I deal with your crazy shit every goddamn day,” he says, voice breaking from exhaustion. “And not just your crazy shit, but your friends’ crazy shit, and the crazy shit of people I don’t even know, and you can’t bring more, even crazier shit to pile on top of the other crazy shit because I am at capacity, John! ”
The wolf rolls rightside up and sits, neat and loaflike, watching Fusco curiously.
“Do you know,” Fusco adds in a hoarse whisper, “how hard it would be to give a shit about you if I didn’t like you so much?”
It thumps its tail on the dusty floor once, twice. And then, with terrifying speed, the wolf launches itself at him.
The wolf catches him square on the shoulders and knocks him flat on his back with ease, standing with big, gnarly dinner-plate paws on Fusco’s shoulders and pinning him neatly to the concrete. And it stands there, staring down at him, its hot breath stinking of blood.
So he’s done for.
It licks him on the cheek. And then again on the forehead, where he split his head open earlier. It snuffles at his mouth, at his ears, and looks him over as though checking him for injuries. And then, apparently satisfied, it flops down on top of him, an impossibly heavy but warm weight.
Fusco grunts as the air is pushed out of him.
The wolf nestles its head against Fusco’s throat and sighs once, contented.
Fusco appears to not be done for. Gingerly, he pats the wolf on the side. Its fur is soft, warm, thick enough to lose your hand in.
“For the record,” he says, “I don’t even like dogs.”
The wolf rumbles gently, almost like a laugh.
“So you can imagine what a bad time I’m having.”
It shifts a little on top of him, trying to get comfortable.
Fusco rests his hands on the wolf’s head, scratches the top of its head, its ears, its chin. “You are in there, aren’t you, bud?” he whispers in one furry ear. “Is there...is there a zipper on this thing?”
A soft whuff of air.
Fusco sighs deeply. Can’t move. Can’t have a conversation. “Guess we’re waiting this out,” he says.
The wolf, predictably, doesn’t answer.
It’s a long time to wait on a concrete floor with a big, heavy animal on top of you. Fusco listens, waiting tensely for the sound of police sirens or the clatter of a footfall somewhere else in the warehouse. Doesn’t happen, no one comes.
He soothes the wolf from time to time, ruffling the fur between its shoulders. That might be what’s keeping him alive.
Mostly, he watches the moon. He can see it, round and gleaming as a new coin, through the broken windows that line the top of the warehouse. Moonlight plays pale and cool over the concrete floor, receding slowly as the night wears on.
As the night wears on, something strange happens. The wolf lets out a soft whine as it’s wracked with familiar tremors. Fusco grabs it tight and holds it through the shakes and the cracking of bones and the strange shifting of fur and skin.
And after a long, painful while, the wolf is just John again, curled up in Fusco’s lap, trembling and pale and bathed in sweat.
Fusco sits up with a groan, stretches until he feels something pop in his back. Then he takes off his jacket and drapes it over John’s hips.
“Thank you,” John mutters.
“Don’t mention it. You want to, uh…” Fusco gestures broadly. “...Explain any of this?”
He buries his face in Fusco’s side. “No.”
“Not good enough, John.”
He takes a jagged breath, curls his fingers in Fusco’s shirt. “I’m sorry, Lionel.”
“You should be.” Fusco shifts uncomfortably on the floor. “OK, we gotta get out of here. How are you feeling? What do you need from me right now?”
“Just want to get to the car,” John whispers. His skin is ravaged with goosepimples.
“OK,” Fusco says, running a hand down his back. “We’ll get you to the car, turn the heat on. Anything else?”
“Really hungry.”
How? Fusco refrains from asking. Instead he says, “Sure. I know an all-night diner not too far from here. And I got gym clothes in the car, so you can go inside without upsetting people. Sound OK?”
“Yes.” And then, “Thank you.”
Twice in one night. That’s gotta be a record. “You’re welcome. We can talk there, OK? I’ll hold my questions until you’ve had something to eat.”
“Let it go, Lionel.”
“Can’t do it, John.” He gets up off the floor, pulls John with him. “It won’t be so bad, talking about it. It might help.”
John doesn’t look like he believes that, but he lets himself be dragged to his feet. He takes a moment to demurely knot the arms of Fusco’s jacket around his waist like a makeshift kilt and then, barefoot and shaking, he lets Fusco escort him the few blocks to the car.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” John asks as Fusco opens the passenger side door for him.
“I dunno,” Fusco murmurs, protecting John’s head as he pushes him into the car. “You always do shit like this.”
“I need you to explain what that was.”
Fusco was gracious enough to keep his mouth shut while John demolished a plate of steak and eggs like he hadn’t eaten in months. Now the plate’s clear aside from crumbs of toast and smears of runny yolk and they’re both nursing mugs of bad diner coffee and John keeps shooting him shamed, soft-eyed glances across the Formica table.
John sets his mug down with a muted clink. “You know what that was.”
“I really don’t.”
“It was exactly what it looked like.”
“I don’t know what that looked like! I’ve never seen anything like that before. What it looked like was crazy.”
“You’ve seen me do things you thought were impossible before.”
“Not like this. Don’t…” Fusco lowers his voice, leans in close. “Don’t make me say werewolf in this diner like that’s a real thing.”
John shrugs. “Call it whatever you want. But you know what it is.”
Fusco takes a long, serious sip of coffee, lets the buzz of the diner’s neon window sign fill the silence. “So how long...is this a new thing, or…?”
John shakes his head. “Since I was a kid. Eleven. Twelve, maybe.”
“Did something…” This sounds stupid. “Did something bite you? You get cursed by an old fortune teller lady? How does this happen?”
John smiles weakly. “It’s just what I am,” he says. “My dad was the same way.”
John’s dad. Fusco’s no expert on John’s genealogy, but he knows a thing or two. He knows John’s dad died when John was young and that while he was alive, he was kind of a stranger. Fleeting warmth to be had there, but maybe not a lot of guidance. Fusco tries to remember the picture he saw in that bar in Colorado, the one of John’s dad. Could he have seen some clue in that? Fusco’s not sure what he’d be looking for. Hairy palms, maybe.
John’s hands flex nervously around the coffee cup. Long, square-palmed, smooth-skinned.
Maybe there’s no way to tell.
“Does it happen a lot?”
John tilts his head, considering. “About once a month.”
There’s a joke to be made there, but Fusco has more sense than to make it. Instead he asks, “So that, what happened back there. Does that happen a lot?”
“Do I kill people? Is that what you’re asking?”
Fusco nods sheepishly.
“No.”
Fusco guesses that’s good, although as a guy who killed a bunch of people without having the excuse of being a big, hairy monster, he does feel faintly stung.
“Does Finch know about it?”
John nods. Now he’s sheepish.
“You want to call him, let him know you’re OK?”
John shakes his head. Fusco resolves to shoot Finch a quick text the next time he gets a moment alone, just to avoid the third degree.
“Did you know that was gonna happen tonight?”
He nods again. His head seems heavier.
“Why’d you bring me along instead of him?”
John takes a very deep breath. “It couldn’t wait,” he begins. “I try not to go out at all on nights when I know it’s going to happen. But I knew what they were planning and I knew I couldn’t wait until tomorrow. You’re,” John swallows hard, “you’re good in a fight and Finch isn’t. Finch overthinks things and you’re…”
“Not a thinker,” Fusco supplies.
“Pragmatic,” John finishes. “You do what needs to be done. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you overthinking. I just wanted you to use the silver bullets if you needed to.”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Yeah,” John murmurs, rubbing at his scalp.
“You’re surprised.”
“I’m not in control, when I’m like that. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t care who I hurt. I could’ve killed you.”
Fusco thinks about that for a little bit. “I would’ve liked a warning.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Lionel.” He extends his little finger, lets it brush against Fusco’s knuckles where they’re curled tight around the mug. “I just didn’t want you to hesitate. If you could protect yourself from me.”
“I knew it was you anyway.”
“How?”
You have the same eyes sounds too tender, too vulnerable, so instead he just says, “Being stalked by a mythical weirdo who might kill me has been my whole life for the past four years. Of course I knew it was you.”
John grabs his wrist and squeezes tightly. His eyes are downcast when he says, very softly, “I’m glad we didn’t try to kill each other tonight.”
“Don’t count on that. I’m still pissed about you not warning me.” He doesn’t try to shake off John’s grip, though. “But me too.”
They sit together in quiet, friendly silence until the coffee in their cups goes cold.
“So,” Fusco says as they pay their bill. “What do you usually do when this happens? Lock yourself up? Hire a dogwalker?”
John considers as he zips up the oversized hoodie Fusco lent him. “Want to see?”
No big deal, but Fusco’s never been to John’s apartment.
He wasn’t even sure John had an apartment. To be honest, he’s still not. The open, airy room John led him to on the way up to the loft looked too modern and clean to be a place where someone sleeps and cooks and does laundry. It looks like a showroom, or a place you’d see in some kind of lifestyle magazine, too manicured and sterile to exist in.
The room at the top of the steps is the same, but worse. For one thing, it’s the only closed off space. It’s got a couple of tiny windows, a door studded with padlocks, and that’s it. Inside, it’s bare. The floor and the walls are white tile - “Easy to clean,” John says ominously - and its only feature is a chain as thick as his wrist, bolted to the wall and coiled neatly on the floor. The room, already quiet, falls quieter still when John closes the door behind him and shuts out the rest of the apartment. Soundproofed. You could scream the place down, Fusco thinks grimly, but no one would hear it.
“Usually, I lock myself in here overnight,” John tells him. “That was enough for a while, but…” He taps the doorframe, traces out deep, ragged scratches in the metal. “Had to replace this,” John murmurs, rapping his knuckles on the shiny metal door with its many locks.
“Windows ever pose a problem?” Fusco asks, like he’s talking car mods or home improvement.
“Sometimes. You’ll see scratches there too, if you look. But the glass is bulletproof and I...I like to be able to see.” John hazards a smile, thin and weak. “It gets boring in here, after the first few hours.”
“Really?” Fusco says, letting his eyes roam around the bare, bright white room. “Wouldn’t have guessed.”
“After I broke down the door the first time, I installed the chain, so I can...I can still have the windows. As long as I’m chained up.”
Fusco examines the chain, this big heavy thing curled in a perfect oval on the floor, and suddenly he can see with perfect clarity a post-transformation John, shaking and sweaty, dutifully winding the chain around in a circle from his hand to his elbow like it’s a garden hose to be stashed away in the garage.
At the end, there’s a collar, this big iron thing as big around as a dinner plate. It’s the kind with prongs on the inside, like you’d see on some mistreated junkyard dog that you’d feel pity for but never, ever go near. Fusco touches it, carefully, with the tip of one finger.
John stands there, fists balled up in the pockets of his borrowed sweatpants, watching him. He looks nervous. He feels nervous.
“Keeps me under control,” John says at last, with a nod towards the collar. “Most of the time.” He says it like he’s trying to be reassuring.
Fusco’s mouth is dry. He swallows. “Can I say something, big guy?”
John cocks his head to one side. “Don’t think you’ve ever asked me that before, Lionel.”
“It’s good how you figured all this out, as a way of managing your...your condition. Like I can tell you’ve been thinking about it and you don’t want to hurt anybody. But this is fucking miserable, bud.”
“You don’t have a better idea.”
Fusco lifts his head, tears his eyes away. “I do.”
John’s staring down at him, head tilted, brow furrowed.
“I’m saying you should stay with me. Or I should stay with you. Somebody should stay with somebody.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Kinda think I do.”
“I’d rip you apart.”
“You’ve been like this the entire time I’ve known you. If you haven’t ripped me apart yet, you’re not gonna start now.”
John snorts. He smiles. He doesn’t say no.
Almost a month later, Lionel Fusco hits a werewolf in the face with a chair.
So, the whole sleepover idea wasn’t going exactly to plan. But, Fusco reflects as he and the wolf stare each other down from opposite sides of John’s dining room table, it could be much worse.
It’s an energy thing, he reasons. John’s got a lot of energy; he’s always sprinting after suspects and trying to shoot people in the knees for no reason. The wolf is no exception. Last time, killing about fifteen people kinda took it out of him, so by the time he and Fusco were nose to nose, he wasn’t quite as murder-happy.
Now there’s nobody else to kill, which means Fusco has to be on his toes.
And again: it could be worse. The wolf doesn’t seem to be trying to kill him - kill him, if that’s a distinction you can make. The attitude is almost playful as it stalks him around furniture and lunges at him from the shadows, but you know: big teeth, big claws, zero self-control. It could take a dark turn.
Case in point, the wolf gets tired of stalking Fusco in a circle around the dining room table and just hops on top of it, making the wood creak.
Fusco brandishes the chair at it. “You really want me to hit you again?”
The wolf flashes its white teeth, wags its tail.
“I’ll do it. There’s seating for four here, bud. We can keep this going for a while. Glasses is gonna have to buy you all new chairs.”
Glasses probably has his finger hovering over a panic button right now, and not because of chairs. A few days after the last full moon, Finch appeared, furtive and wrapped in an overcoat, outside Fusco’s apartment building as he was arriving home from work. “May I come up?” he asked, and Fusco always kind of appreciates it when these people don’t just break into his place, so he lets Finch come up.
“To my regret,” Finch said as he perched nervously on Fusco’s couch, turning his hat in his hands, “it seems you now know.”
“This about the wolf thing?” Fusco asked as he boiled water for Finch’s tea.
Finch sighed, heavy with distaste. “It is about the wolf thing, yes. I assume I can count on you to treat this incident as confidential.”
“Sure,” Fusco said, digging some forgotten Lipton tea bags out of the back of the cupboard. “Not like anybody would believe me anyway.”
“I suppose not.” Finch rested his hat on his knees, accepted the hot mug of water as Fusco passed it to him. “I want to commend you on your handling of the situation.”
“I don’t know how much I handled it,” Fusco answered, sitting opposite in an overstuffed easy chair, “but I guess I’ll take a win where I can get one.”
“As you should,” Finch replied, primly steeping his tea bag. “I’ve never known anyone to come away from an encounter with John when he was in that state. Not intact, anyway.”
Fusco sits back in his chair. “Oh.”
“For that reason,” Finch continued, “I would urge you to reconsider your very kind offer to keep John company during his transformation.”
“He told you about that?”
“John expressed some concerns. I agree with him. You’ve been incredibly fortunate, Detective. And your desire to alleviate John’s suffering is more than admirable. My concern is that, as with the silver bullets, you might prioritize John’s safety over your own, with potentially deadly consequences.”
“I do a lot of things for you that have potential deadly consequences.”
“I feel - and John feels - that this is an unnecessary risk.”
Fusco leaned forward, thought a while. “If you really believe I’d take that kind of risk to keep John safe, then you know this conversation isn’t going to do anything.”
Finch sighed knowingly. “Oh, but do be careful.”
A little less than a month later, in John’s apartment, Fusco carefully swings his chair at the wolf’s head a second time. This time it dodges, jerks back just in time. It crouches now at the other end of the table, watching him with horrible, bright-eyed anticipation.
“Told you, pal,” he says, brandishing the chair again. “I can do this all night.”
That’s a bluff. Fusco’s arms are getting tired. But the wolf doesn’t have to know that.
The wolf might know that anyway. It takes a single, deliberate step towards him.
The wolf is so heavy that the table is lifting off balance a little, the legs on Fusco’s end hovering centimeters from the floor. Fusco kicks the underside of the table hard, sends the table flipping on its side and the wolf crashing to the floor with a yelp.
“We done?” he shouts over the commotion as the wolf struggles to its feet. “This still fun for you?”
Apparently yes, because the wolf leaps over the collapsed table and straight for Fusco.
He catches it with the chair again, shoves it hard, but the wolf catches a chair leg in its steel trap jaws that can splinter wood, shakes its head, and the chair comes apart in Fusco’s hands.
“Oh shit,” Fusco mutters, backing away as fast as he can, but not nearly fast enough. The wolf is on him in a second, pinning him to the floor again with its massive paws. Fusco brings up one arm to shield his face. The wolf closes its jaws on Fusco’s forearm.
Gently.
Its teeth don't even snag on the fabric. It just holds there, jaws strong and delicate, tongue lolling hot against Fusco’s shirtsleeve.
Finally it lets go and rolls cheerfully to one side, showing its belly.
Fusco sits up cautiously, lays a fearful hand on the wolf’s stomach, and gives it a gentle rub.
The wolf squirms happily.
“You asshole,” Fusco says fondly, waiting for his heartbeat to subside. “We’re done now?”
The wolf rolls rightside up again and stalks across the room to John’s bed where it flops down, eyes soft and imploring.
Fusco grabs the remote control as he walks to join the wolf, climbs up on the bed beside it. “ESPN OK?” he asks.
The wolf gives a non-committal grunt.
“OK. I’m putting on ESPN and if you want something different, speak up.”
The wolf nuzzles its way under his arm, relaxes against him with a sigh. Fusco settles back, gently scratches at the base of its ears as a mostly action-free Giants game lulls him into something like security. Sometime after the first hour, the wolf begins to snore, deep and rumbling. Fusco grins to himself, ruffles the thick fur on its shoulders.
Sometime after the second hour, against every instinct he has, Fusco drifts off too.
When he wakes up, the lights and TV have been turned off, but there’s a faint, rosy glow coming in from around the drawn blinds that tells Fusco it’s dawn. It’s morning. He still has all of his limbs. The wolf is gone. John is here, his head pillowed on Fusco’s chest. He’s peering up at Fusco, heavy-lidded.
“You’re up,” he says.
Fusco rubs his eyes. “Yeah. Can’t believe I fell asleep. You turn back OK?”
“I slept through it,” John murmurs. “I never sleep through it.”
“That’s good.”
“I think I destroyed the dining set,” John says.
Fusco hesitates. “That was more of a group effort.”
John sits up in bed, pushes Fusco down by his shoulders, looks him over. “Didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” Fusco assures him and John relaxes, but doesn’t take his hands off Fusco’s shoulders. “I mean, we had a fight, but that’s not...I don’t even think you wanted to hurt me.”
John’s brow furrows as though he can’t quite get his head around that.
“At one point, you had my arm in your mouth and you didn’t - oh, come on,” he says as John rips open the cuff of his shirt sleeve and yanks it upward, unveiling Fusco’s forearm. “That’s not even the right sleeve, man.”
Without missing a beat, John tears open the other sleeve up to the elbow, so Fusco probably should’ve kept his mouth shut. He lies there patiently while John examines his arms for broken skin.
“You didn’t bite down,” Fusco says. “That’s what I’m trying to say. You hunted me all over the apartment and I hit you with a chair a bunch of times…”
John peers down at him, a tiny curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“...And when you had the chance, you didn’t bite me. You just wanted to play. It’s like you think you want to hurt me, but you actually just want to fight me. That make any sense?”
John tilts his head, his smile broadening. “A little.”
Fusco takes him by the wrists. “What about you? You feeling OK?”
“Face hurts a little. I can guess why.”
“Sorry about that,” Fusco says, not feeling or sounding particularly sorry. “Is that all? What do you need from me right now?”
There’s a bright, tremulous, yearning light in his eyes as John leans down, presses his forehead tight to Fusco’s, intertwines their fingers. “Just stay,” he murmurs.
Fusco’s breathless for a moment. “I can do that,” he whispers. “You want me to make you breakfast?
“Yes. But later.”
“Run you a bath?”
With one hand, John’s ripping a torn sleeve of Fusco’s shirt still higher, up to the shoulder. “I’ll think about it.”
Fusco swallows hard. “You want to put clothes on at all?”
“Not especially.”
“OK,” Fusco murmurs, reaching up to push the hair out of John’s face. “Guess we’ll take it as it comes.”
But for now, he just stays.