Chapter 43: Chapter 42 - Cody

Sunday 20 December

~*Cody’s POV*~

Coffee. I needed coffee.

My brain slowly started ticking over, and it kept telling me the same thing over and over.

Give me coffee or give me death.

Considering that I wasn’t yet so far gone that I was dreaming about offing myself, coffee would have to do. At least for now.

The apartment was quiet, thank fuck. I glanced at my bedside table to where the clock radio should be, but discovered someone had draped it with the top that I had worn last night. Scrunching my eyes closed, I tried to force my brain to answer the question of how it had got from me to its current position, remembering vaguely that the lights from the clock had annoyed me so much that I had thrown the top over it to block the light. Then I wondered if the top I had been wearing last night was no longer on me, what on earth was I currently wearing?

I barely opened my eyes to squint down at myself. Huh. This t-shirt? I hadn’t worn this in forever. I actually didn’t know why I had brought it along with me to camp. Maybe I thought I might need it for some paintball action or something? That was about all it was good for. I shrugged, then winced, as even the slight movement of my shoulders annoyed the hell out of my caffeine-deprived brain.

Pulling the top from the clock, I discovered it was just after eleven AM. Plenty of time to traipse around the apartment, doing nothing but getting rid of this damn hangover until camp tomorrow.

Figuring I couldn’t put it off any longer, I rolled out of bed and headed for the kitchen, noting that I was just covered in the ratty t-shirt and my undies. I couldn’t be arsed putting any other clothes on, but figured it wouldn’t be an issue. The silence in the apartment led me to conclude that Nat was the only other one in, or she had gone somewhere for the day, probably with Bells.

Stumbling through the lounge area, I noticed her door was still closed, which meant that she had not gone out for the day. “Nat? You up yet?”

Finally making it to the kitchen, I turned the kettle on and prepped a cup of coffee. I leaned my elbows on the kitchen bench and laid my head in my hands.

“You can’t help everyone, you know.” Roux had decided now was the perfect time to start a deep heart-to-heart conversation in my already splitting head.

“Oh, you can fuck right off, Roux.”

“I’m just saying—“

“I know EXACTLY what you’re saying, and I’ll repeat what I just said — you can fuck right off. I’m not in the mood.”

“You’re never in the mood to talk to me when you’re drunk or hungover.”

“I know. Isn’t it fabulous?”

Roux growled at me. I imagined sticking my tongue out and blowing a raspberry back at her. See how she liked them apples.

I shuffled around the kitchen and grabbed a couple of slices of bread for the toaster. “Nat?”

I turned the toaster on and figured I had a minute or two before it was ready for butter and vegemite, so I ambled across to Nat’s door to tap on the door. Maybe she was still asleep? I put my hand on the door handle to peek in to find out. “Nat? You awake yet?”

“Just a second!”

Crap. I hope I hadn’t woken her. Oh, well. Too late now, I guess. “I’m in the process of burning toast. You want me to make you any?” I let go of the door handle but waited for a response.

I could hear a slight commotion, but figured Nat was just stumbling around her room like I had been only minutes ago. Her door opened a fraction, just enough for her to poke her head out to talk to me. “Not yet. I’ll be out in a minute. I’ll get some then.” She quickly shut the door again, not waiting for a response.

Fair enough. She might have had a rough night, too. I shrugged and turned back to the kitchen, only to curse when I saw smoke rising from the toaster. “Stupid bloody thing. It’s always either charcoal briquettes or raw bread with you, isn’t it?” I summoned enough energy to shake my raised fist at the hunk of useless machinery before plucking the now almost useless chunks of blackened cardboard out of the toaster.

Not giving up on them yet, I stood over the bin to scrape the worst bits off both slices, then slathered them with a heaping of butter and a tiny amount of vegemite, just as the kettle started whistling.

I moaned with anticipation. Coffee… My wonderful, amazing, delightful coffee…

I forgot about my toast altogether while I gulped down half of the still steaming cup, nearly burning my throat. It was lucky I’d become so used to being impatient around cups of coffee, otherwise I’d have ended up in the emergency department for internal burns well before now. It would not surprise me at all if, in the years to come, I could just dump a spoonful of coffee onto my tongue and pour the boiling water down my throat.

“You’d be an idiot to try that, Cody. A fool. A nitwit, and a cretin.”

“Oh, shut up, Roux. Let me live in a fantasy world just once, okay?”

“Cody, you’re a werewolf. How much more of a fantasy world do you want?”

“Enough of one that you could leave me in fucking peace for two fucking minutes while I sort this fucking hangover out.”

“It wasn’t me that made you drink so much last night, you dingbat.” I could feel Roux shaking her head at me.

“No, it was fucking Tatum.”

“Right… He was totally the one who forced your mouth open and poured the alcohol down your throat.”

“You know exactly why I did what I did, Roux.”

“Doesn’t mean I agree with your methods, you bonehead.” She grumbled before receding to the back of my mind.

I growled.

Fucking Tatum. To my everlasting horror, that fucking turd had pulled the same shit on me last night that he had last week.

Last Saturday, when Bells and Nat had been out on their first date, I had spent a good couple of hours trying to talk to Tatum about what he was doing to Bells. Initially, he’d been surprised that I knew, but then he laughed and made a bet with me that for every glass of gin and tonic I could swallow while we were talking, he would grant Bells one ‘free day’.

Unfortunately, I had never drunk gin before and didn’t realise how badly it would affect me. I could only make it through half a glass before I started feeling like I was losing myself. The bright, vibrant, cheerful Cody I had been at my birthday party the night prior had slowly been replaced with a morose, miserable, and sad Cody that cried as she tried to negotiate with one of her oldest friends.

Tatum had absolutely thrived on my agony. It was like for every tear I shed, a new door to his sadistic nature opened. He started taunting me that I’d only gifted Bells half a day’s grace period when I stopped drinking, ridiculing me as I fled his apartment.

I couldn’t understand where the old lovable Tatum that I used to know had gone. Ever since he’d turned sixteen and met his wolf, I had noticed that he’d slowly become more and more bitter with the world. Bells had been dating Kadin, and it seemed like the happier Bells was, the more unpleasant Tatum became.

The only thing that kept Tatum even a little grounded was his relationship with Zelda. Tatum kept Zelda separate from it all, so she never saw the destruction he was wreaking on Bells. In order to save his sanity, Bells had encouraged Zelda to hang around Tatum more, and slowly Tatum and Zelda’s relationship had become romantic.

There was a brief reprieve from Tatum’s hostility when Kadin had dumped Bells, sending Bells spiralling into misery. The sadder Bells got, the happier Tatum became. It was like they were both on a seesaw, each balancing the other out.

For a couple of months before their eighteenth birthday, Bells had finally started getting over Kadin dumping him. He was slowly returning to the content man that we all remembered, and Tatum was receding into the disagreeable jerk we all disliked but could tolerate.

And then they’d both turned eighteen and started shifting.

Tatum’s resentment had transformed into cruelty. For over three months, he had taunted Bells, constantly needling him until Bells would crack and start beating him. Tatum would never fight back, preferring to receive every punch Bells threw, then thank him for the beating as soon as it was over.

This ripped Bells’ heart out, and Tatum knew it. Just as before, the sadder Bells got, the happier Tatum would become, so Tatum made it his mission to make Bells as miserable as could be. Thankfully, the fights only occurred every two to three weeks. Zelda remained oblivious to it all, as did pretty much everyone else in the pack; most putting the mood shifts down to typical hormonal changes or simply getting used to their wolves.

I wasn’t convinced. It wasn’t until someone had accidentally pushed Zelda into Tatum one day and I saw him wince and massage his torso that I suspected there was more going on between the pair. Tatum had laughed it off, but it got me thinking and I ended up approaching Bells about it.

He eventually told me everything but was adamant that he was in control of the situation, that he knew what he was doing and that there was no need to tell anyone about what was going on. He looked relieved that he could finally talk to someone about it all, and I had told him I was always there for him if he needed a shoulder to lean on.

The very next fight, just before we finished our final exams, Bells had knocked on my door, beyond distraught. As I wrapped his knuckles in bandages, he admitted he loathed what Tatum did to him, that he was weak to allow himself to be manipulated so easily.

I countered that Tatum knew exactly how Bells felt, and that’s precisely why Tatum kept doing it. Tatum would poke and prod and harass Bells until he would crumble under the pressure and a one-sided fight would result. I knew that Tatum absolutely thrived on the control he had over Bells, and if Bells kept fighting, he would continue feeling absolutely destroyed by it.

I had seen this same exact fight for control before between my parents.

I tried to convince Bells to talk to someone, anyone, about what was going on, but just like my Mum, he still insisted that he had everything in hand.

And then Bells met Nat.

I thought little of it at first. I knew Nat had a crush on Bells from that first meeting in the pack house lobby and that Bells had seemed reasonably happy about the attention. Initially, I had found it amusing, as I thought Nat would be on her way out of Matlock either that day or soon after.

But Nat hadn’t left. It wasn’t until the first day of camp that Tatum realised how happy Bells was. I could see the shift in emotions already beginning again, the buildup to another fight brewing. As the morning progressed, Bells grew happier, and Tatum grew angrier. To stifle what I knew was brewing, I encouraged Zelda at lunch to spend more time alone with Tatum under the pretence that I needed to look after Nat. Still remarkably oblivious, Zelda was only too happy to go along with the idea.

Bells knew what I was doing, but that afternoon, he couldn’t keep his hands off Nat. It was almost like he’d been starved of happiness, and he was making up for lost time. Not that I could blame him; Nat seemed to have this way about her that made most people automatically like her.

Well, everyone except Kadin, Spence and my Dad, that is.

That night, Tatum had goaded Bells into a fight and Bells had succumbed to the pressure. I realised what had happened the following day when Bells was miserable around Nat. I let Nat assume it was because of Kadin’s blow-up the afternoon prior. What else could I do?

The week wore on, and Bells grew happier the more he was around Nat, and Tatum grew more unpleasant. The ever-tightening tension between Tatum and Bells snapped on the night of my birthday, the day before my party at The Gap. When Nat was in with Kennedy and I was with my folks, Tatum had gone after Bells again. I wasn’t expecting it and I don’t think Bells had either, as there had never been such a quick turnaround between fights before. I knew nothing about it until the next day, when Bells had mentioned it to me at lunch.

Neither of us knew what to do, so we compensated by getting extraordinarily drunk that night.

I had then confronted Tatum about it the following night. It had been the first time that I had spoken to Tatum about it, and just like Bells, Tatum seemed relieved to talk about it with someone. Unfortunately, Tatum decided to see if he could gain the same sadistic pleasure out of me as he could out of Bells.

I fell for it, and to his absolute joy, I gave him the satisfaction he had been looking for. Fool me once, shame on you…

I hadn’t lied to Nat that night. I was glad that she was in Matlock. Things were better when she was around.

It was Tatum, that was worse.

Tatum had been true to his word. It wasn’t until lunchtime on Sunday that he’d started hounding Bells again until Bells broke. I knew that Bells had made plans with Nat for that afternoon, but had had to cancel them because of the state he was in, blaming it on a family emergency.

Back at camp this week, things had remained relatively calm. I told Bells about my ‘drinking game’ on Saturday night, and we both figured that after that and the beating Tatum had received on Sunday, we had satisfied Tatum enough for the week. It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon when Bells showed up looking frantic that I realised that this peace wouldn’t last.

Bells and Nat had gone out for dinner last night when Tatum and Zelda showed up at my door, begging to go to The Gap. I had only planned to go for a couple of drinks, but once we were there, Tatum cornered me when Zelda had excused herself to go to the bathroom. He demanded a rematch of our ‘drinking game’, telling me it was within my power to ‘help’ Bells, to ‘save’ him.

And once again, I fell for it. Fool me twice, shame on me… and oh, how shamed I felt today.

Tatum knew he had control of me now, and I didn’t know what to do. He’d had a taste of someone other than Bells, and I feared that there was no stopping him.

I would need to talk to Bells again, convince him to ask someone for help. We had to get control back or things were only going to get worse. Much worse.

I looked up from my cup when I heard Nat’s door open, distracting me from my thoughts. She looked anxious, her hands twisting in front of her as she made her way to the kitchen bench.

“Everything okay, Nat?” I took her in with narrowed eyes, noticing that she was slightly flushed. “You’re looking a bit pink. Are you feeling okay?”

Nat rested her hands on the barstool in front of her and her pink cheeks developed into a blush. I noticed she was looking at everything except me. She seemed to take great interest in the toaster.

“Nat? You want me to make you some toast or something? I don’t always burn the bread, you know.” I watched her curiously.

A shuffling noise came from Nat’s doorway. I reluctantly tore my eyes away from Nat to notice Bells emerging from her room, adjusting his t-shirt. My mouth dropped open as I watched him wander over to Nat and wrap his arms around her waist. He kissed her on the cheek, rested his chin on her shoulder, then looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes.

“Oooohhhh…” As much as I knew how much this complicated matters, I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face. I turned my attention back to Nat. “We are so going to be talking about this later.”

Nat groaned in embarrassment. “Shut up.”

Bells laughed, nuzzling her neck. A shy grin fell over Nat’s face as she leaned her head into his. She wrapped her arms over his, enclosing his hands with hers, looking completely and utterly at peace.

I nestled the cup of coffee still in my hands and tilted my head to the side. “Was he here last night? I can’t remember seeing him.” I frowned, then shrugged. “Of course, I can’t remember much of anything last night right now, so…”

“Yeah, I was here,” Bells said. “You came home completely wasted. How’s your hangover?”

“Better than last week. I must be getting used to them.” I grinned at him as I took another gulp of my coffee. “Either of you want something to eat? There’s plenty of bread left that I haven’t yet burnt to a cinder.” I put the cup down on the kitchen bench and turned around to get the bread.

“Um, Cody?” Nat asked.

“Yeah?” I grabbed the bread and turned back to the toaster.

“You don’t have any pants on.”

I looked up to see Nat on the verge of laughing and Bells burrowing his face into her hair.

“Oh, come on. Give me some credit. I thought you were the only one I’d see, and you’ve seen me plenty of times with no pants on.”

“Yeah,” said Nat. “But last night you flashed Bells, so I think he’d be more comfortable if you put some pants on.”

I felt the colour drain from my face. “I what…?”

“You flashed Bells.”

“No…”

“Yup.”

My eyes widened. “Shit, Bells. I’m sorry.”

“All good. But could you put some pants on now, please?” Bells muttered, still facing Nat’s head.

“Uh… Sure.”

Nat laughed as I ran to my room. Once I re-emerged, I found Nat at the toaster and Bells seated on one of the stools at the kitchen bench. I joined him and grabbed my abandoned coffee.

When Nat handed Bells the toast, I couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed. “What the hell, Nat?”

She looked lost. “What?”

“How is it not burnt to a crisp?” I glared at the slice of golden-brown toast on Bells’ plate.

“Uh…” She looked at Bells, who shrugged. “Aliens?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I knew it was a bad idea letting you watch the History Channel.”

“So, Cody,” said Bells, as he buttered his gorgeously cooked slice of bread. “What’s with the scratches?” He looked at me pointedly.

I frowned. “What scratches?”

“The ones all over your face.”

“What?”

Nat coughed. “I think I can answer that.” I turned my attention from Bells to her. “You had a nightmare last night. You said that the butterflies were attacking you, but the butterflies were your hands.”

I was utterly perplexed. “… what…”

“You were scratching at your face when I came in. I stopped you, but the damage had already been done.” She looked apologetic. “But you do look better than you did last night.”

I cast my mind back to recall what Nat was talking about, but my mind was still too foggy. I’m sure I’d remember it all, eventually. “Eh, I’ll see to it when I have a shower.” I shrugged. “In the meantime, can you please cook me some of your magical toast, oh master toaster?”

“Your wish is my command.” Nat bowed forward with a flourish of her hand at her temple.

Thanks to Nat’s mastery of the toaster, we all had a wonderful lunch. We chatted about anything and everything as we ate. Eventually, Nat excused herself to go to the bathroom, leaving Bells and me at the kitchen bench.

“You need to talk to someone, Bells. He needs help.” The smile that had been present on my face throughout lunch dropped from my face.

Bells stilled and swallowed nervously. “What happened?”

“You should be clear this week. I couldn’t handle more than a week’s worth.”

He winced. “Cody—“

I cut him off. “No. This has to stop. You know it won’t end with just us.”

He sighed and stared at the kitchen bench. “I can keep him in check, Cody. I know I can.”

“Bells, you can’t.” I put my hand on his shoulder as he hung his head and his shoulders slumped. “His desire for control is getting worse and you’re not coping. I can barely manage and it’s only been a week.”

A long silence fell between us as I let him think. Once I heard the toilet flush, I removed my hand from his shoulder. “You need to do this. We’re running out of time.”

He nodded slowly, but avoided my eyes. “Leave it with me.”

“So, what’s the plan for today?” Nat asked as she emerged from her room. “Anyone up for an exciting day of laundry? Or do we put it off to watch movies?” She looked at each of us. “Bells tells me that there are eight more Star Wars movies I haven’t watched. Or do we delve into whatever the Marvel Universe is?”

The smile that I had forced back on my face when she came back into the room became more relaxed. “Nat, let me introduce you to a man named Tony Stark…”