Chapter Text
Thomas came back for him fourteen months later.
He was standing in front of the house when Gordo came back from the shop, and for a moment Gordo didn’t think he was real. He was wearing a heavy coat, and his hair had gotten longer; from a distance, he could almost be mistaken for someone else, if not for the nearly-dead thing in Gordo’s chest letting out a faint gasp at the feel of his presence. The bags under his eyes were dark and heavy as bruises.
Gordo said: "what are you doing here?"
He tried to make it sound scathing. Turn it into something that cut. Mostly it just sounded heavy, falling to the ground between them like a silver weight.
Thomas said: "I'm sorry."
Gordo said: "oh, really?"
Thomas said: "I missed you so much. I didn't even realize, until I saw your face. It's funny, really," he didn't sound quite right. "You always surprise me, Gordo."
Gordo said: "what's going on?"
Thomas took a step forward. Gordo tried to take a step back, but his legs wouldn’t listen to him. There were tears on Thomas’s face, he realized. He hadn’t seen Thomas cry since right after that day.
Gordo couldn’t breathe.
Thomas said: “They still fear you there. They always will, and I can’t fix that. I’m afraid it may be awful for you there. I think you may grow to hate me just as much for bringing you there as you do for leaving you here. But it’s not right like this.”
He took another step forward, and they were standing so close to each other, as close as they’d been standing on the dirt road fourteen months ago, when Thomas had clutched at Gordo’s shoulders and begged for him to speak to him, begged for him to understand.
He hadn’t. He still didn’t.
But Thomas raised a hand and pressed it to his face, calloused and familiar and soft, and the dying thing in his chest burned, sharp and real, and Gordo shattered into a million pieces.
He fell forward. Thomas caught him, immediately, unhesitatingly. He wrapped his arms around him, pulling him close, pressing him tight against a body that wasn’t as taller than him as it had been fourteen months ago. His face was buried in the shoulder of that stupid heavy coat. Thomas’s hand roamed over his back, clutching and releasing and then clutching again.
Thomas said: "I came to take you home. I'm sorry. Please come home with me. Please tell me I'm not too late to make this right."
Into Thomas’s shoulder, Gordo said, "yes."
He packed his bag within an hour. There wasn't much. A few clothes, a toothbrush, a spare pair of boots. The movie Rico had gotten him for his birthday months ago, that he still hadn’t watched. A wooden raven and a stone wolf, each carefully packed in separate pockets. The latest vehicle manual he’d gotten in the mail only a week ago. They probably had cars in Maine.
He didn’t pack any of his school stuff, because he figured he wouldn’t need them anymore. He thought about calling his friends, letting them know he was leaving. But they were going to ask a million questions, and he didn’t have it in him to deal with that; not right now, with everything in his head unsteady and raw. In the end he wrote a note, leaving it in the mailbox by Tanner’s house cause he was closest. It wasn’t the best of explanations, but they knew how he felt about being left behind, even if they never talked about it. They'll understand.
He did speak to Marty. Went up to the bar where the older guys from the shop were drinking, pulled him outside into the quiet night air. He explained everything as quickly as he could. It wasn’t hard. Marty already knew most of everything, anyway.
Marty said: "you come back any time you need to. God knows the shop needs all the hands I can get."
Gordo said "sure" and "definitely" and "this is still our territory, we keep an eye on it".
Marty squeezed his shoulder, his hand heavy and warm. “I hope you’re happy there, kid. Good luck.”
Probably not. But better than here. Out loud he said: “Thank you,” and he knew Marty understood.
Thomas had gone into the woods, and was probably going to take a while to check the territory, so Gordo allowed himself to take his time on the way back, taking in the town. It wasn’t much. He had never lived anywhere else.
Marty's house looked the same as it did this morning, when he expected to have to spend the foreseeable future inside of it. He sat on the front step, his bag at his feet, and stared into the woods. The territory hummed with magic in the back of his mind. With or without werewolves around, Green Creek knew its witch.
"I'll be back," he told it, unconvincingly. Thomas had always sworn they'd be back. Gordo hadn't believed it then, and he didn't believe it now.
He ended up sitting there for two hours, listening to the whistling of the wind, to the sound of a lone wolf howling in the forest. He pressed his hand to the wooden raven through the bag’s pocket, its beak digging into his palm. He waited for Thomas to come back and tell him he's changed his mind, that he'd gotten over his sentimentality, that he'd decided it was better if Gordo stayed after all.
Thomas came back a few hours before dawn. There was dark earth under now-human fingernails, and a stray leaf in his hair. He'd put his shirt back on backwards after shifting, the seams showing, the way he’d been doing for as long as Gordo could remember. It always made Elizabeth laugh. His eyes were sunk even deeper than they were at the beginning of the night, but something had settled in his shoulders.
"Are you ready?" He asked.
Gordo said: "I was ready fourteen months ago."
Thomas said: "let's go."
Osmund said: "sir, I must once again protest - “
Thomas said: "you have been protesting constantly for the past four days. Surely, I have already heard and considered whatever it is you have to say. And I have made my decision.”
Gordo said: "yeah, shut the fuck up."
Thomas sighed. Gordo wasn’t bothered. He could feel, underneath the crushing weariness, the wave of fondness that said yes, like that.
There were three other wolves waiting for them alongside two cars, all parked at the dirt road leading to the old house, because god forbid the Alpha of All travel alone for a single day visit to his own land. They all stood up straight at Thomas’s approach. None of them spoke, but Gordo could feel their eyes on his skin.
Osmund said: “Then if the land is well and the boy is ready, we should go immediately. We have already been away for far longer than is wise.”
Thomas said, “Osmund, why don’t you take the second car,” and Gordo didn’t quite bother to hide his snort.
Osmund went. He took two of the betas with him, and pointedly didn’t look back. Gordo watched the car as it drove away, reluctantly letting Thomas put his bag in the trunk. A movement from the direction of the blue house drew his attention. Looking up, he saw Curtis’s little boy was awake, watching the commotion with wide eyes through his second-floor window. He watched a lot, that one.
Gordo raised a hand and waved to him. The little boy waved back.
Then he got into the car.
The beta whose name Gordo didn’t know drove. Gordo had left the passenger seat to Thomas – ceding seniority and all that, and he didn’t really want to sit next to the guy, anyway. Thomas, after a moment’s deliberation, turned away and entered the back seat instead.
The middle seat stretched like a continent between them.
Thomas said: “Gordo - “
Gordo said: “Don’t. Not right now.”
Thomas said: “Alright,” but he kept looking at him, bright eyes unwavering, as though he didn’t intend to stop soon. Gordo couldn’t stand meeting that gaze for long, so instead he turned away to stare out the window at the road passing beside them, taking them away.
When they reached the exit sign of Green Creek he remembered, suddenly, clear as lightning, that day a lifetime ago. He could almost see them standing outside, a row of wolves blocking the way. His mother’s face going pale, the last time he ever saw her. The tremor in Thomas’s voice as he pulled him out of the car and held him close and promised that he’s got him, that it was okay, that no one will ever take him away.
There were no wolves on the road. No one stopped them. The car drove on.
Thomas reached a hand across the back seat and grasped his shoulder; his fingers were tight as a vice. He didn’t speak again, but the sound of his labored breathing was awfully loud in the car’s silence.
Gordo didn’t look at him. He didn’t shake him off, either.
The full moon caught them somewhere in the Midwest, a few hours' drive from a town whose name Gordo didn’t catch. They parked the cars at the edge of a field, somewhere no one was likely to come around during the night. Gordo sat at the edge of the asphalt and watched as the rest of them shifted, leaving their clothes and their words behind.
He had missed running with the wolves. It had been a strange ache inside of him during these fourteen months, like a sharp hook twisting inside him every time he watched the full moon and heard the hollow silence in the forest.
These weren’t his wolves, though. They didn’t want him anymore than he wanted them. He still didn’t know any of their names, except for Osmund. They ran off into the field, howling at the joy of stretching after those long days in the car. Gordo ran his hand through the faded grass, trying to feel the earth underneath. He wished he’d packed his schoolbooks, after all. He was tired of long silences, waiting for an arrival he couldn’t even imagine.
This particular silence was interrupted by the sound of steps through the grass. He looked up to find one of the wolves did not disappear into the fields after all. He knew him, of course. Gordo thought he could be dead and he would still know this wolf.
Gordo said: “You can go. I don’t need you to watch over me.”
The wolf tilted his head, red eyes watching him.
Gordo said: “If I did, I wouldn’t have made it this far. So fuck off.”
The wolf whined. Then, taking a few running steps, he launched himself at Gordo, knocking him on his back into the grass. He then sat on his chest, heavy and too-warm, and started rubbing his head under Gordo’s chin; Getting his scent properly all over him.
Gordo pushed at him ineffectually. “I said fuck off, Thomas.”
The wolf whined again. Then he licked him in the face.
Gordo said: “Ough, I hate you.”
It might have been a lie.
The wolf huffed again, softly. He licked Gordo’s face a few times more before finally getting up from his chest. He didn’t go far, though. Just sat down on the grass beside him and stretched comfortably, stomach exposed, as though fourteen months ago the last words Gordo had said to him were not, I want to hurt you.
It was a warm night. They had slept in the cars, mostly, until this point. But the moon was full and the grass was soft and something in his chest said pack and love and brother, and Gordo didn’t let himself think too deeply before he laid back down beside the wolf and buried his face in soft white fur.
The other wolves howled in the distance. Thomas's chest rose and fell under Gordo’s cheek. He radiated heat, a shelter against night’s chill, and Gordo thought, I'm still mad at you, and also, I didn’t realize how badly I missed you until now either.
His eyes burned a little, humiliatingly. Into Thomas’s fur, he whispered: “I’m really glad you came back for me.”
That one, at least, wasn’t a lie. The wolf huffed quietly, and then turned around a little; placing his large head on Gordo’s chest, right over his heart.
The land was hollow and strange beneath him, but he still slept easy that night.
Mark was waiting for them by the road leading to the compound. Gordo felt him before he saw him, a pull on a thread that never fully went away. It took him a moment to notice a figure leaning between the trees, watching for the cars on the road. He followed the car as it entered, a large brown wolf running alongside the road; weaving between buildings, never letting them out of his sight.
Spitefully, Gordo pretended he didn't notice him. He turned away from the window instead, crossing his arms over his chest.
Thomas's lips twitched. Gordo could feel a pang of blue through the steadying bond within them; but stronger than it was the overwhelming green of relief, and the unmistakable sense of deep amusement.
Gordo said: “stop that.”
Thomas, who stopped fighting his smile, said: “Stop what?”
Gordo waved a hand in his general direction. “That. Quit it.”
The guy-without-a-name in the driver seat made a vague sound of disapproval about the Alpha of All being spoken to this way. Both of them ignored him.
Thomas said: “I didn’t say anything. Although, I did notice you have been carrying around this very nice raven figurine over the last week. I can’t imagine what that might mean.”
Gordo groaned: “Don’t you have a continent to run? Other people to boss around? Anything else you’re supposed to tell me?”
Thomas said: “I do. And I’ll probably have to go do it soon, and we’ll definitely have to talk about the more formal affairs soon. But this is a matter I, as your alpha, also have a certain interest in, you know.”
Gordo glowered. Thomas smiled.
He said: “I want you to be happy. And him. Very much so.”
They arrived at the house before Gordo could decide if he wanted to yell at him.
The Bennett’s house in Caswell was smaller than the one they’d left behind, meant for a smaller pack. It was located at the edge of the compound, right by the trees, where the Alpha of all could have some privacy. The windows were coloured blue.
As soon as they stepped out of the car, the door opened, and Elizabeth Bennett came running out. She ignored her husband and the driver to stop in front of him.
She said: “Oh, Gordo,” and then stopped talking and just looked at him, eyes as bright as the sun.
Gordo felt something rise in his throat that might have been a sob or might have been a scream. At least Thomas had the decency not to fucking smile at him like that.
He didn’t say anything.
She said: “You got taller,” and then wrapped her arms around him, leaning up to bury her nose in his hair. She smelled of paint and tea and a home they could never go back to. If she noticed he didn’t hug her back, she didn’t mention it.
She said: “Welcome home. Your room’s ready, though you can change things if you want. Thomas, where are his things?”
Thomas said: “It’s lovely to see you again too, my beloved wife,” and Elizabeth swatted his shoulder before leaning up to kiss him.
As she pulled away from him, Gordo noticed the two boys peeking out the open doorway, blond-hair-wide-eyes-all-familiar despite being so much bigger than the last time he’d held them. They looked at him with naked, unafraid curiosity. Gordo wondered if Carter remembered him at all.
Carter told Kelly: “That’s Gordo. He's our witch. We're not allowed in his room without permission. Even though we helped hang the curtain and were allowed then.”
“You’re right, you’re not,” Gordo said, immediately, because Chris complained enough about the dangers of toddlers in your room. Then: “Thank you for helping prepare it, though.”
Kelly tilted his head, looking at him thoughtfully. Then he sniffed the air, slowly, as though trying to take in the whole day.
Then, carefully, he said: “You’re welcome.”
Carter said: “Well, you can come to my room, if you want. Mark is too busy to look at my Lego. But you should.”
Gordo turned to look over his shoulder: “Oh, he is?”
Mark made a protesting sound from where he was trying to discreetly get dressed behind the car. “I said I will, I just had a meeting - “
Carter said, accusingly: “Liar. Mom said you didn’t have any meetings today, you were just sitting by the gate - “
Gordo laughed. The sound surprised him as it left his chest, like it didn’t belong there. Behind him, Thomas and Elizabeth’s quiet conversation suddenly fell silent.
Mark's ice-blue eyes grew very, very wide. He straightened up from behind the car slowly, his shirt still mostly unbuttoned. He took a step forward.
He said: “Hey.”
Gordo said: “Hey.”
And because he had time now, as much time as he wanted here, to figure out how he wanted things to be, he turned away from him. He looked at the boys in the doorway instead.
He said: “You can show me the Lego right now, if you want. And my new room, too.”
Carter beamed. He leaped forward to grab Gordo’s hand in one hand – the other never letting go of Kelly, who squeaked – and dragged him inside, so fast and excited he didn’t have any time to hesitate at all.
That night, after he went to bed, there was a scratch at the door.
Gordo remembered this part; this ritual from those days when he was young and bleeding and yet too ignorant to know just how much worse it will all get.
If he didn’t open the door, he knew, he will stay outside all night.
He got up and opened the door. Mark looked a little surprised and a lot relieved, and somehow, unfairly, more beautiful in the relative darkness of Gordo’s new room than he had the last time he’d visited him.
Gordo stepped back. Mark came in. Neither of them spoke as Gordo turned his back, listening to the sound of clothes being removed behind him. (He sort of wanted to look. Surely, after all this time, it was fine for him to look. He wondered if Mark knew he wasn’t a virgin anymore, if it would matter. Probably not. Idiot wolf cared a lot about doing things right).
A wet nose nudged his hand. He climbed in the bed, the brown wolf following, humming softly with contentment. Gordo sighed, and let the familiar weight of him distract him from the strange sounds of the house, and from the hollow feeling of the land beneath him.
In the morning, Carter said, accusingly: “How come Mark is allowed in Gordo’s room? He didn’t even help with the curtains.”
Thomas said: “Oh, is he now?” and Gordo threw the slice of bread he was about to eat at his head as he ducked and Mark spluttered, and Elizabeth laughed so hard the table shook and Kelly dropped his oatmeal on the floor.
No one in Caswell wanted him there.
He'd expected as much, and so for the most part it doesn’t bother him. They all watched him, as he entered the room after Thomas for those meetings the witch to the Alpha of all should be there for. They whispered when he walked through the compound, in voices too quiet for his human ears to understand. He got the general meaning, though. Livingstone. Dangerous. Murderer.
“You don’t need to stick around me all the time like that,” he told Mark, annoyed. “I can take care of myself just fine, you know.”
Mark snarled at a pair of women sitting outside one of the buildings who watched them passing with a spark of yellow in their eyes. “They don’t get to look at you like that. And I’m watching your back. Same as always.”
“Against bad guys,” Gordo remembered flatly. “Do you think someone’s going to, what, fucking assassinate me?”
Mark growled low in his throat, then looked away. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. A lot of them were very upset when Thomas said he was done arguing about this. Three people left.”
“Well, they can try if they want to.” Gordo glanced around, the raven fluttering from his arm to his neck. Even so far from the land he belonged too, Gordo could feel the earth alive under his feet, ready to respond. “If anyone wants to fight me because of dear old dad, they can find out just how much he taught me.”
Fuck them all. Their Alpha, his Alpha, had decreed that he was going to be there, and they were going to have to make their peace with that. If they wanted to avoid him in the street, that was fine with him. Most people didn’t particularly like him all that much back in Oregon, either.
He spent a lot of time with the boys, instead, while Mark and Thomas were away dealing with all the matters concerning the Alpha of all that didn’t require a witch’s presence. Carter and Kelly were both delighted to have another adult who’d pay attention to them. Carter would drag him into the woods, often, to show him interesting stumps or fox lairs or holes he’d dug in the ground – “without a shovel!”. Kelly stumbled after them on chubby legs, demanding not to be left behind. He was still small enough for Gordo to carry, small arms wrapped around his neck as he chattered about birds or clouds or bread.
They were easier than the rest of Caswell, easier than their parents and their uncle. None of this has ever been their fault. He could love them easy, like this; could remember holding an hour-old Carter in his arms and swearing he’d protect him from the world forever. He hadn’t known anything about the world then, about blood on the snow and women with crosses. But he did now, and the promise was the same, always, forever.
When they came home, leaves in their hair, Elizabeth said: “Thank you watching over them, Gordo.” She sat on the couch beside him, the living room’s lamplight turning her hair into a golden crown. Her hands were wrapped around a tea mug, and Gordo had his own; it was becoming a ritual, slowly, something just between the two of them. Looking at her was getting easier.
As she spoke, she reached a hand to absentmindedly rub across his wrist, leaving her mark. “It’s been helpful, having another adult around the house for so much of the time again. Thomas tries to be there for them as much as he can, you know that, but there’s always something. It was good to finally have some time to sit down in the studio.”
Gordo said: “I don’t mind. You know I will always look out for them.”
Elizabeth smiled, a little sadly. Then she said: “I know. I’m going to need a lot of help next year, I think.”
Gordo said: “What’s next year?”
Elizabeth grasped his wrist and pulled his hand close to press it against her stomach. “Still a while away, but maybe he can already sense you.”
Gordo's eyes widened. “You are...?”
Elizabeth nodded. “This one is going to be an alpha, I think. I can feel it.”
Then she said: “That’s why you had to be here. You are his witch. He has to know. You have to know.”
Gordo closed his eyes.
He said: “Okay. Okay. I know.”
He got his hands on the first car a month or so after arriving in Caswell.
It had been mostly unplanned. He had been walking home from the main house when he noticed Thomas’s latest appointment, some beta whose name he didn’t remember who’d been investigating rumors of hunters in the south. The sound of her car drew his attention; a dull groan he’d spent enough time at Marty’s to recognize.
He knocked on the window. “She’s not going to last ten miles out of the compound, not in this weather.”
The woman stared at him through the glass, eyes skipping over his tattoos in that wary once-over he’s grown familiar with. Then her shoulders slumped. “It figures.” She opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Going to be a whole mess to deal with right now.”
Gordo frowned at the car. “What do they even do here when cars break down? Everyone's always coming and going.”
"There’s a garage in one of the towns down the road. We operate the fake-town below enough that they don’t ask any questions.”
Gordo blinked incredulously. "Then what do you do if the cars can't go to the garage? If they are, you know, broken?”
The woman shrugged. "Then we call for a tow truck, I guess?”
"That's stupid. People shift around here all the time. We've put a lot of work into making sure outsiders don’t come around. Do they just get wolves to push the car out until – that's probably what they do. That's so dumb.”
She raised her eyebrows. “If you’ve got issue, I guess you can take it to the Alpha.”
“Oh, I will. In the meantime, can you push it toward the house – that one, yeah. Leave it there and I’ll take care of it.”
“You are going to fix it?” she sounded incredulous.
“No, I'm gonna put a horrible curse on it.” Gordo rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am going to fix it. You can leave it there and go tell the Alpha that his vehicle maintenance policies are idiotic for me.”
“I don’t think I will do that.” She pushed the car to the edge of the road behind the house. “There. Is that good?”
“Yeah, it’ll do.” Gordo tilted his head at the car, trying to figure out where to go from there.
The woman hesitated by the road. “You aren’t actually going to curse it, are you?”
“Go away. Come back tomorrow. I might be done by then.”
He probably wasn’t going to be. For starters, he didn’t actually have any of the tools he would need to fix the problem, even if he figured out what it was.
“I’m gonna have to drive to the next town over,” he stated.
Mark stopped pretending he wasn’t watching from the window and came out of the house, sending a wary glance in the woman’s wake.
“What for?”
“I think I saw a shop on the way selling the equipment I need. If not, I might have to look around a bit.”
It was stupid, maybe, going all this way just because of some woman who didn’t even ask for his help, just because Thomas’s stupid werewolf town in stupid Maine didn’t have its own garage. But there was the car; eventually there were going to be more. This was something he could do. This was something he needed to do.
Mark blinked, and then nodded. “Oh, yeah, I know the one you’re talking about. We could probably get there and back before Thomas needs us without issue if we leave now.”
Gordo narrowed his eyes at him. “I don’t need you to come with me.”
Mark smiled. “Yeah, I know. But I've got a few free hours, anyway.”
At which point Gordo stopped arguing, because, well, he didn’t actually want him to stay behind.
They found the right town easy. The man behind the counter gave Gordo a considering once over, like a strange mirror of the werewolves’ suspicions, and then nodded approvingly and asked him what he was there for.
They sat in the town’s diner, afterwards; an ancient looking place that almost reminded Gordo of the Oasis in Green Creek. The fries were hot and the milkshakes were sweet and Gordo laughed when Mark complained about Thomas’s latest petitioners and for an hour or so it was as simple as it’s ever been.
They lingered in the parking lot, leaning against the car, not quite ready to go home. Gordo sort of wanted a cigarette – he'd tried a few back home, but didn’t bring any with him, knowing Thomas would smell them and wouldn’t approve. It was probably better not to get into the habit, anyway. Not with the boys around.
He stared at the horizon, the dark outline of the road disappearing into the woods. “Thanks,” he said, “for coming with me.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, quietly.
Then, quick and shocking as lightning, he reached over and grabbed Gordo’s wrist. Gordo turned, surprised, to find those sharp eyes on his face.
“Can I kiss you?” Mark said. “Just once. We'll go back to waiting after.”
They hadn’t talked about this, not since Gordo had come to Maine, and not before it, either. About the things they promised to each other, about Mark leaving. About the wolf still sitting in a box in Gordo’s bedroom. Maybe he should’ve given it back, now that they were a real pack again, let Mark do it again the proper way when he was older. He hadn’t.
It was his now, for better or for worse.
He was still taller, the bastard. Gordo grabbed him by the back of his head and pulled him down, pressing them together. He could taste the diner’s milkshake on his lips.
Mark didn’t let it get too deep. He clung to him for one short, endless moment, and then slowly pulled away. Then they stood there in the parking lot, faces too close, staring at each other.
He thought about saying: I never know what to do about you. I missed you so much.
He thought about saying: do you really think you can stand there after all this and talk like nothing happened, and expect me to wait for you?
He thought about saying: I fucked some other guy in Green Creek, just so you know. So you don’t have to be all old-fashioned about this.
He thought about saying: you can’t ever leave me again.
He said: “It’s getting late. Let's go home.”
Later, after Mark went back to work, Gordo stood behind the new house and tried to figure out what was the car’s problem.
“Come on, you useless wreck,” he mumbled. “What is this – oh. Hey.”
Carter stood on his tip-toes and peered into the engine. “What’re you doing?”
“Something useful, unlike anyone else in here.” Gordo stepped back, looking over the old parts. “Want to help?”
Carter's eyes widened. “Can I?”
“I just asked, didn’t I?”
Carter looked from Gordo to the car, and then nodded eagerly. “I’ll help.”
“Okay. When I say the name of a tool, you bring me that tool. Some of them are heavy.” He pointed sternly. “Do not drop them. I just bought this stuff.”
Carter glowered. “I won’t. I'm not that small.”
“Right, right. Okay. That thing with the blue handle is the torque wrench. I need the torque wrench.”
“Torque wrench,” Carter repeated, picking it up.
Well. It was a start.