One Month Later

The air was frigid and the damp earth beneath them was beginning to steal the warmth from their bodies, but they were both still fresh enough out of the change to ignore it. It was a cold blue morning just after his second full moon—Kevin's third. They were lying together on a blanket spread out on the grass outside Castle's place in the Hamptons. The captain had given them three days without being asked, though he warned them it was just the once. It was remarkably generous under the circumstances.

Exhausted and naked, cold and dirty, Javier thought he'd had worse vacations. That probably said something about him, though he couldn't say what exactly.

This second time around the change had been easier. It had felt less like a weight dragging him toward a fall he couldn't stop and more like a gentle pressure... Almost, almost, like he might have been able to resist. If he had chosen to. Castle's property was far enough away from most prying eyes that Javier hadn't seen the point. And there was just something about trees and grass and sea and soil that smelled almost how they were supposed to smell that pulled at him unexpectedly. As though even the wilder part of him that had thought it knew what it was were only now learning.

A pull, but not a calling. He was still a city-boy at heart.

There was no line anymore, no struggle. No him and the wolf. Just himself—irrevocably altered by the otherness making itself a home inside of who he was, but still him. It was something he could live with, something which he'd yet to admit to anyone but himself he was actually beginning to enjoy. Sometimes he thought that should scare him more than it did. A month wasn't a long time at all, but already it was difficult to imagine how small and dull his perception of the world had been just that long ago. How little of the world he'd been aware of. In a few months or a few years, he might not be able to imagine it at all. He didn't want that. He didn't want to lose sight the way he used to be. While he no longer feared the way he once did, there was always that sliver of worry that more of what he once was might slip away from him leaving God only knew what in its place.

As it stood, though, he didn't mind being this.

The only gauge by which he could measure himself was Kevin, a full month ahead of him. Judging by that, the prognosis was apparently good. Since Javier had joined him, his partner's behavior seemed to have stabilized. The flinching insecurity he'd displayed after the full moon had dropped away, and the aggression he'd shown in the beginning had yet to return. And if Kevin was a perhaps little more assertive than he once was, Javier considered it an improvement. Beckett had speculated that he'd merely needed time to adjust, but Javier quietly thought otherwise. After all he'd yet to experience either extreme himself, thank God, but then Javier had known since his first night in that he—that Kevin and he—weren't alone in this. Not really. It was a security Kevin hadn't had in the beginning, though Javier knew for certain he felt it now.

The conversation had taken place only once, after that first night truly together, in few words but with complete understanding.

"Do you..." Ryan had paused, eyes taking on that far-off quality Javier had since come to associate with the difficulty of articulating in words a feeling that originated with a part of himself that had no use for them. Javier had had plenty of those moments himself. It had disturbed and frustrated him at first, but he had slowly gotten used to it. "Kate and Montgomery."

Even without a full sentence, Javier had easily understood his meaning all the same and snorted, nodding.

"Castle." He had added, a faint note of both annoyance and affection in his voice.

Ryan had smiled.

"Yeah."

Neither of them had felt the need to clarify what they were talking about. They were merely acknowledging what they each already knew. Wolves needed a pack, and they were just lucky enough to already have one. It was really just that simple. There was a gulf separating them from the others which Javier thought no one but the two of them might ever fully understand, but they didn't doubt for a moment that Beckett and Castle and Montgomery were behind them. And as long as that was true, the 12th would still be safe for them. Would still be home.

Inside the house, he could hear the comforting sounds of someone stirring. That meant the afterglow was over. This early it was probably Kate, but he couldn't be too careful. Castle had them figured out after the first night, sure, but that didn't mean they had to give the man any more ammunition than he already had. Javier moved to get up, only to have Kevin's arm tighten around his waist.

"No..." The word was a warm whisper against the back of his neck, half muffled by sleep.

Back in the house it would be warm. There was a shower and clothes and knowing Castle probably bacon...and here he was lying in the dirt with Kevin wrapped around him. Javier gave it a longing look.

Maybe it could wait a few more minutes.

The End