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“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow man.”
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Jack knew this full moon was gonna be a rough one. He just wishes he’d actually gone through with crushing up the chondroitin chewables from the pet aisle to lace Robby’s morning tapioca pudding with. Woulda saved ‘em both some trouble.
“Rob. Hey. C’mon now, you gotta eat somethin’.” He has no idea about other old werewolves’ propensity towards hypoglycemia, but he knows that his old werewolf has a bad habit of bottoming out the minute he’s shifted back, yet he’s often too nauseous to do a damn thing about it, not unless Jack’s right there with somethin’ soft on a spoon. “Don’t gimme that. Open up. It’s just a little bit, ya cranky pup.” Robby just curls up tighter in their nest — toasty warm from the crackling fireplace nearby — if that’s even possible, his forearms crossed over his ribs protectively. Robby’s always carried a fair bit of delicious chub: good weight, solid, something to hold — but now it makes him look all the more pitiful, folded in on himself like that. His knuckles are still scraped up from the tough midwinter ground, already healing, yes, but tender-looking, and there’s a stiffness in the way his shoulders are locked that makes Jack’s chest ache. “Ah, c’mon, kid. Don’t be stubborn. Just a bite. For me, yeah?”
Robby huffs and doesn’t budge.
Jack read somewhere — some late-night forum thread half-buried between veterinary advice and a buncha crackpot occult garbage — that older werewolves didn’t bounce back the way the young ones did. Somethin’ about cumulative lunar strain, cartilage wearin’ down faster than it oughta. Repeated calcification, de-calcification, whatever. Sounded like a load of bullshit at the time. Now? Not so much. His Robby, who used to come back from a full moon grinnin’, feral and bright-eyed when Jack let him run outside their cabin in the middle of nowhere, now comes back shakin’ and bakin’. Fuck, Jack starts patting at Robby’s belly, taking what he can get. His palm sinks into that familiar, soft give of him, round middle warm as a furnace — too warm, fever-hot, the sticky moon residue still clingin’ to him. “Yeah, I know. I know, sweetheart.” His thumb starts tracing slow circles in the flesh, careful, real careful. “Easy. I gotcha. You’re alright.” Robby just whines, quiet and miserable, but his breathing evens out a touch.
“Yeah, there ya go,” Jack grunts, pressing in closer, nosing at his damp temple. “Toughest guy I know, huh? Big scary werewolf.” His tone’s got that dry edge to it, but it softens at the end whether he wants it to or not. Robby makes a faint, unimpressed noise, so damn grumbly. Jack has no idea how he got saddled with this fussy thing for the rest of his days. “Yeah, yeah, don’t gimme that look. Still gotta eat.” He slides a hand up, fingers working gentle through Robby’s thinning hair, mindful of his sensitive scalp after the receding moon rips out a carpet’s worth of hair from his body. “You don’t gotta do nothin’. I’ll handle it. Just open your mouth, that’s it. C’mon.”
Robby stays curled, stubborn as hell, but there’s a shift in his jaw finally. His lips part, barely. But it’s enough. Jack lets out a quiet, relieved sigh. “Atta boy. Knew you had it in ya.”
He feeds him slow, careful, catching whatever dribbles down and bringing it back up with the spoon. “Yeah. That’s it. Good. Nice and easy. Ain’t goin’ nowhere, pup.”
The thing up next on the list is the foot rub, and Jesus, Robby needs it. His feet take a beating every time — bones stretchin’, compressin’, twistin’ into that digitigrade shape and then back again. Jack winces just thinkin’ about it, about how many microfractures his poor bastard’s probably wobblin’ around on. Cartilage worn thin, joints all wrong, body not clearin’ what it oughta from his joints anymore, like werewolf inflammatory arthritis. “Alright, alright, that’s enough of me doin’ all the heavy liftin’,” Jack bellyaches, setting the spoon back in the bowl for a second. He shifts, bracing an elbow into the blankets, leaning over Robby’s curled form. “C’mon, Rob. Work with me a little here.”
Robby just makes a low, miserable sound and tries to tuck his chin deeper like he can hide from the caretakin’.
“Hey.” Jack’s voice firms just a notch, coaxing with a little backbone behind it. He nudges the spoon back up, taps it lightly against Robby’s fat lip. “Don’t go driftin’ off on me yet. Need you to hold this, alright? Just your hand, I ain’t askin’ for miracles. Hold it up.” Robby glares and Jack rolls his eyes. “Don’t gotta do much here, Rob, just keep it there. I’ll guide you, baby.”
Robby whines, but he doesn’t fight it. He lets Jack steady his wrist, bring the spoon up, and tip it just right to fit. “Good. See? You’re doin’ it. Pain in my ass, but you’re doin’ it. You keep that there now. Small bites. Don’t rush it into your belly or it’ll come right back up,” Jack chides, giving his hand one last guiding squeeze before letting go. He watches for a second — just to make sure Robby actually brings it up and swallows — then nods to himself. Only then does Jack shift downwards in their nest, easing himself along Robby’s side with a grunt, dragging the blanket with him. “Alright, lemme see the damage down here.” He gets ahold of one ankle and gently coaxes it out from where Robby’s got himself all folded up.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Jack yowls like a trod-on tabby. “You didn’t tell me it was this awful, brother.”
Robby’s feet look even worse than last month. They’re swollen up, angry red, the skin stretched shiny and hot like it might split if you looked at it wrong. His joints are all puffed out, and his little sausage mini toes look stiff and wrong. It looks like the worst case of gout Jack’s ever seen and he’s seen a few, back when he was doin’ odd jobs at that clinic in Dorchester. “No wonder you’re actin’ like a baby about it, you ain’t got any movement in these piggies. Nobody’s goin’ to the fuckin’ market.” His thumb hovers before he actually touches anything, gauging the heat coming off him. Then, he shifts, Robby’s foot resting heavy and hot in his lap. Robby sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, the spoon clinking faintly as his grip tightens.
“Yankl, that hurts.” It’s the first words Jack’s heard from him since the moon and it’s horrible how often it’s that same phrase.
“Yeah, I know, baby. I know.” Jack coos, already adjusting, easing off where he was rubbing the sole. “We ain’t gonna push it. I’m just gonna try and get some of that swelling down, alright? Loosen it up a little.” His thumbs start working in careful circles along the arch, avoiding the worst of the joints, then back again. “Just gotta get this fluid to go back into ya. Breathe through it. You’re alright, kid.”
Robby’s whole body is still tense, but another shaky spoonful makes it to his mouth. His eyes are big and wet, never leaving Jack’s.
“Good. Keep on eatin’,” Jack grumbles as he leans forward and presses a quick, featherlight kiss to the inside of Robby’s ankle before getting back to it, the heat under his lips is unreal. “Christ, you’re burnin’ up,” He hisses. “Next time you tell me you’re ‘fine,’ I’m callin’ bullshit sooner.”
Robby gives a soft, tired whine, but his other foot shifts, nudging closer like he wants the same treatment on that side. “Yeah, yeah, I see you, pup,” Jack sighs, one corner of his mouth twitching despite himself. “One at a time, don’t get greedy. Eat your pudding. I’ll handle the rest.”
Robby manages another couple of shaky spoonfuls before he lets out a small, embarrassed burp and goes pink in his craggy cheeks. He looks so sad about it that Jack can’t hardly bear it. He rolls his eyes where he’s working his thumb careful along the side of Robby’s balloon of a foot. “Whoa, guy eats, guy burps. Call the presses.”
Robby just shakes his head, making the words come, hard as they are when he’s been a wolf for the last several hours. “I’m sorry, Yankele.”
He glances back up, frowning. “Hey. None a that.”
But Robby’s staring somewhere past him, eyes so unfocused and damn near glassy with that marrow-deep exhaustion that always comes after. He’s so sick. Jack knows Robby don’t share the half of it with him. He doesn’t want Jack to worry, like Jack hasn’t been worried about him for nigh on thirty years now. “Every year it’s worse. I can feel it. So much extra work for you. I really thought I’d be gone by now,” Jack freezes, hands cradling Robby’s other swollen foot. “Most of us don’t make it this long. Couple decades maybe, after the bite; if that. I’ve been this way for forty years, Jack. I shoulda been pushing up wolfsbane by now.”
“Hey. Knock that off.” Jack growls, knowing that he ain’t no wolf. But, “I mean it. You don’t get to sit there and talk like you’re some kinda — what, expired milk? Eggs? ‘Sposed to be tossed out already? Long past your best buy date?” He snarls, irritated and raw. “That’s crazy talk.”
Robby grits his newly regrown human teeth. “It’s not, though.”
“Yeah? Says who? Some assholes on a message board?” Jack shoots back. “I seen plenty a things not supposed to happen. You’re still here, ain’t ya? Weird ass freak of nature. Ain’t no werewolves in no nature documentaries neither, so how do you know your tits from your ass?” Robby doesn’t answer that and Jack scrubs a hand over his face before dropping it back to Robby’s second foot, gentling his grip again. His thumbs resume their slow, careful work like nothin’ happened, only softer now. “Listen to me, you ain’t a burden. We’ll keep patchin’ you up same as always. One crappy moon at a time.” Jack shakes his head like he’s arguing with himself more than anything. “I hate even sayin’ this out loud, sounds like a buncha fairy tale shit, if you ask me. But you’re gonna be the longest-lived werewolf any of ‘em’s ever seen, ‘cause you got me. Them other poor bastards?” Jack shrugs one shoulder. “Didn’t have a Jack, simple as that. I ain’t letting you go no place without me, pup.”
Robby’s eyes start to shine and his lip wobbles. “Until I hurt you again.”
Jack already knows where this is going. His gaze drops, following Robby’s down. “Oh, here we go. It was thirty years ago, Rob.” Jack whines, refusing to indulge that shit. “Let it go.”
Robby shakes his head weakly, tears slipping sideways into their nest. “I hurt you. I could do it again.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack snorts, “I shoulda known better than to be walkin’ in the woods by myself. If you hadn’t taken my leg, something else woulda. I didn’t even turn. Was it crunchy?”
“Jack!” Robby howls, mortified.
“What?” Jack shrugs, like it’s nothing and he gives Robby’s calf a steady squeeze. “Hey, look at me. I saw you that night, figured out what you were and I came back the next full moon. I kept comin’ back and then we made this whole life together. PTMC, doctoring, nightcrawler shit; you and me. I stayed, didn’t I? I chose you then and I choose you now. So quit pullin’ that face.”
Robby’s face crumples a little. “I ate your leg.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m glad you had some good protein in your belly,” Jack shoots back, then sighs, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “‘Sides, that was before we knew how to handle it. Now we’ve got a system.” Robby sniffles, eyes dropping again.
“Finish your pudding,” Jack chides. “You’re cryin’ and burpin’ at the same time, it’s disgustin’.”
Robby’s grip on the spoon gives out, instead. It clinks softly against the bowl as his hand drops, and then — like he’s got not a single ounce of pride left to his name — he sticks his bottom lip out and he lifts his arms.
Jack looks up, sees it, and immediately rolls his eyes so hard it’s a wonder they don’t stick. “Babes.” Robby doesn’t say anything, just holds them there, wobbling a little with the effort. Jack drags himself back up through the blankets with a grunt and nudges the bowl safely off to the side, then leans over him, bracing his weight careful-like so he doesn’t jostle anything sore — to roll them both over with Robby in his lap. “C’mere, ya big baby.”
Robby’s whole body is still hot, fever-warm and heavy, the soft weight settling into him. His round middle presses close, too hard, like it might make him spit up and Jack adjusts without thinking, making room, tucking him in tighter. Robby starts clutching at the back of Jack’s shirt like he’s afraid he might go somewhere without him. “Knock it off with that. You’re fine. You just had a rough one, that’s all. We’ve handled worse.”
Robby shakes his head weakly against him, but he doesn’t pull away, gettin’ sleepy again no doubt. Jack’s chin dips, eyes half-lidded himself, coming up with some half-assed poetry shit. Robby makes him sappy like that, remembering literary shit from the Classics degree he got a million years ago, “...and live by love though the stars walk backward.” He loves Robby so damn much and Robby farts.
Jack loses it. He chokes on a cackle, jerking back just enough to look at his husband, already wheezing. “What the hell was that?!”
Robby’s face goes violently red, from his ears straight down his neck. “Stop!” He whines, mortified, trying to burrow back into Jack like he can escape it. “Stop laughing! I couldn’t help it!”
Jack’s not stopping. He’s wheezing now, shoulders shaking, one hand coming up to cover his face while the other still has Robby trapped against him, windbag that he is. “I’m sittin’ here, bein’ romantic and droppin’ poetry on you and you fart on me. The romance is dead.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Robby protests, scowling. “I think I ate a deer.”
“Yeah, I figured with how round you are, lookin’ pretty close to full-term.” He pats Robby on the belly, maybe the pudding was overkill, and his husband makes a strangled noise, hidin’ his pretty face completely in Jack’s shoulder.
“I hate you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack snorts, still grinning like an idiot as he pulls him back in proper, tucking his gassy werewolf against his chest again like nothing happened. “Love you too, stinky.”
Robby groans into his shirt, but he doesn’t pull away. “Go to sleep, Yankl.”
“You first, toots.”
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