( continues...) integrity, everything except FitzChivalry Farseer. Chivalry’s son. His own boy. His Fitz. And so he had urged this last, most desperate, most despicable ploy – that the boy give over his soul into Nighteyes’ keeping, for a time. That the boy become the beast. The very thing he had feared all along – but in the end he discovered that it was infinitely preferable to letting the boy die.

Fitz stirred in his sleep and whined softly in the back of his throat, his hands twitching for all the world like the paws of a puppy dreaming of hunting rabbits. Burrich’s tongue stilled, and he asked himself once again what he had done.

* * *

The seizures were erratic and pitiful, and as Fitz’s young body spasmed helplessly, Burrich fantasized a host of lingering deaths for the boy’s uncle.

“There, Fitz. Good lad, there’s a good lad,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around the twitching limbs and hating Regal with all his heart. The pained incomprehension on the boy’s face cut him to the quick. He didn’t understand, had no notion of what had brought him to this pass, of why his body betrayed him thus. But Burrich knew, and knew that he must have once had it in his power to keep Chivalry’s son safe from the wretched uses his king had found for him. There must have been a point at which he could have said no, a time when he could still have fled and kept Fitz innocent of all the sordid skills they taught him.

The tremors passed, as they always did. Fitz’s arms and legs remained clenched tightly around Burrich’s body as though he were the sole stable and solid thing left in a treacherous world, but Burrich felt the tension in chest and limbs relax very slowly. He knew that Fitz, or the wolf thing that now dwelled within his skin, no longer trusted his own body. Long after the last shudder had ended the boy remained miserably wrapped around Burrich, his scarred face buried in the hollow of his collarbone. His breath was hot and moist through the fabric of Burrich’s shirt, and it was some time before Burrich even realised that the lad had fallen asleep.

He lay there for hours after the first soft snore sounded against his chest, feeling the fragile pulse of life quiet and steady in Fitz’s once-dead body, and sleep eluded him.

* * *

The first time it happened, Burrich crossed the room in two swift strides and cuffed the lad so soundly that he fell back hard upon the dirt floor in a startled and ungainly sprawl. His eyes, gazing up at Burrich, were huge and baffled, and he panted, his tongue lolling slightly from his lips. His hand slipped back out of his breeches and he raised it uncertainly, a placating gesture but with all the fingers bent into claws. For a moment there was a flicker of fire in the lad’s eyes, the beginning of a snarl contorting his soft mouth. Faster than thought Burrich hunkered down, straddling the lad’s waist and deftly pinning his wrists to the floor beside his head. The boy growled. Burrich growled right back.

“You don’t do that,” he said clearly, in a dark voice that brooked no defiance. “Not in front of others.” Heart of the Pack mastering an unruly pup, every inch of his body expressing his will and his readiness to enforce it. He could feel the anger and frustration singing through the young sinews and muscles under him, and he braced himself for a fight, knowing he would win, wondering whether he was relishing this, in some dusty corner of his soul.

After a long moment Chivalry’s son arched his spine and let his head fall back, baring his throat. The plaintive whine that he made was no fitting sound for any human creature, let alone a Farseer. A chaos of conflicting emotions seized Burrich, and he could hardly keep from trembling as the warmth of the body beneath him gradually soaked into his flesh.

“It’s not – appropriate,” he said awkwardly, unable to bare the honesty of silence between them. (continued...)

( continues...) And this was nonsense, in a way, for he had been a soldier and he had shared living quarters with large groups of men. There had been no room for secrets or privacy. “Not when there’s light,” he amended. “Not before other people.” As well chastise a dog for licking its balls, he thought with sudden hopelessness. But FitzChivalry Farseer was not a dog, and in time he would know it.

The boy was still hard, and Burrich could smell his arousal very clearly in the quiet hut. Could feel it pressing against him. They sat very still. Burrich knew that he was much too close, and he was certainly going to move in a moment. Fitz’s gaze was locked upon his own, and Burrich couldn’t help following the path of Fitz’s pink tongue as it darted out to wet his lips. He felt the boy begin to squirm under him, and there was an instant when he thought that this was going to be another tussle for mastery, an attempt to win freedom. But it wasn’t. He gasped, his shock unfeigned as Fitz began to rub urgently, hopefully against him, and then in one appalled movement he had released the trapped wrists, cuffed the boy again and flung himself away as if burnt.

“You don’t do that,” he shouted again, although whether he was speaking to the boy or to himself he was not sure.

Burrich emptied a bottle of blackberry brandy that night, and his dreams were full of the Fitz’s father. In the dreams, Chivalry’s face was scarred, and Burrich knew it was his fault.

* * *

The second time it happened, the lad was on the very cusp of coming when Burrich unlocked the door and stepped into the hut. Slitted eyes met his, glassy with lust, pupils dilated so wantonly wide that each iris was reduced to a fragile ribbon of colour bound around the darkness. His father’s face, battered and bruised but beautiful despite it all. Burrich felt the force of it like a kick from a plough horse. His treacherous eyes darted at once to the jutting flesh that Fitz had freed from his breeches, and which Fitz was handling with an almost brutal efficiency. For a moment he could not breathe.

“Stop that.” His voice was like a lash, breaking the urgent rhythm of the lad’s hand for a moment. The boy who had once been FitzChivalry Farseer snarled at him and resumed his task. “You are NOT a beast,” Burrich insisted, as if the words might make it so. He was dry mouthed as he crossed the room to wrench Fitz’s hand away. He felt the lad’s gaze sliding shamelessly over him as Fitz quickened his rhythm to a frantic pitch. Burrich’s hand closed on his wrist just a hair’s breadth too late, and the sudden splatter of wet heat against his skin shocked him into stillness.

They stared at one another, Fitz’s breath warm against Burrich’s face and the stink of sex in the air. He should, Burrich knew distantly, cuff the lad. Hard. He needed to learn that this was not done, was not acceptable behaviour for a Farseer, even a bastard Farseer. He needed to learn how to be human again. Instead he released his grip on Fitz’s wrist very carefully, and pulled himself away from the boy. The back of his hand brushed fleetingly against the boy’s wet and wilting flesh, and the accidental contact sent a jolt through both of them.

“Oh, Fitz,” he rasped, the name torn from him. It was almost a plea, although to whom and for what he was not sure. Burrich backed away, stumbling all the way to the door. Fitz watched him lazily through slitted eyes and gave a vast and guileless yawn. He rolled over, doglike, as Burrich closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, staring blindly out into the dusk. He was, he realised, shaking like an old man with the palsy. Or like a bride on her wedding night.

He was also achingly hard.

This could not go on.

* * *

Fay, I know I've been watching too many zombie movies lately, but the second sentence made me think you were writing some sort of crossover, where the body was dead and the animal spirit inhabited/animated it.

The rest of it is wonderful. You have such a lovely way with sensuous language, and the characters feel right to me.

Because I can't say no to Fay...a continuation. I was surprised by the Faith/Claire vibey-ness...this may end up being femmeslash.

Even after her embarrassing reception in the back, Faith didn’t leave. Claire was, like, monumentally relieved. She would hate for her friend to find out how much of her cool was bullshit. She needed to hang out with a girl, no, woman, that if somebody called her Toe Suck Girl would be all “Hey! What the fuck are you looking at?” and not care at all. Yeah. That was bitchin’. And the fact that she made David turn green? Such a bonus.

But she still wasn’t prepared for this. “So, C, who’s the muffin?”

“Excuse me?” Even though she bitched about them, Claire supposed she’d gotten used to Fisher lead-ins to conversations like that.

“Well, you know, there was a gay guy and a stiff...who was the other one?”

“Don’t say anything about David being gay, okay? My mother doesn’t know.”

“How long has your mother been blind?”

“Since ever...my brother Nate? A muffin? Really?”

“Well, yeah. But I guess it would be Appalachian of you to notice. But there is one test I always use.” And before Claire knew what was happening Faith made...one of those kind of faces and said “Oh, Nate, harder. Faster. Oh, yes, oh God that’s good!”

Claire cracked up laughing.No, this was definitely not a Fisher.

“He passes. Definite muffinage.”

Claire was quiet for a minute. Despite the squick factor of thinking of Nate having sex(Which was kind of alarmingly frequent being that Brenda thought leaving the door open was free and open, instead of like, rude, and maximum TMI.) she found herself compelled by Faith’s imitation. Great, she thought, I either dig incest or...Toe Suck Girl is bi.

Erika, I don't know the show, but you've got Faith's voice down. That's awesome.

Thanks. I think it's the noir in me. (If you did know that show, you'd know I set off a hand grenade in their house. A hand grenade in leather pants.)

Well, the body was dead, and while it lay Buffyishly cooling Fitz's spirit has been cohabiting a wolf's body and is pretty much totally in wolf mode now that it's moved back in. So the effect is exactly what I intended. Cool.

Erika, this is splendid.

Thanks, glad you like it. Feeling the girl-on-girl this early in a story is new for me, although I thought there was a vibe between Joyce and Kay in that make-up thing, but for the most part that was metaphor.

Claire/Faith seems like such an obvious femmeslash pairing I'm surprised it never occured to me.

Good show.

I knew Claire would be attracted to Faith as she is Danger-Seeker Girl...I'm just surprised that "attracted" means porn. Or will. Maybe I'm channelling some slasher right now, AIFG.(Or maybe I just thought it would please the lovely Pandarus.) Thanks, Nova, good to hear as I mostly write het or gen...and I've only seen one season's worth of SFUs. So I'm a little insecure about my ability here.