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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

NED

Ned could not help but notice the fleeting flicker of hope that passed across Garrett's face after he'd answered Ned's knock.

He hadn't even been sure the coyote would be home at this hour, if at all. He could have been off dealing with his....other life, if one could call it that, or he could have gone back to LA...Ned couldn't remember when exactly Garrett had said HBO wanted to start filming Season Five of Carmen Barbosa- sometime later in the summer or early fall, although it would depend on whether the casting director decided to promote Garrett to a season regular or leave him as a reoccurring character.

Garrett's eyebrows were raised questioningly, eye intent. Ned paused, wondering how to begin this. After talking with Arkady, he'd known for certain he had to go back and settle things with the coyote, but he hadn't really rehearsed what he had to say. Sure, it'd been going through his head; enough that he'd avoided Scarlett so as not to have to talk to anyone else until he'd settled this.

"I missed you last night," Garrett said.

Five simple words, yet when Ned's ears caught them he felt his resolve against the coyote weakening, as heart overruled mind. "I did too." The words almost surprised him, but they were true, he had to admit that, and almost without understanding it, he opened his arms and embraced the coyote, feeling Garrett's arms going around his own neck, his ears falling back as he tucked his muzzle into the coyote's shoulder. It wasn't a sexualised or lusty embrace, just one of emotion, two souls pushed apart and now reunited.

Neither spoke until a few minutes later, when the door had been closed and they'd sat in the living room, across from each other rather than together. Garrett had heated a couple cups of some variety of herbal tea, and as Ned gripped the warm mug, he looked up to meet the coyote's eyes. "We need to talk."

"I know" Garrett said. "You probably have questions."

Ned hesitated. His eyes had risen above where Garrett sat on the couch to examine Olympia's ceremonial swords. The Chinese influence everywhere in the room was stifling, ever reminding him why he was here. I'm in the devil's lair, he thought, and I'm not even fighting my way out.

"The floor's yours" the coyote told him.

Ned asked the first thing that came to mind, the question that had tormented him for the past 24 hours.

"Why?"

Garrett smiled, kind of sad like, and looked wistfully off into the distance, at nothing in particular.

"You are a good person" Ned encouraged. "You had everything going for you. You're good-looking, you have talent for writing, you're an actor with a place in a popular show. There's thousands of people who'd give everything to have what you did, and yet you gave it up to become...a killer? Why?"

"I wasn't always like this" Garrett murmured softly. He stroked a paw thoughtfully across his arm, reflective. "You've never seen who I was before I met Olympia."

Ned's ears flew up. "Wait, so you were a mobster first, an actor second?" That he had never considered; always he'd thought that Garrett must have turned to crime in the way some celebrities turned to drugs or to illicit lovers, having become so absorbed with their own brilliance that they felt themselves invincible.

The coyote stirred his tea and sipped. "Remember where I came from. Rural town in Idaho, far from anything. My biological father was never a good husband to my mother or a decent father for me. He worked only irregularly, leaving my mother to work full-time, while he ran around entertaining himself with pointless hobbies or chasing younger women. Growing up, I had few friends, all of which were girls. I was introverted, quiet, kept to myself, lost in the worlds of the novels I read. Always I dreamed that somewhere, there had to be something more."

His voice rose a little in volume as his paws tapped the table. "I had awkward social skills, and while I've never been helpless, I wasn't particularly talented physically either. My little brother used to always beat me at wrestling and when we tried practicing karate and the like, I was always so on the defensive that I'd get myself beat up just by trying to avoid being hit."

The coyote finally paused, letting Ned respond. "But that is all superficial" he argued, exasperated. "Issues with your self-image, perhaps, but at least you were good-"

"I was weak!" Garrett snarled.

Ned's fangs clicked together with a snap. Garrett's ears were down and his muzzle was pointed up obstinately. "I was weak," he repeated, "and while weak I could never become anything. I came to this city, and for reasons I'll never know, Olympia saw something in me that no one else did. She taught me to fight, to control fear, to live with confidence. I learned to trust my instincts; to speak with charm and poise, in such a way that your peers want to follow you. I always wanted to be something more than ordinary. She made me what I am - and look at what that is! I am everything I ever wanted to be. I even have the lover I dreamed of having."

"But what is that worth if you had to sell your soul to do so?" Ned growled in frustration. "When will the price be too much?"

He'd thought maybe that might make Garrett reconsider, but instead, the coyote actually smiled, a touch of his characteristic sly grin. "Actually, Ned, my soul is in better shape now than ever." He waved a paw in the direction of his bedroom. "You saw some of the foreign décor in there? After we finished filming in Egypt a year ago, filming the Season Three finale, I met Olympia in Cairo and we flew to China and spent almost two months studying in an Ashram with some gurus, at a monastery in the mountains. I'm entirely at peace within." He arched an eyebrow. "But are you?"

The implication of the question was irritating, so Ned avoided it. "You said you didn't want to do anything forever. Is this ever going to end? Or are you addicted to killing now?"

"Of course it ends" the coyote retorted. "I'm not some psychopath who takes lives because he enjoys it." He set his tea mug on the table. "In fact, psychopaths make terrible assassins precisely because they enjoy killing. The bloodlust can be a distraction; can be the cause of a fuck-up. Those like Olympia or myself who view it just as a job; a means to an end; make the best assassins."

"Oh, so life means nothing to you?"

Garrett rolled his eyes. "No. Who do you think most our targets are? Drug lords, crooked CEOs, greedy foreign politicians - we aren't usually hired to take out the 'good guys.' Sometimes we even help law enforcement out, so to speak. Olympia hates sex crimes - she got attacked by a rapist when she was a kid - so she's killed pimps and sex traffickers a few times just to get rid of them."

"It's still killing" Ned growled. "Outside the law, for money." Besides which, Garrett had already more or less admitted to killing or terrorising people - the "associates" he'd mentioned the day before - who probably did not fit the categories he'd just described.

"Did you ever pause to consider what that money might be paying for?

It wasn't necessarily a question Ned had been expecting; wasn't the money going to pay for Garrett's lavish lifestyle? The expensive car; the trendy clothes he wore; the quality of the furnishings in his bedroom. All suggested that the coyote had money and wasn't afraid to spend it on himself. "Mostly on yourself, right?"

He wasn't certain whether the coyote's expression was one of smug satisfaction, or...defiance. "Most of my own expenses are paid for by my acting and writing career." He suddenly jumped up, walked around the coffee table, sat on the edge of Ned's chair. "But let me tell you what else the money that I've earned from my place in the Triad has bought."

He held up a paw, counting off on the fingers. "Let's begin with my mother. I sent her enough cash to pay off all her debts, so she could leave her husband without worrying about financial ruin. I also gave enough that she could fix the house up substantially, so she was able to get a much higher selling price than otherwise. Third, I bought her the blue convertible she'd always wanted, so she could drive a fun car and not just a beat-up 1980s-era Volvo."

One finger folded down. "Next there's my brother. I'm putting him through film school, and also bought him a house near the school of his choice." Second finger down. "I paid for my grandmother's medical bills after her stroke." Third finger. "I helped two different friends buy places of their own so they could finally move out of their parent's houses and begin their lives. I put another friend through veterinary school." On he went, folding fingers and describing this or that friend or relation who had had their lives turned around after Garrett's generous gift, until finally the coyote looked up and said seriously "So don't tell me I do what I do for selfish reasons."

Ned had never mentioned that, but he had thought it, so his ears lowered sheepishly. "Don't you want more than a life of secrecy?"

"Of course I do!" Garrett insisted. He reached up and turned down the wolf's muzzle, so their eyes met again. "I told you that before. I want to travel, I want to have a family, I want to really live, with passion, never as someone ordinary - and I want to do it with someone I love." His yellow eyes were pleading now, Ned thought, begging him to accept...everything. "I want a soulmate to share everything with, the good and the bad. Someone who I can share every secret with without judgement-" Ned winced, "someone to laugh with; someone to snuggle with on the couch on cold winter's nights; someone to kiss every night after work; someone who'll help decorate the tree at Christmas-"

"I'm Jewish" Ned muttered sourly, more out of desire to be disagreeable than from religious motivation.

Garrett didn't seem to notice or care, though. "Hanukkah, then" he shrugged. He held out his paws to squeeze Ned's. "Don't you understand? I'm trying to say - I don't know how these things work exactly, but I felt something with you. I myself don't fully understand it; these things aren't supposed to blossom this fast, but I do know that I don't want to lose that feeling I've felt with you, not ever."

"I can't change what I am" Ned whispered, relaxing just a little. "I've...I've always wanted to be the good guy. When I was a pup watching movies with my dad, I wanted to be the hero, to save the day, to take down the villain." He sighed, remembering. "I guess now that I'm older it just shifted into this ideal of right and wrong, my moral code, for lack of a better term. I just wanted to live as proof that good sometimes _can_win in the real world, not just in fairy tales."

The coyote smiled fondly. "And I wouldn't want that. I can't change who I am, or what I've done, and I would never ask for you to do the same. I love you, with your principles and your ideals of right and wrong. You're the good person who stands as a model of everything I can never be." He squeezed Ned's paw again. "You don't have to change, to love."

To love. And did either of them really need any more than that? Garrett was firmly a part of his world, and he genuinely did not seem to feel any guilt over it. Ned could never be a part of Garrett's world, any more than Garrett could be part of his, but if they loved each other, did that really matter? If anything, this conversation had revealed that Garrett was nowhere near as confident inwardly as he portrayed himself to be; he was a fragile soul who'd built up a believable confidence based on an identity that was not truly his. In a sense, Garrett was no less vulnerable than he was.

Slowly, he squeezed Garrett's paw back.

The chair squeaked as Garrett eased into it, snuggling against Ned, the two males holding each other as heads rested together. For the first time in hours, Ned's tail gave a feeble wag, trapped as it was against the chair.

When Garrett spoke a few minutes later, his voice so low that Ned had to prick his ears to catch the words: "So, Ned. Is it possible? Can a hero fall in love with a villain?"

Ned didn't reply, but the kiss that followed was answer enough anyway, he thought.