A Second Bite

Since everyone and their roommate (Well, me, at least) wanted to see what happened to poor Ted after "A Halloween Bite to Remember" We decided to get around to finishing it. But since it's a rather large story and getting larger all the time, we're going to break it up into at least 4-5 chapters.

Title: A Second Bite
Chapter: Chapter one: Once Bitten
Author: Kita and Subu-chan
Rating: Mature (though this chapter is mostly worksafe-some bad language)
Characters: Ted, Drake & JJ (other characters in passing, Chief, Rose, Marty, Ryo & Dee)
Warnings and Disclaimers: Though this chapter is mostly safe for all concerned, later chapters will involve blood, shapeshifting, rude language, and explicit M/M/M sex scenes. Not for those with heart conditions, pregnant or nursing mothers or anyone under the age of 18. The surgeon general warns that this may be hazardous to your mental health. We do not own Fake or any of the characters, we just borrow them, put them through the wringer, and put them away damp. (not that anyone actually reads these things anyway)


Ted scratched irritably at the bandage-covered wound on his arm. Damn thing itched like crazy. He settled back in his chair as the others filed into the small conference room, still rubbing the gauze-covered length of his forearm. Fuck if the others weren’t still teasing him about the source of the injury.

He could remember the crazed look on the man’s face as he whirled around and sank his teeth into the fleshy part of Ted’s forearm, growling like he was a dog or something. God, he hated pulling ‘Full Moon Duty.’ This was the shit that happened whenever the moon was full.

He glanced up as Ryo primly told Dee to behave himself. Gag! Those two were so in love it was sickening. Mandy thought they were adorable and cooed over them each time she’d met Ted here at the station. Mandy… Ted grumbled under his breath. He was starting to feel like Drake, dumpee of the year. Mandy had gone gaga over some brooding, black-clad poet type she’s met at the local coffeehouse. Next thing Ted knew, he was last week’s news.

Marty was proudly showing JJ some pictures of his youngest, who was just turning four. He grinned as he caught Ted’s glance and showed him a picture of himself, steadying the little girl on her bike. Ted managed to summon up a smile and nodded.

Drake dragged in, still looking a little worn around the edges. He’d been out sick for four days. This was only his third day back and he still looked like he should be at home, but he gamely came to work anyway. Drake offered him a weary smile and dropped into the chair next to JJ. JJ turned his attention to Drake and Ted frowned. He wasn’t sure what, but something seemed to have changed between those two. It was nothing he could pin down, but it nagged him.

“Alright, you lot of miscreants, Shaddup!” Chief Smith said with a scowl, barging into the room like the walrus they often called him when he wasn’t around. Berkley Rose followed him. Ted suppressed a shudder. Berkley might be a classy son of a bitch, but he made Ted’s skin crawl. His smug, oh-so-superior look grated on Ted’s nerves worse than usual today and he scowled, scratching irritably at his bandages again.

Rose settled into a chair as the chief began to rant about a case. It was one that had the entire department chasing their own tails. The whole thing was mired in a swamp of dead-ends and red herrings. Nothing made sense. Ted stifled a snort. God knows, he’d been trying to make sense of it for the past two days. It gave him something to think about besides the damned bite on his arm.

He’d been subjected to endless testing and shots when Marty had driven him to the hospital after they had thrown the crazy in the drunk tank. Human mouths were some of the foulest, most unclean things on the planet, Nurse Emiry had told him primly as she swabbed his bitten flesh with first alcohol and then iodine. What if the man had had HIV or even been rabid? She’d warned with a look of horror as false as the color of her hair.

Chief was still going full-tilt, his rasping voice scaling towards a bellow, as he started in on the imagined incompetence of the Investigations Department. Suddenly, there was silence and seven pairs of eyes focused on Ted. He started, only now aware that he’d been growling under his breath. The rumble in his throat had even managed to overpower Chief Smith’s trained bellow.

Embarrassment only made the growl louder. Stricken, Ted rose to his feet and bolted from the room. He didn’t see the glance two of his friends exchanged as the door slammed shut behind him.

Ted hid out in the archives, snapping at anyone who came near with a short-tempered scowl. God, he hated people. They were all annoying as hell. And god, did Janet always wear that fucking much perfume? She smelled like she’d marinated in her damned ‘White Diamonds!’ It occurred to him that he’d always liked her perfume, but now it just made his head hurt. He glared as Peters from Narcotics came in and searched for a file. His ‘Wild Country’ as almost as nauseating as Janet’s perfume, and his breath smelled like he’d been hitting the flask hidden in his desk drawer already this morning.

Ted heard himself growling again and fled to the roof. He huddled against the cold October wind, shaking with something more than cold. What the hell was wrong with him? What the fuck was going on?

He heard soft voices from the other side of the fire door and didn’t pause to wonder how he could hear them through the thick steel.

He identified the first voice as JJ. “You should talk to him first.”

Drake: “Why?”

“Because at the moment, you’re not as much a threat to him as I would be, and he knows that instinctively.”

Ted puzzled over that. JJ, a threat? What the hell?

“Besides, he’s listening to us right now, aren’t you, Ted-sempai?”

Ted backed away from the door, shaken. Drake let himself out onto the roof, wincing a little at the bite of the cold wind. “Ted?”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Ted rounded on his friend, fists clenched at his sides.

“Please, calm down.” Drake held up his hands, showing he was unarmed. “Just settle down and listen.”

“Listen to what?” Ted all but shouted. He wanted to hit Drake, wanted to flee his presence, wanted to know what the hell was happening. The conflicting urges froze him in his tracks. Drake held his position, coming no closer, but he was already too close. Half the roof away, and he was invading Ted’s personal space. “What the hell?”

Drake spread his hands wider. “Please, Ted, calm down and I’ll tell you.” His face was pale and he swallowed thickly. “Fuck, if I’d heard someone saying this a week ago, I’d have laughed myself silly, but the truth is… Ted, that freak that bit you last Friday was a real werewolf.”

Ted exploded. “Fuck you! Drake, do not shit me! I am not in the mood for this!!!” His fingers crooked into claws and he snarled at his friend.

Drake backed away. “Ted. Calm down. C’mon, Ted.”

Ted growled and stalked toward him, all but smelling the sudden fear that rolled off his friend in waves. Drake’s gray eyes widened and he swallowed. His voice was a bare whisper. “Shit. JJ…?”

The door behind him burst open and JJ was suddenly between Ted and Drake.

Ted swallowed his snarl and resisted the urge to back away. While his eyes and mind told him he was facing down JJ, a slim man in slacks and a silk shirt, his instincts said otherwise. Every gut feeling he’d ever had was screaming at him that he was facing down something scarier than a hopped-up junkie with an Uzi. JJ took a single step toward him and Ted backed away until the waist-high barrier around the roof was pressed against his back. “S-stay back!”

JJ stopped. “Ted-sempai. Calm down or I’ll be forced to do something we’ll both regret. I won’t come any closer, but you have to calm the hell down.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Ted-sempai.” JJ warned.

Ted, shaking, slumped to sit at the base of the barrier. “JJ, w-what the hell’s wrong with me?”

“Drake wasn’t lying, Ted-sempai. That guy who bit you was a real, honest-to-god werewolf. He bit you and now you’re becoming one too.”

Ted managed a shaky laugh, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Nice joke, guys, but I think it’s time to come back to planet earth.”

“I’m not joking. You can smell me, can’t you? What do I smell like?”

Ted swallowed, staring up into impossibly blue eyes. “Scary as hell.”

“Besides that.” JJ crouched and offered an arm, wrist protruding from the sleeve of his silk shirt. Ted noticed a little shakily that it was cold as hell, but JJ wasn’t even wearing his suit jacket and looked as comfortable as if it had been a nice spring day.

“Y-you smell strong. Like blood. Blood and sex.” Ted turned wide eyes to Drake. “You and Drake?”

JJ laughed. It was his normal, soft laughter and some of the tension in Ted’s spine eased. “If I had any doubt, you just dispelled it. Your nose is very good.”

Ted shook his head. “Wait. What the hell are you telling me? I’m a fucking wolfman?”

JJ sighed. “This is not the place to discuss this. Think you can settle down long enough to get home?”

“JJ?” Drake made the name a question.

JJ turned to offer him a smile. “We’ll meet him there. He’ll feel better in his own territory.”

Ted rose slowly to his feet. “You promise you’ll explain this to me? No bullshit or anything?”

JJ nodded. “I promise, Ted-sempai.”

Ted managed somehow to convince the chief he was coming down with something. Smith glared at him over his bristling moustache and sighed. “Yeah, you do look like hell. First Parker and now you. Go home before you spread it to any of the other slackers. They’d love an excuse.”

Ted made it home, shaking as he closed the door behind him, leaning against it with an unsteady sigh. The drive had been hell. He had been hyperaware of the other cars around him and the scent of hot tar at one intersection under repair had nearly made him sick.

The soft rap on the door made him yelp in surprise. He knew who it was before he even looked through the peephole. A low growl rumbled in his throat. Logically, he knew JJ wasn’t a threat, but every instinct he possessed said that JJ was the scariest thing in all of New York.

He heard Drake sigh. “Let’s not start this again, okay, Ted? Neither me or JJ are here to hurt you. Understand?”

Ted forced himself to open the door and backed away. Every hair on the back of his neck standing up, he heard himself growling softly. “W-what the hell is happening to me?”

JJ sighed and seated himself on the end of the couch as far from Ted as the room would allow. “I wasn’t lying when I said the nut that bit you was a werewolf. Some of the old stories have a grain of truth to them. Only a grain, mind you, Ted-sempai, but truth. You won’t turn into a monster by the light of the full moon, but it will be a lot harder to control the wolf in you then.”

“How the fuck do you know all this? And what the hell are you?”

Drake chuckled softly, his far-less-threatening presence nearly forgotten. “Boy, doesn’t this sound familiar, huh, JJ?”

JJ smiled up at Drake, his blue eyes softening. Even in the midst of his confusion, Ted recognized the look. It was the same one Ryo turned on Dee when he thought no one was looking. “Only a little.”

Drake sighed and leaned over to rest his forearms on the back of the sofa. “One of your favorite movies is what, Ted?”

The sudden switch derailed him enough that he answered automatically. “What the hell does ‘The Lost Boys’ have to do with any-?” His eyes widened. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding me!”

Drake shook his head. “Sorry. Wish I could tell you otherwise, but nope.”

JJ opened his mouth slowly, baring a pair of thin fangs. Ted froze, staring at them like a deer in headlights. “Those aren’t real. You bought them at that costume place down on Ninth.”

Drake shook his head and reached up to pull his collar away from his throat. Nestled into the curve where his collarbone met his neck was a mark that looked like a small, faded hickey. The tiny punctures in the center of the mark were all too clear and the faded scent of dried blood was more proof than he wanted. “Trust me, they’re real.”

Ted shivered, staring at the clear bruise on Drake’s neck. The same instincts that said JJ was scary as hell were now clamoring that Drake was no one to mess with. He was marked, now. He belonged to JJ and if you messed with him, JJ would make you regret it.

“Christ, what the hell? Last week, my world was normal and now I find out I’m a werewolf, JJ’s a fang-boy, and what the hell are you, Drake?”

“Drake is still human, Ted-sempai. For now…”

“For now?”

Drake took up the thread. “I wasn’t really sick before. I got shot. JJ saved me, but it means that when I croak, I turn into a v-vampire like him.” He glanced down at JJ and his eyes softened. “It was the only way.”

“So you’re what? A vampire wannabe?”

“Something like that.” JJ put in, still smiling up into Drake’s eyes.

Ted shivered. “This is too fucked up!! I mean, come on. This is like something out of the movies!”

JJ shook his head and met Ted’s frantic gaze. “It’s no movie, Ted-sempai. It’s very real.”

Ted felt the growl tickling his throat again. “Why the fuck can’t I stop growling?”

JJ leaned back. “It’s the new instincts coming into play. Wolves growl when their frightened or upset. You’re both.”

Ted shook his head. “How do I stop it?”

“You gain control of the wolf. You have to focus on acting human. Right now, you’re so upset you’re starting to turn.”

Ted realized that all the color in the room had gone flat and tended toward gray.

Drake looked down into his face. “His eyes…”

JJ nodded. “He’s about to go full wolf on us. Drake, stay back. I don’t know what he might do when he changes.”

Ted rose to his feet and looked into the mirrored picture in the hall. The eyes that stared back at him were golden yellow and rimmed in black. That was too much. The world went black.