Originally posted on the JMS Books blog July 12, 2020 in celebration of JMS’s ten-year anniversary.

The traditional ten-year anniversary gift is tin or aluminum, representing durability and flexibility. Unlike JMS Books, which was celebrating its ten-year anniversary (woot, woot!!!), Wilson Banks and Oliver Hughes from Weekend at Bigfoot’s have been together for only one year in this bonus scene, but I made a point of working in forms of those four ten-year words (tin, aluminum, durability, flexibility) as prompts, because as anyone who follows my blog/website and/or receives my newsletter knows, I love writing bonus scenes and flash fiction using random prompt words!

Told from Wilson’s 3rd-person POV, and written using the words tin – aluminum – durability – flexibility

Oliver raised a well-groomed eyebrow, and Wilson returned the gesture with an added waggle. The bonus twitch to one side of Oliver’s captivating lips narrowed down the possible meanings behind that cocked brow to ones at the positive side of the mood spectrum.

“What?” Wilson pressed a hand to his knee to stop his bouncing foot, then gave up and stood again, because his exuberant mood could not be willed away.

Oliver snorted. “You’ve been ricocheting off the walls all morning like a cat trapped in a closet.”

A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not entirely wrong. “Maybe someday it’ll feel like just another day, but I’m not there yet.” Wilson flashed a grin as he paced laps around the cabin’s main room. “And you, my dear, are way too put-together for dark-o’clock in the morning.”

“I like to feel normal, right up until I’m … not.” Oliver sniffed. “Besides, some of the glitter sticks through the shift. I kinda like knowing it’s there.”

“Right?” Wilson had noticed flecks of it on Oliver’s Bigfoot form last year. “I mean, I know people joke about how you can never get rid of that stuff, but seriously, its durability factor is sky high sticking through that wind. What’s it made of, anyway?”

“I think it’s a combination of plastic and aluminum.”

Oliver spread his legs and stretched upward before bending forward and placing his palms flat on the ground, demonstrating a degree of flexibility that took Wilson’s breath away despite having a year’s experience with that lithe, energetic body. And more importantly, with the good-humored, intelligent mind atop that body.

“How much time?” Wilson pulled out his phone and checked the screen for about the dozenth time since they’d woken that morning. They’d spent the night in the cabin.

“Chill.” Oliver’s grin took the edge off his admonition. Even his eye roll when his gaze passed over the cases of tinned fruit cocktail, which Wilson had insisted on bringing as backup to Oliver’s cooler o’ fresh food, conveyed appreciation of Wilson’s concern rather than derision.

“No, really.” Wilson looked out the cabin door. The sun would be rising in less than ten minutes. “Shouldn’t you be getting naked or something?”

When Wilson turned around, Oliver was already half-stripped.

“This isn’t my first time, you know.” Oliver kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his pants.

Wilson crossed the room and pulled Oliver into his arms. “Happy Birthday, love.” He planted a brief kiss on Oliver’s forehead. “And Happy Anniversary.”

Technically, the anniversary of the day they’d met, which was also the anniversary of their first date, had been a couple days earlier, but this was the anniversary of the day Wilson had decided to actively pursue Oliver in hopes of turning a weekend fling into something more, and it was the anniversary of the day he’d learned Oliver’s secret.

Oliver didn’t call him on that technicality. Instead he pulled Wilson’s lips down to his and murmured, “Love you,” into his kiss.

When they came up for air, Oliver snapped into action. He opened the closet door and looked meaningfully at Wilson. “Gear up, babe.”

Wilson saluted. He remembered the precautions he needed to take during Oliver’s shift, of course, but Oliver’s mother-hen act warmed him, anyway. “Love you, too.”

Oliver gave a jaunty wink and with an exaggerated sashay, he waltzed his naked self out the cabin door.

Wilson stared after him for a few beats, then murmured, “See you again in a few,” before closing and bolting the door.

Originally posted in my March, 2020 newsletter.

Told from Oliver’s 3rd-person POV, and written using these words pulled from a random word generator (https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator): match – vex – catch – fat – crave – delay – zesty – vigorous – mouth – ubiquitous

It’s mildly spoilery, but I wouldn’t worry about it. The blurb pretty much tells you (or at least very strongly hints) that Wilson will come across Oliver in Bigfoot form, and this scene takes place after that discovery. The story’s fun is in the journey getting there.

If anyone had told Oliver yesterday that today he’d be giving a piggyback ride—biggieback ride?—to Wilson, the sexy tabloid reporter he’d fallen for against all attempts to listen to the commonsense corner of his brain—not to mention his sister—he would have snorted an unbecoming, untwink-like laugh right in their foolish face. Hair glitter would’ve scattered from the sudden spasm of his head. Yet here he was with Wilson’s arms wrapped around his neck, and legs around his waist, traipsing through the woods surrounding one of the family’s remote cabins.

To say the leadership council in his ubiquitous extended family would be vexed by this turn of events was putting their expected reaction mildly, because who the hell knew what kind of headline the tabloid would dream up if Wilson went back on his word. But he wouldn’t; Oliver felt that to the center of his fat, furry soul.

“What about werewolves? Are those real, too?” Wilson’s voice was tinged with a twelve-year-old boy’s excitement.

Oliver spied a miner’s lettuce patch, gave a non-committal shrug, and came to a halt. Wilson’s inner twelve-year-old needed to chill until Oliver was capable of forming actual words again. Not to mention was less susceptible to the barely-controllable cravings that came with his shift into Bigfoot form.

Wilson hopped off and Oliver tore up clumps of the greenery and stuffed them into his mouth.

“How about vampires?”

Oliver affected a shiver.

“What’s that? A ‘you hope not’ or a ‘you’ve encountered them and they’re scary bastards’?”

Oliver tipped his head and heaved a sigh.

“Right…one question at a time. Was that a ‘you hope not’?”

Oliver gave a firm nod. Who knew for sure? Most people would scoff at the idea of Bigfoot existing, yet here he was. Just because no one he personally knew and trusted had ever encountered them, didn’t mean vampires and other shifters didn’t also exist.

“How much werewolf lore applies to Bigfoots? Is it all hereditary or can you bite someone and turn them?”

Again, Oliver tipped his head to the side and sighed.

“Sorry. Is it all hereditary?”

Oliver nodded, then some of the lettuce leaves still on the ground twitched. There was no delay in his instinctive reaction as he plucked up the small toad—whose camouflage green didn’t quite match the vegetation it was hunkering down under—and popped it into his mouth.

Dammit.

No catch and release for any hapless little critter that didn’t have the good sense to stay out of a Bigfoot’s sight. He narrowed his eyes and gave a vigorous chew as Wilson covered his mouth but manfully managed not to gag. Oliver kept his mouth closed and suppressed the sarcastic impulse to say, “Mmm, zesty,” because there was no call for rudeness and it would’ve just come out as a Chewbacca-like wail anyway.

Wilson’s face wasn’t quite as green as the leaves surrounding him. “Right. Not judging. Sorry.”

Sure. It was nice of Wilson to say, but would he really be able to keep himself from judging?

Oliver swallowed, winced—out of worry rather than from the toad’s taste—grumbled, and stood. He looked to the west. The sun was getting lower in the sky. He cocked his head in the direction of the cabin.

“We should get back?”

Oliver nodded, and oddly enough, he was disappointed that his time in Bigfoot form was coming to an end. Would Wilson still be with him for the next one?