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i-will-physically-fight-you · 1 year

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Discord, I’m Howling at the Moon

Title: Discord, I’m Howling at the Moon

Summary:

Roman was an accomplished Hollywood actor. Millions adored him for his charm and winning smile.

On the flipside, Remus was a certified medical examiner. Millions hadn’t a clue of who he was and those few people that did tolerated him. He dissected dead bodies for a living. Hell, he’d do it for pure amusement if someone offered. Becoming a medical examiner had been just the safe, legal route.

So it might shock people on who was the normal human being and who was the one that could transform into a quote-unquote "horrifying bloodthirsty monster."

Pairings: Brotherly Creativitwins

Word Count: 4.1k

Warnings: Logan is in this fic for like five seconds (not enough to tag him imo), Werewolves, Nonspecific discussion of dissecting dead people (Remus is a medical examiner it’s kinda his job), illness mention, death mention, mutilation mention, vague nsfw jokes, arguing, crying, body horror, hurt/comfort

AO3 Link

Would y'all believe me if I told you this has been in my drafts for nearly three years, needing nothing but a few fixes here and there? Anyways, this idea had seized me one day late at night during 2020 lockdown and I wrote the barebones all in one night as you do. Many thanks to @stillebesat who beta'd it back in the day and gave helpful suggestions. I did use their advice to tighten up this fic...even it took this long for it to come into fruition.

People were generally ecstatic to learn that Remus Merkle was a doctor. Until they discovered his patients were mostly dead. And by mostly dead, they were completely dead. It was just, occasionally, decaying corpses had muscle spasms that caused them to move on their own. Thus “mostly” dead. However, nobody really appreciated jokes about decomposing corpses unexpectedly moving. Whatever, when the zombie apocalypse arrived, he’d be the only one prepared for it.

They also didn’t seem to appreciate hearing about the various ways one can end up dead. As a mortician, he’s seen all sorts of cause for death. Most were mundane things—old age, heart failure, cancer.

Some, however, never failed to crack him up on the depravity of man. They were all going to hell, every last one of them. Anyone who thought otherwise was just fooling themselves.

That was why Remus didn’t care about keeping up appearances. He spoke loudly and proudly about anything, everything on his mind. He proclaimed liking chocolate ice cream in the same breath of proclaiming his enthusiasm for octopus sex. He’d walk around publicly in the nude if it wasn’t illegal. When a grey streak appeared in his hair prematurely—he didn’t hide it away. He embraced it, showing it off to everyone—and he meant everyone. His co-worker Brian, the barista at the coffee shop, the random businessman on the street—everyone.

People were then generally surprised to find out that he had a rather conspicuous twin brother. Or perhaps surprised to find out that Roman Prince was a stage name—as artificial as the grandiose, bravado image his brother portrayed himself to be. Because despite their passing resemblance (they were fraternal) they were polar opposites.

Even growing up this was evident. Roman liked drawing unicorns and fairy-tale princes. In turn, Remus liked drawing five-legged, eight-eyed monsters that ate up Roman’s princes and unicorns. Roman liked the good guys. Remus liked the bad guys. This worked out rather well when they’d play princes and dragons. Except, of course, when they’d argue who should win.

Most of the time? It ended up in a wrestling match full of foul play. Such as pinching, biting and tickling. If their poor mother was fortunate, she might discover them in a heap sound asleep. The unfortunate times were when this rough-housing went too far and one of them ended up crying at the end.

Unlike Remus, Roman cared about what others thought of him. He loved putting on a performance—doing whatever he believed would please others. In school, he was always the favorite among teachers and students alike because of this. Many times Remus tried convincing him to let loose and have fun. All that did was result in arguments with words far more painful than childish rough-housing ever was.

It wasn’t like Roman and Remus didn’t care for each other–because they did! It was just natural that when you spent almost every moment of your life alongside each other up until high school graduation, you were going to argue a lot about stuff that was very important but also very stupid. Nowadays they both learned to agree to disagree about certain things.

Given his acting tendencies, it wasn’t too astounding to Remus that his brother went on to become an accomplished Hollywood actor. Millions adored him for his charm and winning smile, among…other things. Sure, Remus was Remus. But even he had a limit.

Reading stranger’s thirst tweets about your twin brother? It would never cease to be a bizarre, disconcerting experience. This didn’t mean he wasn’t above using it as fodder to tease Roman. For all his talk, his brother was easily flustered by such things.

On the flipside, Remus was a certified medical examiner. Millions hadn’t a clue of who he was and those few people that did tolerate him. He dissected dead bodies for a living. Hell, he’d do it for pure amusement if someone offered. Becoming a medical examiner had been just the safe, legal route.

So it might shock people on who was the normal human being and who was the one that could transform into a quote-unquote "horrifying bloodthirsty monster." This wasn’t always the case, mind you.

It all began when Remus received a phone call one Tuesday evening at around 5:37pm. It was a cold, overcast, rainy day. The type of weather that warranted murders and other violent criminal acts if this was a fictional story. Most actual crimes statistically occurred during warm sunny days.

Remus had just taken his dinner of chicken gizzards out at the same moment that Aqua’s Barbie Girl erupted on his phone at an obnoxious loud volume. Remus groaned, setting the dish aside as he dug out the phone from his pocket.

“What’s up bro? Did you end up finding the surprise I left hidden in your TARDIS of a closet?”

“Ah, I apologize but this is not your brother speaking.”

Remus’ knuckles went white, “Oh really? Then where is my brother?”

“I’m afraid he’s…occupied at the moment. Listen your brother has—”

“Did you kidnap him? Because I can and will find you—and chop you into tiny bits of pieces! I’m real good at that—well with dead bodies but I’m sure the same principle works on live ones.”

“I have not kidnapped your brother, I promise.” The stranger said, voice level and calm. Remus pouted because it wasn’t fun when people didn’t freak out.

“What are you doing with his phone then?”

“My name is Logan Barry, I am your brother’s assistant. I know this is an invasion of his privacy and could very well end in my severance from his employment but I felt it imperative to make this phone call for your brother’s sake. He has been experiencing mood swings—”

“Have you worked with my brother for a long time?” Remus interrupted, barking a laugh, “Roro’s always been one for dramatics!”

“I’m well aware of his flair for the dramatics, having worked under him for two years,” Logan bit back testily, “I assure you this is different. The thing most concerning to me is that a few days ago he dropped out of all his acting engagements and has taken to isolating himself in his home. It is clear something is causing him anguish but he won’t say what it is.”

“And so you thought to steal your boss’s phone and call up one of his family members to check up on him?” Remus hummed, “because damn, yeah, it sounds like a pod person replaced him. But you picked the worst person to call—sure, we’re cool, but we aren’t the sort to do mushy emotional talks.”

“Are you certain? From what he has told me, you two are close. You are also the closest relative in terms of geographical distance.”

Well, shit. The dude had him on that. Both their parents were currently on an anniversary vacation in Florida.

Remus sighed as he grabbed his dinner and shoved it into the refrigerator. Right smushed between a few of his science experiments; a dead rat and dove respectively each wrapped in tinfoil.

“And he doesn’t have any friends you thought of calling first?” Remus asked, snatching up his car keys.

“Roman has plenty of friends—“

“—but lemme guess? They’re a bunch of artificial Hollywood phonies?” Remus asked. He took the resulting silence as confirmation. “Don’t worry, Nerdy Wolverine, I’ll go over and knock some sense into my idiot brother.”

“Thank you, it is much appreciated.”

“Don’t thank me just yet—by the way, how did you get my bro’s phone? Did you steal it?” Remus asked, already in his car and starting the ignition.

“I did not steal it—the phone needed a new screen and he entrusted me with making sure it was replaced. I am simply returning it to him in the morning, rather than this evening.”

“Hm, whatever helps make you sleep at night!” Remus chirped, “I’m gonna hang up now so I can listen to some tunes while on my way to save Roman from himself!”

He then did just that, before Logan could have a chance to utter some formal goodbye. The drive to Roman’s house was long—three hours. It was a little less than that due to Remus’ excessive amounts of speeding. Death metal blared out of the car stereos. Usually he liked to screech along to it but he remained silent the whole ride.

Being a Hollywood actor was Roman’s dream job—just as much as Remus’ job as a medical examiner was for him. He worked just as hard as Remus to achieve that. It’d be one thing if his brother grew stressed from the pressure of the job or wanted to pursue other creative avenues. But for him to up and quit acting? With no warning or explanation? That didn’t make sense. Nobody just did that—well okay Remus would. That was on-brand for him. Not for Roman.

Although, it’d be great after all these years his brother finally learned to cut back and let loose. Who knew, maybe his assistant was just being stuffy about the situation.

It was completely dark by the time Remus reached the gates of his brother’s ridiculously large home. Normally Remus liked ditching his car and scaling up the gate to freak his brother out. Today he used the gate code for the first time ever. He still lockpicked his brother’s front door—what? He had to maintain some sense of normalcy. Or as normal as Remus got anyways.

“Roey, I’m homeeee!” Remus called out, grinning maniacally as he pushed the door open. He took one step inside and his foot met with the crunch of glass.

Roman liked to call himself a man of passion and ideals. He loudly abhorred logic and structure, claiming he followed the whimsy of his heart best. Despite that, he did appreciate some order and rationality. Unlike Remus’ unbridled chaos, Roman’s chaos was organized to a degree. Roman sometimes had piles of stuff lying in a room. Piles that seemed random and unorganized but they really did have a purpose.

Remus shone his phone’s flashlight to a mess that rivaled Remus’ own anarchy. Chairs overturned, broken shards of glass, a torn-up shirt—the list went on.

“Whoa,” Remus breathed in, closing the door behind him. For a second Remus forgot the whole reason he came here. Instead he became invigorated with memories of when he trespassed abandoned buildings as a teen. Some had broken-down belongings still left inside—you could tell a lot about a person from what they left behind. Remus knew that fact intimately.

Had there been some sort of a struggle? Was Roman involved with the mafia? Was Roman dead?

Remus froze, crouched down as his fingers touched a shard of glass on the ground.

“Roman?” He called out, “Where are you? I can’t believe you had a wild party and you didn’t have the gall to invite me!”

He waited, tapping his finger against the glass. Tap, tap, tap. He almost didn’t think he’d get a response until he heard a distant clang. And then, “Remus?!”

His brother. That was Roman’s voice. Weak and faint, although that could be because he was halfway across the house or something.

“Yup it’s me!” Remus grinned, jumping up to his feet, “Bro, where you at?”

“Remus what are you doing here?” Roman asked, a muffled noise following his words.

Remus huffed, slightly peeved. Here was his brother, a pinnacle of manners and yet he ignored Remus’ question entirely. Regardless, he walked in the direction he thought Roman’s voice was coming from.

“What, I can’t drop in, just ‘cause anymore?” Remus asked, “besides, it doesn’t seem like you’re up to anything right now. Besides nursing a wicked hangover, I bet. Did you manage to get laid?”

“Remus, you can’t be here!” Roman’s voice said, sounding increasingly closer. Remus’ grin widened. Bingo.

“What do you mean I can’t be here? I got through the door just fine—also for someone that’s loaded, you should really invest in a better lock.”

“No, please, Remus I mean it!” Roman snapped, the clanging noise echoing once more. This time it sounded like something metal. “You can’t be here, please!”

Remus creeped closer, frowning when he came to the end of the hallway. Hmm, right or left?

“Why not?” C’mon bro, please speak up and tell me .

“I—I can’t! You just have to believe me!” There was a tremble in Roman’s voice. Remus had heard his brother act, time and time again. He knew all his tells. This wasn’t him acting. Roman was genuinely afraid.

He was also definitely in the room to Remus’ left. Now he just had to open the door—locked. Remus bit his lips. Alright, no biggie. He could lockpick it.

“Remus? Is that you? Stay away!”

“Roman, you know me—if you have a dead body in there, I’ll bury it for you. No questions asked. I might just want a peek at the insides though!”

“Remus, please—” Roman let out a pained scream.

Remus’ fingers quivered. No! He steadied them, working as fast as humanly possible. It struck him then that this was just like a scene ripped from a horror movie. A man goes to visit his apparently gone mad brother and finds a mystery afoot. As much as Remus liked horror movies, he was finding that he didn’t like being in one.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the door unlocked. Remus slammed it open, one hand itching close to his pocket knife. The room was dim, containing a single window with blinds drawn over it. It looked like an ordinary guest bedroom until something shifted in the corner.

“Roman?” Remus came near, startled at the sight of his twin shirtless and chained up to the bedposts. What the fuck. “I should’ve thought you were one for such a vanilla kink. Where’s your partner? Are they hot?”

“It isn’t like that!” Roman insisted, baring his teeth, “Listen, I can’t hold it back any longer, you need to g o .”

Remus opened his mouth to respond when Roman dropped to the ground, screaming as he convulsed. Oh my god, he was having a seizure. Remus should call 911. His phone fell out of his pocket in his fumble to pull it out. He reached down to pick it up, only to drop it entirely once more.

This time was due to the fact that Roman…was rapidly growing hair? Like an infection, coarse grey hair started covering every inch of his brother. Which was really fucking weird because Remus did not know of any disease that caused instantaneous hair growth in such a way. But it didn’t just stop there.

As it continued, there was a series of horrible crackling noises. It sounded akin to someone popping a dislocated shoulder back into place except it sounded wrong, wrong, wrong. Something screamed within Remus that he should not be here, that he was in danger, that he should escape while he had the chance.

But he didn’t move a muscle, standing stupefied at the sight of his brother…transforming? Yeah, that seemed like the right word. Because the crackling was the result of Roman’s bones rearranging themselves to create an entirely different skeletal frame. His brother’s face twisted and contorted until it no longer resembled anything human. Dull human teeth gave way into sharp carnivore teeth.

At this point, Roman no longer had any hands–they’ve fused together into something else entirely. The same was beginning to occur with his feet.

The pants his brother had been wearing had long since been torn to shreds, but they became even more so as something burst forth from his body like that parasite from Alien except it was near his butthole and oh–was that a tail?

A werewolf. His brother was turning into a fucking werewolf.

Remus almost laughed. Was this a dream? Was his apartment infested with toxic mold and this was the result of a hallucination? Because the idea of werewolves was fucking sick (he’d been convinced he was one in middle school) but as far he knew, they weren’t supposed to be real and his brother sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be one.

Yet, it was becoming very damn apparent that his brother was turning into one. As the transformation leveled out, Roman’s screams ceased as a deep, guttural howl replaced it. The grey hair became more shaggy and looked soft to the touch like fur. His brother had paws! And fluffy wolf ears! If Remus hadn’t witnessed the whole thing, he would’ve assumed that Roman had a real ass wild wolf chained up to a bedpost!

Remus couldn’t help himself. He reached a hand out towards Roman, only to be met with a snarling and gnashing of teeth.

“No touching, got it.” Remus whispered, staring as his brother thrashed against the chains. The wolf tried chomping down on the chain, only to let out a yelp. Ears pinned back, he tried a few more times to success. Eventually he threw his head back and howled.

This was where most people would’ve been terrified enough to run away if they hadn’t at the start. After all, his brother had turned into a wolf and now was trying to escape his chains. Surely if he managed to break free, his animalistic instincts would cause him to maul Remus to death.

Oddly enough, Remus was feeling very calm. Perhaps a bit too calm, but as he stared at the wolf that was now his brother, things made sense. The trashed house, the erratic behavior, the fear in his brother’s voice moments before–werewolves were real and somehow his brother got bit by one.

“I bet it’s silver, isn’t it?” He mused underneath his breath. Silver hurt werewolves, right? Assuming that was true, it was no wonder that Roman’s wolfy form was so agitated by it.

So Remus decided to do something that was probably ill-advised. In fact if this was a b-rated horror movie, the audience would be yelling at him right now for being stupid. He reached for his lockpick toolkit and slowly inched forward. Roman growled at him.

“Listen, I’m gonna just,” He held up his lockpick toolkit out to show Roman, “help you out bud. See this? If you promise not to eat me, I’ll let you out.”

Remus didn’t know how much awareness Roman had in wolf form. He was gonna go with not a whole lot. Still didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try and communicate.

Roman sniffed at it curiously. He then stared at Remus, tilting his head. After a moment, Remus decided to take that as a permission to continue onwards. He touched the end of the chain to which his brother growled. Rude!

“Ok, look, I’ll respect not touching you, but I have to touch the chains to let you out.” Remus raised an eyebrow. He waited a few seconds before touching the chain again. Roman didn’t growl. He kept staring at Remus, watching his every movement.

“Good boy, good boy,” Remus said, fiddling with the lockpick, “okay, is that patronizing? Am I being demeaning? Please tell me if I’m being demeaning—”

Remus kept rattling on, working on the clasp until it finally released. An angry red band circled Roman’s leg where the chain had been. Roman lifted the paw up and down, tail wagging. He lunged forward, best as he could with three limbs still chained down, and licked Remus’ face. It was rough and coarse as sandpaper.

“Whoa, I haven’t even finished the other three just yet!” Remus protested, laughing. He pushed the wolf’s head away as he started work on the second chain. Roman whined but complied upon seeing what he was doing. The next three came off in quick succession once Remus figured out the locking mechanisms. When the last one came off, Roman bounded about the room excitedly. At one point he started chasing his tail to entertain himself.

Remus watched, deep in thought. His brother seemed so happy to be able to roam and chase his tail to his heart’s content. He’d only growled at Remus because he felt threatened and afraid of his presence. Once he understood his intentions, he immediately lavished affection upon him.

Just how long had his brother been a werewolf? This couldn’t have been going for more than a few months at least. In any case, Roman was so terrified of himself to the point of self-isolation. Which surely made the situation worse, because his wolfy side probably needed proper care and attention that Roman was neglecting.

Something tugged at his jacket sleeve. Remus looked down to see his brother looking at him, whining.

“What? You want some food?” Remus asked, “Damn, if I’d known I would’ve brought the roadkill I have in my freezer to you—”

Roman headbutted him with enough force to send him sprawling. This seemed to satisfy the wolf, because he then proceeded to lay on top of him.

“Hey no fair!” Remus said, trying to wiggle out to no avail. Roman licked his face in response before laying his head down. Remus tried a few more times before giving up. He sighed, finally resigning himself to his fate as a wolf cushion.

“Man, this is gonna be weird in the morning, isn’t it?” Remus asked, yawning.

It was.

He woke up to a scream. By the time he managed to open his eyes, he was greeted to the sight of a human Roman huddled inside a blanket.

“Morning, Ro. What’s for breakfast?” Remus asked casually, sitting up to stretch. If there was one downside to adulthood, it was that sleeping on the ground now resulted in stiff backs.

Roman looked at him like he was a ghost.

“H—how are you not dead?” Roman asked, “The chains—I—it escaped—did you get bitten?!”

He reached forward, searching for a bite mark of any kind. There weren't any. Remus grasped onto his brother’s hand, squeezing it firmly. Okay mushy emotional talk time. Remus wasn’t great at this, but Roman knew this. Hopefully he didn’t fuck it up too much.

“I’m fine, Roman,” He said, “I didn’t get a single scratch, I’m mostly hurt that you didn’t tell me you could turn into a hugeass wolf. Do you have any wolfy traits outside of Full Moon? Ooh, can you eat raw meat? What about your sense of smell?”

“Remus,” Roman began, his eyes wide, “why aren’t you scared of me?”

Remus cocked his head, “Why would you think that I’d ever be afraid of you? If anything I’m jealous of you! I can’t believe you’re better at turning into a wolf than I am. You know I spent half of middle school thinking I was a wolf.”

Roman stared at him, lips wobbling. He then shook his head and laughed. All choked up and wheezy like a broken squeaky toy as he slung both arms around Remus’ wiry frame in a tight embrace. He kept on laughing—his fingers digging into the fabrics of Remus’ shirt and jacket. Remus held onto him, massaging his scalp the way their mother did to comfort them growing up. Eventually Roman’s laughter died down to quiet, stifled sobs.

“I know you care a lot about appearances but you’re not a monster you know,” Remus whispered, “Dukey’s honor that you’re still your princely, heroic self, wolf or not. Besides you and I both know the monster in the room and that’s me.”

“You put pineapples on your pizza.” Roman hiccupped.

“It’s delicious! And there’s much worse cursed things to put on pizzas. Like gold and squid ink!”

“You wear crocs unironically.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You practiced bagpipes in front of my room at 2AM in high school.”

“Yup! See? I’m a certified genuine monster.” Remus beamed.

“No you’re not,” Roman made a strangled noise, “You’re my brother who��s weird and kooky at times but I--I…”

“Aw Roey. Don’t make this a mushy Hallmark movie,” Remus said, “but if it was, you’re still my brother regardless of how many times you get on my nerves.”

He almost addressed the chains–now that Remus knew, they were going to eventually need to have serious talk time about ways to properly care for one’s wolfy self. In a very un-Remus-like move, he bit his tongue on that one though. That was an argument for another time. One that was inevitable to happen if Roman kept transforming into a wolf every full moon.

For now? He was content to start teasing Roman with the latest thirst tweet he stumbled across.

#thomas sanders #remus sanders #roman sanders #creativitwins #sanders sides #sasi #tssides #kat writes

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