Lucky Sevens

[Aldon Huang]

"Oh no, someone stole your pants?" Aldon gasped in feigned astonishment, before giving Gregg a big old grin and a matching wink. "How terrible! What kind of scumbag would do that?"

Discreetly he checked out the pants that Gregg was wearing. Yeah they were kinda tight on him, since Josh wasn't the biggest guy around, but Josh had a habit of bringing larger clothes with him, since he tended to get injured quite a bit during the chaos of the change. Larger, loose-fitting clothes didn't hurt the way that tight-fitting ones might as they rubbed up against any raw bruises or contusions.

"My friend Josh," he muttered as an aside to Gregg, just to keep him in the loop. "He's probably not coming out though." And Josh remained firmly hidden behind the trees and bushes, a disembodied voice.

"Did you see anybody around who might've taken them?" Josh's voice was still irritable.

"Nope!" Cheerfully replying, Aldon tugged on Gregg's hand again. "Gregg and I are heading back to my apartment though. See you later Josh!"

"No! Aldon! Get back here!"

But Aldon was already setting off, blithely ignoring Josh's increasingly vehement threats against him, should he continue walking. Turning to Gregg, he laughed, "He'll be fine, he's probably just gonna take somebody else's clothes."

[Greggory Lennox]

"How many sets of clothing are stashed here?" Gregg wanted to know as they left Josh behind.

Gregg was aware that he was the one that had stolen the pants but he didn't bother interjecting. Better that Josh person remained naked than himself and Aldon seemed to be in agreement.

More interesting was the fact that Aldon said they were heading to his apartment. His apartment was near here? What a strange location for an apartment...

[Aldon Huang]

"A couple. Our pack's is just that one box, though. There's only about a dozen of us so we don't need that many clothes." Speaking of which, he hadn't seen Rae anywhere. Maybe the guy was still sleeping off the effects of the change. That shit was exhausting! At least--usually it was, but this morning for some reason Aldon felt quite energized. He wondered if it was because he'd spent the night frolicking with Gregg, instead of trying to hunt down and fight every other wolf in the vicinity.

It wasn't long before they had made it out of the woods, ascending a long but mild slope out of the forest and onto a stretch of highway. Aldon stretched his hands over his head, reveling in the sun just beginning to peek out from behind a few wispy cloud banks. "There's a bus stop here that takes us back into town. Convenient, right?" He grinned as he led the way down the road. "Nice thing about living on an island is that even if you get lost, you can pretty much just walk around until you hit town."

There was no one at the lonely bus stop, which was nothing more than a bench and a pole with the bus sign attached to it. Aldon flopped down onto the bench and stretched out his legs. "If you're new to the whole werewolf scene, though, there's a couple of things you should know. One, we don't hurt humans... even though they're assholes and keep bringing hunters around. Andrew's pretty strict about us living like normal people, except during the full moon. Then most of our pack heads out into the woods closer to town, and me and the other, more special guys, come out here. Two, we don't. Uh. How do I put this."

Aldon paused for a moment to come up with the right words. "We don't associate with anything lower than us on the food chain." He coughed. Like foxes. One of whom he used to date--and one of whom his best friend Rae was currently dating. Better not let Gregg know about those "exceptions," though.

[Greggory Lennox]

Only a dozen. Only a dozen left? Or a dozen in the pack? A dozen crazed werewolves? He didn't bother asking. He would see for himself, which was unprecedented--an inside look as a hunter.

The morning along the highway was mostly quiet, punctuated with the sound of birds and warmth as the sun began to rise.

As they approached the bus bench, Gregg wondered if the others would be arriving to take this same bus. Would an entire population of werewolves take this exact same bus? Or did some of them come out later? Gregg still didn't ask--the majority of his information came from observation or chatty individuals like Aldon here.

He sat down and the bench groaned in protest. He didn't sit back, instead, still feeling on guard. His eyes narrowed as he stared down the road. Humans weren't harmed? Then how did he explain what happened to Gregg? Yet again, he said nothing, only frowned.

With all the hesitation coming from Aldon, Gregg had to wonder what he was trying to say. Turning back toward him, Gregg finally did ask a question, "What do you mean?"

Was he talking about shifters? Because he couldn't imagine mad werewolves associating with bunnies and birds.

[Aldon Huang]

"Ugh you're gonna make me say it, aren't you?" Aldon sighed and turned to Gregg. He put a hand on Gregg's knee like he was some sagely old mentor, about to reveal the secret of everlasting life to his disciple.

"Don't get involved with shifters. Anything less than a wolf and... well the others are gonna look down on you pretty hard for it. Trust me, you don't want to be That Guy."

Which was rich given how Aldon was That Guy but he knew from experience that it wasn't exactly nice being the one who bucked the trend. Even his best friends gave him hell--though Rae was a total stinking hypocrite, for dating a fox in secret!

"Just stick to wolves, it's much easier on your social life. People look after you better if they like you, y'know? And if they don't like you, when hunters come around, you're probably gonna be the first to go."

[Greggory Lennox]

So it was shifters. Gregg looked down at the hand on his knee but did nothing about it. He wasn't fond of strangers touching him unless he paid them to do it but it just seemed like Aldon was one of those Overly Friendly types. Probably best to stay on his good side.

"What about other shifters?" he asked. "Bears? Lions?"

What exactly counted as a lesser shifter? Things that wolves ate? What did it say about birds of prey, then? And was he really giving this any thought? As if he gave a shit about what they would allow him to associate with, should he decide to.

Still. Notes. Notes were good.

[Aldon Huang]

"...you wanna date a bear shifter?"

Aldon wasn't going to lie, he judged a little bit. Just a little bit! But that was because the only bear shifter he knew was... uh... a real bear. Of a man. And a bear. Not somebody who was his type but maybe Gregg liked his men large and hairy...?

"Aaaanyway, just nothing lower on the food chain and you're solid." He bounced to his feet as the outline of the bus came into view beyond the hill, slowly chugging its way towards them. "When we're all rested up, I'll introduce you to Rae and Josh. Oh and my twin, Roe. Monroe. Did I mention I had a twin?" He probably hadn't.

"He's like twelve minutes older... but I'm better looking. Obviously." Aldon grinned and smoothed down his hair, preening even though Gregg hadn't even seen Roe yet. Not that he needed to, because Roe was basically the same as Aldon, except he had dark hair and was a stick-in-the-mud about dating anyone who wasn't a hopeless, alcoholic loser.

[Greggory Lennox]

No, he had no desire to be with a bear and the way Aldon looked at him made him wonder if Aldon was thinking he was one of those super gay men who were really into bears. Like the kind of gay man who was all big, tough, and hairy.

He didn't bother clarifying. It was really none of Aldon's business.

Rae, Josh, Roe. He had no faces to the names... except maybe Monroe, if he and Aldon were identical twins. When he and his group hunted the werewolves, he only saw large wolf creatures. He didn't see them as people. Now he knew that Aldon was the white wolf. The others... he remembered seeing a lot of generic grey ones.

"What about the alpha?"

[Aldon Huang]

"I'm pretty sure Andrew's married, so..."

Okay, Gregg probably didn't mean that he wanted to date Andrew. Maybe he was nervous about meeting the Alpha--most people were, who met him the first time. He was sorta stern, a real strict father type figure, but he was also fair. For all the times that Aldon screwed up, it was a minor miracle that he hadn't gotten kicked out yet!

As the bus stopped before them and the doors creaked open, Aldon shook his head. "We usually have a pack meeting after the full moon, to make sure everybody made it okay. I think it's probably better to bring you to that. I was hoping we'd run into Rae, and he could introduce you, but he's also kinda... grumpy after the change."

"Kind of grumpy" was an understatement. Aldon didn't feel so hot afterwards either and judging by the fact that they stole Josh's pants, Josh was going to be plenty pissed too. That tended to happen after a night of exhausting hunting, and then an ultra painful change back into a human. Sigh. It wasn't all fun and games, being a werewolf.

He got onto the bus and, after rooting around his pockets, came up with bus fare for the two of them. Then he made for the back and collapsed into an empty seat. "You still wanna come to my place? Or do you live closer? Where DO you live anyway?"

[Greggory Lennox]

...It took Gregg a moment to understand Aldon's quip. Then he rolled his eyes away. He wasn't asking to date the alpha, nor was he interested in pursuing any of these wolves. Although, curiously, his sense of desire seemed to have risen with the advent of the werewolf wound.

When the bus arrived, Gregg climbed aboard. He almost said he'd get his own fare but he wasn't even wearing his own clothing. Once the fare was paid and they were sitting in the back of the bus, Gregg arranged his limbs as comfortable as he could in the cramped bus.

"Where do YOU live?" he asked. How was he supposed to know whether his home was closer or not? In truth, however, when he looked outside the windows, he was certain that he didn't.

[Aldon Huang]

"On Elm street," Aldon replied innocently, glancing outside as the woods flashed past. It would be a few stops before they entered the city proper, and before concrete and cement replaced the tall, straight trees and vibrant greenery. He settled back comfortably, not being nearly as tall as Gregg and not having to accommodate his own legs to the cramped space between seats.

"Is that closer? I tried to get a place closer to here, because. You know. It sucks having to bus back and forth." No car, sadly, for Aldon. He was barely making rent and the money that he had left in his bank account went towards things like food and school fees. During the summer he picked up odd jobs but Aldon... he wasn't about that 9-5 life. He much preferred doing what he liked, when he liked, instead of being cooped up somewhere all day.

[Greggory Lennox]

"It's closer."

He knew it would be. Elm Street. It would have made Gregg laugh if he had more of a sense of humor. This whole thing was kind of a nightmare. Gregg wasn't prone to hysterics and he was calm about the whole werewolf thing on the outside but on the inside, he wasn't quite so okay with it.

So far, he had yet to share this information with his hunter group and he had no idea how he was going to approach that mess. With this, however, he had something of an "in." At least if he was useful as a werewolf, they wouldn't be so quick to kill him.

[Aldon Huang]

"My place it is!"

Aldon tried to remember if he'd left anything incriminating out. Well, the most incriminating secret he kept was that he was a werewolf but Gregg already knew that, so it didn't count. He didn't think that Gregg would go around snooping in his laptop folders, so... he was pretty safe.

Breathing a sigh of relief--wait, maybe he left some underwear out? But they weren't gross dirty underwear--he settled back in his seat. Lightly, the outside of his knee knocked against Gregg's. "This is your first time, right? I mean, becoming a--you know. You're doing pretty well! Most people are freaking out by now."

[Greggory Lennox]

It sounded a little sordid, the fact that "his place it was." Gregg didn't normally go home with men at all. Normally, he just bought and paid for a few hours with a pretty woman and left it at that. His needs were met and left alone until they needed to be met again. Wasn't that all a man needed?

Gregg didn't want a relationship. He didn't want to get entangled in a romance with somebody. The idea of the whole thing just gave him an utter headache. He remembered fumbling through relationships as an idiot teenager and he remembered what a hell they were with his head. There were always words and promises and things got broken. In the end, his way was better.

He knew that wasn't what was happening here but he still thought on it. Maybe it was the way their knees bumped. Maybe it was because they'd been naked together. Maybe it was just the way he felt when he woke up with somebody's arms around him.

Leaning an arm against the seat in front of him, Gregg shook his head.

"Second time."

[Aldon Huang]

Aldon glanced over with a curious expression. "Oh yeah? Second time huh?" Well that explained the lack of freaking out. He'd seen some guys go batshit crazy; it was sort of an... interesting experience. Of course, being a born werewolf, Aldon was mostly used to the change but he imagined that if he was a normal boring old human changing for the first time, that he'd probably lose his shit too.

"So... how'd it happen?"

Maybe an insensitive question, but Aldon wasn't exactly the most subtle or the most thoughtful person to exist on the island. He reached over and patted Gregg on the forearm, the one resting on the back of the seat--just a little comforting, friendly gesture. Kind of funny how most of his friends looked down on 'humans' but after they turned, they were somehow suddenly all right.