Blood of My Blood, Flesh of My Flesh (Bughead)

2. Lost in the Shadows

Song for the chapter is 'Lost in the Shadows' from the Lost Boys movie, which is an old Vampire movie

The rest of the summer lazed by for most of the wolves. They tried to take as much of the summer weather as they could take before they'd be forced back into school, forced to do homework and learn about things that, when they really questioned it, hardly mattered in the general span of things. Toni and Fangs started to hang around with Sweet Pea more and slowly, Fangs got the hang of his shifting, even if he still sometimes turned into a wolf when that sad Sarah McLaughlin commercial came on. It led, once, to an interesting night at his place where he poofed in the middle of his living room and Sweet Pea had to talk him back down while Toni did damage control by asking his dad any question she could think of about what it was like to work at a gas station so he didn't enter the living room and Fangs just blubbered in his wolf form about all the sad puppies.

It was a night Sweet Pea looks back on and chuckles about.

Apart from that, Toni and Fang's summers have been rather quiet. The entire town has been quiet, which is exactly how it's always been. Riverdale is the quintessential little American town with just too much charm and not enough Walmarts or Targets. Nothing exciting ever happens, discounting the very magical presence. Jason Blossom's disappearance was the first semi interesting human driven thing to happen in a very, very long time, at least since The Great Magic Outburst of '53, in which no magical intervention could have fixed the befuzzlement of the humans when a vat of a witch's potion mysteriously made it into everyone's coffee and the town went crazy for awhile. That's just a memory to a lot, or a tall tale. Point being, Riverdale is boring as fuck most of the time and the most exciting thing, usually, is a rare bird being seen by a river.

Toni, Fangs, and the rest of the Junior Wolf Pack have been able to ignore the whispers and worries about Jason Blossom. The older wolves, and Sweet Pea, have not been so lucky. Because of this, the rest of the summer drags by for Sweet Pea in agony as he just waits for the other shoe to drop.

Day before school starts up again and it still has not arrived.

He's been trying to do as FP asked, to keep his ears ready for information, but he's not sure what he should be listening for. He tries to keep it swerved in the direction of FP too, because FP hasn't said anything more about the night of the 4th, but FP's mind is a steel trap, more inpeternatble than usual.

The day before the start of Sweet Pea and Toni's junior year and Fang's sophomore, Sweet Pea is hanging out around the Wyrm when he most certainly should be in bed. He thinks school is a utter waste of time. Anything he wants to learn he can pretty much just google now, and sitting through 8 hours a day in a hot and stuffy room with so many sights and smells just about drives his senses crazy. He's warned Fangs about it already, since he finds it unbearable most times, and he's been to school as a wolf for years at this point.

To his credit, he's only morphed once at school without meaning too. Luckily, at Southside High, there's two or three Serpents around, enough to get a kid out in a pickle if it seems like there's going to be a furry little problem. Still, though.

"You should lay it off, kid," Byrdie refuses to give him another beer, "It's gunna rot yer brain."

"Oh piss off," Sweet Pea grumbles, wishing he could just drop out already. He could be so much more useful to the Pack if he didn't have damn things to do like homework or pretend like the biggest problem in his life was if he was going to college or not. Hah, what a joke.

"You'd better scatter before FP returns," Byrdie raised a single eyebrow, "You know how he feels about a good education." It was one of the few things Sweet Pea outright disagreed with FP on, but FP always said Sweet Pea was too young to understand it.