Fanfic: Out [Teen Wolf]

[argentum_ls]

Title: Out
Word Count: 1841
Summary: Jackson and Danny need to clear the air.
Notes: Written for oteap for the Fall Fandom Free-For-All on the prompt "Danny and werewolf!Jackson ANYTHING."

“All right, spill,” Danny said. He leaned back against the arm of the leather couch, opening a window of space between him and Jackson, but also allowing himself to see his friend better. Jackson was slumped on the center couch cushion, the vein in his forehead throbbing from some tension that Danny could only guess at. Danny had rarely seen his best friend wound this tight, though he had been seeing it so much more over the past few weeks. Danny smoothed a hand down one jean-clad leg, half reaching for his friend, but stopping before the gesture could finish turning into that. Like any scared animal, Jackson would only react badly to sudden movements, to touches that he hadn’t granted some permission for receiving.

“Spill what?” Jackson asked, his eyebrows crawling up to his hairline. He looked down at the can of Coke nestled in his hand, ran a thumb over a drop of condensation on the outside and smeared it around. An abandoned video game controller was balanced on one knee.

Danny let out a slow breath, gathering his thoughts, calming his anxiety. “For … days … now, you’ve been hinting, hedging, backtracking around something. I can tell that it’s killing you not to talk about it, so: spill.” A command, yes, but he tried to make it sound more like an invitation. He set his own can of Coke on the coffee table in front of the couch, careful to place a coaster under it so the moisture wouldn’t mar the wood. He nudged the video game controller also on the coffee table, the one he’d been using, further away so the Coke wouldn’t get on it if the drink got knocked over. The TV screen glowed with the light from the pause screen of the video game they had been playing.

Jackson sprawled farther down into the couch cushions, his legs spreading, one hand coming up to massage the juncture of his shoulder and neck. The freckles that covered his face stood out against skin that looked paler than usual. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping. Jackson looked like he was trying to summon the nerve to speak and wasn’t having much success. If there had been anyone in the room except for the two of them, Danny would have understood the hesitation, the inability to trust that whatever couldn’t be kept bottled up anymore wouldn’t explode like a shaken bottle of champagne. But there wasn’t anyone else in the room, and a part of Danny couldn’t help wondering when things had changed between them, when Jackson lost the ability to tell him everything without question. He had to get that back.

He could hear his parents moving around upstairs, their footsteps echoing through the floorboards and into the basement area that Danny and his brothers had turned into a rec room years before. He’d always liked the room, had been proud of what they had accomplished in converting an unfinished basement into a warm hang-out, but now he was doubly glad for the additional privacy. Jackson still hadn’t spoken.

Danny leaned forward, not able to wait any longer, and set his hand on Jackson’s leg, just above his knee. He gave a light squeeze. Jackson’s eyes drifted closed and back open, the tension around his mouth easing. His whole body tilted toward Danny in an unconscious request for more contact. Danny pulled the Coke out of Jackson’s fingers and set it next to his on its own coaster, then wrapped his arms around him. The last thing Jackson needed, it seemed, was more space between them.

Jackson mumbled something into Danny’s shoulder, then froze as if steeling to be pushed away.

“Try again,” Danny suggested, careful not to push his friend away, even for the precious millimeters that would make his words understandable. “My arm got in the way.”

“Never mind,” Jackson replied, tearing away on his own. He jumped to his feet, crossed over the large screen TV that dominated the back wall, and punched the power button with more vehemence than necessary. The screen flickered, went dark. A low buzzing that had been filling the room disappeared with the light. “God, that noise.” Jackson pawed at his ears like he couldn’t decide whether to cover them or rip them off. “How could you stand that noise?”

Danny’s eyes narrowed. He thought about how Jackson had grown testier and testier while they battled each other on the video game, how Jackson had started to make stupid mistakes in the game, how he’d started to take Danny’s typical, and good-natured, ribbing far too seriously. If this was how he was going to be—

“It’s too much,” Jackson continued. “Why didn’t he warn me? The sounds, the colors, the smells.” He turned a slow circle as if searching for a cord he could unplug or a switch he could flip. “God, the smells. The bastard should have said something.”

“You’re hinting again,” Danny pointed out. Jackson was pacing in front of the TV now, clearly worked up. He had his hands wrapped around the back of his neck, fingers laced, like his head had become too heavy to hold up without that support.

“Fine. You wanna know?” Jackson rounded on him. “I’m a werewolf. There, I said it.” He narrowed his eyes at Danny as if challenging him to fight back, to demand evidence, to shout for help.

Danny gave a slight shrug. “Yeah. I know.” He eyed his friend, his more-than-just-friends friend. Qualifying their relationship was more complicated than Danny had ever wanted to bother with. It was easier—had always been easier—to accept that the rules that governed their relationship were imposed by no one except themselves. And those rules were nebulous at the best of times. It meant they were free to explore, knowing that they would always be safe with each other. It also meant that they knew each other better than they knew themselves; without a need to impress each other, the two boys had seen every facet, every quirk the other had to offer.

“What do you mean you know?” Jackson’s eyes flared yellow—which was kinda cool, especially considering how easily he had slipped into allowing it; there’d been no effort to hide or lie about the slip—and his top lip curled back in a snarl.

Danny merely shook his head. As much as he didn’t want to downplay Jackson’s revelation to the point of dismissing it, sometimes lengthy explanations weren’t in order. “It’s me,” he said, tapping his chest with his thumb.

The yellow melted back to the blue Danny couldn’t help dreaming about. It was fascinating to see up close, the yellow change to blue without passing through green.

“You knew?” Jackson repeated, voice lower, as if tasting the idea the words represented. His shoulders drooped. “How? How long?”

Another small shrug. It didn’t matter, really. Jackson wasn’t exactly subtle about anything. When he came to school the morning after the winter formal with his self-satisfied smirk and his too-cool-for-life gait turned up as high as they’d go, Danny had known something was up. Granted, werewolf wasn’t his first guess. But, Danny had some experience with poking at seemingly impenetrable code until it unraveled, and he knew Jackson better than computer programs he’d designed and built from the ground up. He also had some experience with drawing conclusions based on the evidence and not his expectations.

It didn’t take him long to put the pieces together: the mood swings, the sudden habit Jackson had developed for hiding his face and hands when upset, the increased physical prowess on the field well beyond what he’d ever been capable of before—well beyond what a human should be capable of. Though it wasn’t entirely appropriate to the moment, Danny couldn’t help wondering who the “he” was in Jackson’s diatribe. He had a couple ideas, and a more than reasonable suspicion that Jackson wasn’t the only lycanthropic member of the lacrosse team. He shoved that thought aside to be dealt with after Jackson’s identity crisis.

Speaking of which: “Remember when I came out to you? What you said then?” Danny asked.

Jackson frowned as he tried to remember. A door slammed upstairs. Danny instinctively glanced at the door that lead to the main floor. It remained shut, a thin streak of light leaking under the crack at the bottom. If anyone had been standing there, listening in, they’d block the light. Danny did not need his brothers overhearing or walking in on this. “No one’s listening,” Jackson commented, able, as always, to figure out exactly what Danny was worried about. He took a breath, then licked his lips as he recalled his words from that day—the only day of Freshman year that Danny saw starkly in his head, each word he’d spoken so planned and rehearsed that they felt like someone else’s in his mouth. Apparently the memory of that conversation hadn’t been as powerful for Jackson, not that Danny would ever grudge him that. “I told you to get over yourself,” Jackson stated, speaking the quote slowly as if he weren’t quite sure that he’d gotten it right.

A small smile from the memory tugged at the corners of Danny’s mouth. Of all the responses he’d heard from his family and friends and neighbors, Jackson had managed to produce the winner in the no tact contest. And, yet, if he’d said anything else, he wouldn’t have been Jackson and they wouldn’t have been able to stay friends because Jackson had done one thing right: he’d refused to change how he thought about a guy whom he really hadn’t known long enough to have earned that kind of respect.

Danny pushed himself to his feet and crossed over to Jackson, who took a small, unconscious step forward as if to meet him. Clapping his hands on his friend’s shoulders, Danny said, “You’re a werewolf.” Jackson’s head tilted up, drawing taut the line of his throat. His blue eyes met Danny’s brown and Danny had to draw a breath against the urge to lean in and steal a kiss. He wasn’t done talking yet, couldn’t be done yet. “Knowing you, it was a choice.” He could feel Jackson tense, prickle at accusation, at the removal of a complete parallel between them. “Now would be a good time to take your own advice.” To ease the sting of his words, he pulled his friend close, arms enveloping him. The tension disappeared.

Jackson wouldn’t listen to what Danny said this time, to his best friend echoing his own words. He wouldn’t know how to take his own advice, no matter whom it came from. But that’s what Danny was there for. While he didn’t know what the whole werewolf thing entailed—and he suspected that Jackson didn’t either—he knew the two of them would just keep doing what they had always done: They would make their own rules, and it would all work out. It always did.