Just an Old Legend Ch. 06

"Buddy is wolf, Elena."

She smiled for a second at how he'd said her name, but shook her head and thumped her fist against his chest, raising her voice in the wind, "No! Buddy is in here, Buddy is a wolf, Buddy is a man named Ion. Buddy is you! It was you who cleaned up the beach for me. You brought me flowers!"

Her voice softened as she spread her fingers into his fur, " I'm sorry I was frightened, I'm not any more, not really." She reached up and held his face, "Listen to me. We can get along, just like my friend the wolf and I. There's the house that you made. You don't have to live out here. I can't change what happened, and neither can you. But I want to know you and God DAMN it, I want to talk with you!"

She wound down, "And I don't want to learn about you out here in this freezing shit."

He looked down sadly, "You do not know what I am, Elena. I am beast, an animal, ..." he sighed, "I am murderer."

She stood on her toes and pulled on the fur of his cheeks until he lowered his great head, and she kissed his face, "Look at me. Don't look at the house, look at me. Listen to me. I, ... I want to know you. I want to know about you, Ion. I want to hear your side, but only if you want to tell me. In any prison system around here, you get at most twenty-five years in prison for murder. They'd never have understood why you did it, but I'm pretty sure that I do. Twenty-five years. They call that 'life in prison.' You've been in this prison for a lot longer than that with no one. At least prisoners get food and clothes."

She knew what was rising up in her, she'd found an underdog. Not just any underdog, but one whom she couldn't abandon to his dark thoughts and pain. She understood loyalty perfectly as a concept, and she thought that she had more of that than any six people.

He heard her voice, soft again now, even through the wind that tried to whip her words away. She was quietly determined. It was a rare quality even in his time. If there was one person who could override his own will, he thought that she could very well be that one. The thought came to him that for all that he was, all that he had reluctantly become, he just might have met his match here in this person.

She was still talking to him, beseeching him to see it her way. He resigned himself to hear what she had to say as she continued, "... I'm a very stubborn person, and I don't care what you say. I can argue even you into the ground. Goddammit, look at me, Ion!"

He was helpless in this. His arms rose slowly to her back, and he pulled her gently, needing to hold her now.

"I already know a lot about you. I don't know how this works, or anything like that, but now I absolutely know that you have control over how you look - when you're not asleep, anyway. And I know that you have control over what you do, and that you don't want to hurt me. I'm still your friend. That's good enough for me, Ion, it's all I need. Please, let's go."

He stared at her, and she nodded, "Please, Ion, let's go back inside where it's warm. My feet are frozen, all of me is cold."

He looked down at her and smiled softly, before reaching to pick her up gently. "Try to find place where rain will not drown you, and keep your face there."

She smiled and hid her face against his neck as he walked back to the house. This close to him, he was warm. She wondered about the classic wet dog smell. He didn't have it, and she thought he smelled wonderful.

As he carried her up the steps to set her down, he paused. "I have to turn into man, but I have no clothes."

She took his hand, and said, "We didn't need them at the beach or in here before. I sure don't care now, as long as we can get warm and we can talk. None of this matters. No one knows who you are or who you were. We have time to work everything out. For right now, just see if you can get the woodstove going really well." She walked to the pot and took out the wildflowers with a soft smile that he would never forget. He nodded shyly.

The last of the water ran off his skin as he changed and they walked into the house. Ion walked to the woodstove and opened the door to add wood. Helen looked at him. She herself wasn't quite as sure as she'd tried to sound to him and thought about that a little. There would be challenges to this, she realized.

But as she stood looking, she came to herself again, and thought about how much they seemed to be attracted to each other. Friendship might just be the start of something. And God knows she needed something to restart her life. It might just be the restarting of his life that does it.

And, she thought mischievously as she stared at his backside, holy cow, there just had to be a way to keep clothes off him at least part of the time!

Helen broke her reverie and walked up the stairs to the bedroom with the flashlight. She found a clean towel, a good thing, because every other towel in the place now needed washing. She toweled her hair as dry as she could get it with only one towel and she turned to the mirror and noticed that there was a bit of blood now on her sweater which had run from the slight wound on the rim of her ear. The flashlight made it difficult, but she could see that the wound had begun to form a wet-looking scab.

She stepped back and very carefully pulled the sweater off. She was about to head for the bathroom to soak the sweater when she looked at herself there in the mirror.

She smiled a bit to herself. Nothing to write home about here, she thought, but she'd taken care of herself, and she knew that she'd once had enough in the way of charms...

She smirked and began to shake her head at the thought. The dull pain that resulted she took as a reminder not to have these thoughts. She wet the sweater in the bathroom sink before walking down the stairs again. She hoped that the blood would come out, but if it was the price for getting this far with such a friend as Ion, she considered it well-spent. Her head was still attached, after all.

Ion had the woodstove roaring by then, and she walked past him and then turned with a smile, knowing several things at once. That he'd feel embarrassed about his nudity here in the shape of a man. That he'd heard her coming down the stairs and had likely watched her walk past. And finally, that this would likely be a long night of talk that she hoped he looked forward to as much as she did. She found his eyes looking at her shyly and laughed a little. Apparently, she still had it, whatever it took to get the attention of a male who had lived alone for seven decades.

"I'm going to make some tea," she said, "Do you drink tea, and how do you take it?" She'd found that when he was a wolf, she could sort of get him past things if she made out like nothing was a big deal. She hoped it would work now, at least to get them past some of the awkwardness that she was sure would come. With his answer, she found and filled an old, but clean blackware kettle and set it on top of the stove while she hunted for some Ibuprofen for her head and toes.

She sat on the couch behind him and indicated a spot on the floor in front of her, "I'm way too small to do this right any other way, but if you'll sit on the floor right here facing away from me for just a minute, I'd be happy to dry your hair for you."

He was just about to begin shaking his head with the apologetic refusal that would go with it when he saw her determined smile as she pointed to the spot, "Sit,.....please."

With a shrug and an awkward smile, he stepped over and sat. Helen wasted no time and got to work. "Listen," she said, "I want you to think about something. Over the past few days, you've seen me naked a few times, and if you need me to tell you, I'm the kind of person who is comfortable with my body. You were naked then, and yeah, you were a wolf, but I did get to see, didn't I? When you'd changed to that big beast that you can become, I saw everything then and Ion, you know when you're like that, what's there is pretty much the same as it is right now, it's just hidden better in more fur. Sorry to break this to you, but while you were sleeping right over there, I got up and I saw everything you have as you slept- "

He spun his head around with a slightly wounded look that she ignored.

"AND," she continued, "you have nothing to be ashamed of. I saw a man. Now while I still have a ton of clothes that I could be wearing here, you have none, right? So maybe I'm sitting here completely naked out of consideration for how you might feel. I for damn sure wouldn't have let you see me naked if I'd known then that you're a man inside that wolf, but it happened. That I'm naked now and sitting this close to a naked man means a couple of things. I'm doing this so that you don't need to feel badly that you have no clothes. That I trust you, and that I like you an awful lot. You just think about that."

She worked in silence for a couple of minutes.

She was done, and lowered her head to the side of his with her arms on his shoulders, "I'd think you'd just prefer to enjoy this - and I've had men in my life before. I was even married once. Believe me, I know all about men's parts and what might just happen, even though you might not want it to at the time. If that does happen, I want you to know that I'd just think that it is what it is. Don't feel bad here. We're just a couple of people, ok?" She kissed his cheek and got up to get the cups and the teabags without a backward glance.

Which was just as well, he thought, with a quick downward look as he shifted once uncomfortably. He shifted again just after he remembered that her breasts had been against his back after a thought about when that had happened last.

She walked up the stairs again to the linen closet and returned with a comforter. The kettle was about to begin to boil from the heat of the stovetop, now a dull red. "Could you please pull the cushions off the couch - " she smiled, "sometime while my back is turned to make our tea? Just put them there on the floor so we have something to sit on under this comforter. I'll get warm faster and you'll feel better then."

And so several minutes later, they sat together under the comforter drinking tea and talking. She got up several times to make more tea, and once insisted that it was a bit unfair and that he do it just once. But by then, Ion felt much more at ease with his friend. He told her what he knew of his condition - as she seemed to call it rather insistently.

"I will have some trouble," he said, "As example, I see now that I hurt you on your ear there, and I am so sorry. But I want to say that to look at this as a man, I could accept this before, but as what I am, because I care about you, I feel that I want to lick there - to try to make it better somehow. This I can never do, and you know why. Only a little from my mouth..." He shook his head.

Besides the pleasant thought that he'd just given her, Helen thought for a moment, "Ion, how long was it after Danaya's arrival here that you found out about her?"

He looked away for a moment, remembering, "Almost a month, I think it was, but please, Elena, I think that I could tell you everything about this. I see how you try to make me feel better, but you will need to wait some time. I am not ready yet to talk about it, about everything."

She nodded, "I understand, Ion, but that wasn't why I asked. You were man and wife, right? And you had been apart for what? Three years? Did you two not even kiss each other for a month after she came?"

He looked down a bit shyly, "We kissed many, many times, Elena."

"And more, right?"

He looked up, and found her green eyes looking at him steadily, waiting, "I read your sweet promises to her in your letter."

He blushed furiously, "Yes, of course, but- "

She said, "I think I understand a bit now. This thing you have, if it's a virus, or something like that, it must be a fairly large one as these things go. It must need to be placed directly into the bloodstream through a large wound or a tear that opens the bloodstream. In any person's mouth, there are always small tiny wounds, scrapes that we make with our own teeth, things like that, all the time, but we never feel them. I'm sure that two lovers such as you were must have done much more than kiss each other on the cheek, but it wasn't until she opened up your chest there with her solid bite that you were affected with this. How long between her bite and the start of it?"

He shrugged, "Hours, Elena, and I washed the place over and over in this time with lye soap, even, and it burned. But I knew in only a few minutes. I could feel this in me even then."

He went on to give her a brief overview of what he'd felt , and she knew that he was leaving a lot of the pain out of it. Their discussions turned to her and then a bit of the future, as he said that sadly, all he knew how to be was a farmer and how to work. Helen countered that it was nothing to sneeze at, and said that if he wanted to continue this, he could now do that, if she was successful in purchasing the island, but that maybe he ought to think about the winter months and what he'd do,

"I cannot say at all, Elena. I cannot now keep cattle here, can I?"

"Maybe you can, Ion. If you can control this, you can keep enough here for fattening and private consumption. If you plant a bit more crops, we'd have plenty to survive, and wouldn't need to buy much food. I'd be proud to eat what you provide. We'd have to check about a lot of things that didn't even exist when you came here, but I'm sure that a little subsistence farming just for us isn't a problem. It's when you go commercial that you need permits and paperwork out the ass."

She looked over at him and laughed at his expression, taking his hand, "That's just a modern and not very nice way of saying it."

He looked down at her hand and smiled, "I do not think that it would be so easy. I think the cattle would be afraid of me, no matter how I look to them. Many animals can sense this. But I am happy that you came here. I cannot say how it is all possible, but thank you for only coming here."

She took her hand back and placed her other one in his as she stretched a bit to put her left one on his shoulder and leaned against him lightly, "I'm happy I came here too."

They sat like this for a long time looking at the flames in the stove. Eventually the weariness of the day's terrors got to her, and she suggested that they call it a night.

Ion said that he'd be happy to sleep on the floor or the couch, but she shook her head with a smile, "You forget that I've already watched you as you slept, Ion. The floor is right out for any friend of mine, especially you, unless you're a wolf who wants a nap on something hard like a floor. The couch is out too. What would happen if you went to sleep like this, and became the um, wolfman? One move in your sleep..."

He smiled, "And I would be on floor anyway, so you see - "

"That's why you're going to sleep in the bed, and I'll sleep down here. At least you have a chance then to get some rest." she said.

Ion was willing to go a long way for her under any circumstance - even as they were before, but this was one thing that his background and his upbringing would absolutely not permit, and after a few minutes of it, Helen had to admit that there were some things that could not be moved, the Rocky Mountains came in second in the 'Immovable' category - right after Ion's iron will on something like this.

"Please listen, Elena. We are friends, and you cannot know how this makes me feel inside. In my heart, I am nearly crying, I am so happy. But before you will sleep on the couch, I will sleep on the porch, or in the old barn with the mice. You are my friend too, and I will not let you do this. My heart will not let me."

"Fine," she said with a small smile, "then I will do what MY heart tells me to do."

It was all that she said, though he waited for her to continue. When she didn't, he asked her.

She summoned up her most adamant look, though she did try to soften it a bit, "WE, you AND me, WE are going to sleep either on the floor, or in that bed upstairs. If you insist on the floor, that's where I'll be too. You want to be stubborn about it, fine. I only hope you have enough sense to choose the bed now, though either way, it's you and me, since we're each as pig-headed as the other."

He stared at her, "But..."

"And just think, Ion," she said pointing with a smirk, "if you think THAT'S uncomfortable now with a naked woman just sitting next to you, imagine how it will be lying next to me,"

His eyes opened wide at the thought but she wasn't done, "And just so you know, I like warm, and that's another nice thing about you, so I'm gonna be about this close to you all night long." She held up her thumb and forefinger squeezed together.

He laughed then, he couldn't remember when he'd laughed like this. It had been so long. So she was smart, beautiful, AND she really could argue him into the ground, just as she'd said she could.

"I will sleep in the barn, then," he said with an evil smile.

"All right, tough guy, but that just means I'm going to be even closer to you."

His mouth fell open.

"Two reasons," she said, "I'll need you to keep me even warmer then, and I'll only feel safe from the mice if you hold me."

He threw up his hands, "I am back where I started then. I will have to sleep outside as beast."

"No, she said, reaching to pull his head to hers and kissing his lips quickly, "You will have to grow a brain and sleep in the bed with me. I don't actually want to do anything but sleep right now. I can't promise about tomorrow night, but for tonight, that's what I want."

He shook his head, "You are so beautiful, Elena, but what you want..."

Her pretty eyebrows rose, "You don't think you can sleep next to me, is that it?"

"Of course I can," he said, "I even WANT to sleep like this, but I do not think that I CAN sleep under this thick blanket here, What if I change? I did not even know that I change while I sleep. What happens then?"

She smiled with a chuckle, "Then, since I want to sleep with your arm over me, I'll be even warmer, won't I?"

"But I could... you will feel..."

"I'm sure I'll feel just fine, Ion, and I know what you're trying to say, though you're embarrassed about it. It won't bother me. But fine, you win. If you want to be that way, you get to sleep in the bed, and I'll sleep on the couch."

He was relieved. He cared about her, and as he lay in the bed, he even had a wishful hope that this could be more than an odd friendship that they shared. His eyes had been closed for several minutes before they flew open as the realization came to him that she'd gotten her way after all. He began to chuckle at himself. Elena was amazing, he thought.

"What are you laughing about?" her voice came to him from downstairs.

"I am laughing how you won this." he called to her.

"Do I have your admiration for the way that I argue?"

He laughed at himself again, "Yes! Admiration," he repeated, "you have it."

She appeared in the doorway a minute later, and his breath caught in his throat as he looked at her in the dim light of the moon, now that the storm was done.

She walked to him slowly, "I'm glad then, it feels good to have someone's admiration." she said as she sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down to kiss him, "But even though I was joking around with you, now I realize that I'd still rather have your arms around me." She slid her hand over his chest as his reached for her shoulder.

"Can I have both, the admiration and your arms?"

Ion smiled and nodded, as he moved to make room for her. She got onto the bed and pushed herself back until she was as completely against him as she could get. She turned her head, "I was still a little cold."