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The first time Henry stepped foot on campus, Alex had gotten his lowest score to date on a pop quiz. It’d felt like a skin-spiking fever, or some kind of air-borne poisoning that he couldn’t put his thumb on, getting closer and closer to campus and everything feeling sharper, keener, so fucking vital that if he didn’t get himself within fifty feet of that damn scent he’d—
He’d gotten a 79/100 and almost kicked a door off its hinges.
“Dude!” Liam yelps as Spencer has to duck out of the way of Alex’s frisbee throw. “We said no advantages.”
Alex raises a hand sheepishly and mouths an apology at the only human in their game. Spencer accepts it gracefully, though Alex has no doubt he’ll be paying that back later with his meal points.
It’d been a coincidence, really, going to the same college as Liam. As co-captains of the lacrosse team, they spent their time working on game plays, at meetings with the local Austin supernatural community, or—a few nights fueled by mounting pressure and laced whiskey—tucked under Liam’s bed covers. A short-lived but pivotal and comforting time, where Alex could indulge his instincts and werewolf nature with some who actually got it . The constant vibration under his skin. Prickles around his jaw and nail beds if someone agitated him too close to the full moon. Nothing feeling better than a long-ass run where he drenched himself in sweat and coming home to June and Nora in a pile on the couch.
Speaking of.
irl chaos demon:
omw now w pez and henry
Alex tries to ignore the way his heart picks up.
“Alex?” Liam says from behind him, inquisitive, as Spencer packs their frisbee into his rucksack. “You good, man?”
He sucks in a breath and spins on his heel. “Totally,” Alex breathes out, holding his phone. “Nora said she was on her way. With, uh, Pez and Henry.”
Spencer snorts as Liam nods, smugness creeping onto his scruffy face. Alex purses his face into a mocking expression and curses the super hearing Liam’s always been so good at utilizing.
“Shut the hell up.”
“We didn’t say a damn thing.”
They have time to run to Five Guys, and get back to a slightly mossy picnic bench, arms full of greasy bags practically overspilling with cajun fries. Alex is two bites into his hot dog, A1 sauce sticky over his mouth, when the long-awaited trio turns a corner and into sight. Spencer calls out to them chipperly. Alex, meanwhile, drinks in the sight of Henry. He’s in a slouchy sweater vest and neat pants. Under the sun of early spring, his blond hair practically glows. Fucking dork.
(A slice of fried onion might fall from his mouth and back into the paper bag, and he hurries to get it out of sight.)
“Sup?” Nora nods, already reaching out for a handful of Alex’s fries.
He bats her hand away and, when she lifts her legs to sit opposite, kicks her knee in warning, then shrugs at her offended stare. “Spencer has yours.”
“The hell, Alejandro? You’re my designated bitch.”
Alex grunts as he bites off another large mouthful of hotdog. “Not today, I’m not.” Nora glares at him. He gives her a slack-mouthed smile, relishing in her disgusted reaction at the masticated food he’s showing off at her.
Then she moves to one side, revealing Henry waiting behind her, and Alex shuts his mouth in such a panic that he catches his tongue between his teeth and winces at the sting. Thank all that is good and mighty for accelerated healing.
Henry smiles politely. “Erm, so—”
“I’ve got yours here,” Alex interrupts and yanks a foil-wrapped bun from the greasy paper. A hamburger with lettuce, because Henry can apparently get through life without the dopamine of a quality Five Guys order. “Sacrificed my reputation ordering that, by the way. They had to check if someone had a gun to my head.”
“If your reputation is built on ordering hot dogs with an absurd amount of toppings, I fear for your future.” Henry shoots him a small, grateful smile. Their fingertips brush as he takes the burger. Alex gulps down his food as a hair-raising shock hits his nerves from the contact. Damn senses.
“There’s plenty of reasons to fear Doofus’ future that aren’t his reputation with the Five Guys employees,” Nora chimes in, cajun season already around her mouth. “His caffeine dependency, for one.”
“Hey!”
Liam nudges his shoulder with his own. “His dresser spilling with khakis.”
“They’re chinos —”
“What about that time he went on a run the day before a full moon and came back in only his underwear?”
Alex gapes at Spencer’s disloyalty, just as Henry chokes on his food. A morsel of lettuce hucks onto his crinkled foil. It’s a testament to Alex’s affections that even that doesn’t gross him out.
He needs to find a new pack.
Alex hadn’t been sure what to expect when he’d finally met the source of that scent/pheromone/whatever the fuck it was that made him feel like he could run a marathon. All he knew was that it was simultaneously infuriating and intoxicating.
How goddamn apt.
Henry Fox had entered that lecture hall, satchel strapped to his back, hair neatly combed, and introduced himself to the professor with all the grace of a modern-day Prince Charming. Alex spread his hand across his face—part to try and cover his face as he felt his gum begin to itch, and just a little because he needed to make sure he wasn’t drooling.
He’d been stationed in the seat directly in front of Alex, and that’d been the nail in the coffin that is his grade point average. Over an hour of staring at the neatly trimmed blond hair laying over the nape of Henry’s neck, fidgeting with the urge to fix where a label from a fancy-looking brand had flipped up over the collar of his shirt.
It’d gotten to the fifth week of their unassigned-assigned seating when a senior wearing drooping pants and too much axe body spray (even by human standards) had taken the seat in front of Alex. He’d had to decide if he should let it go and watch Henry from the other side of the hall, or do something a little undeserved for the sake of his own fixation.
“Hey, dude?” Alex had leaned over his table to get closer to the new guy in the row in front. He’d turned to Alex with furrowed brows, and Alex got a waft of what he’d been trying to cover with the deodorant. He swallowed a gag. “My friend sits there.”
Random Guy sneered like Alex was stupid. “There’s no assigned seating here, dipshit. He can go somewhere else.”
Alex had scoffed. “Or you can go back to the Cs make degrees corner you dragged yourself out of. Some of us are here to actually learn shit, not just spread our legs in the direction of every girl in a tight skirt who walks past.”
“Hey, fuck you man.” Random Guy faced Alex properly. Legs tightly closed, he noted. “Your prissy little boy toy can sit his ass in the front row if he’s such a brown-noser. No need for you to pop a knot over him.”
Alex felt his face heat, as if a spotlight had hit his skin with a thousand-watt intensity. He had heard a few hushed opinions from the other students nearest to them, and that had just made it worse. Molar grinding, nostrils flared, Alex stood to get closer to the guy. But a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“I’m glad you’re finally taking your education seriously, Grant,” Henry had snipped. “Better late than never.”
Random Guy—Grant—bared his human teeth, but Henry hadn’t looked to be very affected by it. Instead, he dropped his hand from Alex’s shoulder, gave him a small smile with a ‘what can you do’ shrug, and stepped around the commotion.
Alex watched him drop down the stairs to the row second from the front, where he slipped into a seat and pulled off the headphones he’d had slung around his neck. He knew, technically, that Henry hadn’t been burning that hot, but the feeling of his fingers had seared through the fabric of Alex’s hoodie like scalding. He wanted to shove his nose into the cotton, follow that scent and every drip of it left behind. Chase it down. Drink it greedily and keep it for a rainy day.
Holy fucking shit. Get a goddamn grip.
Their professor was stalking across the room in loud heels when Henry turned back to face Alex from a distance that felt like miles. He angles his head, lifts his brows in question, and motions towards the spot beside him where his dorky little satchel is resting.
Alex doesn’t even question it. He does, however, trip over his own feet and almost break his hastily grabbed laptop in the rush to get himself next to the man.
It’s a very human quality, Alex has found, to desire solitude to the point of self-isolation. Perhaps it’s just his own issues, but the idea of being without his pack, his family, and his friends, sends a panicked chill over his skin, and a trip in his heartbeat. He’d gone from living at home with his family to rooming with Spencer during his first year, and then straight into renting an apartment off campus with June and Nora. He wasn’t built to be alone, nor did he want to be. It was instinct. If he didn’t have his couch time with June, or his scrums with Liam, or juvenile attempts at a dinner party with his friends, what was he here for? His inner wolf revolted at the idea of it.
“You’re sure it’s okay for us to be here?” Henry twists the cuff of his sweater in one hand. Pez bounds ahead into the apartment, calling out for his girls. There’s a cry of outrage from Liam and Spencer (“Oh, you know you can both be my girls too.”) faintly from the cramped kitchen.
“‘Course,” Alex shrugs, latching the front door behind them. “Why wouldn’t it be? What, have you got a secret stash of silver bullets up your sleeve?”
Henry snorts. “Well, this is all considered quite sacred, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been here like a dozen times, H.”
“Not right before a full moon.”
Alex makes a dismissive noise like his hands haven’t been restless and clammy all morning. The period around full moons is sensitive for anyone of the lunar inclined. Limits get tested, instincts go haywire, and something as simple as getting cut off by some douche in a Camaro could have Alex fizzing with frustration. He was homeschooled til middle school for a reason.
There were rules, however, that he didn’t have any intention of breaking. Never had and never will.
- You don’t spend full moons alone.
- You don’t spend full moons with people you can’t trust.
- Anyone you’re around during the twenty-four hours surrounding the full moon needs to understand what’s going on.
“We wouldn’t have invited you guys if it was a bad idea.” Alex shrugs and leans a shoulder on the plaster wall a few feet from Henry. “You’re okay with being here, right?”
Henry nods.
He waves a hand. “There we go then. Besides, June’s always been good at handling my ass if I get too intense. You don’t scare easy, do you?”
Narrowing his eyes, Henry snorts. “What exactly are you implying? That I’m a sheep in a wolf’s den?”
“A sheep?” Alex leaned forward. There was a thrill in the way Henry’s pupils spread wide like inkblots on wet paper and his deep vanilla, old book pages, and pure Henry scent seemed to sink into the air around them. “Nah. You’re more of a fox, aren’t you?”
Henry lets out a heaving sigh and shoves him as Alex sniggers. Despite the lack of super strength, Alex’s bones weaken at the touch and he stumbles back. He forces himself to keep a casual smile, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth to make sure he doesn’t say anything stupid like You smell really good or Do you want to stay in my room tonight so we can cuddle under my covers and maybe make out a little?
“Could you two shut the mooing cow schtick down and hurry your asses in here?” Nora yells. Henry, frustratingly, jumps a step back. Alex feels a vein in his forehead tick. “We’re gonna order without youuuu!”
Alex squawks. “It’s on my credit card!”
“No one cares!”
He groans as Henry lets out a little puff of air. The corners of his lips are quirked up in a small smile, varnished in such fondness it looks soft to the touch. His lips are probably really soft, Alex thinks. They look like it. Pillowy. He probably uses an expensive lip balm; maybe something with shea butter. He’s the type of guy to taste amazing.
Henry licks his lips, and the sight of his pink tongue and a flash of white teeth shock Alex back into reality.
“Erm…” Henry hums. If he listens carefully, Alex can hear an extra thump to his heartbeat.
Alex swallows. “Sick! Uh.” He points a thumb to the doorway leading to the rest of their friends. “Movie?”
For a split second, Henry seems to hesitate. Then his slow smile is back, and Alex is following him into the living room like a hound following a particularly intoxicating scent trail.
Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
“Do y’all think they went back to a normal life after that?” June’s voice asks from somewhere Alex doesn’t care about. His face is entirely buried into a soft, warm pillow and fingers are stroking at his hair. Everything is fuzzy and nothing matters.
Ba-thump.
“Who?”
“Brad and Janet.”
Ba-thump. Someone lets out a contemplative hum. “Who can be sure? I doubt it, considering Brad’s eyes have been opened to the wonders of corsets.”
“In the 70s?”
“Especially in the 70s, my darling! Frank-n-Furter would’ve been another drop in the bucket within a certain scene in those times.”
Alex’s pillow laughs. Ba-thump . “And the queer part?”
“Hmm. Maybe not, but if they didn’t utilize the glory of a strap-on, I’ll eat my own shoe.”
He’s jolted out of place when a violent, sudden lurch below his cheek jostles him into life. It’s coupled with the vibration of close laughter, and Alex nearly swallows his tongue when he realizes who he’s been using as his napping pillow.
“ Ghauf ,” he garbles, shooting up into a seated position. His head rushes, and he grips his tight forehead to steady himself. “My fucking God .”
“Christ.” One of Henry’s hands gently wraps itself around Alex’s bicep. “Are you alright?”
Alex groans. “Yeah, just. Y’know. Headrush.”
Henry hums knowingly. “I’m not sure if you still getting head rushes while having accelerated healing is a bad sign or not.”
“It’s the caffeine,” Nora chimes in from her slouch in their third-hand beanbag. “His very own unstoppable force versus immovable object.”
“Y’all need to be nicer to me,” Alex grumbles. He shuffles away from Henry’s half-recline and winces at the drool patch he’s left staining the center of his t-shirt. “Sorry, dude.”
“Don’t be,” Henry shrugs it off. His ears are rose-petal pink. “I was rather enjoying myself—you’re very warm.”
Silverware clatters into the sink from the kitchen and Nora snorts while pointedly looking away. “It’s a wolf thing,” Alex says weakly, and bites his tongue before anything incriminatingly stupid comes out.
They put on another movie, slumped into couch creases with touching body parts keeping them close. Brad, Janet, Betty, and Judge Wright are picking a lock on the TV when Alex realizes how the sky outside has settled into a shadowed gray, too vibrant to be navy, moonlight peaking through the clouds. The moon is out.
The full moon is out.
Alex freezes, as if he can trick his nervous system into not noticing if he keeps still. He takes a catalog of himself. No teeth-baring urges. Not a hint of craving to go and be one with the night sky in his transformed glory. He’s steady. He’s good.
The pull of the moon had always affected Alex more than it had June or their Mom. He’s an emotional boy, she’d once said. Feeling anything and everything the moon had to offer. It had never been like the shitty stereotypes — he’s never gone psycho killer or pulled An American Werewolf in London — but his tether to the moon is tender. She’s a trigger, and when she’s full, Alex feels it.
Except tonight.
“Hey,” Henry whispers. His breath is warm on Alex’s cheek. “Are you alright?”
Alex feels a pit in his throat and swallows it down. Slowly, he turns his face to meet Henry’s concerned blue eyes. They’re bottomless and heady and more enticing than any lunar cycle. “Yeah,” Alex croaks. Henry angles his head as if asking again, so Alex doesn’t hesitate. He takes Henry’s hand carefully, is urged on by Henry’s own matching grip, and swings his arm up and around the other man’s wide shoulders.
“Alex,” Henry whispers again, as loud as a bell toll in Alex’s ears. But he isn’t tense under Alex’s arm, there’s nothing uncomfortable under his scent, and while his heartbeat might be racing, he’s leaning into him. Slouched, with their height difference, but undeniably pressing closer than Alex thought he would.
“This okay?” Alex asks in a mutter, eyes forward again. He feels Henry nod with a small hum of approval, and doesn’t even try to stop his own little grin creeping up.
“You could go for a quick run if that’s what you need.”
Alex spins from where he’s been staring beyond his bedroom window. He’s left his blinds up, window open. Henry, in a casual sweater and pants, watches him from the threshold. Beyond him hums the late-night chatter of Nora telling a story to the others, Liam chiming in on something about courtside rules.
“Do I look that bad?” Alex jokes.
Henry rolls his eyes, smiles, and crosses his bare arms over his chest. “You look sort of on edge.”
Alex points to the night sky. “Well.”
“Okay,” Henry sighs. “I’m giving you an excuse to go and get some energy out, if that's what you need. You usually do, don’t you?” When Alex nods, he motions towards the entryway, and beyond it, the front door.
He hesitates. “I don’t know. It’s not that bad, right now.”
Henry shrugs and takes a few steps closer. His brows have the lightest of creases between them. “That doesn’t mean you can’t do what you need to do anyway. If you’re always waiting to be at your worst to take care of yourself, you’ll never hit a plateau where you’re truly okay.”
Alex gnaws on the inside of his cheek and ignores the sting where his canine breaks the flesh. “It’s just a run, Hen.”
“Not to you.” Henry nods to the window. “Not tonight.”
Alex scrubs a hand over his hair, fuck however it ruins the curls, and looks back to the outside world. Their apartment is popular amongst the supernatural crowds in their town because of its distance from the metropolitan chaos and the surrounding greenery. It reminds Alex of the woodlands half a mile from his childhood home, curtained by banks and creeks and armies of bur oaks and cedar elms. He’d spent years playfully snapping his jaws at June and his Mom there. He still feels the phantom sting of being shoved into an evergreen sumac by June’s clawed fingers and howling with unbridled energy.
“Yeah,” Alex sighs. “Okay, yeah. That’s—yeah.”
Henry smiles with approval. It solidifies Alex’s decision further.
He’s already in sweats, so he grabs his running shoes and moves past Henry to leave. Pauses. Turns back.
“You’ll still be here when I get back, right?”
Henry blinks. His jaw slackens in the slightest, then ticks with clenched teeth. “Well,” Henry mutters, eyes flitting to somewhere above Alex’s shoulder. “If you’d like me to be.”
“It’s more of a need , at this point.”
Chest leaping, Henry lets out a guffaw of air, lips spread into an outraged smile. “You’re absolutely incorrigible.”
Alex holds the sight of a soft-looking Henry standing against the backdrop of his room, lit frosty by the moonlight in his mind’s eye. When he passes June’s room, he ducks his head inside. She’s in loungewear with a loose swooping ponytail, and she smiles at him when says a quiet ‘hey’ into the dim light.
“What’s up, Lil’ Bit?”
Alex holds up his sneakers. “You wanna come?”
June's mouth purses. “Y’all okay?”
He nods, then sighs when June lifts a perfect eyebrow. “Seriously, I’m good. Better than usual, actually. I just…” He trails off, not sure how to get his words together to make something coherent. June nods, filling in his blanks.
“Give me a second to change.”
He’s not sure how long they’re out for. Time doesn’t feel the same when he’s so keyed into his wolf because the wolf doesn’t give a damn. He follows the birds cawing over the treetops and squirrels scrambling up trunks. June runs beside him, chasing him and letting him chase her till they’re tumbling over stray stumps that sprout from the ground. She rubs behind his ear with her hand, careful of the claws, and scent marks him as they approach the border where woodland meets asphalt stained with oil. Alex welcomes it and drags her into a hug that she doesn’t resist. His chest rumbles against hers, and they knock their temples together.
Alex stretches his hearing out as they climb their walk-up. It’s definitely late, maybe two or three in the morning at least, and he can hear Liam and Spencer snoring in perfect sync. Nora is muttering under her breath, Pez croaking out a hum every other sentence. Henry’s voice is nowhere to be found.
June nudges his elbow like she can read his mind. “Five heartbeats,” she says, and unlocks their door.
He toes off his shoes, stands there, and focuses. Listens. Pulls the heartbeats apart like knotted thread and narrows down on the one he’s looking for. It leads him like breadcrumbs back to his bedroom.
Alex nudges his bedroom door open slowly and says a low “Henry?”
To the human ear, it’d be silent.
For Alex, it's a goddamn thunderstorm.
Cacophonous rushing of his own blood hits his ears while his stomach twists and turns at the sight of Henry lying across his bed width-ways, like he’d been sitting waiting and couldn’t resist the pull of sleep. Curved in the fetal position with his head pillowed on an arm, knees tucked. The window is just as Alex had left it, open and uncovered, the chilly air tousling Henry’s bedhead endearingly and flooding Alex with a waft of his and Henry’s scents perfectly mingled.
Alex is one weak motherfucker. It’s a surprise he doesn’t keel over then and there.
“Hey,” Alex whispers, shaking Henry with a hand over his shoulder. “Henry?” He shakes him again, til Henry’s nose is crinkled over the bridge and he’s squinting up at him.
“Alex?” His voice is gravelly and low.
“Sorry, I,” he hesitates. “You can get under the covers, y’know.”
Henry stares for a moment, then brings himself up to his elbows. “Christ, sorry. I’ll get off your bed. I didn’t—sorry.”
“No, hey,” Alex holds a palm out. “You’re totally cool to sleep here. You might just be more comfortable under the covers. Did you bring PJs?”
Henry shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. Sorry—God, I wasn’t going to stay—I should just go—”
“No! No, uh.” Alex swallows. “You should stay. It’s late. You can borrow some clothes.”
Henry eyes him, and Alex fidgets. “Okay,” Henry says quietly, finally.
“Okay?”
He nods at Alex. “Okay.”
Not letting himself overthink a single movement, Alex digs in his closet for some sweats and an old gym shirt for Henry to wear. He expects him to take them to the bathroom to change, but when Henry pulls his sweater straight over his head, Alex panics with a scalding hot face and turns to study his half-empty key hook. Get a fucking grip , he thinks to himself.
The sound of bedsheets moving pulls him back around, and Alex practically chokes on his tongue at the sight of Henry sitting under his covers wearing his too-short sweatpants and a t-shirt he won from the local burger joint’s food assistance raffle. It’s the most casual, unmanicured, and personal Henry has ever looked in front of Alex. It’s also, indisputably and without a second of doubt, Alex’s favorite.
“Coming to bed?” Henry asks simply, like he hasn’t just sent a damn shot up Alex’s spine. Like Alex sleeping anywhere else wouldn’t feel like a betrayal of his own desires.
“Uh.” Alex lets out a lame hum and flexes his fingers. “Yeah, I…” He walks forward til his knees brush the cotton. “I should take a shower.”
Henry stills and looks to one side. “I don’t mind.”
“I stink like a pig.”
“Not a pig,” Henry protests. “Like yourself. Like the woods, and grass, and sweat.”
He’ll change his sheets in the morning, Alex tells himself, even if he knows it’s a disgusting little lie. He’ll absolutely, totally be able to bring himself to put them in the wash, to get rid of the dirt and grime and heady gross smell of his sweat and Henry’s scent plastered to the threads. No doubt. Yeah.
“You asked for it,” he mutters, giddiness running over the brim in his chest, and follows him under the covers.
Alex hears Henry sigh beside him, and can’t get his body to relax. He wonders if he’s about to set a record for the most unrelaxing nights’ sleep in history. Maybe even get a medal. That’d be cool—he could hang it with his debate trophies. He’s just going to stay on his side, and none of this will ever have to be a big deal between the two of them.
That—
Wait.
Could this be a big deal between the two of them? It feels like a big deal to Alex, but would Henry think the same thing? It’s not like he has any of the—
“Alex.”
Shit. “Yeah?”
“I can hear you ruminating.”
Alex scoffs into the late blue light. “Factually impossible. Even with super hearing, no one can actually hear people's thoughts. Trust me, I tried when I was, like, seven and June wouldn’t tell me where she hid my Spiderman toy. Took me like a week to find it behind the couch because she always sat in the way—”
“Alex—”
“But what I’m saying , is that your normal wimpy human hearing—”
“Alexander.”
He chokes on nothing, stares at his ceiling, and tries not to picture the way Henry’s lips look when he says Alex’s name.
“If this is too much for you tonight—too close for such a night—then I can move to your sofa. It’s okay.”
Alex snaps his head to face Henry, whose face is half-smushed into a pillow. Silhouetted by the cold night lighting, Alex can barely make out his slow blinking eyes, and the beauty marks pricked sparsely over his perfect skin. “I don’t need you to go. I don’t want you to.”
“Then what do you want?”
Clenching his fists, swallowing his doubt, Alex pushes himself into Henry’s space where his scent is most potent as if he’s an Olympic diver finally getting his one and only chance. He hears Henry’s heart stutter like a skipping track, rubs a hand over Henry’s chest to soothe it, and slots his nose into the perfect spot just below the angle of his jaw. Sucks in a greedy, luxurious breath and pants it back out against Henry’s throat. His chest rumbles.
“ Alex , I— Oh .” Henry gulps as Alex rubs his hands up and down Henry’s sides while practically inhaling him whole, balanced on his knees on the giving mattress. “Okay, okay,” he mutters, and Alex feels a hand press into his shoulder blades.
“Sorry, I just,” Alex stops himself. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be—”
“I’ll stop, I’m—”
Henry shifts his legs and hugs him back, pulling Alex down, and oh if that doesn’t satisfy every little craving Alex has been itching with all day. No. Longer; since Henry walked into that lecture theater with his dorky satchel and never ever asked Alex to give it a rest when he felt too much.
“Henry,” he whispers, lips to skin, his entire weight pressing Henry down. “ Henry .”
“I know,” Henry says, weak underneath him. “I know.”
“— lex .”
Alex grumbles, mind foggy and unwilling to lift himself entirely back into the real world. There’s another call of his name. He grips tighter onto the fabric in his fist and yanks. Someone chokes and a heartbeat stammers and flips into a two-time speed. Fingers begin peeling his hand away.
When he awakes for real in a few hours' time, he’ll have the distant, dream-like memory of a voice saying I’ll be late and a whispering sleep a little longer, love . His extra pillow will practically drip with the scent of Henry’s shampoo and fancy hair products that cost more than an heiress’ jewelry collection.
The heaviest realization he’ll have, however, is that next time he has Henry in his bed (because yes, there will be a next time, Goddamnit), there’s no fucking way he’ll be letting him leave without an unmissable, unmistakable claim on him for everyone, supernatural or human, to see.
It’s bad.
Like, republicans storming the capital, Frank Ocean retiring, Alex’s favorite Thai place shutting down from a health code violation type bad. It’s downright pathetic.
He didn’t change his sheets the day after the full moon. Not even the week after. It’d taken June’s lip curling at him one morning for him to finally shove the covers into their washing machine and set them to the gentlest cycle possible.
He hadn’t used detergent in an attempt to keep it smothered in Henry’s scent. It didn’t work. Hopefully, when Henry gave his clothes back, he’d be able to rub himself in the scent like an animal’s claim.
“So are you two, like—” Nora makes a crude gesture with her fingers “—now or what?”
Alex splutters, head snapping away from where Henry is standing, talking with one of the humanities professors. “Nora!”
“What? He doesn’t have super hearing.”
Grumbling through a mouthful of water, he denies her inquiry. “No, we’re just. Y’know.”
“Co-dependent?”
He glares. “A real friend would be offering me comfort right about now, you know that don’t you?”
“Lies. A real friend has a duty to make fun of you whenever you’re being a loser ass bitch.” He motions towards him. “Exhibit A.”
“I bring whimsy to your life and you know it.” Ignoring Nora’s obnoxious laugh, he anchors his head around to look back at Henry and the professor. “Do you think he needs me as, like, a get-out-of-jail card?”
Nora makes a nasally grunt. “Unlikely. He’s the one that stopped Prof over there; if anything he’s the one that needs an out to get away from Henry’s Byron-fawning soliloquies.”
Alex frowns as tries to look for any signals of irritation on the Professor’s body. “That motherfucker,” he mutters. “Henry is eloquent as fuck and deserves to be appreciated.”
“Oh my God.”
“You don’t understand Shakespeare if you haven’t sat down to talk Hamlet with Hen, and don’t even get me started—”
“I try not to.
“—on his breakdown of rank and society in Pride and Prejudice.”
The bench creaks as Nora hangs her head, sighs, and mutters something about a can of worms.
“Y’know what?” Alex said sharply.
Nora stares at him over her sunglasses. “I probably do, but go on.”
“I’m getting Henry out of there.”
“Oh, goodie .”
Alex shoots to his feet, shoulders his bag, and skips a few hurried steps over to the quad where Henry is nodding enthusiastically to the professor. His t-shirt—a pale green one with a tiny graphic from a nearby greengrocer on the chest pocket—is charming, but Alex secretly thinks he had looked better in Alex’s burger raffle one.
“Alex,” Henry says suddenly, started, pink-faced from the warm sunlight and fingering his bag strap. “Hi.”
“Hey, Hen.” Alex tries his easy smile as he saddles up beside the taller boy. “Prof.”
Henry’s voice is slightly strained. “Are you not meant to be at practice still?”
He shrugs and pulls at the collar of his compression shirt. It’s still a little damp with sweat. He hopes he doesn’t look too gross. “Nah, it ended a little while ago. Cap has a few weaker stragglers running drills.”
“But not you,” Henry says.
Alex smiles and shrugs one shoulder. Pretends he isn’t preening. “Not me. You know I was out there kicking ass.”
Henry rolls his eyes good-naturedly, the same way he always has to Alex’s casual boasting.
The professor clears his throat, catching their attention. Alex feels a knick of irritation at his weary expression. “I’ll see you in class, Henry.”
Henry perks up. “Oh, of course! I’ll read through those journals you sent over and let you know my thoughts.”
“Please do, you’ve always had a fascinating view of the romantics.”
Is it selfish, to be mad at the way Henry lowers his head and smiles bashfully at the praise? Does that make Alex a selfish man? He doesn’t think so. Unfortunately, the ache behind his clenched jaw says otherwise.
“He has, hasn’t he?” Alex interjects. “Y’know, he went off for like an hour about Keats before, and I swear to fucking God—”
“ Alex .”
“—he got me more interested in those old white guys than any English professor ever could.”
The professor's lips pinch in at the corners, almost smiling. “I don’t doubt it,” he says.
“I mean, no offense and all that, but nothing can compare to a guy that really gets it , y’know?”
The professor chuckles as Henry turns his flushed face away, and Alex feels that bitter jealous stain at the back of his tongue dissolve like salt in hot water. That, Alex decides, is much better. He did that. Him .
The professor waves as he leaves, which Alex happily returns.
“Do you ever get tired of tormenting me?”
“Fuck no,” Alex laughs, rubbing his elbow into Henry’s side and smirking at the outraged, uncomfortable wriggle it gets him. “It’s like, my second favorite hobby.”
Henry adjusts his bag higher on his shoulder and starts his walk across the chalky-white slabs pathing the way to the south building. Alex almost trips over his own feet to follow him. “So,” Henry hums. “What’s your favorite then?”
Alex stares at Henry’s clothed back and the way his wide shoulders taper into a slight waist, the perfectly sized dip to hold on to. “Huh?”
“Your favorite hobby. You said your second favorite is tormenting me, so what holds the highly-coveted spot of number one?”
Alex bites at the inside of his cheek, pulling it between his molars as he tries to stop his lips from turning up into something filled to the brim with suggestion. It’s a weak attempt. Henry turns to face him when a moment too long has passed, and his curiosity is quick to flip into dismay.
“For fucks’ sake.”
“You asked!”
Henry cackles with him and motions for Alex to catch up. He does, happily, and beams when Henry doesn’t pull his fingers away each time they clash and very almost entwine.
(“So when’s he meeting Mom and Dad?” June asks when she comes home to see Alex forcing Henry to take a drink from his soda to prevent him from leaving their cocoon of blankets.)
(“Judie from my Econ class asked if you were single today,” Spencer remarks, hours after he’d caught Alex stroking his pointer finger over a napping Henry’s nose bridge. “I genuinely had no clue what to tell her, man.”)
(Pez squints at him on a seemingly random Sunday morning, the only human to have avoided a hangover and spending his time taking the rest of them to brunch at a local cafe with terracotta floor tiles. “You’ve left him in quite a state, I must say.”
Alex swallows his bite of egg and frowns. “Huh?”
“ Oh Pezza, when will he realize what he’s doing to me ?” Pez wails mockingly, nose lifted snootily and brows crinkled, capturing the very picture of Henry in melodramatic anguish. It's downright scary. “ I don’t dare overstep, there’s no way he’s unaware of my feelings! Whatever shall I do, oh dear, wise, beautiful, all-knowing Percy? ”
Throat suddenly dry, Alex lets out a croak. “Henry said that?”
Pez shrugs. “He was much more maudlin, you know our Hazz. But that’s the jist of it.”)
Henry is talking to a guy at a party, next to a sticky table of bottles sprouting up in a jewel-toned cluster, when Alex decides he’s done with pretending he’s patient. He won’t listen in to their conversation, partly because he isn’t sure he wants to know what's being said, but largely because it’d feel like an invasion of Henry’s privacy. That doesn’t mean he can’t stew over the way the guy leans into Henry’s space like he fits there. As if it’s not molded to Alex’s shape.
He catches Henry on the front porch later, the mystery man long gone, but the scent of yeasty beer and sharp, unfamiliar cologne clinging to his skin. Perhaps Alex had a few too many shots, sue him, but he thinks it's his responsibility to get rid of it.
“Heeenry!” He sings out as he saddles up beside where Henry is leaning against a paint-cracked wooden banister. The thin cotton shirt is soft against Alex’s chin where he’s poking it into Henry’s shoulder. “You out here all by your lonesome?”
“I am,” Henry hums. “Until now.”
“ Until now, ” Alex mocks in his own rendition of Henry’s posh accent. “Aren’t y’grateful I’m coming to your rescue?”
Alex lets himself be turned by Henry until he can perch against the porch rail, directly below the Sigma Chi signage. He doesn’t respond to Alex’s question, at least not one that Alex hears, and the idea of Henry ignoring him makes him frown.
“Hey.”
Henry sits gently beside him, in a markedly less stable spot than Alex is in. Should he get them to switch?
“Henry.”
“So Nora gave you a dose before you arrived?”
Alex swallows and nods. Nora had been the one to originally source a way for him to get hammered without having to consume enough alcohol to kill a horse. Small little capsules containing a powdery herb, taken ten minutes before whatever booze was on the menu, and he could get as wasted as any human. The super healing meant his hangovers were virtually nonexistent too. He’d practically jumped for joy when she explained it to him.
“Didn’t have too much though,” Alex mutters, which is true. He’s a little naive, but not stupid. “Couple beers, some shots.”
Henry nods and purses his lips momentarily, and it’s a testament to Alex’s self-control that he doesn’t lean forward to touch the pink flesh. He still smells like himself under that guy's scent, Alex notes. A little sweatier, a strong undercurrent of something alcoholic, but still Henry. Still his Henry.
“Did you hook up with that guy?”
Henry jolts suddenly and blinks at Alex. “What?”
“The guy from the kitchen,” Alex motions to the inside of the house, past the shitty lighting illuminating drunk art history students and fraternity brothers. “You seemed close. Thought you might, I dunno. Make out. What do y'all call it across the pond? Pulling?”
It’s late, this time the moon a thin slip of white in the sky, so Alex can’t blame his anxieties on the lunar pull. It’s brought upon by how Henry looks sitting opposite him, pulling his leg up to his chest and curving his shoulders down over it. “I suppose,” Henry mutters.
“You suppose?” He’s gonna vomit.
Henry makes an odd noise. “He wanted to. I didn’t, really. Did it anyway, for a bit.”
Alex frowns. “You did it when you didn’t want—?”
“I don’t—. God, don’t ask me about it.” Henry stretches his neck to the side and—. Fuck. Alex is suddenly smacked with the memory of what it’d felt like, running his nose over that vein. “I just did it. I like kissing so—. I don’t know.”
“Was he good?” Maybe Alex is a fucking idiot.
Henry blanches. “Excuse me?”
“Was he a good kisser?” Alex leaves the stability of his backrest and shuffles along the banister, closer to the other man.
Henry stares back at him, slack-jawed. “Alex,” he whispers.
“What?”
Like an intricate palace made of brittle playing cards, Henry's face collapses into a pained scrunch. “Fucks’ sake,” he winces.
“Henry?”
“You’re being really mean.”
Alex scoffs, stupid and tipsy. “How am I being mean?”
“Christ, Alex!” Suddenly Henry is a blurry shot of movement, standing from their little huddle and tripling their distance. “You know how. Don’t act like that when you know exactly what you’re doing to me!”
The only other time Henry has ever gotten heated with Alex has been over Star Wars, and whether Padme and Anakin’s wedding or Leia’s confession followed by Han’s following I know holds the top spot as the most romantic moment in the whole franchise. That hadn’t felt nearly as wrought as watching the normally poised, if antsy, Henry throwing his head back like the underside of a run-down porch roof could answer every begging plea he could think to ask.
“God, ignore me.” Henry puts his hands up to his face, and Alex hears the muffled sigh against his palms. “You haven’t done anything wrong, I’m just a bit… drunk. It’s just—foolish.”
Alex stands, the barest of tilt to his step, and clenches his teeth at the topsy-turvy feeling in his chest. “Obviously, it’s not. If you’ve got something to say—say it.”
Beyond them, something bass-heavy lifts the air with cheers from the party goers. If he wanted to, Alex could stretch his hearing out to find out what he’s missing.
“Liam said you can detect heartbeat patterns and—and nerves and emotions.”
Making a vague sound, Alex shrugs. “In a way. Like, it’s not mind reading, but—”
“And that time Nora said June can always tell when she’s in the mood to—”
“ Don’t remind me, oh my god.”
Henry lifts one shoulder in a shrug and rests back against the brick of the house. Any desire to stare at the shadowy dip of his clavicle, barely concealed between the cliffs of his unbuttoned collar, is turned into dust in Alex’s gut at just how goddamn downtrodden Henry looks.
“I think,” Alex says, suddenly sober, “that you should say what you mean, and not rely on whatever signals you think you’ve been giving me to do the talking for you.”
Adam’s apple bobbing, Henry stares Alex down. The stalemate between them stretches and stretches, punctuated only by a car siren in the distance and a bottle crashing into shards beyond the front door, and Alex tightens his fists to prevent himself from letting it snap like an elastic band.
The restraint doesn’t have to last long.
Henry surges forward, grips Alex by either side of his jaw, and tugs him into a hot, frantic kiss.
And Alex?
Well.
Alex lets the heat under his skin push him into Henry’s body. He hears the other man make a nice half-choking noise as Alex cranks the kiss up to a hundred with his hand fisting the fabric as Henry’s hips and moving up to that dip at his very bottom rib. His hands—beautiful, with long fingers and delicate wrists—smooth around the sides of Alex’s head, and then his hair is being tugged with an urgency that has Alex gasping into Henry’s panting mouth, gums itching with the warning of fangs.
Henry pushes on Alex’s shoulders and leans away—not an easy feat when Alex is holding his lower body close in an iron grip. “ God ,” he breathes roughly. “Sorry, I—”
“What? Why?”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Yes, you should’ve, and you did.”
“But—”
Alex lets out a frustrated grunt. “But nothing. You want me?”
Henry’s eyes drill holes into his own for a split second, and then he’s nodding frantically.
“Then fucking have me.”
Something in Henry falls away. His body goes half-slack in Alex’s grip, before he’s hauling him closer again, and Alex is a desperate, hungry man who shoves Henry backwards until they fall against the grotty wall. He presses Henry into the brick with his body. Henry’s mouth opens, and then there’s Henry's hot, wet tongue against his own. Alex fucking purrs, chest vibrating, as he practically inhales the other man. It’s wet and sloppy, a little gross in a way that fully sober Alex would wince at, but this Alex absolutely revels in it.
“We could, erm,” Henry says weakly when Alex is working his teeth against that tempting column of pale skin. “ Fucking Christ —spare rooms, upstairs.”
Alex growls against his neck. He feels Henry shiver against his tongue. “You wanna go find a room?”
“Yes,” Henry half-moans. “Do you?”
“Hen,” Alex pulls away and leans up to bump his nose against Henry’s. “There would have to be a crime committed within a fifty foot vicinity to distract me from you right now. And, like, a big crime. No purse snatchers or binge drinking; I’m talking triple homicide, baby.”
Henry laughs against Alex’s lips, turning their kiss into some breathy and sweet. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re a sweet-talker.”
They dodge around a group of freshman guys trying to dance and pass a pair of lip-locking girls (very familiar girls, Alex thinks, though he ignores the sight of his sister and ex-girlfriend for the sake of his own sanity), leading Henry upstairs with their hands clenched tightly together.
“Y’know they’re gonna tease us like hell for this later,” Alex says when they’re fumbling over the threshold of the nearest empty room they could find. It’s a bathroom, which isn’t ideal, but beggars can't be choosers.
Henry hums, and Alex feels the vibration in his teeth. “That they are.”
“Wanted you for a stupid long time.”
“Yeah?”
“ Oh , yeah. Seeing you out there flirting with that guy with the fuck-ass quiff? Torture, and not the fun kind.”
Henry laughs. “Glad it worked then, darling.”
Alex pulls back and stares Henry down. “You’re kidding me.”
A shrug.
“And you called me mean!” Alex points a finger in Henry’s face, laughing, slack-jawed and incredulous. “You conniving little—” He’s cut off when Henry cranes his head forward and, quick as a whip, snaps his teeth at Alex’s appendage. It’s only his supernatural inclination to pull it back that saves the finger from a bite.
They still, silent for a moment, as Alex stares into Henry’s jewel-blue eyes, and breathes through the heat he feels at witnessing something so animalistic from him. Henry is not a rowdy man. He’s careful and poised, even in his most neurotic moments, not one to shove or boast or roughhouse, and he never, ever uses his teeth.
Deep within the crevices of Alex’s chest, something growls in delight.
“I’ll make you pay for that,” he mutters, leaning close again til his dark curls are ruffling with Henry’s sandy blonde fringe. He watches Henry’s iris expand, and feels the breath of a shaky exhale against his face.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
Pez grins, the angle of it charged with pride, when he finds the couple watching an old rerun of The Great British Baking Show under Henry’s duvet the next morning. In itself, the act doesn’t say a lot, considering how often they’ve always tucked away under soft covers together, but the telltale hickies and yet-to-heal pink marks over Alex’s back say plenty.
“My congratulations to you both,” he says, tickled with humor.
Alex lifts a hand in thanks, while Henry mutters something not far from an order to shut up. He’s still staring intensely at his laptop screen, his bared shoulders covering Alex’s in their slump, while Paul Hollywood offers one of his coveted handshakes to a lucky contestant.
Alex presses his lips to the offensively oversized purple bruise he’d bitten into Henry’s neck, feeling the pulse of Henry’s heartbeat. Pez disappears with a last call for breakfast that they both ignore.
“He’s gonna tell the others,” Alex says, just as both their phones begin buzzing with a flurry of notifications on the bedside table.
Henry hums. “Let him,” he says. “I’m not willing to move an inch unless Noel Fielding himself invites us out there with a plate of lemon meringues.”
“You’re driving me crazy,” Alex whines into Henry’s shoulder, smelling grass and dirt and cologne and other men . He hears Henry laughing, and makes an affronted growling noise into Henry’s jersey. “ Stooop .”
“I’m sorry, love. It’s just,” Henry wraps an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “You’re being a tad dramatic, even for you.”
“I’m allowed to feel possessive over my hot boyfriend smelling like other guys.”
Henry snorts. “You could just not.”
“Easy for you to say!” Alex accuses. “Your nose is wimpy and human. You can’t tell how bad those guys want you.”
“Wanted the ball, you mean.”
“Nope. You .”
Henry pushes Alex back enough to catch his eye and raises an eyebrow. The rugby team at their college is small, but it’d been the closest thing to familiar Henry had found when he’d moved across the ocean. It’s a casual club, meeting up every few weeks to play or hang out, and one Henry only attends when everyone else in their pack has plans that he doesn’t want to join in on. This is the first time he’s gone to play since they’d actually, officially, become boyfriends. Months of blissful ignorance. The antsy proprietorial feeling isn’t new, but the permission Henry has given him to express it is, and Alex will take a goddamn mile.
“You’re projecting,” Henry says, smiling.
Alex hurumphs through his pout and steps back. “If it was me I was smelling, trust me, I would know.”
Henry narrows his eyes and leans back against the kitchen counter. It’s a little damp, and cuts a dark line into his shirt. “How so?”
Tonguing the inside of his cheek, Alex looks Henry up and down, repeats it, and is delighted at the resulting fidgets it gets him. “For one, it’d be unmistakable.”
“Oh, really?”
“Totally.” He chews on his bottom lip and drags in a lungful of air through his nose. Nature, salty sweat, the spiced pheromone of Henry’s delicious arousal. “I know you can’t tell, but I’ve been fucking drenching you in my scent.”
Henry’s throat bobs over his swallow. “You have?” he croaks.
“Mhm.” Alex nods and approaches his boyfriend again, leans into him, hands on the counter either side of his lean waist, and tucks his face just below Henry’s aristocratic chin. “Because you’re mine, and I’m yours, and I wanna make sure everybody knows it. No one else’s.”
Through a shaky inhale, Henry nods incrementally.
“Every touch,” Alex pushes Henry’s sweat-damp jersey up to his chest with a hand on his sternum, “and every kiss,” a quick press of lips to his clavicle, “puts my scent on you.”
“Oh…”
“When some random guys cover that up, it’s my job to put it back.” A hand hauls Alex closer, Henry turning his head to one side to allow him unfiltered access. Decadent and savory, Alex drags his tongue thickly up Henry’s neck and to his ear, where he tugs a lobe between his teeth teasingly.
Henry shivers. “Teammates, not random guys,” he mutters pointedly.
Alex makes a disagreeing noise. “The wolf doesn’t care,” he jokes.
Henry snorts. “The wolf? Seriously?”
“Yeah, baby. The wolf. Issue?”
One finger rubs over the shell of Alex’s ear. “No, of course not. The wolf.”
Alex grins into Henry’s sharp jaw. “You want me to prove it to you?”
Between them, Henry’s breathing stutters.
They almost break Henry’s bedroom door hinges in the fight to get somewhere Pez won’t find them if he has unfortunate timing. Alex doesn’t hold back on using a few sharp claws to shred Henry’s clothing off, not when Henry is giving him that look of utter adoration with blown wide eyes and a lover’s sultry smile.
“Can I—I know we’ve been careful, but…” Alex trails off with a huff of frustration as they pull the final threads of slouchy sleepwear from their bodies. “I can’t carry anything, so I can’t give or catch anything either, and—”
“Alex.”
He blinks up into Henry’s bottomless eyes, follows him down as Henry sits, then leans back on his sunrise-warm covers.
“Fuck me raw.”
A strong vibration sounds in Alex’s chest. He drops his mouth open and tastes Henry’s syrupy, thick arousal filling the room and smothering Alex’s senses. There’s a sudden sting in his mouth, panting breaths pushing through canines that are getting sharper by the millisecond. Henry’s eyes drop the miniscule shred down. Alex knows he sees them. He can’t— won’t hide them.
Henry opens his mouth and takes a breath as if to speak, but Alex doesn’t give him a chance. He surges forward, rolls his body on to Henry’s, and kisses him—fangs and all, aching and vital while the heat of Henry’s bare body sings against his own.
“Alex,” Henry says, low and gravely while Alex is clicking the bottle of lube open. He’ll use more than usual, he thinks. “Please, I need—I need—”
“I know,” Alex cuts him off, tucking his knees under Henry’s thighs and pulling his legs to wrap loosely around his waist. It’s a struggle not to rush as he fingers Henry’s hole while idly stroking himself to the sight, but Henry giving him this, giving him everything, is a scenario plucked from his wet dreams, and he refuses to risk fucking it up. He stops when Henry is pulling him close with his ankles, and reaching to pull him into a bizarrely innocent little kiss. “Baby?”
Henry smiles at the name. “Fuck me.”
“Already?” Alex blinks.
“Mm.” Henry nods. “I want to feel it in the morning.”
Alex’s stomach feels like it’s being wrung out, but he looks to one side in consideration. “Maybe I should get a towel?” he asks. An amused huff and fond eyes stare up to him. “What? Your sheets are gonna be ruined.”
Henry kisses him again with the barest slip of his tongue. Alex spills a lot when he comes—always has and probably always will. He’s messy and has to be careful with any condoms he wears, but Henry doesn’t mind. Loves it even, if the way he offers his face for Alex to cover in spunk whenever he’s given Alex the deepthroating of a lifetime says anything. “I can clean my sheets,” Henry says finally, quietly, tracing fingertips over Alex’s shoulder blade. “If you don’t fuck me here and now just to look for a towel, I can’t promise I won’t be disappointed.”
Alex grins. “Aye, aye, captain,” he jokes and blows a lungful of air into Henry’s neck when he groans at the mocking. He’s grinning, probably more than he should be, as he jerks himself once, twice, but who the fuck gives a damn. Everything is more fun with Henry, including sex, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.
Hot and tight around his cock, it’s a goddamn sight to behold as he watches Henry practically suck him in. “Hen, holy shit,” he whines, holding Henry’s legs so he can see the perfect angle. “Fuck.” Any words he’s scrambling for evade him at the new sensations of Henry’s inner walls pulsing around him, not a molecule of rubber separating them. “I don’t know if I’m g’na last.”
“S’okay,” Henry lets out, pulling his legs apart further and reaching for Alex to bring him down again between them. “Just fuck me. Please, love.” He released a punched-out moan when Alex brackets him between two forearms and buries himself to the hilt, then fucks him in earnest.
“You feel fucking—”
“ Alex —”
“Wanna fill you with my come,” Alex mutters, a little fuck drunk as he prompts Henry to tighten the grip of his thighs around his waist. “Want you full and goddamn dripping with it.”
“You’re insa—ane .”
“You think I could stuff you full?”
Henry reaches an arm over his head to stop Alex from fucking his head into the headboard, but it doesn’t help prevent Alex’s efforts when his hold on Alex’s hair tightens to a fist. Something garbled comes from his lips, but even Alex’s super-hearing can’t make it out.
“Gonna make sure everyone knows you’re mine,” Alex says sharply, the hair pulling sending a zing down his spine. “Everyone. Humans, too. I’ll cover you.”
“Oh my fu— ucking Christ,” Henry whimpers, eyes squeezing shut tight with furrowed brows. “Please come—on me. Please , Alex.”
“Fucking perfect, Hen. So insane. Want me to come all over you?” Henry nods something frantic. “It’s in you or on you, baby, one or the other.”
A noise of frustration pulls from Henry, and Alex would laugh, were he not holding himself at the edge of his control. “Both,” Henry says, in that demanding, bratty way he gets only when Alex draws it out of him.
“I can’t actually do the impossible,” Alex remarks.
“Yes, you can,” Henry saws through grit teeth, reaching down to play with the very tip of his bright pink cock. “Fuck, wan’ come.”
“Gonna come?”
“ Fucking Christ .”
“Okay baby, you can come for me,” Alex pauses his thrusting, leans to make space, and lends his boyfriend a hand. He gives Henry’s cock a squeeze, a little rough the way Henry likes, and only circles his thumb just below the head when Henry goes taut and almost devastatingly tight. He fucks him through the pulsing wave, swallows his pitched laugh with a kiss, and feeling the wet release between them.
Putting his weight on one arm, Alex swipes his hand through the sticky mess between them, and barely has a chance to rub it over his own abdominals before he follows Henry over the edge of control and spiraling down, twitching and loud against Henry’s sternum.
Henry’s hand is back in his hair, lazy fingers barely moving. “There you go,” he thinks he hears Henry mutter, soft tongue warping his words. “I want to be stretched full of you.”
Alex’s orgasm drags out in pinches and whispered words, feeling like it’ll never stop as long as they stay exactly where they are. He’s still coming, he thinks. Henry says something about pulling out, but that makes Alex hold him even tighter.
He comes back one breath at a time, Henry still stroking the hair behind his ear. “M’guhf,” he fails to say.
“Gesundheit.”
“You’re not funny,” Alex lies. As he pulls back, he keeps their position just enough to stare at the way his come is leaking like a too-full cup from Henry’s poor pink rectum. “Jesus,” he mutters.
“I can feel it,” Henry drags a hand over his lower stomach, ignoring the come getting tacky, “in here, I think.”
Alex’s poor spent dick twitches. “You can?”
Henry makes a confirming noise. “Think so,” he sighs happily. “It’s weird.”
“It’s hot,” Alex says. He rests back on his laurels, holds Henry’s ankles, and moves them out to see the mess. The sheets really are fucked. Henry gasps a little when Alex drags his finger over the cum-covered hole. “Y’okay?” he asks.
Henry nods and lifts himself to rest back on his forearms. “Just sensitive.”
Carefully, Alex pushes two fingers back past Henry’s sphincter and drags some of his come out. Henry squirms beneath him, but doesn’t complain when Alex brings his hand up and wipes it on Henry’s stomach.
“Oh,” Henry says, breathy, when Alex repeats the gesture again, this time over a thigh. “Darling—”
“Everyone will know now,” Alex mutters, rubbing the substance like lotion. “You’re gonna smell like me for weeks , baby, you have no clue.”
“I really don’t.”
“I’ll remind you.”
He repeats the action again, and again, and still doesn’t run out. Henry relaxes into the touches and the overstimulation, stroking his own fingers up and down Alex’s ribs as if he’s covering Alex too. He is, in a way, even if Alex is the only one of the pair who can really tell.
“Love you,” Alex whispers, careful and cherishing, and so damn happy in their cocoon of sweaty warmth he fears breaking the atmosphere.
Henry grins back at him. “Love you too, darling.” The mole by his lip warps. Alex doesn’t hesitate to kiss it. He lies back on top of Henry, almost purring at the way Henry hugs him. It has the added benefit of mixing their respective spunk together into a glorious, disgusting, carnal mess.
“What?” Henry says blankly.
Across the table, Liam is wearing the exact same expression that June had worn the morning after their come-glazed fucking. Face contorted with astonishment, curved with disgust, and gaping hilariously.
Alex snorts into his second coffee of the day. He’d heard a little rumor through the supernatural grapevine that his and Henry’s respective new scents hadn’t gone unnoticed. Like, at all .
He thinks he might tag along to Henry’s next rugby game.
“You guys are gross, dude,” Liam says to Alex, curling his lip. “You know the stuff you gotta do to make that smell so fuckin’ strong?”
“Obviously,” Alex snarks. “We did it.”
“Oh, come on!”
“You asked!”
“ It was rhetorical! ”
Beside the bickering werewolves, Henry and Spencer consider each other, and then their respective partners.
“Do you…?” Spencer starts.
“Not a clue,” Henry chimes, like butter wouldn’t melt.
“Oh. Okay.” Spencer stirs his yogurt. “Are you wearing Alex’s cologne by the way? You smell different.”