Chapter Text
Things were difficult at the moment.
That was a common state of affairs for the Pines family of Glass Shard Beach. Things were difficult. Money could be tight from one month to the next as sales slowed and became scattered when the weather got cold. Their neighbors were pieces of work. Managing two twins wore on the nerves.
Especially these two twins. Stanford and Stanley Pines were, as far as Filbrick Pines was concerned, both trouble in their own right. Stanford thought entirely too much, obsessing over things that didn’t matter and running around to test questions that didn’t need answering. Stanley thought entirely too little, what few thoughts he had falling from his brain to his mouth to babble on about stories no one believed.
Most days, it was a relief to see them quiet when he stepped into a room. He didn’t want their yammering and they knew it. Seeing their backsides vanish out of the front door as they found ways to entertain themselves that didn’t involve being in the house was a welcome sight almost every day.
That had shifted after the robbery, Stanley strange and mute, but he’d slowly been livening back up. Filbrick had been certain he would be back to his old, irritating levels of noise soon enough, Stanford coaxing him back to himself. The mute shadowing of his father would vanish in time.
Filbrick found he didn’t enjoy the quiet of the morning even more than usual this past month.
He’d spent most of it laying down in his and Caryn’s bed in perfect silence and tattered clothing, an unnerving amount of blood on his person and on the sheets—the part of his mind always calculating expenses cursed at the idea of replacing them until he remembered the existence of bleach. He stared at the wooden ceiling and attempted to accept several key alterations to reality.
Turning from a man to a wolf was something that could happen to someone.
Werewolves were real.
That punk that had tried to rob his store was a werewolf.
Filbrick Pines was a werewolf, now.
Filbrick did not cry or panic. He was not a crying or panicking kind of man. But he did press his hands against his face and rub at his eyes; a faint and useless attempt to quell the headache he’d woken up with and that only got worse the longer he was awake.
Laying around feeling pathetic and sorry for himself was not the sort of thing Filbrick Pines did either, so eventually he got up and did the productive thing of getting into the shower and washing the mystery blood off. The only reason he hadn’t grown alarmed at the sight and feel of it was the note that had been placed next to him in his wife’s familiar scrawl. It assured him everyone was alright. She didn’t lie as much in writing.
(Still, for a minute before he read the note, still disoriented and muddled by fragments of memories or perhaps dreams, he’d felt like his breath had been punched out of him, his mind conjuring the image of Stanley pale and limp and suddenly, terribly small with blood smeared on his face from just weeks ago—)
That he could hear others moving around on the second floor helped. That he had never been able to identify what sounds were being made and where with such surety before this morning did not help.
He took the shower. The brown streaks of dried blood washed away. The taste of something metallic and rottingly sweet in between his teeth went away with the application of toothpaste and a tooth brush. By the time he was dressed, it was as if the mystery of what had happened last night didn’t exist at all.
Even so, the lingering question quickened his steps down to the kitchen and small dining room. Seeing Caryn, seeing the boys.
The boys didn’t look at him when he stopped at the door. Or, they did, but their gazes darted away just as quickly. Stanford went pale as a ghost, holding his breath like he was afraid that would give him away. Stanley looked nervous, clutching the edge of the dinner table with one hand, the other tucked away behind his side. They fixed their attention down and away to their plates, laden with pancakes complete with cheap syrup; a rare treat in the house. They were barely eaten.
His sons refusing to look at him was hardly uncommon. They were a pair of hellions when they wanted to be, which was most of the time, and the guilty cringe away from authority was just par for the course.
But in those circumstances, it was Stanley and Stanford that had something to be sorry for. The fear creating lines of tension in their spines wasn’t the fear of kids afraid of a knock to the back of the head or another round of scolding—it was the fear of animals too close to something that could kill them.
Between her sons, Caryn sat with her own plate, head propped on one hand. She looked unspeakably exhausted, the skin of her hands red like she’d been busy cleaning. She at least did not look afraid.
It was a cold comfort.
There was something itching and thrashing at the back of Filbrick’s mind. A force that had slowly begun to nag at him like a forgotten thought since the day of the robber that Filbrick had wrestled back, refusing to be dominated by lingering fear like he might’ve once been in his youth. It kept his eyes drawn to his sons.
Once, when they were younger and had just gotten their feet under them, they’d toddle after him and latch onto his legs with short, fat arms. Stanley more than Stanford, but both had gone for his legs when he was in the room.
Filbrick had tolerated the behavior for months before he began to pry their grubby hands off, telling them that they were boys, not burrs. They’d ended up clinging to each other instead, which wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least Filbrick had his calves back.
There had been the stray thought that he missed their pudgy little faces looking up at him, squished against his leg. But it was always fleeting and easily squashed. Right now he missed it more than ever. Wished they were still small enough to easily hide away against his sides.
“Sit down, hun,” Caryn said flatly, breaking the quiet like a gunshot.
Filbrick sat down and picked up the newspaper that someone had fetched from the front step before he came down. He snapped it open, ignoring the flinches from his sons.
The newspaper felt like the shower. If he went through his morning routine, it could be any morning, not the aftermath of whatever had happened just last night. If he read the newspaper like he always did, he was human like he always had been.
His eyes scanned the paper, but the words meant nothing to him. The headline could’ve declared that the president had run away to the Soviet Union and the Americas were about to be a free-for-all of violence and communism, and Filbrick wouldn’t know until the repercussions hit the street outside.
Slowly, as Filbrick refused to lower the paper, sounds emerged behind it. Quiet shifting in the chairs. The clicking of forks and the chewing of food.
Filbrick grit his teeth and did his best not to wince with every noise. He had always despised the sound of eating and metal on ceramic ever since childhood, but now it felt like knifes stabbing into his ears. He sat perfectly still and endured. A man was nothing if he couldn’t endure the simplest of annoyances.
But soon enough, Filbrick reached the end of the articles and was forced to put it down or reveal he had taken in none of it. The hints of breakfast being eaten quieted as everyone finished their food.
Funny. Filbrick had been almost ravenously hungry for the last week. But now he had no desire for food this morning. Not out of nausea; he felt as well-fed as he did well-rested.
His sons and Caryn were here and still walking, so he wouldn’t contemplate the why of that further.
Once Filbrick dared to lower the paper, Caryn fixed him a look from the other side of the table. Not looking away, she said. “Stanley, baby, put your arm up.”
From the corner of his eye, Filbrick could see the uncomfortable twist on Stanley’s face. The boy clearly wanted to do nothing less.
“Stanley,” Caryn ordered.
Grimacing, Stanley brought the arm that had been held at his side up onto the countertop. Filbrick could see now the pink, fresh—but not fresh enough—scarring of rows of teeth sunk into the skinny limb.
Ah. So that was one of the answers to the question that was last night. Filbrick still had many others. Why Caryn had been cleaning so hard. Why Stanley looked at him like something frightening, and Stanford looked at him like he was a monster. And not the sort of monster his son would go chasing like a fool. Why Filbrick was not hungry.
All Filbrick could wearily think was that things were going to be difficult.