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Easy to Forget

It's easy to forget, with the way they look most of the time, that they aren't average, ordinary people. It's easy to forget that Lucius isn't just some prissy clothes queen with an ego and a temper to match; easy to forget that Peter had to fight Lucius for his obeisance and relative quietness.

Easy until he comes home to see the door busted open by someone, the locks splintered clean off the over-priced real wood veneer. Easy until half-wolfed Lucius is splintering someone's throat just like the door. Easy until his cream Stainmaster carpet is being stained beyond any hope of repair by thick, red, blood.

The jaws catch his attention first, jutting out of an otherwise almost ape-like skull, the gleam of bone and gum and tooth in abnormal places, the bristle of hair not grown to full length yet. They crush together with a slow patience, sickening, a drop of spittle going from clear to marbled red as it runs from werewolf-Lucius's twisted, half-formed lip down the cheek of his victim.

And the smell; the man that Lucius bites? eats? mutilates? has let his bladder and bowels go, mixing with the overpowering salt-metal reek of blood. When the smell strikes Peter he flees, to the bathroom, locking the door behind him and vomiting until he coughs up only bile, and even then his stomach still convulses.