Jaime still wasn’t speaking.
Was he angry with Finn about threatening his brother, and he just hadn’t said anything in the aftermath of their argument? He’d told Sam that they were together, but did he regret that? Should Finn have double checked that Jaime wanted to be all the way out here with him? Was he afraid of being this isolated and alone with a guy who could turn into a wolf? Did he regret being intimate with him?
“Finn.”
Snapping out of his anxious thoughts, he looked over toward Jaime, who had already opened the truck door and stepped out, stretching his legs. Finn was still sitting in his seat, hands clutching the steering wheel, engine idling. “Sorry. Right, I’ll get our bags.”
Jaime turned to take in the cabin. It was small, longer than it was wide with a steeply pitched roof. The walls went up five or six feet before meeting the roofline, so it wasn’t quite an A-frame, and several steps led to a porch spanning the front of the cabin.
There were three large windows framing the roof peak, but the windows along the ground level were small, and Finn had no doubt they were reinforced, both for security purposes and because of wildlife.
He grabbed their bags out of the back seat. “Stay by the truck, I’m going to go check that everything is clear inside. This time of year bears can be unpredictable and aggressive, and they’ll break in if they smell food.”
Jaime paled and shuffled back to sit in the truck and wait. Finn entered and did an initial sweep, noting the lower level was all one open space with a kitchen, living area, and a wood stove for heating. He fed it a few pieces of kindling to get the room warmed up, as it had clearly been some hours since the people who had opened the cabin had left.
Opposite the stove, sat a couch and chair flanked by large shelves filled with books and board games and puzzles, and then a narrow set of steps led to a loft area which contained one large bed. A matching set of windows framed the peak that sat over the space, and someone had strung up fairy lights all along the loft area, making it feel soft and warm.
Had those always been there, or were they a special touch that Sheppard had requested, knowing the two of them would be there for a while together?
Right. Well, this would be cozy.
He set their bags down by the bed and stepped back out onto the porch to wave Jaime in, and while he was heading inside Finn paced around the side of the cabin to check that the outhouse was clean. He fiddled with the stash of toilet paper a little before making his way back around to the front porch where he pulled out their secured line and fired off a quick message to Sheppard and Silas, letting them know they’d arrived, before pocketing the phone again.
And then he just stood there, staring out at the scenery.
The view was breathtaking; true wilderness with a vista of the interior’s taiga that Finn knew would showcase stunning sunsets over the distant mountain range. He couldn’t take it in though, couldn’t relish in the soft sounds of animals moving through the brush or the creek trickling nearby, because he was too worried that he’d already fucked up this thing with Jaime before it began.
Again.
Taking a final, deep breath, he turned away from their beautiful view. Enough was enough; if Jaime was going to reject him, he’d better just go face it instead of hiding in a fucking outhouse like a coward.
Walking back inside, he locked the door before turning to see Jaime standing in the middle of the living area, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and avoiding eye contact.
Even when he was nervous, he was nearly otherworldly enchanting in the way he moved—Finn could stare for hours and hours and still not completely take him in. Stepping toward him, he gathered his courage to speak, but as usual, Jaime beat him to it.
“If you’ve decided that you don’t want me, just tell me. I’m sorry about what my brother said. What he called you. It’s not true. You’re not a monster. Or, you’re not the kind of monster that Bishop is.”
Finn felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. So, Jaime did think he was a monster? Just a different kind of monster than the ones he already knew?
Seeming to sense his downward spiral, Jaime looked up at him, intense and focused and in the way that Finn had always imagined he looked at a subject before he painted them. All-seeing. It gave him goosebumps to feel the full weight of Jaime’s attention. It was overwhelming, but not dissecting. He was being seen entirely, but not judged.
And because Jaime always saw Finn, his face shifted from wary hurt to sharp determination. “I’ve asked you several times now to show me your shift. All of you. But you’ve avoided me, and I think it’s because you don’t want me to see you for those things. You want me to see you foryou.”
Jaime stepped forward and cupped his jaw, running his finger along the blunt end of a normal human canine. “But I already do. And I ask to see those other parts because I want all of you. I want everything. I love your teeth, and I love what you look like, all big and hairy and growly.”
He turned red, and Finn remembered that fleeting moment in Jaime’s bedroom after he’d pulled the attacker off of him, and had smelled Jaime’s arousal at seeing Finn shifted for the first time.
Jaime continued, “I ask to see you because those are parts of you, too, Finn. I don’t separate them from the man standing in front of me. And you use the word monster like it’s a bad thing, but it’s not. Not when it’s about you, about all the wolfy sides of you. I want those parts, too. Now. Always. I don’t want you to hide from me, Finn.”
He doesn’t really mean that. You haven’t told him everything. You haven’t told him you want to have sex with him when you look like that.
Finn exhaled hard, leaning into Jaime’s palm. “I keep thinking that the next thing I show you, the next thing I tell you, will be the thing that scares you off. Please. I don’t want to see that in your eyes. If this is all we can ever be, it can be enough for me. This can be enough.”
Jaime’s face sharpened in anger, a flash of what Finn had seen directed at his brother this morning. He placed a hand on Finn’s chest and pushed, knocking him back against the kitchen counter. “Do you think so little of me? Do you really think that I only want some of you, Finn?”
Tears pooled in Jaime’s eyes, his anger making his face ruddy. “If this is your way of telling me that you do not want anything more with me, then just say so, and I won’t ask again. But I have asked, Finn, because I want to know you. From the very fucking beginning I have wanted to know all of you. If you aren’t ready for that yet, then tell me, and I will wait. I will wait as long as you need me to wait. But stop pushing me away out of your own fear of rejection and then telling me it’s my fault.”
Finn whined at the sight of Jaime’s tears, all of his fear and doubt bubbling up, up, up—needing out, needing absolution. Silas’s words came back to him, then.
