Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (32 page)

"You don't have to--" Fridge Guy started, but then Axton sat back down, holding a box of frozen waffles.

"I don't have to what?" Axton asked. "Heat these up? I know; it just came to me that they're a better vehicle for peanut butter this way."

"Leave, I was gonna say," Fridge Guy explained.

"Oh," Axton said thoughtfully, nibbling on a waffle like it was a cracker. "Thanks."

"You could, I don't know, like--we could get along, dude."

Axton tried not to arch an eyebrow. Fridge Guy didn't deserve his rudeness. Probably.

"I don't know," Axton said vaguely. "It's been a weird time for me. Could we?"

"Dana vouched for you," Fridge Guy said. "That counts for a lot."

"Dana. Yeah." Axton finished his waffle and fished a new one out of the box. "What did he say?"

"That you were a stand-up guy. Said you worked together on a few things, back in the day."

"Mm," Axton said, noncommittal. The only thing Dana and him had ever worked on together was fucking up against as many surfaces as possible. They wouldn't have done any official werewolf business if it had bitten them in the face. They had actually run away from the possibility of official werewolf business, once or twice, and made out in the backseat of Dana's truck until it went away.

"I think people would, you know, get it," Fridge Guy said.

"What?" Axton said.

"Like, don't get me wrong, it's weird and some people are just gonna be grossed out," Fridge Guy went on, having demolished his plate of soggy waffles, now working on stacking the cheese onto the deli meat, "but it's not the end of the world."

Axton's heart picked up the pace. A waffle hovered halfway to his face, because Axton had gone carefully still.

"Yeah?" he asked cautiously.

"I mean, I wouldn't," Fridge Guy said, lowering his voice, "but there are some seriously hot human girls out there. I can kind of get it. Long as it doesn't happen again, I think people could be cool."

"Oh," Axton said, dazed. Of course. Right. He stuffed a waffle in his face so that the chewing would hide his sudden crushing despair, but he was no longer hungry. "Right."

"It'd be cool to go on a hunt with you," Fridge Guy said cheerfully. "You're fast. Jack and you go out together, yeah?"

"Yeah," Axton said distantly.

"Weird old geezer," Fridge Guy said affectionately. He'd finished his food, so he stood up, taking his plates to the sink.

"Is there any beer in the fridge still?" Axton asked.

"Yeah, sec," Fridge Guy said, with his flawless knowledge of fridge inventory. "I'll get you one. There's a couple of six packs shoved in the back."

"If you could just hand me one," Axton said. "Like, one six pack. Thanks."

"Uh," Fridge Guy said, "sure. We gotta remind someone to go into town and stock up, though."

"I'll be sure to mention it," Axton said numbly, when Fridge Guy handed him the beer. "Thanks."

He nearly tripped on his way up the stairs, because his throat was thickening and his vision was swimming and he was trying so hard not to cry.

It hurt, it hurt, it hurt so much to lie.

Up on the roof, Axton bowed his head, the sun setting behind him, the backlighting obscuring his features.

The hours stretched out and no one came to check on him, which was exactly what he wanted.

It hurt to deny himself; it hurt to deny his lover.

He could have a good life here. Axton knew that. Dana would bend over backwards to make him comfortable; the only thing Dana would deny him was the thing that mattered most. Jack was his friend. Helen, in her own way, was also his friend, and Axton cherished his runs with her. The pack wanted to accept him--the pack was ready to accept him. Even Dru treated him with something akin to kindness now. Axton had proven himself on the hunt time and time again, after his initial defiance, and he'd fixed things around the house without being asked and had tinkered with cars and been generally competent and useful. The pack didn't doubt his utility, his worthiness, like they had when he had first arrived.

What was it Dru had said?
No real man
, while implying that Axton's act of defiance marked him as a real man, as someone potentially worthy of respect. That was his standard.

And it would be
nice
, was the hell of it. He could belong to this pack more than he ever had to his own. His quietness, his bookishness--that they could come to accept. Even if they didn't always listen to him, the pack seemed to like Jack, so they couldn't mind those things too much.

It would be nice.

It would be so nice that it would kill Axton slowly, rotting from the inside out.

When sunset had long melted away, when stars had peeked out and then shined bright, when the night was old--then Axton was disturbed.

Dana found Axton with his knees up, his head hanging between them, surrounded by a scattering of empty beer cans.

"Ax," Dana said. "You all right?"

Ax. Dana so rarely called him by his name, when they were alone. It was
sugar
or
baby
or
sweetness
or
beautiful
. But now, someone might overhear. Now, it was time for real names.

"No," Axton said simply.

"I'm headed out in a few," Dana said. "Pretty much everyone else already has. Good hunting tonight." There was an implied question, or expectation.

"You've as good as murdered me," Axton said. "You don't understand."

"Now, don't you indulge in melodrama none," Dana said, "not when there's this gorgeous full moon out."

"Murder," Axton said blankly. The plan was not coup d'état. Of course not. They were all relatively comfortable here.

And did he really want a revolution, whatever his motives? Blood. Biting. Everyone fighting to wound everyone else.

The violence outside him echoing the violence inside him. The violence inside him turning outside.

"You're stronger than you look," Dana said. "It'll take more than me to murder you."

Oh, the hidden
affection
there, in that low ultra-masculine voice that was all gravel and smoke, to match Dana's broad chest and square jaw. What had attracted Axton to Dana in the first place was how every bit of him growled one exaggerated word:
man
.

It could be nice here, Axton thought again. He decided to say it out loud.

"It could be nice here," Axton heard himself say, like the words came from somewhere else.

"It already is," Dana said, obviously pleased.

Axton lifted his head up, and cleared his throat, to make sure he would whisper as low as he could.

"Do you love me?" he asked.

Dana's head whipped around, despite his earlier claim that nearly everyone was in the woods already.

Axton suspected that it was even true. Dana wasn't actually checking for anyone. It was just his knee jerk reaction.

Dana took a deep breath, and indecision flit over his face until he made his choice.

"Yeah," he breathed.

"Say it," Axton said.

Dana gave him an incredulous look.

"Why? You finally coming around?"

"No," Axton said.

"You wanna have this talk somewhere else?" Dana asked.

"No," Axton said, "but if you do--if you ever did--"

"I love you," Dana said, in one low rushed breath. "You know I do."

"Then you'll understand," Axton said. "I think. Eventually."

"What?" Dana asked.

"I'm sorry," Axton said.

"Jesus, s--Axton. Come on. We're wasting moonlight."

Axton stood up.

"Sure," he said. "Let's go."

The pack hunted together, and it was good.

Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly,
you'll find yourself, and that, and only that,
can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
Pablo Neruda

Axton gave himself a few days. It wasn't going to be something he did in a moment of passion. It was going to be something deliberate. He wouldn't be able to blame it on an impulse later, on one bad day. It would have meaning. He'd make sure he was getting along well with everyone first. There would be no one thing to use as an excuse.

The next time he saw Helen, he took the time to wander over on two legs. She knew him now and came bounding at him joyously. They ran and leapt at each other for a while, despite their mismatched shapes, but eventually she seemed to sense his mood, and they sprawled out in the grass together. She rested her head on his chest, and Axton had one arm folded under his head and the other around her.

"I might not get to come back here," Axton said suddenly. He had no idea if she understood him.

She pawed at him, but that might have just been because he stopped petting her.

The next day there was the brief but animated distraction of maundering bears, which Axton was grateful for. He chased the biggest of them off, before Dana or someone else got the idea to kill one as an example.

Everyone was very impressed.

Quarterly, Jack managed to wrangle the pack into an official meeting. They didn't really listen to him when he told them the herds where thinning, that soon they would be overstepping their hunting rights, risking a confrontation with the neighboring pack--but they assembled for him, all the same, and let him talk. Ever the optimist, Jack liked to turn the floor over to the rest of the pack, in case someone had an issue they wanted to raise.

"I just think we need to do more town runs," Fridge Guy was saying, "for, you know, groceries."

Good old Fridge Guy
, Axton thought, with a rush of affection. He had saved the last box of waffles for Axton.

Oh well.

"I have something," Axton said, standing up.

Dana, who was lounging with aggressively casual and sexual ease against a wall, bounced an eyebrow up.

He had such nice biceps, Axton thought. He had seen May and December checking Dana out appreciatively, too. Oh well.

"Sure, Ax," Jack said kindly, thrilled at the participation. "Take the floor."

Jack had been a very good friend to him, Axton thought. It'd be fun. Oh, fucking well.

Axton cleared his throat, but he didn't really feel nervous. He had a jittering, twitchy feeling under his skin, but it was an exhilarated sort of anticipation. Even when it edged into dread, it was exciting and alluring. He wondered if this was an echo of what throwing yourself off a bridge felt like, if there was a moment of fierce relief, of trembling joy at making that
choice
--

Maybe he should have picked a more positive metaphor.

"I'm sure you've all heard some rumors," Axton said, "about why I'm here."

At the periphery of his vision, Axton saw Dana shift his weight, no longer lounging up against like wall like a vision of
don't give a fuck
and sex. Dana was immediately tense.

Don't
, Axton thought.
Don't give yourself away now
.

"You've all been very kind to me," Axton said, and, giddily, in that moment, he realized it was true, or true enough. "And I'm very thankful for it. I've been an outsider for most of my life, but briefly, sometimes, I've felt like I belong here. And for that, again: thanks."

"You're welcome," Dru said. "Is that all, Ax?"

"No," Axton said dreamily. "I wanted to address the rumors that I'm here because I was romantically involved with a beautiful human woman."

Dana was about to surge forward. Axton twitched a hand to say
stand down
but didn't look over, not wanting to call attention to Dana, knowing that right now everyone's eyes were on him.

"What about those rumors?" Dru asked.

"That's what I told Dana," Axton said. "That was that story I gave him--that I was involved with a beautiful human woman."

Axton repressed the urge to--laugh, of all things. It wasn't exactly funny, but he had so much tension thrumming inside him--

"Those rumors aren't true," Axton said. Then: "It was a beautiful human man."

Silence--a strangled, nervous little half laugh threatened to flutter from Axton's throat. He coughed instead.

"That's all."

He sat down.

"Axton, what the
fuck
," Dana said, which could read either way. It fit with Axton's lie, and it fit with Axton's truth.

Don't ruin it
, Axton thought.
Go ahead, look horrified, mortified, disgusted. That works. This is my gift to you, even now.

"So--" Fridge Guy burst out, "you're saying that you're, like--gay?"

"Yeah," Axton said. "Yeah. I'm gay."

There were furious whispers from all around him, but Axton couldn't hear much over the sudden ringing in his ears.

"I see," Dru said, evenly. "Dana--"

"I had no fucking idea!" Dana burst out. "Jesus fucking--"

"Calm it," Dru said, annoyed. "There's no need for that."

"There's not?" Jack asked, the only person in the room who looked calm.

Axton was well on his way to developing a hazy glaze over his eyes. Now that he'd followed through with his plan, he was just sort of--he just wanted a nice nap, kind of. It wasn't that the worst part was over, exactly, but that the important part was, and he would prefer to just sleep through the consequences for a while.

"No," Dru said.

"Oh, good," Jack said. "So, then, the last item on the agenda is--"

"Obviously you'll have to move out of the communal house," Dru said to Axton.

"Sure," Axton said, dazed. "I understand."

"You have until sunset to move your things," Dru said. "Frankly, I'm disappointed. You never should have been there in the first place."

"Where are you going to put him?" Fridge Guy asked. "I mean, out of the communal house for sure. I'm not really comfortable with him staying in the--"

"He can't stay with me," Dana cut in. "He sure as hell can't stay with me. The hell."

"Obviously. I wasn't saying--" Fridge Guy started.