You Are the Moon That Breaks the Night |Virgato|

Chapter 8: Syzygy (Part 2)

Erick made a beeline for him the moment Chris entered the kitchen. "Don't beat yourself up too much, Chris. We all struggled at the beginning."

Chris needed a few good seconds to process what Erick had just told him, "Huh?"

"A few more shifts and you'll be fully sentient when you're a wolf. Richard told us what happened at school today."

Oh. "Oh," Chris mumbled.

"We all mess up sometimes. Control will come eventually," Erick smiled, "You'll get there, I believe in you."

"Thanks, Erick," Chris smiled at him, feeling consoled. It was nice to know at least one of them did.

"Pizza!" Richard announced, coming in from the living room, a stack of cardboard boxes in his arms.

"Pizza!" Erick cheered back, pulling open the drawer to his right in order to retrieve what turned out to be a pizza cutter.

"They will need a while for that," Joel told Chris, appearing at his side. "You can come into the living room and choose a movie with me."

Chris nodded before following the other boy into the next room. Chris flopped down onto one of the chesterfields while Joel walked over to the shelves next to the chimney.

"So like..."

Joel looked up from the stack of DVDs that had been perched horizontally in front of all the other DVDs stacked in the shelf.

"Pizza and movies?" Chris asked. "A normal movie night? This is what this is?"

Joel blinked at him, "Yes?" The raven haired boy furrowed his brows. "Why, what did you think we were going to do?"

"Oh," Chris pulled his knees against his chest, "Nothing, just..."

Joel looked at him for a couple more seconds before a sly smile took over his features, "Why, Christopher? Did you think that we were going to do some crazy wolf ritual? Paint a pentagram onto the wall with out blood and howl at the moon?"

"No," Chris gave back. It wasn't what Chris had thought of. There had been candles in his vision.

"Sure," Joel laughed before holding two of the DVD cases up, "Anyway, which one?"

Save yourself the time, Pimentel," Richard's voice came from the kitchen, "I already chose a movie."

Chris was about to respond, but then suddenly Joel was towering over him, pressing Christopher's knees flat before flopping himself on top of the other boy. Chris gasped lightly, played it off as a sound of discomfort.

"Shh," Joel shushed him, sprawled himself out until he was comfortable. With a sigh, Chris deflated and accepted his fate as Joel's pillow for the evening.

"Good boy," Joel mused from where he had bedded his head on Christopher's chest. Chris was about to ask, but then he remembered that, right, echoes were a thing.

"Disgusting," Richard commented as he walked up to them, "Look how they are cuddling without us, Erick."

"Rude," the black haired boy agreed, his faux-offended expression crumbling within seconds as he perched himself on Richard's lap, who had previously wedged himself into the space between Christopher's feet and the armrest of the sofa. Chris thought it to be kind of ironic, that there were two more, enormously sized sofas available and yet they had all ended up on the same one. Somehow, he didn't mind in the least. It felt right like this, all of them ending up in a single heap of limbs and pizza grease.

Erick was the first one to fall asleep, Richard following him throughout the second movie. Chris felt his eyelids become heavy at the end of it an with the knowledge that he was safe here, surrounded - quite literally - by his pack, he allowed him to fall asleep.