Toxic Hearts

[Kang Taebin]

What the fuck was taking so long?

Josh paced up and down in front of his apartment building, arms crossed and a sour look on his face. He'd been waiting for half a freaking hour and Rae still hadn't shown up. If he was taking so long just to say goodbye to that little rat shifter he was dating, Josh was going to hunt the little pest down and have him for a snack on the next full moon.

What did he see in that cripple anyway? What did Aldon see in Ryland Ren?

Ugh. Right. "Love." Disgusting. Josh was determined to never, ever fall into that trap--he saw how much of a fool love made out of his best friends and he wanted no part of that. Besides, he liked his lifestyle. It was an indescribable high, albeit one which he needed to constantly chase. Sometimes... it was tiring. But most of the time he reveled in that vicious sense of victory, whenever he managed to have his way with someone. Especially someone already in a relationship--there was no point chasing the easy target, was there?

But what didn't please him was the fact that it was nearly forty-five minutes before Rae's car came into view, and the first thing that Josh did was poke his head in through the passenger's side window to hiss, "You're fucking late, asshole!" He slung his bag into the back seat, slid into the front passenger's seat and slammed the door hard.

"What took you so long?! I could've slept in for another hour if I'd known that you were going to be this late!"

[Reagan Ryang]

"Well fuck me," he said casually in response to all Josh's snarling and thumping around. "Maybe you should've slept in if you're gonna go full tilt at me. Fuck."

Swearing just sort of happened, especially when it came to Josh. The words just slipped out, mostly because Josh sort of warranted them. It wasn't like Rae was cursing at Alva all the time--he had no fucking reason to. Alva was perfectly sweet. He was like the anti-venom to all of the toxicity that was Josh.

Sometimes, Rae wondered if Josh got the worst end of their feral stick. After all, Rae and Aldon could be perfectly fucking civil half the time. Josh was like... extra dosed with that genetic defect or some shit.

Rae's tires squealed as he turned the car abruptly onto the street and sped toward the highway.

"Feel free to get some sleep on the drive there, sweetheart. You need plenty of beauty sleep."

[Kang Taebin]

Josh was very civil--to people who didn't make him wait almost an hour, without any word. Not even a text, this fucker. In response to the slew of curses, he lifted his feet up and propped them onto the dash, just to piss Rae off. Which didn't work so well for him when the car jerked suddenly, as they shot away from the curb like a bat out of hell.

"Do you even know how to drive like a normal person?"

He didn't even have time to put on the seatbelt! On it went, although he doubted that it would do any good. Rae was a freaking psycho behind the wheel and if Josh's car hadn't been in the shop, he would've insisted on driving. Hell, he might have tried to drive Rae's car too, but he didn't feel like initiating a fight to the literal death at 1 in the afternoon.

"I'm very beautiful, shut your mouth." Josh reached up to facetiously smooth down his hair. "You're lucky I even let myself be seen in public with you, loser." His scornful gaze raked over Rae, over his pretentious punk hairdo and his... Well he had a nice body and nice arms, that Josh wasn't going to deny, but his attitude. Yech. That was enough to keep Josh far, faaaar away. He couldn't stand the stink of an asshole--literally and figuratively.

"And would you slow the hell down? Are you in a hurry? Is your hair on fire?" He reached over to flick at Rae's hair--probably not a good idea, since Rae was driving. "Not that it couldn't do with a little mowing."

[Reagan Ryang]

The answer to that question was a resounding no. Rae didn't know how to drive like a normal person. Technically, he shouldn't even be driving right now--he was supposed to go back to driving school to get his license back but fuck the police. Seriously. He wasn't listening to the man. Humans were stupid creatures, thinking they could fuck with the supernatural.

Not that they knew exactly. Rae didn't transform and maul the officer who gave him the ticket although he wanted to. He thought about it, too. Just leaping through the window and snatching the man's throat and ripping it out.

He blamed thoughts like on the feral blood running in his veins. It was easier than caving to the idea that he was seriously fucked up in the head.

"Oh? So that's why we're going into the mountains?" he asked. "To be seen in public?"

He wished Alva could have gone. Or at least Aldon. Even Roe would have been better company. Being alone with his worst friend was like... he didn't even know. They were weird friends. With a friend like Josh, he didn't need enemies.

Batting at Josh's errant hand, he swerved slightly on the road, tires squealing slightly as he righted himself.

"No. And I'll cut it when I feel like it."

[Kang Taebin]

"Jackass, you know what I mean." Trying to be smart. Hmph. Obviously they weren't going into the mountains, to a secluded cabin--owned by Josh's oh-so-wealthy parents--just to be seen by no one. Actually he didn't even know why he was going. Oh, right--because if he didn't, Aldon was going to bring Ryland around, because this was the glued-to-the-hips phase that they always went through, each time they made up. Did he want to sit in a cabin and be pissed off at Rae all weekend, or did he want to sit around various places downtown and be pissed off at Aldon, Ryland, Rae and Alva all weekend?

Honestly, Josh should have gone alone. He side-eyed Rae. If Rae didn't have the only working car between them...

"Oh my god, watch the road! No wonder they revoked your license, you're a freaking maniac!" This time he didn't flick Rae's hair, he punched him in the arm for driving all over the road. "We're going to die before we even get there." Great. Now he was stuck for 2 hours with a guy who drove like he couldn't see straight. Josh slumped down in his seat and bonked the side of his head against the window in agonized defeat.

"If we die, I'm going to come back and kill you in the next life."

[Reagan Ryang]

Rae laughed, even as he swerved again. Not on purpose--he was punched and he hoped--betted--it hurt Josh more than it hurt him. He grinned even as he righted the vehicle again. It was going to be a long drive if they bickered like this the whole way but Rae saw it as a different form of friendship.

"Better make it interesting, then."

If he was going to die, he wanted to go out in a blaze. Besides, if he killed Josh while driving, chances were high that Rae himself would be dead, too. They would go out together in a blaze of speed.

"You can drive in an hour," he said, mostly because he doubted he could sustain his speed for the entire trip and partly because he didn't fucking want to drive the full two hours.

[Kang Taebin]

"Shut up." Irritable though his tone was, Josh's lips twitched. Damnit. It was hard to be mad at a guy who laughed like that in the face of danger--like a completely deranged maniac. He didn't actually know what was wrong with Rae. Sometimes innocent things riled him up; other times full-on death threats made him giggle. Maybe it was the feral genes. Maybe they scrambled his brains or something. Lord if Josh knew!

Somewhat appeased by the offer to take over the wheel, Josh stopped trying to physically assault him. "Jerk," he muttered sullenly, sinking down in his seat and getting somewhat more comfortable. A few moments of relative peace passed before Josh spoke again, this time in a civil tone. See? He could be civil--when Rae wasn't pushing his buttons.

"I'm surprised you didn't bring your little boyfriend along. Isn't he always clinging around your legs, everywhere you go? He's not stuffed in the trunk, is he?"

[Reagan Ryang]

Alva was kinda the reason he was late in the first place. They had been dating for five years, which was practically an eternity next to anybody else he knew. Most people would have grown bored at this point. That or they would have just gone and tied the knot because it was what, seven years before a couple became tethered to one another by default in the eyes of the law?

Not that Rae gave two shits about the law.

Things with Alva were weird and complicated and he loathed talking about him with Josh. He never had a nice thing to say about either Alva or Ryland and he guessed rightly so. Before Alva, Rae used to ridicule the little shifters too. They weren't the same as they were, even as wolves went. Little foxes, little clever, quick foxes.

Rae would be a dead man if it weren't for Alva though. That sort of gave a person a different view. He didn't expect Josh to understand that.

"He knows I'm gonna end up swinging from branches and jumping into the river and I don't think he wants to watch."

Rae didn't say the rest of it--that he himself didn't want to leave Alva alone or with Josh. Alva was just better where he was. The cabin in the woods with Josh? Josh and Alva weren't exactly close and Rae didn't feel like playing referee.

"I'm surprised you don't have some ass to bring along. Now what're you going to do with your morning wood?"

[Kang Taebin]

"I don't want to watch you swinging from trees like a goddamn monkey either. Last time you and Aldon almost cracked your heads on that rock."

There was a rock just barely submerged under the water that neither of them saw, and both of them decided to swing towards the same place. If they had gone another foot towards it, both of them would be dead by now and... Well, Josh would have to waste the time and energy into finding new friends. No thanks.

Truthfully, Rae and Aldon were the only two people that he felt remotely close to--people that he could trust not only because they shared a terrible affliction but because on some level, they all accepted one another. None of them were exactly nice people--and that didn't matter. They still stuck with each other, through thick and thin.

Unsurprisingly, Josh didn't have many friends. His haughty attitude drove a lot of people off. The ones he slept with tended to be in relationships, and therefore were obvious dead ends. Maybe he was trying to compensate for the love he never got from his parents, by chasing anything that moved, but he didn't feel like that was a problem. So what if he broke hearts left and right? Everyone who slept with him chose to do it; he didn't put guns to people's heads. And if they chose to fall to temptation and allowed themselves to be seduced then they weren't faithful to begin with. Simple as that.

"I think I'll be okay. Thanks for all the concern, Rae," he said loftily, if sarcastically. "I mean you haven't fucked anybody in five years and here you are. Two days won't kill me."

How the hell did Rae even do it? That miserable cripple couldn't possibly satisfy a guy like Rae--a guy who, previous to meeting that useless lump, used to be... desirable. Josh might have harbored some secret little fantasies about him, once. He might have started to develop a bit of a crush. Then Alva came along and reduced Rae to a pathetic sack of crap; it was unbearable to watch a once-virile man confined to a sexless relationship. Handjobs and blowjobs? Those couldn't possibly satisfy him and anything he said was simply to save face, Josh was sure.

But more so than the fact that both Ryland and Alva turned his best friends into angsting teenagers... They stole them from him. There was a reason that Josh was so nasty towards them; a reason why his tongue was extra sharp around them, why he was cruel and unrestrained in his obvious animosity.

Rae and Aldon turned into different people with them and Josh felt like he was always on the outside whenever they all had occasion to be together. His best friends were too busy making eyes at their lovers, too busy to hang out or go out with him and he... He missed them. He felt lonely without them.

Of course, that was utterly pathetic and he would never admit as such.

[Reagan Ryang]

"At least we took the chance."

He would rather jump and take the chance than sit safely on the sidelines watching other people. Alva didn't have a choice, though. All he could do was watch from the sidelines while everybody else lived their lives but that didn't make him some pathetic cripple. Just because he was paralyzed from the waist down didn't make him useless. Rae couldn't stand useless people so that said it all, didn't it?

"Where the fuck are you getting this idea that I haven't fucked in five years? Like who the fuck is telling you this shit?"

Seriously! Just because a man was crippled from the waist down didn't make him useless, how many times was he going to waste his breath trying to explain that to Josh? Alva could show his affection for him in a number of ways. The whole dick to hole thing wasn't the end-all/be-all of sex, as far as he was concerned.

[Kang Taebin]

Josh rolled his eyes in a clear indication of scorn. Taking a chance was different than having a death wish and with how Rae carried on, he was definitely headed towards an early grave.

Not that it bothered Josh or kept him up at nights. That was Alva's job.

He scoffed openly, too, at Rae's defensive response and looked over at him with pity clear as day on his face. "Oh please. What you and that cripple have can't possibly be called sex." Not the real, satisfying kind of sex that left a body sore all over. Josh shook his head, also pityingly.

"You probably don't remember what it feels like to have a good fuck. Don't they say that after like a year, you're practically a virgin?"

[Reagan Ryang]

For fuck's sake. He let out an explosive sigh and veered off to the right side of the road as he turned dark, annoyed eyes on Josh.

"Why are you so obsessed with how we fuck or don't fuck, anyway?"

It wasn't like Rae gave a fuck what Josh was doing with his dick or butthole. But Josh was constantly poking barbs into Rae's side and sometimes Aldon's, too--about how their fox boyfriends were inferior in every way to wolves. Maybe. Maybe not. Rae liked to think there were things about Alva that were superior. Maybe not to him as a person or whatever but...

It wasn't just gratitude that kept them together for five fucking years. It wasn't like he just fell over himself for a crippled fox. Time moved between them. Alva turned out to be a surprise. There were parts of himself that he could show Alva without worrying if he was "wolfly" enough for him.

"And it hasn't been over a year. How many times do I have to say it?"

[Kang Taebin]

"Uh. HELLO? You brought it up by dragging my dick into this!"

Seriously, Josh wasn't the one who leapt straight to his "morning wood" so what the hell was Rae getting his panties in a twist about? If you asked Josh--which nobody did but whatever--Rae was the one who kept bringing up the thing about sex.

Although, yes, Josh used it to needle him and he certainly didn't tread lightly around the fact that Alva was crippled and couldn't exactly perform. But Rae always took the bait and it was just too easy to get him riled up over it.

"Like I care if you fuck or don't fuck," he scoffed, settling back into his seat (after gripping hard onto the door handle, as the car swerved dangerously). "I like my partners to be experienced, anyway."

And Rae, for all of his insistence that he was "all right" in his relationship with a paralyzed man, hadn't used his skills for five years. That definitely meant that he was out of practice and Josh, for one, had no time to baby somebody in bed.

[Reagan Ryang]

He did bring up the morning wood thing. Whoops. Well, it was still usually that bastard who was bringing up the whole lack of sex with Alva. Of course it needled at him and agitated him. For the most part, he was happy with his lover.

But yeah, there were times he wasn't enough. The problem wasn't even with Alva. They were two creative people and they could figure things out, how to make them interesting in bed together. The problem lay mostly with Rae himself. Alva made him want to be careful and loving. He treated Alva like precious treasure (and he knew that was partly why Josh hated him so much--it was so out of line with the Rae he knew).

Rae had other kinds of needs, though. He used to tear around with some of the others. Rarely ever anything serious. Just a lot of hard fucking, a lot of scratching, clawing, biting mid coitus. Violence was a turn on. Usually.

The closer to the full moon it became, the more those tendencies made themselves apparent. That was when he withdrew affection from Alva because he didn't want to do it to him.

It was complicated and it struck a nerve every fucking time Josh brought it up. And Josh knew it, which was irritating even if he didn't have the whole story.

"Nobody asked what you want in a partner." His scowl turned into a grin. "Why, were you thinking about getting it on with me for a second there?" His gaze moved back to the road.

"Joke's on you anyway. I've got experience in shit you've probably never tried."

[Kang Taebin]

"Hah! Funny, Rae. I never thought of you as a comedian before."

As. IF.

Rae was the one who had experience in things that Josh had never tried? Josh both rolled his eyes and shook his head in the same movement, looking out through the window at the changing scenery with hardly any restraint on his derision.

Good Lord, this sad, pathetic, delusional little wolf-man.

He had no idea what Josh was really into. Violence came with the territory. Clawing and scratching and biting were mild for him. He loved the taste of blood, the metallic tang; it brought out the feral side of him that he had to repress, just to appear 'normal'--for whatever meaning the word carried for them, as supernatural beings.

Josh's needs were definitely... not for the faint of heart. He wasn't a vampire, though. He didn't drink blood by the gallon and he didn't need it to live, it was just more exciting with a little nip here and a bite there.

"Believe me, Reagan, even if we were the last two people on the planet, I wouldn't fuck you." His voice was a low drawl as he turned back to Rae with a smug-ass little grin--the kind that people often said made them want to punch him in the face.

"I don't do pity fucks. That's just beneath me, you know?"