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Author's Chapter Notes:

Jim Halpert loves his wife. He loves his children. He doesn't love being a werewolf… but then, who would? 

Humbly submitted for the 2018 Halloween competition. 

If the old Jim Halpert had been asked to list his top ten fears, at least half of them would have been Pam-related. Becoming a werewolf wouldn't have made the cut. Hell, it wouldn't have broken the top hundred.

But, as the saying went… well, shit happens. Then you die.

Jim wasn’t dead yet, not even close, so he counted himself one of the lucky ones. Shit had happened… the shittiest shit of all the shits. But he'd survived it.

Hell, even his relationship had survived it, making him one of the luckiest ones. And he damn well knew it.

Sniffing the air, he scratched his hip under the blanket. Before long, he'd be forced to paw at his haunches with one or the other rear leg. In anticipation of forthcoming events, he was nude. That wasn't a requirement, strictly-speaking, but it made no sense to waste perfectly good clothing.

As it happened, tonight's full moon would coincide with Halloween. Jim refused to read anything into that, because it was simply a coincidence. According to Google, it happened once every eighteen-ish years or so.

With a quiet whimper of dread, he tucked the blanket more tightly beneath his armpits. He did his best to tune out the drone of the television from the living room downstairs. He hadn't been able to hear it just a few short minutes ago, but his senses were beginning to sharpen acutely. This part wasn't shitty–it was actually fairly cool, from a scientific perspective.

With his preternaturally-enhanced sense of smell, Jim suddenly detected the scents of raw rabbit and uncooked chicken gizzards, all the way from the kitchen.

Closing his eyes, he smiled to himself. God, Pam was the best.

If there was a God. There might be–in fact, there probably was–so Jim counted his blessings regularly.

Like every other red-blooded thirty-something, he'd watched the Harry Potter series. Aside from that, he'd never paid much attention to werewolves in film. He'd never bothered with the Twilight franchise. Jim was possessed of a Y-chromosome, and he wasn't gay. Moreover, his wife–in her usual, amazingly atypical fashion–wasn't into paranormal romances between conspicuously attractive, psychologically-damaged teenagers who were variously covered in sparkles or fur.

Then Jim had become a werewolf. Practically overnight, he'd taken an obsessive interest in the genre. Twilight, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (which he'd seen, but he paid closer attention to Lupin upon rewatch), The Wolfman, Howl, Van Helsing… hell, he'd even downloaded Teen Wolf. The movie and the television series.

Jim rolled his eyes. None of the movies had gotten it entirely right. But then, he didn't suppose he could blame them. Until incredibly recently, werewolves hadn't really existed.

Every square inch of his skin prickled sharply, from head to toe. It felt for all the world like his smooth, moderately hairy body was turning into a saguaro cactus.

Against his will, Jim gasped, twisting the blanket between both fists. He stared at his forearms, surprised as always that they weren't studded with bloody pinpricks. Unfortunately, the one thing Hollywood had gotten right was the searing, bone-crushing pain of the transformation.

His neck twitched back spasmodically. A rafter-shaking howl erupted from his throat.

It wasn't a sound that any human should ever, ever make without the assistance of a professional sound designer.

It was equal parts involuntary and–no matter how much his doctor reassured him that it shouldn't be–so fucking embarrassing. It only happened once a month, it was easily predictable. The only people who would ever hear it were non-judgmental relatives. It wasn't as bad as Tourette's Syndrome, Mister Halpert, please try to retain a little perspective.

In spite of all the professional medical wisdom to the contrary, the experience was fucking mortifying. That wasn't the only reason he and Pam had sold Jim's childhood home and moved, but it was a biggie.

They hadn't gone far, just far enough. They'd found a relatively-secluded property. They had neighbors, but they were sufficiently distant that the sound wouldn't attract undue attention. 

In response, twin sets of footsteps thundered up the stairs.

 


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