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Silver

He's screaming but Peter likes it.

The full moon pours through the glass doors leading to the balcony. White light on white skin; Peter sees white in the corners of his eyes, flashing, like a ghost he can never look directly at.

There's a howl in Peter's throat, so he lets it out, hawwoooooooooooooo!

Somebody pounds on the floor above; somebody pounds on the door. "Shut the fuck up, you fags!"

The white ghost flashes past the left edge of his vision. I'll ghost you, motherfucker, Peter thinks randomly, a line from a movie, maybe. He tastes blood. He's biting. He's bitten. He's got a bite straight through the flesh between thumb and forefinger. There's another in his thigh; it feels deep.

There's blood on his chin, too.

White light again in the corner of his eye; he twists to see it, but there's nothing there.

Just a flash of silver.

(I'll ghost you)

Lucius is flat on his back, blood on his face, his nose and lips distended as if someone had attached a giant vacuum cleaner to his face and just let it *suck* until the skull underneath crunched and broke and exploded outward. Only there are fangs jutting out behind black lips and fur-beard-stubble prickles all over his face. Black silk short hairs, soft down, sleek pelt.

Wolf-face, or half-way there, grotesque dog-ape face, human eyes behind a roman-nosed muzzle.

He reeks like piss and sweat and blood and fear. He reeks like death.

Dead. There's somebody dead in the room (a ghost) maybe.

Lucius snarls, rolls to his feet, more wolf than man now, his human thighs bending in twisted shapes, feet tipped in black claws. The expensive pants stretch and bunch and bulge in uncomfortable places.

(It's just the moon)

Silver. Something flashes in the corner of Peter's eye, and he realizes his hand is bleeding, and he opens it.

It burns. A heavy chain, silver. His skin is all red underneath it; a rash, only worse.

There's a twisted scar on the inside of Lucius's thigh, from a mistake he made as a boy, and Peter doesn't like to touch it. Silver made it, but worse than that, somebody else made it. He wants to take a bite, bite it off, chew until there's a new scar there, forever, who cares if it cripples him?

But you can't fuck someone without touching their inner thighs. Peter swears sometimes to himself that it burns against his skin.

Peter is a good guy, but Peter has his buttons.

Lucius knocks him over, Lucius has teeth wrapped around his throat before he really notices. But he, Peter, he slams the handful of silver chain against Lucius's inner thigh, and Lucius screams.

It's not a man's scream.

It's not even a wolf's whine.

Something not even inbetween. Something else. Something monstrous.

Peter wants to slay the monster and be the hero. So he's told himself since he was five years old and realized that his foster parents did not change into big, man-eating wolves. Slay the monster, wear the silver. It made him sick but he would be the hero.

There's still a burning around his throat and he thinks that maybe Lucius's teeth caught him, just a little, pricking into the skin before he could burn the silver into his skin.

Lucius killed a man the other day, a man breaking into Peter's house, someone who invaded his Pack's territory. It's not normal practice but the man had a gun, Lucius said, so he had no choice: kill him or be killed. Peter called the police and told him his guard dog killed the man. Then he told him he'd put the dog down by himself, so he didn't need anyone to come destroy it.

When the police came, there was only Peter, Lucius and the body, so they believed him. Lucius said he'd seen the whole thing. He had, sort of.

Now what? Was Lucius trying to kill him too? The burning on his neck was still there. They must be deep marks.

(Take it off, Lucius had said, take that fucking thing off or I'm not coming near you. It's just the full moon.)

(kill)
(the)
(Big)
(Bad)

Blood on Peter's hand. Lucius rashed from silver. Then he bled and blistered. Then his skin sloughed off. Eventually it would poison him, kill him. He was terribly allergic. The wolf-- it was terribly allergic.

Was Lucius separate from the wolf? Peter couldn't remember.

The flash of white light again.

Just the moon.

He hated the goddamn moon!

Who's afraid, Peter?
Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Peter is: the flash of white, white skin, Lucius's skin.

Lucius is on his back, but he's white skin all over, black hair only on his head and peeking through the open fly of his shredded expensive black pants. There's no wolf here. Just Peter.

"Peter," Lucius says, through lips that are bloody, maybe his own blood, maybe someone else's. "Just take it off. Just give it to me."

And he stretches out his hand, nails too long, blood under them, and skin.

Peter hesitates. The moon... it makes him... Crazy.

Silver like the moon. Silver like a silver dollar.

He drops the chain in Lucius's hand, practically hears it sizzle. Like bacon on a hot grill. But Lucius still extends his fingers; still bares his palm though he trembles from the pain of it.

"Please, Peter." He whispers it, like if he raises his voice, the pain will be twenty times worse. Even though it's in his hand and not his throat or mouth or chest.

White light flickers, and Peter turns, but there's nothing there, just the mirror catching moonlight, catching the sparkle around his throat, the glisten of wet puss running down his collarbone...

Peter puts his hand to the blistered skin. There's a necklace there. There's no teeth marks, no scraping of fangs, even lightly, on his neck. Only a silver cross on a silver chain, that he barely remembers putting on this morning when he saw the threatening empty white circle on his calendar.

The chain makes one sharp protest as he snaps it, and he is reluctant to let it go, but finally he drops it into Lucius's hand with the other one.

(Sizzle.)

Lucius flings them off the balcony, and Peter watches the slither of white light over them as they twist and writhe their way to the ground.