Scenes From Buffalo Part Five

“I think he’s afraid.”

Nikita turned the page of the book he was reading and then his hand was back in Sasha’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp with short, blunt nails. “You think who’s afraid of what?” he asked. Only paying half-attention. It had been quiet for a while, the only sound the sigh of the wind in the eaves of their small cabin and the crackle of the fire in the stove. It was warm and cozy, a drowsy evening. They’d eaten the soup Trina’s grandmother had made with the rabbit Sasha had caught before, and were now snuggled up in bed, Nikita with his boring book about modern military history, Sasha with his head on Nik’s chest, listening to the steady in and out of his breathing.

“Fulk,” Sasha said. “I think he’s afraid of being too much wolf.”

Nikita stilled a moment, breath halted, silent. Then he set the book down on the mattress, page marked with a finger. “Is that possible?”

Sasha shifted a little and tipped his head back so he could look up into Nikita’s face, his expected frown. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “It’s…” He frowned, too, struggling to find words for an experience that was distinctly non-verbal…non-human, really. When he was a wolf, he knew that he was still a man, on the inside. But his wolf self didn’t think in complete sentences; didn’t have specific, intricate names for emotions, only bursts of sensation and instinct.

Nikita started petting his head again, soothing, encouraging, running his fingers through the length of his hair this time.

“I like being a wolf,” Sasha said, and felt Nikita’s muscles relax fractionally beneath him. “I like running, and hunting. It reminds me of Siberia.”

Nik curled a piece of hair around his finger and flicked a grin at him. “You were a wild thing even when you were all human.”

“Uh-huh,” Sasha agreed. “It’s not all that different, for me. Simpler, usually. But I don’t ever feel like I’m going to get – to get stuck there,” he said, realization dawning. “I want to be human, too.”

“Certain things would be a lot trickier if you didn’t,” Nikita teased.

Sasha laughed, and nosed up under the hem of Nik’s sweater; bit him lightly along his ribcage until Nik was laughing, too.

They tussled a minute, tugging at clothes, laughing, shoving. Nik pulled his hair, and Sasha squealed like a puppy, and Nik’s laugh was sweet as music. Sasha bit him again, on the hip, hard enough to draw blood, and then soothed the marks with his tongue, licking up the little welling beads of red.

They settled again, side-by-side, facing one another, propped up on elbows.

“Do you think there are wolves who stay on four legs all the time? Who forget who they are?” Sasha asked, oddly stressed by the idea. He loved running through the forest on four legs, chasing prey – but how terrible to not ever have this: rough-housing in bed with his mate; looking into each other’s faces, sleepy and comfortable and loving the way that people loved.

“I don’t know,” Nikita said. “Maybe for some.” His nose wrinkled. “Fulk is all–” He flapped a hand. “Posh.”

Sasha chuckled. “He wears leather jackets! And deep V-necks! And combat boots – like us.”

“He’s not like us,” Nik said, frowning a little, and Sasha chuckled some more. “I’m Moscow street trash, and he’s a baron. And he’s British. He says bloody and he’s dead serious about it.”

Sasha snorted.

“He can dress however he wants now, but he’s very proper,” he said the last in a terrible attempt at Fulk’s accent. “He’s probably afraid being a wolf is undignified.”

“You think so?”

Nikita shrugged. “It’s a theory.”

“A pretty good one,” Sasha agreed.

They were quiet a moment, content to enjoy one another’s company. Sasha felt his eyelids begin to flag; the fire popped low and soothing in the stove.

Nikita rolled over and fetched his book off the floor, where it had fallen during their play scuffle. When he resettled, he pressed it flat on the mattress between them, propped on his elbow again, so he could read while they faced one another, bodies two parentheses on the mattress.

“Nik?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you reading about weapons?”

Again, Nik’s breathing paused. His gaze flicked up, guarded beneath his lashes. He chewed his lip a moment, and then said, “Because I think we’ll need them in the not-too-distant future.”

Sasha inched his way closer, cold suddenly.

“But I don’t have to.”

“No, you should.” Sasha hooked their ankles together, because he could, and because he wanted to.

Nikita sighed, breath unsteady as it rustled the book pages. “He hasn’t said anything definite, but I know that at some point, Val’s going to want to leave. Vlad’s going to war, and he’ll want to support his brother. He won’t ask us to come outright. And we don’t have to go.”

“No, we should,” Sasha said, and saying it aloud was a relief, in a way. He’d been thinking about it; they’d been doing a lot of not-talking about it. He craved honesty more than safety. “I don’t want our friends off fighting while we sit at home and knit socks.”

Nik’s brows lifted. “There’s knitted socks I don’t know about?”

Sasha stuck out his tongue.

They smiled at one another, Nik’s expression softening in the same melting-butter way that Sasha’s insides softened.

“We’re pretty good soldiers,” Sasha said.

“Yeah. We are.”

And this time when they fought, they’d be bound. That warm weight in the back of his mind, that steady presence that was Nik’s voice: I’m here.

“Read to me?” he asked, doing puppy eyes.

“You have strange taste in bedtime stories,” Nik griped. But he settled down, and started to read, and Sasha fell asleep to the quiet, thoughtful voice that Nik used only for him. All the consonants touched with their homeland.