Can't Fight the Moonlight

It’s been a long, jagged night. Morning surfaced around forty minutes ago and I’m now making my way back home, taking my time with every step. Sure, every ounce of my body is exhausted beyond human tolerance, but what awaits me there is something I can bare putting off for as long as possible. A good thing I’m not all that human too or else I would have dropped about a day ago.

“There you are,” El whispers in a rush of words as soon as I open the door. I look in to see Ivanna and her sitting on couch with anxious expressions.

“Here I am,” I sigh, closing the door behind me with little effort. “Is Matt still downstairs? Where are the rest of the guys?” I ask after I notice the two of them are alone. “Did everything go alright last night?”

“Whoa, cool it. Everything is fine. Matt is still downstairs, he’s sleeping. I just checked on him about ten minutes ago. And last night, after about two hours, Jay, Padge and Moose left to grab him some clothes and get some rest. They’re suppose to show up in about half an hour or so.” I nod and plant my butt in an empty seat on the couch with my name on it.

“What about your night? You’re all scratched up. I take it you found the werewolf?” Ivanna asks. I can’t stomach to bring my eyes up to look at them. I drop my head in my hands that are propped up by the elbows on my knees. As my fingers twine into my long locks of hair I give it a good squeeze and bury my face into my skin as deep as possible, sucking in a scent of blood and dirt while doing it.

“What happened AJ?” El asks, sitting down next to me, I don’t have to look at her to see the expression on her face, I can hear it through those three little words.

“It was a rough night,” I mutter. I release my cranium from my hands and exhale a loud, heavy sigh and shake the smell from my nose. Standing up I move past the couch to get access into the kitchen. I don’t want to talk about this. I need a drink of something. Scanning the fridge I grab an opened can of Cola and drink it down.

“So what happened? Are you alright? Did that thing hurt someone?” She gasps at her own thoughts and in the corner of my eye I can see her raise her hand to her mouth.

“No it didn’t…I did.” I whisper, crushing the can easily in my palm to throw it in the sink. “I don’t want to talk about it okay? I’m tired. I’m going to grab a nap before Matt leaves.”

“AJ you may not want to talk about this but I’m your Watcher. I need to know what happened.” They just push and push, don’t they know that you shouldn’t do that to someone with an ill temper and super strength?

“I killed him okay!” I scream, too tired to fight with the silent treatment. “Are ya’ happy now? Are you going to go and scribble that in your journal Ivanna?” I yell, blowing up with a sudden rush of irritation. And just as soon as it rises the irritation falls. Realization strikes and those three little words I killed him are the only thing that I’m hearing. On the walk home I was trying to push the thought away, like I never did it and like it never happened but I can see it as clear as day. Where I beat the first one to death on accident and killed the second one with no other choice…Or I’ve tried telling myself I had no other choice.

“Oh…” And that’s all the either of them can say. I push pass Ivanna standing in the doorway and resume my seat on the couch. “You don’t have to talk about it…” El starts, standing behind the couch and talking in a whisper. I know she must be horrified.

“I don’t know how it happened…” I say, leaning back and tilting my head up against the support of the couch. I can feel the tears will be falling any second now, the closer we get to talking about this it’s going to happen. And I hate crying in front of anyone. “…I was trying to knock it out and my hand slipped…I-I broke its neck or something…” I cover my weeping eyes with my hand and sit up once more before bending my frame over and looking down at the space on the floor between my legs. “…And then…it just-just stopped moving. I sat there and I couldn’t believe what I had done…” El takes the seat next to me once more and pats her palm against my shoulder uneasily. In the way her hand first moves I can tell she’s hesitant, like I might strike her for touching me.

“AJ, that isn’t your fault. You didn’t do that on purpose, you slipped. And he was a monster, trying to kill-“

“-Only three nights out of the month...Other then that he was hu-human.” I hiccup and start crying a new brand of tears. Yes he was human, but he wasn’t the one I beat to death. “And that wasn’t him. There was a second one.” I confess, bringing my wet face up to look at her and Ivanna, who now stood at the end of the couch.

“Two of them?” Ivanna repeats. I nod and drop my face into my hands once more, pushing my hands into my eyes as hard as possible in hopes of trying to stop the abundance of tears.

“A second one came out of nowhere and I had to kill it…I had too…It was absolutely vicious. It was out for my blood.” I sob, going over it again and again. El continues comforting my shoulder before she brings her arm around me and pulls me into aneeded hug. I shrug her off of me just as quickly as she put her arms around me; I stand up and cross the floor to the door of the bedroom. “I waited for sunrise. I dragged their bodies to this empty, dirt lot and waited. Sunrise came and sure enough that second one was that guy from the other night.”

“…And the first one?” Ivanna asks, urging me to go on.

“…I think it was his mate…It was a girl…around his age-“ I say in a thick voice covered in the wet sobs I’ve been crying. I suck in a breath through my nose to clear up the nasally sound. This isn’t where I’m going to fall apart. No, I’ll crawl into my bed and choke myself against the pillow until sleep takes its hold of me and I dream it all over again.

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know. You were only doing your job-“

“My job isn’t to kill people! It’s to save them! And yeah I took that monster off of the street, and who’s to say he didn’t have it coming to him? After all who knows how long he’s been infected and been contaminating other people. But I don’t want it to be my job to take people out of this world. I killed him in cold, monster blood. I shoved a knife into his body. Can you understand that? No, neither of you can. All you do is watch. Watch me kill them, watch me save them and then watch me when I fail. But you have no idea how in the hell that feels.” I close my mouth at the end of my rant. I didn’t mean to blow up like that…again. “And look around; did you notice the guy in the basement? The one I couldn’t protect? Now look what’s happened to his life. It’s changed and he too, three nights out of the month will be a monster. Forever...” I mutter to myself, aware that not only they both can here me but so can someone else. I raise my eyes, [that I just had dropped to the floor] to see Moose standing in the door that I didn’t closed all of the way. During my little outburst I didn’t hear the door faintly swish open.

“Hey,” I’m the first to break the silence. I wipe my hands under my eyes to remove the shiny moistness and slap on one the fakest smiles I’ve ever worn.

‘Ello’…Padge an’ Jay are down in the basement, giving Matt his clothes.” He says, looking quite awkward and frightened.

“I’m going to go change…El, make them feel at home again.” I tell her with my back turned as I walk into the comfort of my room. I look down at my clothes; they’re torn, bloodied and dirty. That might be why I got several looks and whispers thrown at my way as I walked home.

I strip out of my tattered jeans and filthy shirt, leaving them where they fall as I step over to the closet and grab some fresh clothes. “I need a shower…” I mumble, scrunching up my nose and taking a smell of myself. I smell of slaying. “…Eh I’ll do it later.” I state, hearing the sound of feet shuffle into the living room. That must mean Matt, Jay and Padge have joined the group.

So I pull on my pants, not before noticing the scraps and bruises that have already started healing, and then my shirt. I glance over at my bed, “Man do you look comfy…” I murmur, looking at the fluffy pillows and the soft blankets. “I’ll sit for just a second…” I tell myself as I scoot over to it and plop down onto its supple surface.

I can’t help myself or refuse my body once it falls down into the spongy embrace of the colliding fabrics. “No…” I groan with heavy eyes and a throbbing body.

My eyes close and it feels as soon as they do that I’m off to sleep. Waaaaake up! It’s not time to sleep. You can rest later after you solve the problems of everyone else. You’ve got to get up, to say goodbye. Waaaaake up AJ! Come on, now open those eyes and pick your ass up off this bed with that Slayer strength of yours.

Like a major twitch my body jerks and I wake up. I don’t know how much time passed while I regrettably dosed off but I’m wide awake now. Waking up felt a lot like when you feel like you’re falling and you yank awake. I hate when that happens… I scramble off of my bed and hurry out into the living room. I hope they’re still here…

“’ave a good nap?” Matt asks once I tread out of the room, and they’re all still here…Except Ivanna…She must have left to document in her journals. I don’t think rockstars are for her.

“Yeah I did-I wasn’t out too long was I? I didn’t mean to-“

“No, it was fine. I told them not to wake yeh’.” He states, cutting me off. I cross the room and stand by the guys who are all sitting comfortably on the couch or in the chair, El is sitting fine on the floor.

“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye were you?” And that’s the first sentence to leave my mouth.

“Well if yeh’ were still sleeping when we left, yah’ I woulda’ let you sleep.” I feel a small frown playing across my lips but I smack it away, because they aren’t gone. “Yeh’ needed some sleep.”

“We came up with a plan about his wolf days,” El says from the floor, looking up at me while I sling down onto the couch arm next to Moose.

“A plan?” I ask. I hadn’t given that any thought today.

“Yeah, Matt has agreed to come back here the day before the start of the full moon cycle every month. So he and everyone else are safe.”

“Wha-“

“Sounds like a good idea to us,” Jay says, joining in.

“But you guys live over-and you tour and-“

“We can’t necessarily build a cage on our buses. We’ll schedule dates around his dates. We can make this work.” I so don’t even know what to say. What does someone say to that? I can handle vampires, demons, and the apocalypse. But give me a famous guy in a band as a house guest and I’m completely lost for words. Brilliant.

We spent the next ninety minutes or so, talking about this and that and making arrangements for next month. But now it’s time for them to head out and make tomorrow’s show.

“It was nice having you here…” I say some what awkwardly. This time we’ve spent talking and getting to know each other have been great, but it still hasn’t sunk in yet. I mean the bad stuff has, Matt being a werewolf now. But the part where I’ll be seeing him on a monthly basis, that has yet to sink in. And it has been great having them around but it’s been weird too. Like hey, thanks for coming to our city, putting on a great show and by the way here’s something to remember us by: a werewolf attack.

“See yeh’ next month then,” Matt says to me as El says her goodbyes to the rest of the guys as she walks with them to the door.

“Yeah, see ya’.” And just when I didn’t think I could get any more awkward, Matt pulls me into a hug and I kind of just freeze. As if I didn’t want it. Though I hug him back in time before he pulls away and he chuckles lightly at my momentary dorky move, causing me to break a smile.

I wave goodbye as I watch him from the door frame as he walks down the hall to catch up with his mates. “Think you can get use to seeing that here?” El calls from the bedroom she so speedily ran to after she said her goodbyes.

“Maybe, just maybe…” I whisper as I’m leaning against the frame thinking stupid, little fantasying thoughts.