[the full moon has long come and gone, but peter still hasn't stopped thinking about it. it's been a long time since peter was scared of isaac but that doesn't mean it isn't chilling to witness the tenuous hold they have on their humanity. he wonders if isaac understands, really knows, how strong it makes him. in the brittle day after when they're both raw and uneasy, they sleep most of the time, peter rolling over whenever isaac jolts awake, curling up behind him and dropping sleepy murmurs and half-awake kisses over his neck and shoulder until isaac's breathing calms.
it's not until days later that he gets around to asking, though, once things have had time to settle out a little. they're lying in bed in the dark, and isaac has just roundly defeated peter in the last pokemon battle he can tolerate for the evening, so peter snaps his ds shut and drops it on the ground behind his head before he sets his head in the hollow of isaac's shoulder.]
Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer, course.
[The moon leaves Isaac weary. It leaves all of them exhausted, really, but for Isaac, it's a bit of a constant. It's never entirely a physical or mental thing either- his anchor is something he'd rather not think about on a day to day basis, and throwing himself into it so wholeheartedly leaves him emotionally drained.
He gets better, as he always does, with the passing of time and a few days later, it's like nothing had ever happened. Like they didn't just survive by the skin of their teeth, find an anchor and a place to call home just in time to avoid at least two murders that night.
Still, he doesn't think he needs an excuse to have a day to himself, so it's playing video games with Peter and lounging around in his pajamas. He's just about to ask Peter if he wants to play another round, when the weight against his shoulder makes him tense a little and he glances behind him toward the other wolf, his brows furrowed a little.]
[he feels isaac tense and hesitates for a moment. it's not a casual question, or a simple thing, or something that peter would normally be that inclined to ask. in general, letting other people keep their thoughts in their heads is just fine by him. he can't even put his finger on the why of it, other than that he wants to understand, and he's watched, and watching isn't enough to unlock this mystery.]
Your anchor.
[he doesn't make it a question, because how does one even phrase that? what's the thing that keeps you human? peter wonders what the answer to that question is in himself. he's not sure he knows.]
[To be honest, it's a question that Isaac has been expecting for awhile now, but he's still surprised that Peter has asked him. Peter is so laidback about everything- taking the claustrophobia, the nightmares, the violence in such an easy stride stride that Isaac sometimes forgets that he's never told him. Maybe Peter just felt like he didn't need to know. The lack of curiosity isn't so much a lack of caring as it seems to be done out of respect. If it comes up, if he wants to, Isaac will tell him. If it doesn't, he won't.
Still, he slowly closes the DS, shutting out the soft light that it had been emitting and sets it aside. The movement dislodges Peter's chin from his shoulder, and he doesn't quite go back so that Peter can press closely again. He bites at his lower lip for a moment, and he wants this to be flippant, he wants to give Peter his answer like it means nothing, but lying to Peter has always been hard. Peter told him about family- about his mother and Nicholae, about his cousin, and how much they mean to him. He doubts that Peter will really see his response as lighthearted, no matter how he phrases it.
He doesn't have to say it, but he will. He owes Peter that much, right? And he knows that Peter knows that there's something going on with him, he knows that Peter is painstakingly aware of ensuring that he's not in small rooms, that he never has to go down to the basement. It's going to come out sooner or later, and he'd rather it be at a moment like this, when he's rational and aware of what he's saying, than during some outburst of emotion.
Even so, the more he drags it out, the less likely it will be that Peter will buy that it's not a big deal. Isaac finally just shrugs, tilting his chin up and looking off toward the door- because he doesn't want to see Peter's reaction, but he doesn't want it to look like he's hiding from it either.]
My father.
[It's mentioned with a sigh, and Isaac is careful to keep the weight of it out of his voice. It's just as if it's some sort of casual conversation.]
We had what you might call a complicated relationship.
[isaac moves away and peter doesn't move with him, stays exactly where he is and lets him have his space. if he wants to move back, he will. the way isaac hesitates, though, makes peter realize that the question he asked is even more loaded than he thought, that this thread runs right down the middle of the enormous knot of things about isaac he only half understands, the things he makes space for and doesn't ask about.]
Okay.
[he's quiet for a moment.]
There's a picture, a puzzle. [he traces the outline of isaac's silhouette in the air, even though he knows that isaac isn't really looking at him, can see him out of the corner of his eye at best.] And I've got most of the pieces now. But the last couple are the really important ones. [he sketches imaginary empty spaces, right around isaac's eye level, and another in the vicinity of his heart.]
[Isaac listens to Peter speak, and he can feel the rustle of fabric, the small burst of air from his hand, tracing over a shape in the dark. He doesn't know what to say, doesn't know if he can say anything. Nobody has tried to look deep enough to figure him out before. Nobody sees him as a puzzle, nobody really pays him much mind at all past how useful he can be in any given situation.
And Isaac doesn't really mind that. He enjoys his own usefulness, enjoys that people don't try to pry into it, and- maybe on some level, doesn't understand the idea of someone caring about him enough to want to.
Whatever happened to him, happened. The last time was almost a year ago, now. He should be over it. He is over it.]
You don't have to tiptoe around me, [he finally murmurs, glancing back toward Peter, seeing his hand hovering in midair.] I don't mean to be a mystery, I don't really care about secrets. You can ask what you want.
[With that being said, Isaac shrugs again, forcing the nonchalance as he pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, resting his chin down on top. Everyone has shit that happened to them- he's no different. And as determined as Isaac is to not let his own history affect him, he knows that all he can do is acknowledge it, admit what happened, and leave it behind him. He has to.]
My father locked me in the basement freezer when he was unhappy with me.
[A pause, and then Isaac frowns, picking at the hem of his pajamas. His explanation is short, succinct, and his tone is far more casual than it probably should be, considering that he's back to not looking at Peter, as if worried that he'll be judged for it.]
[it's just an acknowledgement that he heard isaac, not a condoning of the situation. his voice stays calm, but isaac can hear when peter starts breathing slowly on purpose, out of time with the acceleration of his pulse, because he's suddenly angry, angry and sick, and that's the right response but it's also not. he stays still until the crest of anger passes, although the sick remains.]
Everybody's a mystery. If they're not, they aren't worth bothering with. And it's not tiptoeing, it's figuring that if I need to know a thing, you'll tell me somehow or other. That's mostly worked so far.
[another pause, and he runs a hand through his hair.]
[Isaac can feel the emotion roiling from Peter, and his eyes lower for a moment at the realization of it. He's not sure how he feels, to be honest. It's easy to see that Peter is upset with what has happened (maybe not easy, but Isaac knows him and the wolf knows him and that's all he really needs to read him like an open book), but Isaac doesn't really know if he's that upset about it anymore. It happened.
Not all the time. Isaac guiltily remembers the moonbase, the deterioration of his resolve and the sudden, crippling fear that he inherited more from his father than he thought. His jaw draws tight, because Peter didn't know what the problem was then, but acknowledged it and tried to help all the same.
Peter's been more to him than he deserves, really.]
That's not why he's my anchor, [Isaac suddenly feels the need to clarify. His fingers twist at the blankets over his legs.] I use him because it wasn't always like that. Wolves don't feel that- I don't know what you call it. Nostalgia? Bitterness? It's a human thing. Scott has love, Derek has anger, I've- got this, I guess.
[Isaac feels like he's rambling and so he goes quiet, cutting himself short when it seems like there might have been more he was going to say. Peter is too easy to talk to, sometimes.]
[pain makes you human. peter's pretty sure that they've both said it to him before, isaac and scott. but peter's never quite agreed. pain breeds fear, and fear is what makes cornered animals lash out, makes them chew their own legs off to escape a trap. what isaac's talking about is a twisty thing, love and fear and pain wrapped up so tightly and put in a shape labeled father. every time the full moon rises, isaac picks at his own scars, summons up the spectre of a man whose horrors never quite canceled out the memory of his love, now forever unchanging in death.
and it's what keeps isaac human.
peter wants a cigarette. he wants to hug isaac. he wants to throw up, a little bit. he wants his mother, wants her to pet his hair and put an arm around isaac and show him what family can look like.]
[Isaac picks at the fabric and doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't know if he's right. He doesn't know if Peter really understands what he's talking about. What he does know is that being trapped in a closet made him almost kill Allison. He knows that being up on the moon base caused him to lash out, hurt people, caused him to call for Jesse's blood and drive forward to an extent that scared even himself.
Isaac isn't sure if what he has can be called control, or if it's just a harder way to chain himself down, but it's something and it works.
It has to. He doesn't have anything else.]
It does the job.
[He swallows hard, before waving a hand, trying to brush it off. When he laughs, there's really no humor to it- just a wry, almost broken sound of someone who can't quite turn this into a joke.] I told you it was complicated.
[Isaac smiles a little sadly, glancing back toward Peter as he considers his words. And he can't really deny that he has strength- in his cockier moments, he's prone to boasting about it and making heated threats. Still, Isaac is pretty sure that Peter isn't just talking about battle prowess or anything physical like that, and so he's not quite sure if the other werewolf is really right.]
I'm something. [And then a pause.] I haven't died yet, anyway.
[it's the flinch that makes him finally curl up, knees under his chin. it's an odd look on him, because he's usually quite sprawly, or at least stretched out.]
Nah. I don't know who he is and I don't give a fuck. If he did, he'd have stuck around, right?
[he folds his arms across his knees, sets his chin on them.]
Christina. The vargulf, her name was Christina. She was fourteen. Her grandparents' property backs up to the lot we live on. She wanted to be a writer, so she came nosing around when we moved in. Good material, I guess.
She'd come hang around the trailer. Always talking, a hundred questions and ninety of them were why? I'd tell her...whatever I felt like right then. Half bullshit and half truth. It was funny, y'know? She never knew whether I was just fucking with her, but that was half the fun. And one day she asked me, just straight up asked if I was a werewolf, because of my fingers.
[he holds up his hand where isaac can see it, wiggles his index and middle fingers, which are the same length.]
Indicator of lycanthropy, y'see. No idea where the hell she found that out. She'd already decided I was, so I went with it.
[he's quiet a moment.]
There's another way to become a werewolf, besides getting bitten. You can drink from the paw-print of a werewolf. That way they don't even have to know.
I didn't know. If I'd known, maybe...who the hell knows. Maybe nothing different at all.
She was so smart, though. And such a girl, all caught up in what other people think and trying to be normal. She wanted to be some normal popular girl so bad, when she was like a hundred times more interesting than that. Although I guess that's most people.
[he bites his lip for a moment, and sighs.]
I don't know what went wrong, when she changed. But she told me--when we'd figured it out, when I was going to kill her--she told me she'd never heard her true name. Something just rose up out of her, I guess, made her do what she did. Kill all those girls. Blame it on me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
freezerburned) wrote2012-08-21 10:00 pm
action
it's not until days later that he gets around to asking, though, once things have had time to settle out a little. they're lying in bed in the dark, and isaac has just roundly defeated peter in the last pokemon battle he can tolerate for the evening, so peter snaps his ds shut and drops it on the ground behind his head before he sets his head in the hollow of isaac's shoulder.]
Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer, course.
Re: action
He gets better, as he always does, with the passing of time and a few days later, it's like nothing had ever happened. Like they didn't just survive by the skin of their teeth, find an anchor and a place to call home just in time to avoid at least two murders that night.
Still, he doesn't think he needs an excuse to have a day to himself, so it's playing video games with Peter and lounging around in his pajamas. He's just about to ask Peter if he wants to play another round, when the weight against his shoulder makes him tense a little and he glances behind him toward the other wolf, his brows furrowed a little.]
Sure. What is it?
action
Your anchor.
[he doesn't make it a question, because how does one even phrase that? what's the thing that keeps you human? peter wonders what the answer to that question is in himself. he's not sure he knows.]
You don't have to tell me.
no subject
Still, he slowly closes the DS, shutting out the soft light that it had been emitting and sets it aside. The movement dislodges Peter's chin from his shoulder, and he doesn't quite go back so that Peter can press closely again. He bites at his lower lip for a moment, and he wants this to be flippant, he wants to give Peter his answer like it means nothing, but lying to Peter has always been hard. Peter told him about family- about his mother and Nicholae, about his cousin, and how much they mean to him. He doubts that Peter will really see his response as lighthearted, no matter how he phrases it.
He doesn't have to say it, but he will. He owes Peter that much, right? And he knows that Peter knows that there's something going on with him, he knows that Peter is painstakingly aware of ensuring that he's not in small rooms, that he never has to go down to the basement. It's going to come out sooner or later, and he'd rather it be at a moment like this, when he's rational and aware of what he's saying, than during some outburst of emotion.
Even so, the more he drags it out, the less likely it will be that Peter will buy that it's not a big deal. Isaac finally just shrugs, tilting his chin up and looking off toward the door- because he doesn't want to see Peter's reaction, but he doesn't want it to look like he's hiding from it either.]
My father.
[It's mentioned with a sigh, and Isaac is careful to keep the weight of it out of his voice. It's just as if it's some sort of casual conversation.]
We had what you might call a complicated relationship.
action
Okay.
[he's quiet for a moment.]
There's a picture, a puzzle. [he traces the outline of isaac's silhouette in the air, even though he knows that isaac isn't really looking at him, can see him out of the corner of his eye at best.] And I've got most of the pieces now. But the last couple are the really important ones. [he sketches imaginary empty spaces, right around isaac's eye level, and another in the vicinity of his heart.]
action
And Isaac doesn't really mind that. He enjoys his own usefulness, enjoys that people don't try to pry into it, and- maybe on some level, doesn't understand the idea of someone caring about him enough to want to.
Whatever happened to him, happened. The last time was almost a year ago, now. He should be over it. He is over it.]
You don't have to tiptoe around me, [he finally murmurs, glancing back toward Peter, seeing his hand hovering in midair.] I don't mean to be a mystery, I don't really care about secrets. You can ask what you want.
[With that being said, Isaac shrugs again, forcing the nonchalance as he pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, resting his chin down on top. Everyone has shit that happened to them- he's no different. And as determined as Isaac is to not let his own history affect him, he knows that all he can do is acknowledge it, admit what happened, and leave it behind him. He has to.]
My father locked me in the basement freezer when he was unhappy with me.
[A pause, and then Isaac frowns, picking at the hem of his pajamas. His explanation is short, succinct, and his tone is far more casual than it probably should be, considering that he's back to not looking at Peter, as if worried that he'll be judged for it.]
He was unhappy a lot.
action
[it's just an acknowledgement that he heard isaac, not a condoning of the situation. his voice stays calm, but isaac can hear when peter starts breathing slowly on purpose, out of time with the acceleration of his pulse, because he's suddenly angry, angry and sick, and that's the right response but it's also not. he stays still until the crest of anger passes, although the sick remains.]
Everybody's a mystery. If they're not, they aren't worth bothering with. And it's not tiptoeing, it's figuring that if I need to know a thing, you'll tell me somehow or other. That's mostly worked so far.
[another pause, and he runs a hand through his hair.]
Unhappy a lot, but not all the time.
action
Not all the time. Isaac guiltily remembers the moonbase, the deterioration of his resolve and the sudden, crippling fear that he inherited more from his father than he thought. His jaw draws tight, because Peter didn't know what the problem was then, but acknowledged it and tried to help all the same.
Peter's been more to him than he deserves, really.]
That's not why he's my anchor, [Isaac suddenly feels the need to clarify. His fingers twist at the blankets over his legs.] I use him because it wasn't always like that. Wolves don't feel that- I don't know what you call it. Nostalgia? Bitterness? It's a human thing. Scott has love, Derek has anger, I've- got this, I guess.
[Isaac feels like he's rambling and so he goes quiet, cutting himself short when it seems like there might have been more he was going to say. Peter is too easy to talk to, sometimes.]
action
and it's what keeps isaac human.
peter wants a cigarette. he wants to hug isaac. he wants to throw up, a little bit. he wants his mother, wants her to pet his hair and put an arm around isaac and show him what family can look like.]
It's stronger.
action
Isaac isn't sure if what he has can be called control, or if it's just a harder way to chain himself down, but it's something and it works.
It has to. He doesn't have anything else.]
It does the job.
[He swallows hard, before waving a hand, trying to brush it off. When he laughs, there's really no humor to it- just a wry, almost broken sound of someone who can't quite turn this into a joke.] I told you it was complicated.
action
[he hasn't seen derek, but he saw first-hand how fragile scott's anchor was.]
Yeah, it's complicated.
[he shifts a little, still not touching isaac, just almost.]
You're strong.
action
I'm something. [And then a pause.] I haven't died yet, anyway.
action
Don't you dare fucking discount that. You don't even know...just don't, okay?
[it comes out more a plea than he meant it to.]
action
It's just a fact. Supernatural beings don't seem to have a great life expectancy where I'm from.
action
action
I guess I have to be good at something.
action
[it's the flinch that makes him finally curl up, knees under his chin. it's an odd look on him, because he's usually quite sprawly, or at least stretched out.]
I just...sorry.
action
Why? You're right.
action
Close to home, I guess.
action
-your dad?
action
[he folds his arms across his knees, sets his chin on them.]
Christina. The vargulf, her name was Christina. She was fourteen. Her grandparents' property backs up to the lot we live on. She wanted to be a writer, so she came nosing around when we moved in. Good material, I guess.
action
You've told me about her before.
action
She'd come hang around the trailer. Always talking, a hundred questions and ninety of them were why? I'd tell her...whatever I felt like right then. Half bullshit and half truth. It was funny, y'know? She never knew whether I was just fucking with her, but that was half the fun. And one day she asked me, just straight up asked if I was a werewolf, because of my fingers.
[he holds up his hand where isaac can see it, wiggles his index and middle fingers, which are the same length.]
Indicator of lycanthropy, y'see. No idea where the hell she found that out. She'd already decided I was, so I went with it.
[he's quiet a moment.]
There's another way to become a werewolf, besides getting bitten. You can drink from the paw-print of a werewolf. That way they don't even have to know.
action
[Isaac understands it slowly, his voice coming out like a quiet revelation.]
You didn't even know.
action
She was so smart, though. And such a girl, all caught up in what other people think and trying to be normal. She wanted to be some normal popular girl so bad, when she was like a hundred times more interesting than that. Although I guess that's most people.
[he bites his lip for a moment, and sighs.]
I don't know what went wrong, when she changed. But she told me--when we'd figured it out, when I was going to kill her--she told me she'd never heard her true name. Something just rose up out of her, I guess, made her do what she did. Kill all those girls. Blame it on me.
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