FIC: Werewolf (Thunderheart, Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: Werewolf
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: Thunderheart
PAIRINGS: Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi
SUMMARY: This kind of life is a horror movie, but it's temporary. Written for Day 5 of Writer's Month 2019 for the prompt sound.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.
      - Psalm 38:3

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.
      - The Killers

Ray has been back from a long undercover job for about a week. Walter isn't sure if he's slept yet. They are both of them living in the no man's land between Ray being gone and Ray being Ray again, and Walter can never decide which is more painful: having Ray out God knows where doing God knows what and three months of an empty bed, or what happens after, with his body close enough to touch but the rest of him still locked up somewhere, trying to break through.

As usual, Ray lost weight on the job, and he looks harder skinny, and more vulnerable at the same time. Walter watches him strip for bed at night and tries not to look at the bruises on his ribs, at the inexpert stitches closing the gash on his stomach. Tell me what happened. Tell me who hurt you. Tell me where you've been. Tell me why you keep going back. The questions are useless, but he wants to take Ray by the shoulders and shake him until all the answers he wants fall out. It's terrifying, that you can love someone so much that you want to hurt them.

Walter waits. It's like living with a ghost. Sometimes he'll go hours without seeing Ray, even when they're both home together. He'll hear odd noises: the crunch of knuckles breaking through plaster, bloodying on tile; sobbing. Screaming, sometimes. Things move from where he leaves them, and sometimes there'll be a flicker of movement in the periphery, and then nothing.

This kind of life is a horror movie, but it's temporary.

Like a monster movie creature turning back into a man, it's scary and it's painful and it happens gradually. The bruises heal. The screaming stops. Walter sees more of Ray around the house. Ray talks more, smiles more, starts putting on weight. Then one night before bed, Walter brushes Ray's arm when they're sharing the bathroom sink, and Ray doesn't recoil from the touch like he's expecting a beating. So Walter presses his luck, and takes Ray in his arms, draws him close, kisses him deep. They make love with Ray up on the sink, back pressed to the mirror, legs around Walter's waist, knees squeezing his ribs. Ray howls, part of the wild thing still in him, but it's on its way out. Maybe in the morning, Walter will wake up and look into Ray's eyes and not see anything but Ray looking back.

If not tomorrow, maybe the next day. Ray's worth waiting for, and so Walter waits for his eyes to clear and the crying to stop and the soundness to return to Ray's flesh. He's not losing anything but time, and he doesn't resent paying it. Not for Ray.