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Tommy tells the story. The campfire has burned low, casting Steve and Tommy and Carol in a red-orange glow where they sit around the pit, empty beer cans littering the ground.
“You ever heard of the monster of the Black Woods?” Tommy asks.
“The what?” Carol asks, and Tommy smiles like a shark, staring at Steve over the fire. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Steve has images of Tommy’s mouth on his neck, his hands around Steve’s waist while he dry humps him from behind, muttering ‘we can’t do this anymore’ over and over even as he shoves his hand down Steve’s jeans.
‘We can’t do this anymore.’ Like Steve is ever the one who starts it.
“Don’t listen to him, Carol. He’s just trying to get in your pants. Scare your date, get them close, get them naked. It’s a classic move.”
“Like he has to scare me to do that,” Carol says with a smirk and a raunchy giggle, throwing back the rest of her beer.
“What’s the matter, Steve? Afraid you’ll have nightmares all alone in your tent?”
“He could share ours.” Carol waggles her brows, and Steve feels his cheeks go even more flushed as he rolls his eyes.
“You’re drunk, Carol.”
“And you’re pretty.”
“Well fuck me then, right?” Tommy feigns offense, but he’s grinning and his eyes say Steve really could do it. Crawl in their tent. Have them both. Pretend it was just the beer and Carol’s tits that lured him in. Nothing gay about fucking a guy if there’s a girl there, right?
If it was someone other than Tommy, Steve might even do it. But ever since Nancy, something with Tommy soured in, leaving a taste in Steve’s mouth he’s never quite gotten out.
“I’ll take my chances with the monster.”
Carol turns her eyes to Tommy, batting her lashes. “Where’s my scary story, stud?”
Tommy’s grin widens. He snags his flashlight and shines it under his chin. “You know they say if you found all the people who’ve ever died or gone missing in the Black Woods, you’d need a bus to get them home.”
“Double decker,” Steve adds, taking a swig of beer, already bored by the story he’s heard a hundred times. They used to tell variations in Scouts. And he’s heard it on about a dozen other camping trips, some of those trips involving Tommy and other girls he was trying to run the bases with when he and Carol were off again. (A couple of times even when they were on.)
“Double decker.” Tommy nods. “The most recent sighting was in, what? Eighty-one?” Tommy pokes the campfire with a stick, sending their last half-burnt log toppling, sparks flying up into the night air. “Four teenagers just like us came out here to drink and suck and fuck, and then it all went wrong. They were some of the lucky ones—all of them made it back to Indy alive, but they were in bad shape. Said there was something out here, something with claws and teeth and black eyes. From a distance, they said, it looks almost human. Until you realize it isn’t. By the time you realize that, you’re usually a lot closer to it than you wanna be.”
Tommy mimes claws with his fingers before diving at Carol’s belly, tickling her just enough to make her laugh. Steve’s busy watching them with dry amusement when they all hear a loud crack off in the trees somewhere close by. Carol squeals.
“What was that?”
“Widow maker finally fell.” Steve shrugs. “It happens.”
“Widow maker?”
“It’s what they call it when a tree branch falls but gets stuck on the way down.” Tommy runs his fingers through her hair. “Big thing’s just hanging there waiting for some poor bastard to set his tent up underneath. If it falls…” Tommy drags his thumb across his neck, and Carol immediately looks up over their head.
“Oh, Steve always checks. Don’t you, Steve?”
“Dying isn’t really my idea of a good campout.”
“You sure you don’t wanna bunk with us tonight?” Tommy asks, eyes tracking down Steve’s body.
“Plenty of room,” Carol says.
“Honestly, I think I’m close to passing out.” Steve looks at the beer in his hand. “I’ll be fine. Scream loud if the monster shows. I’d love to meet it.”
“You said it’s killed people?” Carol asks.
“Oh yeah. Some grizzly scenes out here, babe. Some people had to be identified with dental records or bits of fingerprints. Nothing else left.” Tommy winks at Steve and stands up, offering Carol his hand. “Come on. I’ll hold you close, keep you safe.”
“I’m sure you will,” Carol lets him pull her up and into him, his hand immediately straying to her ass, kneading it through her jeans.
“Night, Steve,” Tommy says. “Come find us if you get scared.”
“Or bored.” Carol smiles at him.
“Night.” Steve gives them a lazy wave and watches them disappear into their tent, pawing at each other as they crawl inside.
Steve ignores all the sounds they make while he sips at his beer and watches the fire burn lower and lower, the coals glowing and flickering. Camp TV is what his old Scoutmaster called it. Steve inhales the smell of woodsmoke and lets the quiet dance of it all lull him into a pleasant daze.
At some point, he must doze off, the sound of another large crack jolting him awake.
“Fuck.” He rubs at both of his arms through his yellow sweater, the fire long gone and the night air cold. He’s got his good sleeping bag in his tent—expensive and stuffed with goose down. The only problem is he pitched a ways away from Carol and Tommy, anticipating them being loud. It’s a short walk. Thirty yards or so, but there are trees and Steve doesn’t exactly have the Black Woods memorized.
He looks up.
The moon is full, but the clouds are thick and Steve can’t see shit. He gropes at the ground around his chair looking for his flashlight, wondering how long he was out. Long enough for Carol and Tommy to have finished their usual three or four rounds, Tommy snoring like a freight train being fucked by Godzilla.
Where the hell is…? Steve keeps feeling around his chair, fingers halting on beer bottles and beer cans, skirting over dead leaves.
“Seriously?” After Steve finds a thick stick for the second time, he grabs it and tosses it away from him. He doesn’t hear it hit the ground.
“Missing something, Steve?”
Steve jumps hard enough to topple his chair, rolling into the leaf litter.
“Who’s there?” Steve asks, right as the clouds part just enough to let a sliver of light through the night. A man stands a few feet away, Steve’s flashlight in his hand, a hand ending in…
No.
Not…
Steve breathes in through his nose, brain already rejecting the notion of something with claws that long and spindly. It’s the weekend before Halloween, and it has to be a prank. Tommy probably put one of the guys from their old basketball team up to it. Steve squints at the guy’s face.
“Very funny. The Black Woods Monster. Ha ha.” Steve stands up. “Look, I can’t tell who you are and I don’t care. I just wanna crawl in my tent and get warm, dude.”
The man takes a step closer, Steve’s flashlight dangling loosely at his side.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” A sniff of the air. “Your friends fucked hard. I’m surprised you slept through some of it.”
“They usually do. You get used to it.”
“They wanted you.”
“They…” Steve shakes his head. “Yeah, I know.”
“Complicated, huh? I get it.” Another step towards Steve. Steve finds himself stepping backwards on instinct, backing away until he hits a large tree. The man takes that opportunity to catch up. On some level, Steve knows he’s too fast to be human, but he shakes off that thought as nonsense and tries to keep his breathing even while the thing—the man—gets into his personal space. “You didn’t fuck them, but it’s not because you don’t want to fuck something.”
“I…”
“You’re lonely,” he says. “It’s dripping off you like syrup. I could smell it for miles, Steve. Miiiles.”
Steve sucks in a trembling breath right around the time that the clouds fully open up, lighting up the forest and the thing that stands before Steve. It’s like one of those dreams where he wants to scream but nothing comes out.
“Oh God.”
Its eyes are inky black just like the stories. So are the tips of its fingers where they give way into those long, sharp claws.
“Oh shit, fuck.”
“Easy. I’m not gonna hurt you.” The thing smiles, showing two rows of jagged teeth. “Unless you want me to.”
“Wh-what?”
“She was right, you know. You are very, very pretty.” A claw runs down Steve’s cheek, making him shudder. “Do you know what I like to do with pretty things, Steve?”
“Please.”
“Correct.”
“I don’t wanna die.”
A deep sigh. “Steve, I’ve never killed anyone.”
“No?”
“No.” A shake of it’s head, its long, dark curls moving with it.
“Then what do you want?”
“I thought that was pretty obvious,” it says, claw running softly down Steve’s chest, raising goosebumps on Steve’s back and arms. “I want to lick that lonely smell right off your pretty skin.”
“You…”
“If you need it more blunt than that, Steve, I want to suck and fuck you until you cry. In a good way.”
Steve’s heart stutters in his chest. His dick twitches in his jeans, and wait—when the hell did that happen?
“What if I say no?”
“Then I give you this flashlight back and you crawl in your tent and convince yourself in the morning that this was all a weird dream.” The monster shrugs. “And hopefully you sometimes regret that you didn’t fuck me in that weird dream, and you jerk off to thoughts of what might have been. But honestly that’s my own little fantasy playing itself out, isn’t it?”
“And if I say yes?”
The monster smiles wide, all those dangerous teeth shining in the moonlight. “The reason men sometimes go missing in these woods isn’t because I kill them. It’s because they don’t wanna leave.” An inky black eye winks at Steve. Steve glances toward Tommy and Carol’s tent. He could make a run for it, see if the thing comes after him.
He could say no and scream and hope…
He could…
He stares into those deep black eyes, and he knows he should be afraid. He’s heard all the stories, hasn’t he? It’s just…
He really is lonely, isn’t he? Nancy dumped him because of his douchebag friends and nothing has been good since.
“Do I need—I have condoms in my bag.”
“Need? No. But I respect it if you want to.” The monster rakes its claws down Steve’s arm. “God, I hope that means you’re considering it.”
“I might be,” Steve says, body starting to shiver again as the fear wears away into curiosity and want. The monster tuts and rubs at Steve’s cold arms.
“I’ve got a fire going. A nice, warm place to lay you down in.” Something sharp circles one of Steve’s nipples through the fabric of his sweater. “Nothing happens you don’t want. Scout’s honor.” Three claws form the Scout salute, and Steve snorts.
“Show me?”
“Oh, I’d love to. Question though… When’s the last time someone gave you a piggyback ride?”
“Is that a euphe—?” The monster turns around and shows Steve its back. “Oh, you’re serious.”
“Fastest way to get there. Ride me and I’ll ride you back,” the monster says. “And that is a euphemism.”
Steve glances at Tommy and Carol’s tent and wonders if he should say something before he goes. What though? I’m going to go fuck the Black Woods Monster. Be right back.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Steve takes a small run and hops up onto the monster’s back. They’re gone in a flash after that, trees flying by in a blur, the monster leaping over and clearing thick clumps of brush. They’ve been traveling for maybe a full minute when the monster slows to a stop outside of a cave, several fur pelts covering the entrance.
“Home sweet home.” The monster sweeps the furs aside to reveal the interior, all furnished with furs and found things. There’s a broken lawn chair repaired with bits of vine. Old paint buckets form tables. Piles of fur make a bed near a roaring fire. Steve immediately makes a beeline for the fireplace carved into the wall, warming his hands by the flames.
“Sorry, I…”
“Take your time,” the monster says, and Steve finally turns to look at it in the warm glow of the cave.
Oh.
It—he? He should be terrifying. Should be. With those black-tipped fingers and claws long enough to kill. With those jagged teeth and black eyes. With that whipcord tail like a long black vine tipped with a rounded barb.
But the monster also has long brown curls and a tiny waist. He’s nude—something Steve’s very surprised he didn’t pick up on back at camp, so surprised that he wonders if the monster has some kind of magic. Steve tries to picture how he’d looked below the neck and can’t fill in anything but the hands.
Here in the firelight, his skin is pale except for where he’s tattooed, all of the designs rough and black. Steve stares at a large deer skull inked onto his chest.
“Stick and poke with wood ash and pure spring water. This one hurt like a bitch.” The monster points to flowers nestled into the dark curls between his legs, and Steve darts his gaze away. He hears a tongue tutting against teeth. “Oh please don’t be all modest when you’re literally here to get fucked. I want you to stare, Steve. See anything you like?”
Steve slowly looks at the monster again, eyes tracking down his chest and stomach to stare at the hard, thick thing resting in that bed of dark curls. It’s not like any cock Steve has ever seen. It’s intimidatingly large for one thing, vaguely resembling an uncircumcised dick with tons more ridges. It’s also tinged charcoal black at the head just like the monster’s fingers.
“What do you think? Be honest.”
“It’s different.”
“But you’re so bored with the same old things, aren’t you? You reek of that too. Longing for something else.”
Steve frowns at the truth of it. He graduated in the spring and took that lower level job at his dad’s business, and he’s felt off ever since—shot through with this feeling like he fucked up somewhere, turned left when he should’ve turned right, something.
The monster moves to stand before him next to the fire, dragging the back of one knuckle across Steve’s bottom lip. “This is so obviously a line, but I’m saying it anyway. You’ll get warm faster if you’re naked.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing you aren’t comfortable with, Steve. But I want to see you. Just how many more of those freckles and moles do you have?”
“A lot.”
“Good.”
Steve licks his lips and keeps staring at the monster’s cock, noting that the tip is pulsating slightly, the hole at the end widening and narrowing in a way that tantalizes Steve deep into his bones.
“Does it…?” Steve trails off.
“Ask your question, pretty baby.”
“I don’t know what my question is exactly.”
“I see.” The monster carefully takes Steve’s hand and guides it to his erection, wrapping Steve’s fingers around it. “Touch then. Explore. Whatever you want.”
Steve lets his hand slowly move from root to tip, feeling along experimentally. So many bumps and ridges. “It’s rougher than…” Something occurs to Steve like lightning in a blue sky. He looks the monster in the eyes. “Do you like being called a monster?”
“Hmm?”
“Like, what do you call yourself?” Steve keeps touching while they talk, feeling, letting his mind run wild. “Monster’s our word, isn’t it? But not yours.”
“Eddie.”
“Eddie?”
“I call myself Eddie. I don’t know what I am or where I’m from because who remembers being a baby, right? But there was a group of campers a long time ago. Eddie was one of them. I liked Eddie.”
“Did you fuck him?” Steve asks.
“Yes.”
Steve nods and finally lets go of Eddie’s dick, reaching for the hem of his sweater, dragging it up over his head along with the white tee he’s wearing underneath. Eddie stares openly, black eyes tracing the lines and planes of Steve’s body. He reaches out clawed fingers to touch and scrape along Steve’s ribs, each touch sharp enough to raise red lines, though Eddie doesn’t break the skin.
Still, Steve has a feeling if he asked him to…
Staring into the pitch dark abyss of Eddie’s eyes, Steve pops open the button of his jeans, pushing them down before he can think too much about it. He’s not wearing underwear. He rarely does when he’s not at work. He likes the way his dick bulges when it’s unconfined. He likes catching the stares of strangers—the blushing looks of women, the furtive glances of men right before they adjust themselves in their own clothing. Everyone.
He stares at Eddie longer. Everyone and everything.
It feels safe to admit it to himself here in Eddie’s cave, miles away from civilization, from anyone who might react to the notion of Steve being attracted to more than just women.
Steve kicks off his shoes and steps out of his pants.
“There really are so many of them.” Eddie yet again uses the back of a knuckle to touch him, running it over one of Steve’s more prominent moles, letting it catch and drag over the raised spot. “Like a night sky in reverse.”
“I want you,” Steve says, raw and honest. Not that he could’ve kept it secret anyway, not bare like this, not with his own cock hard and dribbling.
“Come here.”
Unafraid and obedient, Steve steps closer, relief washing down his spine when Eddie wraps a clawed hand around the back of his neck and tugs him in for a kiss.
At the sight of those jagged teeth, Steve feels a brief spike of something like the distant cousin of fear—the kind of thrill he gets from a scary movie or from cresting the top of a rollercoaster. He mentally throws his hands in the air and sails along with gravity, his lips meeting Eddie’s, his tongue finding Eddie’s—too long, strangely rough and bumpy like Eddie’s cock.
Once upon a time, Tommy licked Steve wet and sloppy, tongue darting inside of him.
‘I read if you finger a guy’s ass, you can make him shoot off super hard.’
Steve had groaned himself hoarse that night.
As Eddie easily licks the back of his throat, he wonders…
Eddie pulls back. “You’re thinking so loud, Steve. What are you thinking about?”
It’s so easy to answer. “You eating me out with that tongue.”
“I can.”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re good for me.”
“Tell me how,” Steve says. “Tell me how to be good.” God he wants to, doesn’t he? To be good for Eddie, for this thing that found him in the woods and coveted him enough to approach.
Eddie nods slowly, assessing him, circling him like a hawk. Steve feels a sharp claw slide down the cleft of his ass and carefully scrape at his rim, his stance shifting wider while the claw keeps sliding, gently scratching at his balls. Always enough to entice, never enough to hurt.
“Fuck,” Steve gasps, breath hitching and drawing the word into two syllables.
“Lay down.”
Steve drops onto the furs nearby, Eddie lowering his own body down, pushing Steve’s legs apart so he can kneel between them.
“Show me how much you want me.”
“How?”
“Touch yourself, pretty baby.” Eddie licks his gray-tinged lips with that massive tongue. “Rub yourself like I’m your favorite fantasy.”
Steve grabs hold of his cock with a sigh of relief, staring at those dark eyes—twin black moons set into a handsome face.
Almost human in appearance, the stories always said. Almost.
And what an almost it is.
Steve jerks himself like he means it, his other hand finding his chest, pulling one nipple between his fingers and pinching it hard before going for the other.
He doesn’t hold back. No one can hear him groaning besides Eddie. No one is going to judge him for saying it feels good.
“You’ve been eaten out before?” Eddie asks, absently rubbing at his own cock.
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“Just tongues and fingers. I’ve never…”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to if you don’t wanna.”
“I’ve wondered but I don’t…”
“In your own time, Steve. Keep going. Is it nice?”
“Yes, but…” Steve closes his eyes and can almost see Eddie’s tongue circling his cock, dipping low to push inside of him. He jerks off with a frenzy at those images, eyes flying open in surprise when he feels hands wrap around his ankles, pushing them up until Steve’s legs are in the air, bent at the knees.
He’s exposed, everything on display for Eddie.
“Keep going,” Eddie says, winking at him and sliding that massive tongue all along Steve’s crack and rim, laving all the way up to his balls, that textured tongue curling around one and then the other before sliding slimy-wet back to his hole.
“You taste like a wet dream, Steve.”
“Do you have those?”
“I do, and they’re messier than yours. Much messier.”
Steve feels his cheeks flush red hot at the implication. The tip of Eddie’s tongue teases inside of him—slick, so slick.
Eddie pushes deeper, reaching up to grab onto Steve’s wrist, forcing him to slow his strokes to a pace that’s almost too teasing to bear, Steve’s hips bucking up off the furs in an attempt to fuck into his fist.
Eddie’s other hand stops that too, tongue burrowing deeper all the while, swirling and flicking and—
Steve moans softly when Eddie hits home, his tongue licking at a consistent back and forth pressure that builds up deep.
“Oh God,” Steve groans roughly. He feels Eddie’s pleased hum against his hole, and Eddie guides his hand back into a frenzied speed. The rocky ceiling of the cave blurs in the firelight glow.
“I’m…”
Eddie stops so fast it gives Steve whiplash, tongue pulling out of him, hand around Steve’s wrist moving to pin it above his head. He blinks up at Eddie, not entirely sure how he got on top of him, only that he has.
“Wha—why?”
Eddie shushes him, backs of his knuckles stroking affectionately at Steve’s cheek.
“It’s okay, pretty baby. Just something for both of us now.” Eddie reaches down and takes his own cock in his hand. “Fuck, I’m close just from the goddamn smell of you.”
Steve stares between them, Eddie lining the tip of his cock up with the tip of Steve’s. Steve’s eyes go wide as Eddie pushes them together, that pulsating hole opening wider to make room for Steve to slip inside, Eddie sheathing Steve’s cock with his own.
It’s wet in there, wet and ridged and so tight Steve lets out a little choking sound.
“Fuck.”
When Eddie’s swallowed Steve all the way up, he wraps a clawed fist around himself and starts to stroke. Steve can feel it through Eddie’s skin. At the same time, he can feel fluttering around him. It’s vaguely—but also nothing like—being with a girl.
The worst (best?) of it all is the soft sucking feeling, like Eddie’s body is trying to draw him in deeper and deeper.
“Oh my God.”
“You feel so good, Steve.” Eddie rocks his hips, making his cock fuck onto Steve’s—tiny motions that sure as hell don’t feel tiny for how fucking good they are.
“Can you feel your…?”
“Yes.”
Steve curls his hand over Eddie’s and helps him jerk them both off, helps him force his cock to move up and down over Steve’s. Their moans mingle hot in the air between them, tearing through the night, echoing off the walls of the cave.
“I’m gonna come all over you, Steve.”
“What happens if I do? Inside?”
“A mess, baby. A really, really pretty one.”
“Eddie.” Steve’s eyes water with the effort to hold back when he feels Eddie’s whipcord tail sliding up his inner thigh. “No,” Steve gasps like someone who doesn’t expect to get a bike for Christmas finding something distinctly bike-shaped beneath the tree. “I mean yes, but you aren’t gonna… Are you? Gonna?”
“I can if you want.”
“Please.”
The tip of the tail is flared but not sharp. With Steve still slick from Eddie’s tongue-fucking, the tip of his tail goes in easy, that flared end gliding across Steve’s most sensitive spot until he feels like he might pass out
“Eddie.” Steve says it like a desperate prayer, one choked out in the final hour. When he comes, he’s still praying—Eddie’s name over and over again, creamy-white leaking from the place where the two of them meet, pooling at the base of Steve’s cock in a warm puddle.
“God,” Steve grits out, Eddie still stroking himself even while Steve softens inside of him. He feels the tail leave him, whipping out. He knows from the motion of it that Eddie immediately shoves it into himself, fucking it deep into his own hole.
“Holy shit,” Steve breathes.
Eddie nods like a bobblehead, voice strained. “Holy shit,” he agrees. And then he throws his head back, a guttural moan echoing off the walls.
There’s so much come, it’s unreal. It leaks out in viscous streams, pudding on Steve’s lower belly, spilling over his hips and between his legs to pool on the furs beneath.
For several minutes, there’s only the sound of panting breaths. He finds Eddie’s hand resting on his stomach and grips it tightly.
“Is this one night only?” Steve asks, already imagining another time. A time where he lets Eddie inside of him, all that come filling him up, dripping out of him like water overflowing a bath. “Can I come back?”
“Oh, you can come back.” Eddie says it with blissed-out enthusiasm, spreading his body over Steve’s with zero heed for the come, for the way it’s slick and flesh-warm between their sticky skin.
“Good.” Steve tangles his fingers in Eddie’s curls, tugging Eddie’s mouth to his, kissing him softly this time. It’s languid, Steve carefully exploring the textured ridges of Eddie’s massive tongue before tasting each sharp point of his teeth.
Playfully, Eddie nips at his bottom lip. Steve can taste the faintest hint of iron before Eddie moans and sucks that lip into his mouth.
It slips free with a quiet pop.
“I think I know the answer,” Steve says, “but hypothetically…”
“Mhm?”
“Hypothetically, if you fucked me, that would feel good?”
“Yes. Inside. Outside. It’s all good for me, Steve.”
“If I put my fingers into…”
“Yes. Your cock, your fingers, anything.”
Anything.
Steve swallows, combing through Eddie’s damp curls with his hand. “If I come back, how do I find you?”
“I know your scent now. If you’re out here, I’ll come to you.” Eddie’s claws skim softly across Steve’s scalp. Steve hums appreciatively at the feeling—better than fingernails. But all of Eddie’s better than any human, isn’t it?
That’s the real reason Steve agreed to all this in the first place if he’s being honest with himself.
“You know you’re the prettiest boy I’ve ever had in my bed,” Eddie says, knuckles trailing through the mess between them before pressing it to Steve’s lips.
It’s a heady taste. Steve sucks it from Eddie’s skin, lapping it off the place where pale flesh fades into black, fascinated by the change in tone. By the rough tattoo hidden between the creases of Eddie’s fingers.
“How do you hold a needle?” Steve asks.
“I don’t.” Eddie wiggles his claws.
“Oh.” And just like that, Steve wants a tattoo when he’s never wanted one before in his life. He could sit still while Eddie straddled him and inked something right on his rib cage, one of those claws gently poking into his skin over and over again.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Eddie says. “I’ll clean you up and take you back. You wanna share any?”
“Share?” Steve watches Eddie kiss down his chest, his tongue licking through the puddle of come smeared on Steve’s stomach. “Oh.” A shaky breath. “Fuck. Yeah, I…”
It takes several minutes, Eddie making passes up and down his skin, mouthing at his chest, nipping at him, kissing him with sloppy mouthfuls until Steve’s not sure he’s ever known a better taste than Eddie and him, mingled together.
“Sorry about…” Steve gestures at the matted furs beneath them before Eddie pulls him to his feet and offers him his sweater.
“Don’t be.” Eddie smiles at him before leaning in to softly kiss his jaw. “You’re worth a little laundry. You’re worth a hell of a lot of laundry actually.”
The first hints of dawn have started to color the horizon when Steve steps out of the cave into the chilly morning. He wants to go back into the warmth immediately. Instead he lets Eddie carry him back to camp, putting him down quietly next to his tent.
Eddie waits there to make sure Steve gets inside safely. He’s not satisfied until Steve’s in his sleeping bag toasty and warm. .
“Sleep well, Steve.”And then he’s gone, Steve’s flashlight abandoned in the vestibule.
Steve dozes happily. Until Carol and Tommy wake and show up swearing about packing up and getting somewhere warm.
Steve goes back the next week and the next and the next after that.
He learns he likes to be bitten and scratched, that he likes Eddie’s skin under his fingernails too. He learns he likes how it feels to have Eddie’s cock suckling desperately at his fingers while Eddie moans his name.
He learns he loves when Eddie comes inside of him, those massive loads filling him up and dripping down his thighs when Eddie takes him against one of the cave walls, the stone scraping deliciously at his back. He learns that Eddie can fit both his dick and his tail inside of him at the same time, and that when Eddie says ‘I’m fucking my hole inside of you,’ right in his ear, he’ll practically black out from just how hot it is.
But not everything Steve learns is sexy beyond his wildest dreams.
He also learns he likes waking up wrapped in Eddie’s limbs and Eddie’s smell. That he likes the way it feels when Eddie kisses each one of his freckles and moles, every touch of his lips as delicate as petals raining from a cherry tree.
One day, Steve wakes up with Eddie curled around him like a sloth, and he realizes the cave feels more like home than the Harrington house ever has.
“I love you, Stevie,” Eddie mutters, slurred and sleepy.
Stevie. And that’s how Steve realizes he’s completely gone on a monster. His monster.
His Eddie.
“I love you too.” They’re the easiest words Steve’s ever said. He goes home with his mind made up.
A week later—three weeks before Halloween, Steve goes back to the woods one more time. Eddie eyes the luggage he has with him—a bigger duffel than usual slung over Steve’s torso, the strap digging deep into his shoulder.
“Steve?” Eddie looks between him and the bag.
“You said a long time ago that sometimes people went missing out here because they stayed with you.”
Eddie shakes his head. “That was a lie,” he says. “Something I said trying to seduce the prettiest camper I’d ever seen. People go missing for the same reasons people go missing in any woods, none of which have anything to do with me. Thing is, Steve, people share my bed for a little while, but they never stick around. They always go back, find real people to settle down with and live with and…” Eddie clears his throat.
Steve looks at him, this wild thing amongst the trees. He looks at his claws and teeth and soft cock, at his pretty curls and homemade chicken scratch tattoos.
At his midnight black eyes and all the love and hope they still manage to express.
A year ago, Steve had felt off balance in his life, like he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
He knows now. He knows exactly where his life is.
“And if I want to settle down with you?”
Eddie takes a slow step forward, carefully pulling the bag off Steve’s shoulder to slip it onto his own.
“I’d say let’s go home, Stevie.”
Eddie offers him his hand. Steve takes it.