A different take on the traditional M/M werewolf romance topic: less romantic, less traditional, more disturbing and with conniving wolves, vampires and submissive marines.
Comments or requests for more of Meta (& the Marines) can be emailed to Meta.JohnAR@gmail.com or check out www.amazon.com/author/johnar.
Depending on reception, I will post more chapters.
And if any military boy wants to start a MetaPack, let me know ...
John A.R.
Meta & the Marines II
(Meta Origins)
The house was even more run down than he remembered at the time he'd left nearly three years ago. The neighborhood had never been one of the best in town, and even the coveted location at the end of a cul-de-sac street didn't help.
The pitiful excuse of a garden was overgrown with weed, and some of the bushes planted on the edges had dried dead. The few, which had survived, hadn't been properly pruned for years. Even the concrete on the walkway to the house showed signs of neglect. Some boards on the patio in front of the main door suffered from worm infestation so that somebody had to lay separate boards across them in 90 degrees angles to support the weight. The few chairs were dirty after many heavy rain falls and the ashtray on the cheap white plastic table was full of cigarette butts. Everything said: `White trash. Stay away.'
Colt was actually shocked to see in which environment he had grown up, and looking at Prime and Brian he judged he wasn't the only one.
One of the windows on the ground floor next to the door was cracked. The adhesive tape, which had been put on it to stabilize the glass, was already fading to a dusty brown and peeling off.
The humidity was unbearable. The pale GE thermometer next to the grayish entrance looked broken but Colt thought the 102 degrees Fahrenheit it showed were actually correct. His T-shirt started to get soaked and he desperately hoped some of the old air conditioning units inside still worked, even if they would make a mind-numbing noise.
He quickly looked at Prime, whose forehead was sweating in the heat. His pine smell became not unpleasantly penetrating due to the heat and humidity. Colt was happy he wore his black shorts, which hid his boner pretty well. Nevertheless he earned himself an eye roll by the redhaired hunk, who clearly thought a boner in this situation was inhuman. Colt begged to differ. Just the green eyes and the sturdy smooth calves alone would have been enough reason to fuck Prime right now. He loved biting into those muscled smooth calves when he dove into the marine. It had to wait though.
Brian seemed least fazed by the heat, which Colt found surprising given that he was from Utah. As he'd never been to Salt Lake City he didn't know what the temperature was like there during summer. The cute jock had barely broken into a sweat and he still smelled so cherry soap clean and wheat deodorant fresh that it hurt. For one second Colt was tempted to lick a tiny sweat drop that had been collecting on the chin of the blond icy blue-eyed wolf. Smelling Colt's arousal, Brian smiled encouragingly readjusting the chain and the lock under his gray Nike T-shirt.
Colt shook his head with a naughty smirk and rang the bell. It worked.
A deep voice responded: "Who is it?" It didn't sound very friendly or welcoming despite what people thought of Texans.
But Colt wasn't surprised and answered: "It is I, Colt."
"'It is I'," the voice mocked his sentence, obviously thinking he was saying it quietly enough not to be heard outside, but Colt caught it anyway and cringed at the insult. Any hope he could have a civilized conversation with his father was gone already before it had started.
They heard the noises of several keys turning in locks. Prime frowned as he clearly judged the locks to be quite useless. He could have pushed easily through the weakened wood of the door if he wanted to get into the house. A few cheap locks wouldn't have been an obstacle.
Then the noise stopped. They heard steps moving away from the door. Somebody pushed some dirty white curtains, or maybe they only looked dirty because of the dirty windows, aside looking at them suspiciously.
Colt forced himself to turn to his father, who stared at him with barely concealed disgust, and smiled a fake smile.
Shuffle sounds approached the door again and finally, Mr. Parker Sr. opened the door, greeting his son with: "Hi."
"Hi. I'm here to get some of my books."
Prime was visibly shocked when he saw the man. He was nearly as tall as the alpha wolf, but had become quite fat, his beer belly hanging over dirty dark blue gym shorts. He was unshaven and his thin dark brown hair wasn't properly cut and combed. The cigarette in his mouth was not yet lit, but Mr. Parker did it the moment the three men came into the main room without bothering to ask for their approval.
Brian looked around in disgust, noticing the empty beer bottles on the table next to the well-used sofa, several pieces of the man's clothes on the floor, and a mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink. The garbage can was completely full with fast food packaging and empty cigarette packs. The Beta had always thought Colt overdid it with his descriptions of his desolate home to justify his own insecurities and unhealthy attitude towards people, but he now realized everything had been true. It was a total surprise how this environment could actually have allowed Colt to become a reasonably successful person in the first place and not a mass murderer and drug addict. But he also knew a clean home and God-fearing parents didn't necessarily mean the child was loved, as he'd experienced himself. He mentally separated himself from his own painful family history and turned his attention back to the foul pit of the present.
"Have a seat," his father said nearly sincerely hospitably, pointing his fat fingers to the dining table, which was decorated by a cheap vase with dried up flowers. Yellow pollen dust had fallen on the tablecloth.
"I think we're happy to stand," Colt said in a reserved manner. "Is mum home?"
"Should be here any second, picking up her check." His father took a long drag and exhaled clouds of nicotine smoke.
Colt turned away knowing his cancer risk was already astronomical having been passive smoking for most of his childhood. He assumed his father was referring to the welfare check given the time of the month, as they didn't get money for their `son' anymore. "Ah, how are you doing?"
"Great. I guess you can see that," Mr. Parker Sr. answered cynically, while he pointed with his left hand from one end of the house to the other, sucking desperately on his cigarette. "Who are your `friends?'" His tone was disgusting.
"Oh, that's Sergeant Loope."
Prime nodded at the older man, not reacting on the surprise Colt had introduced him as a member of the military. He must have had his reasons. Parker senior took the hand of the redhead scrutinizing him with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
Colt was satisfied his father nearly dropped his cigarette when dealing with the strength of Prime's handshake. It was obvious his Alpha had made it very clear he was the top dog in this house. Even if only temporarily.
"And that's Brian, also at my college."
Colt was amused that Brian said: "Pleasure to meet you," nodding with his head and avoiding to offer his hand to the old man. Mr. Parker Sr. wiped some ash of his dirty `U o T' shirt, when he realized that he wouldn't be shaking Brian's hand.
"I'm Colt's father," the old man introduced himself unnecessarily, putting out his cigarette and throwing the butt on a heap of ash and butts, under which an ashtray must be buried somewhere.
Prime smiled a forced smile; he looked at Colt. "Why don't you and Brian get your stuff, while I wait here?"
Colt sighed gratefully and left an in-charge-feeling Prime behind to deal with the old man. He wasn't sure what Prime's plan was, but he didn't really care, he just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible.
He nearly regretted having come here in the first place, but he knew he had to do it. He needed to get this information.
They walked up the narrow staircase. The brown carpet was still the same as four years ago, but it had even more burn holes than when he left. The same one-dollar store pictures hung on the crooked walls with faded greenish wallpaper: a dog, a horse and a tractor on some field in Indiana. It was this wallpaper, which had convinced Colt that whenever he had his own house, all of his walls would be either plain brick or painted museum-like white.
Upstairs he turned left opening the door to his room.
When Brian had entered as well, Colt quickly closed the door, leaned against it as if to block anyone else coming in and sighed. The weight of the Earth had been lifted from him, it seemed. "Oh, fucking shit. This is worse than I remembered."
"Sorry, Colt. Not sure what to say," Brian said full of sympathy, approaching the nerdy young men and putting his left hand on his shoulder massaging it gently.
Colt enjoyed the sparks and jolts he got through the physical contact and the view of wide clean fields in Brian's tempting blue eyes.
"Say nothing. It's okay. Let's see whether my stuff is still here." He knelt on the floor and tried to lift the bottom board of his bed, which blocked the gap between the actual bed and the floor. "I'm actually surprised they didn't mess up this room as well. It still looks like I left it."
"Including the Channing Tatum in `The Eagle' poster?" Brian asked smugly.
"Yep, you know he had to pretend to be a Brit's Roman slave in the movie?" Colt asked equally smug.
"Well, I have no idea why this could have been of interest to you," Brian continued the banter. "Maybe we should watch it one day together, as inspiration."
Colt just grunted remembering the last time he watched the movie with a `friend,' while he continued to work on the board.
Brian browsed through the shelf looking at some of the books. "You definitely liked Star Trek."
"Yep, was kind of escapism. Now I have all those books on my Kindle, so don't really need the paperbacks. Maybe I'll take them one day before this house gets torn down." Colt was still fiddling around with the board.
"So who's your favorite character?"
"In which generation?"
"There are several?" Brain asked incredulously.
"Oh, where did you grow up? No TV there?"
"Mormon household," Brian excused himself. "Then hitchhiking through America, then in a pack with our controlling Alpha. Do I need to say more?"
"Got it. Well, in the original, Spock was my hero."
"Logic I guess."
"Yep. In the next generation, Diana."
"Who's she?"
"A mind-reading shrink, kind of."
"I see the pattern, Meta. She could fuck brains, I guess?"
"Too nice, but in the alternative universe she was a cool bitch."
Brian seemed amused with Colt's excitement about Sci Fi characters, but he got distracted: "And what's that? Polish German English dictionary?"
"Yep, my mother is Polish German or German Polish or whatever. I think she doesn't know herself. Spent several summers with my grandparents there, that's why half of my brain thinks in metric. Wasn't too bad, actually. My grandmother was really quite nice, although we barely understood each other, but she cooked like a genius, and she had this amazing orchard," Colt continued to work on the board trying to lift and shift it.
"That's why you like dark bread so much, like CE."
"Yep, she baked it herself. That was so good. Especially when you compare to what I got here." He made an `urrggg' noise attempting to shift the board a bit more.
"Need help?"
"No, I'll get it."
"And what's that: DVD collection of NCIS ..."
Colt chuckled. "Where else do you see so many cute marines being interrogated?"
"You have a dirty mind, Meta." And Brian didn't seem unhappy about that for one second.
"And don't you love it," Colt moaned. Then a `thud' noise. Colt pulled the left part of the board towards him and then to the side, revealing the dusty floor underneath the bed. Carefully he grabbed a metal box and dragged it outside despite the scratching noise on the floor.
"What's that?"
"My secrets box."
"Oh, shall I carry it?" Brian knelt down next to the nerd.
Colt felt the reassuring warmth of the wolf, which didn't bother him at all despite the heat in the house barely contained by the decrepit air conditioning. "Not yet, let me first open it to see if my stuff is still in there."
"Well, it doesn't look as if anyone bothered to check under your bed or broke up the box."
"You would be surprised about my mother's capability to find valuables to fund her addiction. I couldn't even leave my mobile phone unattended; she would sell it and then pretend never having seen it."
Brian face became sad again. "That sucks."
"And not the good way," Colt repeated his joke, turning four wheels in the combination lock. When he heard a reassuring click, he put a key on his small key chain into the opening on the box.
"Key and combination lock, you were very thorough."
"Learned the hard way," Colt answered.
"So you like Channing?"
Colt giggled remembering his high school years. "Oh, I have done many unspeakable things to him."
"Like to us?"
"Worse."
Brian lifted his eyebrows. "What's holding you back?" he teased.
"This is real life, wanking fantasies are ... well, fantasies." Colt opened the box, touching the contents.
"And I thought your brain wanted to convince you this is a fantasy in the first place. Maybe you should take advantage of that," Brian suggested like a little devil sitting on Colt's shoulder.
"Be careful what you wish for, my dear Beta." Colt directed his attention back to the contents of his treasure box: His two old mobile phones with their chargers. Two diary books with dark-blue plastic bindings. Three well-read books with half naked men on the cover. Several ugly bronze colored medals, which he'd won in school for his nerdish algebra and history knowledge. Few letters from his grandmother showing beautiful old-fashioned handwriting and foreign stamps, as she'd had no clue how to e-mail and actually sent him real letters over several years. He had to translate them the hard way from her mixture of German and Polish. A candle with woodland pattern. A thick envelope from a company in Chicago. And a booklet with years of bank statements.
"What's that?" Brain pointed at the Chase bank statement booklet.
"We'll see, I couldn't make sense of it when I was a kid, but maybe today I'll learn something about my past."
Brian nodded. "So much about your uniform fetish -- even a candle in woodland pattern," the wolf teased.
For a second Colt couldn't get any air in the barely air-conditioned room, his muscles tensed and he violently suppressed memories of his 13th birthday.
Brian seemed to sense that he'd a touched a raw nerve and put the candle down trying to send soothing wheat scents.
Colt smiled gratefully and reached out to touch the last item in the box. A beautiful owl made of glass. He caressed it as if he could make it come alive with that gesture and help him chase away dark thoughts. "My algebra teacher gave that to me when she left. She said one day I would make her really proud. I'm not sure she was thinking I would become an accountant."
"Will you become an accountant?" Brian asked.
"More like a consultant, I think. Let's see how my internship goes over the next weeks." Colt closed the box again.
"Why didn't you take the owl with you?"
"My leaving the house for college was a bit rushed," Colt remembered pain resurfacing. "Couldn't get to the box."
Brian nodded, not wanting to dig deeper. "Is there anything else here which you would like to take with you?"
"No, I don't think I need the Channing poster anymore." Colt smiled a bit too smug. "I once had a Twilight poster as well, with a very bare chested Lautner."
Brian grinned. "Seems Fate prepared you for hunky wolves."
"Not sure, once I wanked myself bloody at One Life to Live shows -- when Scott Evans played a gay police man."
"... well a man in uniform." Brian chose not to mention the candle.
Colt nodded. "You're right. Seems I'm programmed to go after big hunky men in uniform. Don't tell CE!"
Brian laughed. "No worries. Seems I need to join the marines though."
"Why's that?"
"So I can seduce you even better, Meta."
Now Colt laughed. "You don't have a problem with that, Beta. Look!" Colt pointed at his bulge. "Even in my loosest pants, you still make me hard like crazy. If I wasn't freaked out by my parents and this house, I would have already fucked the come out of you in my old bed."
Brian gulped. His wheat scent became toxic, but Colt shook his head.
"Let's go downstairs, I don't want Prime to do something stupid."
Brian picked up the box and went through the door opened by Colt, who took a last look into his old room and then closed it with little regret. He actually was happy he would never ever have to return to this place of his unimportantness. He hoped.
"So young man, do you have a special lady?" The voice was trying desperately to sound sinful and seductive.
"No, Mrs. Parker."
"Good, I mean I'm sure you could have your pick ..."
"Indeed."
"But nowadays those girls are so difficult, aren't they?" she continued, while loosening the most upper button on her blouse.
"A bit yes." Prime looked uncomfortable at the late forties vamp in front of him. Unfortunately, the missing tooth stopped her success even before she'd started.
"Here you are, Colt." She was a bit sad to stop her seducing Prime to acknowledge her son coming down the stairs.
"Hi, mum."
"Hi, honey. How are you?" she greeted him trying to sound motherly and failing completely, as she didn't make a step towards him to hug him like any other mother would have done.
"Doing fine. And you?"
"Moving on. So are ye coming back to us?" she asked hopefully.
Colt met Prime's scared eyes. "No, I'm doing an internship in California, and next year my last year of college."
"But, it's so dangerous there," his father intervened lightening another cigarette.
"Not more than in gun-loving Texas," he responded.
"What's wrong with guns?" his father asked. "They're only wrong in the hands of crazies like in California."
Colt swallowed, only wanting to get out. He observed with disgust how his mother moved in front of the old fan to play with her bleached hair in the artificial wind trying to do a Mrs. Robinson. He could see Prime twitched his nose. Colt didn't know how his highly available mother must have smelled to a wolf. He could only smell the unpleasant combination of drugs, alcohol, old sweat and dirty sex.
"Well, as said, I'll be fine."
"You should stay here, darling," his mother tried again. "Prime, tell him." Her lips made clear that she would `reward' him for his efforts.
"I'm sure Colt can decide for himself," Prime answered approaching the door. He wanted to get out of there as much as Colt.
"Obviously not. We are his parents. And we want him to stay here." His father became louder, trying to cut Colt off from the door.
"I'm 21, so I don't need your permission for anything. So now please let us go."
"I think you didn't hear what ya mother said. She wants you to stay," his father repeated with a threatening tone.
"I think you didn't listen to me. I'm leaving." Colt looked into the bloody gray eyes of his `father.'
"You are so ungrateful," his mother started to whine. She'd always tried the martyr route, when she didn't get her way. They call it `passive aggressive' nowadays.
"How come? For growing up in this dump?" Colt snorted.
His mother started to cry, well, she started to pretend to cry.
"How dare you?" His father closed the gap to Colt.
"Maybe you should have left me to die in that dumpster."
And then the scene froze. His mother had stopped making unnecessarily loud crying noises, his father didn't make a step further towards him, and Prime and Brian looked at him with an open mouth, unable to close it anymore.
"We should have," his father finally said. He turned to Brian. "You, faggot, carry that stuff back to his room."
"Take that back!" Colt demanded.
"What? I'm sure he's fuckin' you, so he's a fag," Mr. Parker spit on the floor. "And if you don't move your fuckin' ass up there in the next five seconds I'm goin' to rip you a new asshole."
"Try it!" Colt responded without thinking about the consequences.
His father's fist approached him much too quickly. He could barely move to the left and felt the knuckles' impact on his cheek, when suddenly Prime was next to him, pulling him aside. Before Colt could even process what had happened, Prime had already taken hold of the older man's hand and twisted the arm brutally behind his back.
"If you even try to touch Colt once more, I'm going to break both of your arms. Your wife will have to clean you after taking a shit," Prime pushed the words through his clenched teeth.
"Let me go, fag."
Prime twisted further. "You will apologize now."
"Never."
Crack.
Fuck, Prime had broken the right arm of his father, Colt thought. Like this. And immediately twisted the left arm behind his back.
"Fuckin' shit. Ya dead!" His father shouted and whined at the same time.
"Colt, make him stop," his mother tried to intervene, approaching her son. Brian had put the box next to the door and was in between her and Colt in a second. His cold blue eyes sent a clear message: `One more step and you'll also need somebody to wipe your ass in the next months. And nobody fucks an ugly woman in plaster casts.'
"I said: `Apologize!'" Prime repeated as if for handicapped.
Resistance and silence.
More twisting.
"Stop it. I'll say it. Fuckin' shit, that hurts."
"Say it!"
"Sorry, Colt."
Colt knew Prime wasn't satisfied with the answer and was tempted to play the drill instructor game of `I CAN'T HEAR YOU!' but decided against it.
"And will you make any troubles when we leave now?" Prime asked parent voice style.
"Get fuckin' lost, you ..." Only a quick, but little movement by Prime stopped the heavily sweating man in pain from completing his sentence with inappropriate words.
"With pleasure."
Prime wanted to release Mr. Parker, but Colt said: "One second, Prime."
Colt ran to the box and got two small bags out of the thick yellow brown envelope. He threw one to the surprised Brian, who looked at it as if he saw a diaphragm.
The nerd ripped the bag open and moved to his father with a cotton swab in his hand. "Open wide, dad," he teased the old man, who was now sweating like the proverbial pig. The heat, the pain of the broken arm and this red-haired animal keeping him immobile was too stressful.
"What's that shit?"
"Mr. Parker," Prime reprimanded him like a policeman talking to a driver who exceeded the speed limit, "when your son asks you to open your mouth, you are going to comply. Otherwise you'll have another broken arm. Understood?"
The pig grunted but didn't stop Colt from picking up some of his saliva in his stinking mouth with the swab. He quickly put the stick in the little plastic container, which came with the cotton swab.
Brian understood now, turning to Mrs. Parker and saying smugly: "Well, my Lady, why don't you show me how good you are with your lovely red mouth?"
Colt nearly burst into laughter at Brian's sense of humor in this `Pulp Fiction'-like scene.
And his mother was much too shocked about everything to offer any resistance. Brian swabbed the women's mouth as if making love to her, and put it into the glass container saying: "All done here, Colt."
"Last question, dad, and then you can call the ambulance," Colt snickered. Seemed all his kid revenge fantasies had come true.
"Who offered you money to get me back here?"
"Nobody."
Prime growled. "You might rethink this answer. I can also break ribs, you know ..."
"So?"
"Don't know the name. Just said we'd get 50.000 bucks if you'd come back."
"He called you?"
Hesitation. "Yeah."
Colt looked around, found his dad's old Nokia phone and browsed through the calls.
"Hidden number," his father seemed to read Colt's mind.
Nevertheless, Colt wrote something down on his own phone. When finished, he said: "Good. I think we're done now."
Prime pushed the fat man away from him so he landed on the couch chair on top of some empty potato chip bags.
"And you better not call me anymore," Colt said while closing the door.
If he'd thought it was hot inside, he was welcomed by a wave of humidity, which made him nauseous. He quick-marched to the waiting van.
When he saw Brian, Sam jumped out of the car to open the trunk, so the Beta could put the box there. And they quickly followed Colt and Prime's example hopping into the air-conditioned car with relieved sighs.
"Brian, get us away from here," Colt ordered quickly, not looking back at the house when they rode down the street.
"Dumpster?" Prime asked.
Colt shrugged his shoulders. "When I was 12 or 13, I started to think those two couldn't be my parents. I was so different from them. They were such losers. So I always had this vision I actually wasn't their kid but somehow had been `lost' by my real parents, and Mr. and Mrs. Parker just took me in to get the child support money."
"Wow," Sam said, turning around to look at his Meta.
"Anyway, I held on to this belief until I realized that supposedly a lot of kids have this kind of fantasies. It was part of dealing with parents I read. So I thought I was going just through the same phase."
"And the swabs?"
"I'd nearly forgotten about them. I got them years ago before I graduated. Back then those quick genetic tests became popular, so I wanted to finally check whether I was their biological child or not. But then I realized I had to be 21 to get results. Those tests were targeted to men checking whether their children were actually theirs; not for kids to check whether their parents were the real ones. So I had to wait; and then I went to college and everything changed anyway."
"And when he confirmed the dumpster theory, you remembered. Smart," Prime concluded.
"I guess that's why you guys put up with me," Colt joked self-deprecatingly. The angry growls in the car nearly upset his stomach. "Okay, got it, wolves. Love you, too." He smiled.
"Anyway, I'm 21 now, so I'll have them tested. I mean I already kind of know they're not my parents, but I need it scientifically confirmed."
"You wouldn't believe how it looked in there ...," Brian said.
"I guess if the exterior is a good proxy," Sam extrapolated.
"Wasn't as bad back then. But maybe because I was taking care of some things." Colt wondered why he tried to defend his `family.'
"Well, good you have a new family then." CE seemed to pick up his thoughts and sent him warm plum scents while handing him a chilled Diet Coke.
"So now you know why I didn't have nightmares as a kid, I was living them anyway."
This time nobody contradicted him or thought he was overdoing his childhood memories.
"So where are we going now?" Brian asked towards the row behind him, Colt and Prime.
"Well, I think we could have a bite. Breaking people's arms makes me hungry."
CE chuckled. "Not fair, Alpha. Why do you have all the fun?"
"Because, he was supposed to stay alive."
"Oh, makes sense." CE grinned. "Anyway, I could eat something."
The car burst into laughter. CE could always eat something.
"Sam, look on your smart phone for a diner. I'm not sure Colt would appreciate a steak house again," Brian ordered.
"Thanks, Mormon boy, wouldn't mind some vegetables actually."
Prime shook his head. "Rabbit food?"