Work Text:
The problem is that you do not know how not to be so unfathomably in love with Ox Matheson.
The problem is that when you see him everything stops for a second or two.
The problem is that when it restarts, your vision cannot tear itself away from him, his skin and his eyelashes and the expanse of his hands. His everything. You ache. You do not know how to not ache.
You run, and run, and run.
You howl, and your wolfsong is full of longing and torrid desire and you can’t stop. You ache and you cannot soothe yourself. You ache and there is nothing but the smell of him at night, the phantom of his scent in your nose and you can’t get it out, you don’t want to, he is everything he is inside you he is Ox, Ox, Ox— you curl your hands in the duvet and you tear it to shreds with your claws and you do not think about how you will explain it to your family later and you do not think of Richard and you do not think of your future and you do not think of anything except Ox, Ox, Ox, and you rut your hips restlessly into the air.
It is not enough. It is not enough . It is not enough when you finally wrap your hand around yourself and it is not enough when you snatch up a pillow to thrust against and it is not enough even when you come, snarling and biting your own mouth bloody.
You hope it heals quickly. You hope Ox doesn’t notice it. You hope he doesn’t look at your mouth and then ask, because you can’t lie— you won’t be able to lie about it, and you cannot take him turning from you. You cannot take anything, anymore, but especially not that.
***
He notices you he notices you he notices you and your skin is too tight, you want to burst from your flesh and expand your bones and become. You want your teeth in his throat. You want your hands in his chest your cock in his ass your teeth in his throat your teeth in his throat your teeth in his throat. His blood in your mouth.
His blood everywhere.
You are so fucking scared of yourself.
You are so hopeful for the first time in so many years, a bird fluttering in your chest. He notices you. He has been looking at you for years and he has been Ox for years and finally he sees you and you are Joe and— and— oh fuck oh god he sees, and now it is not shameful or petty or childish to imagine and you lock yourself in the bathroom the first chance you get, fling yourself into the shower with the water streaming coldcoldcold such a relief and not a damper on your shuddering, all-encompassing lust. You bite your bicep until you taste yourself like prey, you close your eyes against the spray and you gasp through your nose and fuck your own fist and think of him, of Ox, yours, yours, he is going to be— he is going to be yours you are going to mount him and you are shaking you are shuddering you are biting and you are coming and roaring and your brothers are going to give you such shit for it later— the sound vibrates your vocal chords and shatters against the tiles until you think it will break the mirror.
Seven years of bad luck but you don’t care because Ox notices you.
***
You leave.
You leave and you are Alpha and you are with your brothers and with Gordo and you are alone.
Your father is dead. Your mother is unreachable. Your Ox—
you are alone.
You are always running.
You are always aching.
You feel like your skin has been turned inside out and studded with tiny shards of broken glass and rusted nails, like everything you touch you hurt and you are scoured, flayed— you are fucking up every moment and you can’t breathe and you are so angry and so sad and so alone—
and the dreams are the worst part, breathless and gorgeous and soft, downy and lovely and full of OxOxOx and everything is good and okay, and then you wake up, hard and aching in a shitty motel room or in the back of the truck, exhausted to your marrow and furious and so fucking lonely.
You are so fucking lonely.
***
You come home and everything is different except for the fact that you see Ox and the world stops.
He is Ox he is mate he is best friend he is gorgeous he is handsome he is there he is
he is Alpha and oh my love, you think wildly, helplessly, what have I done what have I done what have I what have what
it is all your fault, and you know it.
You ache in new and familiar ways.
You want, so terribly you can’t swallow for the agony of it.
Until you decide to leave again until you decide to leave again until you decide to leave again.
No.
No.
***
You are not too full of broken glass to use all your advantages to your advantage. All the weapons at your disposal. He smells like Want.
He being Ox. There is no one else. No other he.
You take off your shirt. You unbutton your jeans. You strip yourself bare for him and thrill with the way he smells, the way he looks at you, everything. You thrill and feel sick with it, with want and lust and sorrow and lead-heavy remorse.
You are on fire with your own desire and with your fury at the thought of anyone else’s hands on his skin, anyone else’s teeth in his throat— that scrawny fucking wolf, Jessie, anyone. You don’t care. You don’t care. You would end them. You would rend their flesh from their bones and there would be nothing but your rage and your teeth, the yawning expanse of your maw and your wolf singing that will teach you he is mine mine mine.
You are unashamed of the monstrous feelings in your chest; you are too far gone for anything as mundane as shame. Anything as innocent as nobility.
You are a monster. You are a monster.
You are shaking with holding yourself back as you feel his muscles trembling with indecision; you know he wants to lean back against your chest. You know he can feel your breath on his neck. You know that the moon can see you, you know that he knows, he can feel it, he knows how badly you want to possess him.
Your Ox. Yours.
He does not lean back, but that is okay, because you know he wants to. You know that he is furious with you but he still can’t escape this, no more than you can. You are trapped in this together, heaven and hell, a nightmare and a daydream, everything on fire. Everything is on fire; you have been burning for years. You feel like cinders on the inside. You can taste ash on your tongue.
You shift, and smell him in the dip of his waist where sweat likes to pool. He trembles.
Not unaffected. Not closed-off. Not someone else’s.
Yours. Yours. Yours.
Soon.
***
The scrawny wolf challenges you. Something inside of you snaps. Robbie. The monster in you that Richard encouraged, that fire he fanned so meticulously, is fucking pleased. You are pleased. You want to hurt him. You want to hurt him so badly.
You don’t.
You don’t but you want to. Part of you recoils from it. Part of you rejoices. Part of you snarls.
All of you stands to attention when Ox shows his power.
So that’s how it is.
Yes.
***
Your body is new to this.
Your everything is new to this, but most especially your body. Your mind has had time (so much time) to imagine it, to conjure Ox from the deepest recesses of your heart and have him in every way you know of to have another person.
Your skin has not been sensitized to this, though. You are unused to the want pouring down your spine like icy water, so cold it burns, and you’d always thought that it would feel like fire, but it is cold and it burns and you think you’ll cry with it, with how fucking good it feels, in Ox’s old bed in his old room where you’d used to imagine him, late at night, where you imagined him on his knees and you came so hard you saw stars, thirteenfourteenfifteensixteenseventeen and burning from the inside out.
It feels too good, it feels like too much, it feels like not enough- nothing will be enough until you have him for real, until you make your claim, until you, like you said stupidly and earnestly to his mother in the kitchen when you were seventeen, mount and bite him. So everyone knows. So no one can say he’s not yours. So he can’t say he’s not yours.
He is yours. He is yours and your teeth are snapping and you feel like murder and also so raw and tender it hurts to even have the air on your skin, and he says
he says
he says yeah yours joe i’m yours
and you are
u n d o n e.
His mouth his teeth his hands his everything his cock, Ox Ox Ox and you’d thought- you thought, you thought you thought you knew what you wanted, you thought that the Alpha in you would want nothing but taking and you were right but you didn’t understand you didn’t understand because you want, you want to take and you want to take it and you want everything. You want all of it. You want to sear your scent and your touch into every single part of him, every single square inch of your mate, your Ox.
You want him to sear his touch into every single part of you.
All of you.
He has you dumb with it, willing for anything you will do anything you would do anything, you have been so alone so alone so alone and he is there and his mouth oh fuck oh god oh Ox his mouth, but he says not yet not yet not yet he’s been on a refrain since you came home and it is your fault and you are so fucking dumb and you could’ve been doing this years ago, if you hadn’t left if you hadn’t fucked it up but it’s okay because not yet isn’t no and Ox knew what you needed.
He knew.
You were crying with it by the end- eyelashes wet and spiky and vision bright and everything raw, all your nerves fried and buzzing and there was OxOxOx like he’d never been away, like you’d never been away, like you’d been together all this time doing nothing but this, like you’d become one fire that burnt brighter than the two of you ever could separately.
And Ox-
Ox saying Joe and coming all over your skin, all over where you were pink and new and gasping raggedly like you’d nearly drowned because you had, you had, you’d been drowning all this time and you’d drowned in him and you still were, you were suffocated dying drowning living breathing OxOxOx.
Everything was Ox.
Everything.
***
You turn him because you can’t not.
There was no world where you weren’t going to get your teeth into him.
There is no place where there can be Joe Bennett without Ox Matheson.
You had never existed in a world where there was no Ox. Even before you met him, he’d always been alive somewhere. Breathing. Being.
You are not going to live in a world where there is no Ox.
***
Do it he snarls and his eyes are flashing redredred and he is an Alpha and you are an Alpha and you are i n s i d e him and nothing has ever been like this nothing will ever be like this it will never be the same you can never go back you will never go back and you are helpless and hopeless and full of so much terrible love that you can’t even breathe can’t do anything but watch your cock fuck into him, watch him take it, watch him and feel his claws in your back and you’re dizzy and lightheaded and you’ve never felt like this before- you have never-
do it, he snarls and your fangs drop through your gums in a bright little slash of ordinary pain that seems extraordinary because this is extraordinary, you are sure there’s never been anyone who felt like this before in the whole history of the entire world, you are sure of it and you are even surer when he comes, when he comes and you are inside him and you come too and you bite
you bite-
you bite and there is blood in your mouth and he is inside you he is inside your mind your heart your chest your skin your wolf he is everywhere and you’d thought before that he was already in your soul but now it’s true now it’s real now he is he is he is
Mate.