text: Cooper woke up shivering. Every muscle in his body hurt from tensing with cold and his jaw was trembling, seconds away from a full-blown teeth chatter. Fucking air conditioner must have kicked back on with a vengeance sometime during the night. He rolled to the edge of the bed—sitting up dragging the blanket with him around his shoulders—so he could turn the ice monster off, and was immediately faced with an unfamiliar window.
  
  Cooper blinked at it, so deeply disoriented he felt a little dizzy. The waning moon blinked cheekily back from behind quick-moving clouds. With a rush, he remembered being in North Carolina on a case.
  
  The retreat. The cabin. The river...
  
  Another violent shiver racked through his body, and he quickly lay back down and pulled the blankets closer around him—lightweight summer weaves that did little to help. Every time his muscles clenched with cold, his bruised ribs ached and his calf itched awfully. Hesitantly he reached down toward the place Vanessa had latched on and felt five little scabs that stung at the faintest touch.
  
  Cooper shivered again, this time only partially from cold, remembering the feeling of her teeth breaking skin. The look in Symer's eyes...
  
  He pushed the thought away and burrowed deeper into the bed, starting to notice the heaviness of his head and a sore tickle in the back of his throat. It was possible his disorientation wasn't all from being sleepy. Cooper cursed silently. The last thing he needed was Park's half-worried, half-smug told-you-so if he really did come down with pneumonia or some kind of goddamn river disease.
  
  Cooper pulled the blanket up over his nose, trying to direct his own hot breaths downward, to build a small pocket of warm air. His heart was beating a little faster than normal. He could practically feel it fluttering in his throat. 'Cause he was sick or...?
  
  He looked around the small cabin on high alert, wondering what had woken him up. But the room was still and quiet. Outside, summer crickets played their moonlight sonata. Beside him, Park was zonked out. Cooper studied him. It was dark in the cabin, but the dim light from the cloud-spotted moon was enough for his eyes to adjust.
  
  He rarely got to see Park, who was an early riser, asleep. It was one of his favorite treats. The few times he caught him unconscious, Park's face was soft and almost childish. Vulnerable in a way that appealed to some deep, unexamined part of Cooper.
  
  Tonight was different. Park's lips were turned down and there was a little furrow between his brows, like he was annoyed by something or someone. Cooper got to see this look plenty.
  
  Another spasm of cold seized his muscles, and he felt the first twinges of a cramp in his back. Cooper scooted closer to Park incrementally, trying not to wake him, but desperate for the inhuman heat he'd pooh-poohed just yesterday. Pressing gently against Park's body and burying his face against his chest, the oppressive heat of the apartment seemed like a wonderful dream now. He wanted desperately to get back to sleep.
  
  Suddenly a wolf's sonorous howl split the air. Cooper jumped, looking quickly over his shoulder at the cabin door. He half-expected to see that one had let themself inside, the howl was so loud.
  
  "It's okay," Park's sleep-rough voice said, and his hand smoothed over Cooper's waist.
  
  "It must be late. What are they doing out there?"
  
  Park shrugged, yawning. "Not so late. Just feels like that because you passed out as soon as we got back to the cabin," he added, sounding amused.
  
  "Oh, I'm sorry. Were you hoping Kyle and Andrew would get back here and practice some intimacy through touch exercises?" Cooper teased, snuggling up even closer.
  
  Park cursed and ran his hands all over Cooper's body in a decidedly non-erotic way, which was pretty much the opposite of what Cooper was hoping for. "You're shaking. And feverish," Park said, angrily and far more awake. "I knew we should have gotten you off the mountain and straight into bed—"
  
  Cooper groaned loudly, cutting him off and faked a pitiful cough. "Please, every time you say 'I told you so' I get sicker. I read it on WebMD so you know it's true. And fatal."
  
  Park grumbled but pulled Cooper tighter into an embrace. The heat of his body was wonderful. Cooper soaked it up like a starving man, but it wasn't quite enough. He continued to shake, sensing Park's unhappiness hovering as clearly as if there were an animated raincloud above them.
  
  Out in the darkness he heard the wolf howl again, and this time another one joined in the distance. Again and again, the two wolves repeated this pattern as the sounds moved farther away.
  
  "They're playing our song," Cooper whispered into Park's chest. Park snorted but didn't say anything. Cooper got the impression that he was listening carefully. Decoding nuances in the duet of voices that were hidden from human ears. "Are they...saying something?"
  
  Park was quiet for long enough that Cooper would have thought he was asleep if not for the way he kept rubbing Cooper's back. Finally he said, "Sort of. They're happy. One is calling the other home."
  
  "Romantic as fuck," Cooper sighed.
  
  "Not necessarily. Sounds more like a pack bond, actually," Park said.
  
  They both listened to the howls fade into the distance and the sounds of a summer night fill their absence. It seemed wrong to be so cold in July. And he'd been so sure he was fine on the river, too. Cooper considered getting up and fetching more of his clothes from his bag to put on, but the thought of disrupting the tenuous warmth he'd managed to gather sent another painful shiver through him.
  
  Park sucked his teeth. "If you freeze to death, how am I supposed to stay on at couples camp?"
  
  "Hoo-hook up with Nielsen," Cooper stuttered, shivering. He felt like he was rapidly getting worse and wasn't sure why. The river had been cold, sure, but the air warm. And though tired, he'd felt fine for the rest of the day. Now it was like waking submerged in an ice bath and being windblown dry.
  
  "Nielsen's not my type."
  
  "I've ru-ruined you f-for humans, forever?"
  
  "Nah, too attractive."
  
  Cooper considered kicking him, but his muscles felt too stiff to move and he gently pressed his teeth into Park's chest instead and felt him twitch. "Ma-make hot, passionate l-love to me." He sneezed, jerking away momentarily to avoid getting Park, and groaned stuffily at the uncomfortable way the pressure in his head had suddenly increased. "Or j-just very warm l-love where I d-don't have to move or d-do anything."
  
  "Mmm, so tempting, but no thank you," Park said dryly.
  
  "At least t-take your cl-clothes off. Bod-body heat."
  
  Park was quiet, and Cooper wondered if he was genuinely considering it.
  
  "I could..." Park trailed off.
  
  Cooper waited as patiently as he could under the circumstances, then pressed his teeth into Park's chest again.
  
  "I mean, it would be a lot warmer if I was in fur, unless you wouldn't be comfortable like that. It was just a thought," Park said in a rush.
  
  If Cooper had better control over his muscles, he'd have frozen. As it was, he shook quietly and then said, "If you're o-okay with that, I w-would appreciate it."
  
  Park pressed a kiss to Cooper's head. "Just a minute." He pulled away, and Cooper tried to smother his whimper at the loss of heat. Park quickly shucked his sweatpants and tossed them to Cooper to put on over his own sleep pants, and the lingering heat was wonderful. He tugged them on awkwardly, trying to stay under the blanket while subtly watching Park, who stood naked with his eyes closed. He appeared to be forcing himself to breathe very rapidly.
  
  "It's smoother if my heart rate's already up," Park said as if sensing Cooper's question.
  
  "Do you want me to tur-turn around?"
  
  "No. I—I want you to watch me." He opened his eyes then and gave Cooper an odd look—a little mischievous, a little challenging. "You should know, I'm very, very good at this."
  
  The initial clacking sounds of rock on rock started while Park was still standing and looking at Cooper, then abruptly he dropped into a crouch, falling forward at the same time and—
  
  It was over. Where he'd dropped stood a large wolf with fur the same color as Park's dark brown hair, edged with gray. The wol—no, Park stretched lazily. First in downward dog—plumed tail flopping back and forth—then with one back leg extended at a time. Cooper heard a couple more pops, but it sounded more like knuckles cracking than anything else.
  
  That...wasn't how it was supposed to go.
  
  BSI agents were told shifts took about three and a half seconds. The only transformation Cooper had ever seen was that of Park's sister Camille from fur into, ah, very much not furred. That shift had barely been one and a half seconds, meaning the BSI got the information the Trust wanted them to have and at least some wolves could transform much faster than others. But still. Even with Camille there had been glimpses of...an in-between state as one body stretched and shrank to make another. But Park... He had stood as a man and sat into a wolf.
  
  Park yawned widely, teeth glinting, then blinked up at Cooper who had been just shocked enough to forget how cold he was for a heartbeat.
  
  "You are good," Cooper said, and his voice came out a little strained.
  
  There was a split-second of expectation, of waiting for an answer before his brain caught up to the obvious. Park wouldn't be responding. With words, anyway. He did take a couple steps back from the bed, turn in a quick circle, then stood on his hind legs, teetering for one second, two, before falling back to all fours heavily. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Cooper shuffled over in the bed and lifted the blankets, wincing at the heat-loss.
  
  Very gracefully, Park leapt up, the mattress dipping beneath his weight, and quickly filled the cold spot. For one brief moment Cooper had a terrible thought. What if this sent him into another flashback? The way Vanessa had in the river?
  
  But then Park was settling himself up against Cooper with a quiet little grunt and he dismissed it. Everything about Park, from his familiar smells and sounds to his careful, watchful movements, had the opposite effect he feared. They relaxed Cooper. Made him feel safe.
  
  Gently and with plenty of time for Park to pull back, Cooper reached one finger out to rub up Park's long nose, across his brow and over the tips of his ears, almost velveteen in their softness. Then he did it again, mapping his face, wanting to be sure he recognized him, no matter what. Park held very still, amaretto eyes wide.
  
  Eventually satisfied, Cooper snuggled closer to the now almost intense heat of Park's body and whimpered blissfully. His muscles started to uncramp and he immediately felt his eyelids grow heavy. Now that the pain was gone, his exhaustion could not be fought. Cooper closed his eyes, and the last thing he saw was Park studying him intently, still on high alert. He wanted to say something to put him at ease, but the silence felt too important. As important as talking was to their relationship, this was not a moment for words. Not when Park couldn't respond in kind.
  
  Cooper stroked the fur at Park's neck instead, and this too was luxuriously soft and warm. With his touch he tried to communicate everything he felt—the safety, satisfaction, pleasure. Just before he fell asleep, Cooper felt Park's nose tuck under his chin and heard him sigh contentedly. Message received.