Rachel/Puck- In A Dark Place, I Close My Eyes
Title: In A Dark Place, I Close My Eyes
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Puck centric, Rachel/Puck
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7, 302
Summary: AU Puck is part of a little-known subculture: shifters, people who can turn into wolves. It's hard keeping his secret from his friends. Even harder to keep the fact that he kept his daughter after she was born. (Post season 1)
Author's Notes: Written for this prompt at the glee_angst_meme drabble meme.
His muscles ache. He wakes up on the cold kitchen tiles with the sun burning his eyes, every muscle in his body hurting. He had gone out running the night before. The urge had become too much and so he had stripped off his clothes, threw open his back door and went running. And there was never a problem with that. It was waking up on the cold tile floor that was always horrible. But it wasn’t even so much that it was cold. It was waking up there and hearing the distinct sound of crying upstairs. Soft and whiny, almost like a whimpering puppy.
Groaning he rolled over onto his hands and knees and pushed himself up, ran his hand over his face once he was standing. Every muscle screamed with the sudden movement. That was the worst part about shifting. He had discovered it the first time it happened, involuntarily, when he was eleven. Puberty had just started to hit him hard and he felt something inside of him he couldn’t explain.
All of the boys in the school were going through hormonal changes. They started to notice girls and their voices were changing. They started to grow hair in new places and they started to get turned-on at weird things. But he felt different than them. He started to notice things. He started to smell things that he hadn’t before. He noticed things he shouldn’t have been able to notice. He could even tell when girls were starting their periods by their smell and it was so, so weird. (That stopped once girls got old enough where they started to wear deodorant and perfume. It masked the other scents.) He could smell when someone was cooking down the block when he never could before. And it scared the hell out of him. He thought something was wrong with him. Especially when he felt like there was something inside of him. He felt like there was a living being curled up in the pit of his stomach just waiting to burst through his stomach like something out of Alien.
It wasn’t until about three months after that all started that his mother sat him down to talk to him. She had him sit down on the couch and she sat next to him, took his hand in hers. And that’s when she started to explain to him that they were different from the rest of the people in town. She explained that they were special, that they were capable of things that others weren’t. And at first he didn’t believe her. At first he thought it was some sort of a sick joke and there was just something wrong with him. That had to be it.
And then he woke up one night with pain coursing through his body. It felt like each bone in his body was about to break, like his skin was going to split open. He woke up screaming and fell out of his bed, tried to stand but couldn’t. So instead he crawled. He crawled down the hall to his mother’s room and nudged the partially open door open all the way, called out to her in the most pathetic voice he had ever heard come out of his own mouth, the sound almost like the whimper of a wounded animal. His voice sounded strangled, his throat feeling like it was on fire. He was dying. He was absolutely positive that he was dying.
His mother was standing there looking out the window, her back to him. And then she turned to look at him and he screamed. Or he tried to scream but it came out as a howl. His mother was standing there looking at her son, her eyes glowing, the irises yellow, the pupils thin, inhuman. And for the first time in his life he was scared of his mother. He wanted to skitter backwards but he couldn’t. He was in far too much pain to even try to do that.
“Oh, baby,” his mother cooed at him. Her voice sounded so much more gravely, almost like a growl. And he thought for sure he would be afraid of it but he wasn’t. For some reason that growling voice like she had gargled broken glass was comforting. It made him feel good to hear. Like maybe she could make everything all better. Maybe she could make the pain stop. Maybe she had a secret cure for whatever was wrong with him. He knew that seeing her with her eyes like that should have been a giant indication that she couldn’t help him but he was still holding out hope. How could he not? He was scared and he was in pain.
She moved towards him and then she crouched down in front of him, reached out and took his face in her hands. She brushed her thumbs over his cheeks, sighed heavily. “I know this is scary, baby. I know that this hurts. But it’ll be alright. The pain will pass. And you’ll be alright.” She smiled at him and that’s when he got scared. Her teeth were sharp like an animal and he tried to scream but it came out a pathetic, pain filled sound. He hated what was happening to him and he didn’t even know exactly what it was. He just wanted to feel better. He just wanted the pain to stop. Was that too much to ask?
But the pain didn’t stop. And it didn’t go away. That night his skin felt like it was being torn apart. It felt like his entire body was on fire. He shifted, changed. He was no longer human. He was an animal. And he hated himself for it. For a long time he wanted to crawl into darkness and just hide there for the rest of his life. And then in time he learned to accept what he was. He didn’t like it but he accepted it. But what he knew was that he was forever changed. And that his life would never be the same.
That’s why he didn’t do relationships. Everyone else in town was human and he could hurt them. He could rip them to shreds if he wasn’t careful. He could crush them. Great emotions made him start to change. And he was warm. He was so warm that it was unnatural. And if he spent too much time with a person the heat could overwhelm them. That’s why he started to sleep around. It was a way to feel human, a way to have contact with a person that was normal without putting them at risk, without hurting them. Because if he actually hurt them he’d never be able to forgive himself. And he could definitely hurt them. Because he wasn’t human.
Eventually his mother sat him down and explained to him that they were special. They looked human and lived much like humans but they weren’t human. They were part animal. They changed, shifted into wolves. And there was an order to things. He got used to that order rather quickly. The leader was the alpha and you respected the alpha. And his mother was his alpha since his father had left. His family was a pack.
When Quinn got pregnant it wasn’t that his mother hated her. She had no reason to really hate her. It wasn’t that she hated humans- and Quinn was most definitely human. But she hated the idea of him fathering a child with someone that he hadn’t claimed as a mate, someone he would spend his life with. She hated the idea of him fathering a child with a woman who wanted to give the baby away. And so when she lived with them his mother wasn’t really very nice to Quinn. She wasn’t overly cruel but she wasn’t nice either. She didn’t know how to be nice to her.
His mother didn’t show up to the hospital when Quinn had that baby. And he stood with her and looked into the window at that tiny little baby that he had helped create, the baby that would be cursed in the same way he was. Quinn told him she didn’t want to keep Beth and yet when she asked if he did he couldn’t answer. How could he explain to her that no one else would know how to handle a baby like Beth? That it had to be him? She would never understand. No human could ever understand. They didn’t know what it was like to have a monster inside of them. So it was safer to say nothing at all. It was the only way that he could handle what he was going to have to do. It was the only way that she wouldn’t interfere with what needed to be done. It wasn’t fair that he had to lie to her but life for him had never been fair.
Somehow he finds his clothes as he stumbles through the kitchen, tugs them on hastily, banging his side into the wall as he moves, his body screaming in protest. It doesn’t want to be up yet. It wants to go back to sleep but the crying isn’t about to stop any time soon and its instinct that drive him forward, an instinct he still can’t explain.
Trudging up the stairs he pushes open the door to the room that should be too small to be a bedroom but somehow had been turned into a halfway decent one. For now. Eventually there would need to be a bigger one for her, when she got too big for that one. But for now it was just fine. Making his way across the room he reached down, still half asleep and picked up the crying little girl. He held her against his still bare chest, the baby’s head resting on his shoulder and he patted her back. “Can’t sleep past six in the morning ever, can you?” He wasn’t actually upset. After the last few months he had gotten used to it.
He smells his mother in the doorway before he sees her and turns around to look at her through half lidded eyes, his daughter still crying on his shoulder. The exchange between him and his mother is unspoken. The entire summer he had tried to convince his mother that someone else should know about Beth. He wanted to be able to tell his friends that he still had his daughter. But she insisted Quinn would never understand. She couldn’t be told. It had to be a secret to keep them safe. The problem was that keeping a secret that big was eating away at him from the inside out.
His mother reaches out wordlessly for her granddaughter and Puck passes off the baby only because of the look on his mother’s face. She doesn’t have to tell him to get his ass dressed and get ready for school. She had been on his case about his attendance ever since Beth came. She was determined for her son to graduate so he could take care of her on his own one day. She didn’t want to be supporting them both their whole lives.
Puck couldn’t blame her.
School is hard. Football is harder. School is always filled with smells that get to him the second he walks inside. He can smell what they’re serving in the cafeteria the second that they start cooking it. He can tell when someone hasn’t bathed properly or when they have a new cologne on. He can smell hormones. And the bathrooms are the worst. Sometimes they smell to humans but they smell worse for him. That’s why he prefers the girl’s bathroom. Somehow they always manage to keep it cleaner; somehow it always manages to smell better.
Football is hard because of the natural aggressive nature of his kind. They’re faster, they’re stronger and he has to be careful so that he doesn’t reveal that to anyone else. And if he gets hit too hard the wolf in him wants to come out and attack. He’s learned over the years how to keep it in check, how to hold it back and not let the wolf come out. If it does then he’s going to kill someone and he knows it. He’ll rip them apart and what he is will be revealed to them all. And none of them will accept it. None of them will understand it. They’ll all just be afraid of him. All the people he has known his entire life will think of him as a monster.
Football is hard but glee club is harder. Not because he’s afraid of getting angry but because it’s so hard not to let them all know the truth. He’s never told his mother this but he feels like he’s a part of two different packs. His family is obviously the first and more important one. His mother is in charge and she is the one that he finds himself having to listen to. But the glee club is another pack. It’s another family to him. And Schue is their leader. And the worst part is lying to that pack about his other one. It’s hard not to tell them about the fact that he kept his daughter.
It gets even harder when he sees Quinn. She doesn’t have to say anything for him to know that she’s hurting. He can smell the sorrow on her like she had bathed in it before coming to school. She puts on a brave face, puts on the same attitude she always used to wear. And for the others it seems as though she’s fine, that she’s moved on from giving up their daughter. Sitting in the room and looking at her makes him feel guilty, makes him want to tell her more than he’s ever wanted to tell anyone. But it’s not just her.
Puck wants to tell all of them about his daughter. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep the existence of his daughter in his life to himself. He can’t have his friends over to his house anymore. He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from talking about Beth. He doesn’t ever even bring her up because if he does then he won’t sound nearly as upset as he should be for a man who supposedly gave his child away. But he wants them to know about her. He wants to be able to talk about her, to show them pictures of her, to let them see her. He wants them to be alright with it. He wants Quinn to be alright with the fact that he kept her but he knows that she’ll never be alright with it. He knows that she’ll feel betrayed by the fact that he decided to keep the baby she had decided that they should get rid of.
Most of the time he’s positive that he’s keeping the secret quite well. He doesn’t mention her, he doesn’t talk about her. He puts on the same type of a mask that Quinn does. He acts the same way as he always had. He doesn’t act sad but he doesn’t act like he has a little girl at home that he’s raising, waiting for her to be a monster like him. He doesn’t let them all know how much it hurts him to know that he has a child that will end up being cursed simply because of what her father is. He doesn’t let them know that he hates himself for that every day.
But there are times when he feels like he might not be hiding things as well as he originally thought he was. Because he’ll be sitting there sometimes in class and Rachel will just look at him. He’s never sure why she’s looking at him like that- it’s not the scary, stalker look she would always get on her face when she was looking at Finn. It’s something else entirely. But she looks at him like she’s looking through him, inside of him. She looks at him like she can see something that no one else can and there has never been a time when he felt that uncomfortable around the tiny little brunette diva as when she just looks at him in glee club. Sometimes he wonders just how much she can see.
Puck goes running almost every night. He never used to go running that often- it was too easy to be spotted- but after Beth came home to live with him he started to need a way to blow off steam, to get rid of some of the stress he was feeling. The stress only seemed to get worse after school started back up. He went from just taking care of his daughter to having to actually do homework so his mother wouldn’t rip him apart- possibly literally.
He comes home from school every day and his daughter gets handed back to him so his mother can go to work. He sits down and he tries to keep Beth and his sister occupied while he’s doing his homework. Sometimes he ends up having to let Beth sit on his lap the whole time. Sometimes he has to take long breaks in the middle of his work just so he can keep his daughter occupied, so he can keep his sister out of trouble. It means that he has to do work for much longer than he probably should have to. His homework shouldn’t take most of the day- it’s not like he works that hard to begin with anyway. But with a baby and his little sister to keep busy he doesn’t really have the liberty of getting everything done quicker.
So every night he does his homework and he watches the two girls. He watches them and he makes sure they all eat. And it’s not until after his mother is home and both Beth and his sister are soundly sleeping that he has a chance to actually relax for a while. He slips downstairs into the kitchen, he throws open his back door, he strips off his clothes, gets on all fours and he lets the wolf out. It rips through his skin, contorts his muscles and bones. It shifts his organs around and causes him so much pain that he feels like he should scream but he’s so used to it that he barely even registers the pain anymore. He doesn’t envy the pain both his sister and his daughter will feel when they shift for the first time.
It’s only then, once he’s sure that both of the young girls are safe and sound in their beds, that he actually goes out for his run. He’s always careful. He stays in shadow in case there are people still outside. It’s not as though he could pass for a large dog if they saw him in the light. In shadow they could think he was a stray. In the light there would be no mistaking him for anything but a wolf. And the last thing he ever wants to have happen is for someone to notice him, to know what he is, to spot him and have someone try to hunt him.
Every night he goes on his run he ends up in the park. It’s always empty that time of night and he can run himself into circles as much as he wants to. He can chase after squirrels, hunt them down and rip them apart, devour them. It’s something he would find disgusting if he was in his human form but the wolf is a hunter. The wolf likes raw meat and in that form he never thinks twice about it. He gives into his natural instincts. It’s nice to have privacy for once.
It’s the third week of October when something unusual happens. He’s laying on one of the picnic tables in the park, his head resting on his front legs when he sees something move at the edge of the park. At first he’s not sure what he’s seeing. Maybe it’s an actual stray dog. He’s not sure. But when he lifts his head up and actually looks he can tell that it’s not a stray dog. It’s a wolf. It’s another wolf and he stands up instantly.
A few times when he was younger he had smelled other wolves in town but he could never find them in human form. People with their perfume and their cologne hid their natural smells. But he hadn’t seen any in years so for all he knew they had moved out of town. But standing there he definitely sees another wolf standing there at the edge of the park, its dark fur looking shiny in the moonlight. And his first, wild instinct is to attack but he’s not a vicious person unless he feels threatened.
His instinct after that is to bark, to howl a little bit. But as soon as he opens his mouth to let out a sound the other wolf takes off running. For a moment he’s stunned into silence and then he hops off of the table and takes off running after it. Wolves aren’t indigenous to Lima so he knows that it’s either a wolf that escaped from a zoo or sanctuary or something or its someone like him, a being that’s part man and part wolf. Either way he wants to know and he runs after that wolf, chases it through the shadows. He’s not exactly sure where he loses it but he loses sight of it and ends up standing behind Lima Bean looking for it. But he doesn’t find it and he can’t pick up the scent no matter hard he tries.
He wonders if he didn’t hallucinate seeing another wolf.
Puck wakes up again naked on his kitchen floor to the sound of Beth crying. He’s gotten used to waking up to that sound basically every single day. But he’s exhausted, as usual, and when he gets to school he feels like he might pass out. He sleeps through most of his classes just so that he can stay awake during football practice.
The problem is that when he’s that tired it’s harder to actually control himself. They’re in the middle of running a play at practice and he plows into Karofsky. He sends the much larger boy flying backwards and for a moment it’s like the world slows down and then speeds back up. The boy lands hard with an audible exhale and then everyone is rushing over to make sure that he’s alright. All except for Puck. He just stands there and watches the team make sure Dave is alright, beats himself up for what just happened. He had never lost control that way before. Not once. He knew if he lost control he could really hurt someone.
It’s not until they’re sure Dave is alright that he breathes again. The guy is a dick but that doesn’t mean that he wants to do permanent damage. Still, he’s in a foul mood as he’s heading out of school that day. He wants to rip something apart but he holds that urge inside of him. He feels like he can handle it until the little diva that can drive him crazy comes skipping over to him in the hall, puts one of her hands on his arm. “Noah.” Her voice sounds so very far away. “I heard what happened in football practice. Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
When he looks at her though she doesn’t seem to believe him. And he wonders if it’s because he doesn’t believe it himself.
For the next month he sees the other wolf almost every night that he goes running. For the first week he can’t get near it without it running off. After that they get near each other and they start playing. It doesn’t take him that long to figure out that this wolf is like him, too. It’s like him and it’s a girl. He can tell by her smell. And so every day when he’s in human form he tries to find out who it is but he just can’t. He can’t find that smell anywhere else around town and it’s not the first time that he hates the way humans cover up how they really smell but it makes him hate it even more.
He has to admit though that he enjoys being able to run around with another wolf. His mother spends too much time looking after his whole family to go out running and his sister is too young yet. But it wouldn’t be the same if it were them anyway. They’re family and family is important but it’s not as fun. It seems like more of a responsibility. He loves them but running with them wouldn’t be fun. It’s nice to have someone else around who is just like him.
But the wolf likes another one of its kind far too much and what starts out as playful friendship feels like so much more. After nearly a month of seeing that wolf he knows that what the wolf is feeling changed. He knows how hormonal the wolves can be but he’s never been around another one of his kind that wasn’t family so he didn’t realize that it would get stronger when they were around. And he sort of wishes that wasn’t the case because his hormones had never gotten him anywhere good. But he can’t stop the hormones from acting up as he chases her around the town. And she seems to know what is going on with him because she does this little prancing sort of run, almost dances around him.
It stops being playful quickly after that. He starts to chase her. He starts to chase her with the intent of catching up to her, with the intent of doing something though he’s not sure what he should do. He chases her through the town, him guiding where she’s going because he’s faster and he can cut her off if he has to. He’s not even aware of the fact that he’s chasing her towards his house until they’re there, until they’re in his backyard and she bolts into his open door. Her claws clack across the kitchen floor and he pounces on her, lands on her back and sends her to the floor. He hears her growling under him and she uses all of her strength to roll over, to swipe at him with her paw. Her claws scratch open his muzzle and he knows that it’ll be healed on the morning but it still stings, his skins till splits and bleeds. But she lay on her back beneath him, her paws raised in defense and he feels his wolf start to slip away. His skin shudders with it and beneath him her skin shudders, too. It’s like his wolf is chasing hers away, too.
He shifts back to his human form first but not all of him shifts back. His eyes are still glowing yellow, his hands are still clawed as they press against the floor. He knows he should make the claws go away so he doesn’t accidentally rip her to shreds but he can’t make himself push them away. He just wants to be careful and he knows that he really has to watch himself. With the wolf acting up he knows if he wanted to he could kill her. But he doesn’t want to kill her. The wolf wants something else, something more. The blood runs down the side of his face from where she scratched him and he growls down at her, wanting to watch her shift, too. He wants to know who she is.
When the fur recedes he sees the person he least expected lying there beneath him. And he hates that girls cover their scents up all the time because if they didn’t then he would have known before that she was the wolf he was seeing running around. He would have smelled her as clear as day wandering around the school, walking up and down the street. He looks down at her eyes that are normally dark brown and he thinks that he should push the wolf away because she’s so, so innocent but he can’t. The wolf has always been stronger than him and that hasn’t changed. And when Rachel’s hands grip his arms and her claws dig into him he knows he couldn’t stop the wolf if he tried. And he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want him to anyway. At least not the wolf in her.
So with the wolf in control he crushes his mouth against hers, all teeth and aggression. Her bottom lip gets caught on one of his teeth, splits open and he can’t stop himself from sucking it into his mouth and sucking on it, her blood running over his tongue like candy. If he had been more in control he would have felt bad for that. But then he remembers that she’s like him and that anything he does to her will heal. She’s not human. She’s not as fragile as the others. She may look like a little ragdoll but she can take more than most people give her credit for.
He thinks that maybe if she told him to stop he just might be able to but she doesn’t seem inclined to and he’s not sure how much of it is her and how much of it is the wolf. But her claws dig in more, break the skin. Blood runs down his arms and she presses her body up against his and he knows that she whichever part of her is in more control doesn’t matter anymore. Because the human part of him is so deep inside of him now that he couldn’t stop himself no matter how hard he tried. He’s all wolf in human form right now and there’s nothing he can do about it.
He hands move down and they drip her thighs, his own claws digging in and breaking the skin. She howls into his mouth and then whimpers pathetically like a wounded puppy, her body pressing more firmly against his. Her blood is warm beneath his hands and it should make him pull away from her but he can’t. Not entirely. His mouth moves away from hers and he nuzzles his nose against her neck, sniffs at her skin, inhales the scent of her and drags himself down her body, his tongue lapping at her skin like a puppy. She growls and whimpers and squirms beneath him and he knows it has to be more wolf than anything else because she’s not like that. She’s so much more reserved than that. She’s not a sexual being by any means. But the wolf is sexual. The human side and the wolf side aren’t always the same thing. And maybe she’ll regret letting her wolf form control her when all is said and done but at that moment he can’t seem to care.
He settles himself between her legs, runs his tongue along the puncture wounds that he made, her blood running over his tongue and down his throat. From where he is he can smell her arousal and it makes him close his eyes, arch his back. The smell was different than with other girls and he knows that’s because she’s like him. It’s because she’s got a wolf inside of her. And so he knows he can’t stop himself. He wants to because she’s never been in that position before but he can’t.
He pushes her legs further apart and buries his nose between her legs, inhales the smell of her like it’s the most amazing smell in the world. Then he wraps his hands around her thighs and he flattens his tongue against her, runs it along her opening, laps at the moisture there. She howls again and he worries that she might wake up his mother but he can’t stop. He refuses to. He dives in entirely, runs his tongue up and down, swirls it around, sucks her clit into his mouth so very careful not to bite down and make her bleed there. Blood is fine but it would ruin things if he made her bleed down there. And he doesn’t stop. He can’t. Not with the way her hands move to run through his mohawk, claws scratching against his scalp, her hips arching up against his mouth. He doesn’t stop until she’s a panting, whimpering mess and her body shakes with her orgasm, his name a whisper from between her barely parted lips. And even then he keeps lapping at her until she starts to calm down. But it’s not enough. Not for her and not for him. The wolves aren’t satisfied yet and he knows that because she claws at his arms to pull him back towards her mouth.
Instead his hands move to her hips and he grips her tightly, lifts her up as he switches positions so he’s sitting on the floor and she’s in his lap. His mouth goes back to hers and he fully expects her to flinch away at the taste of herself on his mouth but she doesn’t. Her tongue touches his instantly and she grinds herself against him. He’s hard against her thigh and he knows she can feel it. How could she not feel it? He’s not so sure she’s going to do anything about it though but she surprises him, throws him for a loop when she puts her hands on his shoulders, digs her claws in and lifts herself up only to bring herself down on top of him so he’s inside of her. When she lets out a pained whimper into his mouth he knows that she really hasn’t ever done that before, that they’re not assuming more but it’s too late to stop anymore. What’s done is done.
It sort of goes in a big rush after that, a blur of muffled sounds and sweat. Both of them dig their claws into each other’s skin, scratch each other up. Blood slicks both of their skin, drips down onto his mother’s kitchen floor as she rides him right there in the kitchen, his hands gripping her waist to guide her from time to time. She rides him hard, like maybe her life depends on it, like she’s trying to get somewhere, like she’s trying to accomplish something. And maybe she is. Maybe it’s more than wanting release. He’s not sure because he’s never understood what’s gone on in the mind of girls. He only ever pretended to.
He can feel tension building in the pit of his stomach and he knows that he’s about to release and she is, too. He can feel it in the way she tenses around him. He crushes his mouth against hers again and they both howl into the kiss, both of their bodies rocking and shaking with their orgasms. He’s never been able to be that aggressive with a girl before and it makes his orgasm shake him even harder than it ever has. It’s amazing and for a moment he sees white.
They sit there panting, their foreheads pressed together for a while in complete silence. But then the silence is broken by the familiar sound of a baby crying. His eyes slowly start to shift back to their normal color and she just looks at him. But she doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as he thought she would be. Instead, she opens her mouth and in a breathy, exhausted voice she whispers. “I knew you kept her.”
They don’t talk about what happened the next day at school. He still has deep scratch wounds on his back beneath his shirt and he’s sure that she still has puncture wounds in her thigh but they should be healed soon enough. He spent an hour that morning cleaning up the blood off of the kitchen floor and he knew that his mother smelled it but she didn’t say anything. Still, they don’t talk about it in school. She greets him the same way that she always has and she smiles at him in a friendly way as she moves down the hall to go to class.
It’s not until that night after his sister and Beth are in bed that he ends up speaking to her. His doorbell rings and when he opens it he should be surprised to see her there but he’s not. He just lets her in and they look at each other for a while, just stand there in the living room and watch each other. But then he can’t help himself. He asks her how she knew that he kept Beth. And she smiles serenely. She smiles at him and she tells him that she could always smell him. Because men are so much easier to smell than women are. Because the women wear perfumes and scented soaps, shampoo. Men have much more subtle bath products.
He’s not really sure how they end up in his bed, scratching at each other, him buried deep inside of her, both growling and panting, sweat dripping off of their bodies. He couldn’t explain that if he tried but he knows that his sheets are going to have to be replaced. They’re getting blood on them and when her claws dig into them she rips them apart. His mother will probably be pissed off about it but he can’t bring himself to care about that as he thrusts inside of her, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, his own glowing yellow in the dim light.
When she comes around him and he starts to come undone he doesn’t even think about the next move. His wolf is driving him forward and he leans forward, bites down with his sharp, sharp teeth on the juncture between her neck and her shoulder, marks her as his, his wolf’s. Her blood spills into his mouth and she lets out a strangled sound before he feels her biting down on him in the same spot, the opposite side. He had never intended to claim someone as a mate, let alone her, but once it’s done he can’t take it back and when she effectively claims him back the sensation is too much and he comes undone, all but collapsing against her.
For a while they just lay there, their skin cooling in the evening air, her fingers running through his hair, his head resting against her chest, the sound of her heart beating in his ear. He should feel guilty for everything knowing that his best friend still loves her but he can’t bring himself to in that moment. She’s not really Finn’s anymore. And she’s the only person in Lima who can actually understand him. She’s the only one in Lima that’s like him outside of his family.
Beth starts to cry and he worries that he may have woken her up. Climbing off of the bed he grabs his boxers and pulls them on, heads down the hall to go see his daughter. He picks his daughter up, glad that the blood is only on his back and that it won’t get onto her. He just holds her against him and tries to soothe her, runs his hand over her back to try to calm her down. Sometimes it seems like she just has nightmares. And his whole life is a nightmare most of the time so he can relate.
Rachel appears in the doorway with his t-shirt on. It reaches mid-thigh and she looks strangely sexy and innocent at the same time as she moves closer to him and reaches out, runs her fingers over Beth’s feather soft hair. It’s a familiar gesture that seems so weird to see towards his daughter from someone who isn’t family but he doesn’t stop her. It’s just nice to see someone else outside of the people in that house to be around his little girl. But it’s still strange despite all of that.
“You know you can’t tell anyone about her. Not yet. They wouldn’t understand. You have to wait until Quinn can’t take her back. It’ll take time. And we both know she can’t raise her. She’s not like us. And if the others know then she’ll know.” He knows she’s right but he can’t bring himself to want to hear those words from her. It hurts him not to be able to tell the others. It’s nice that Rachel knows but it doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe it will never, ever be enough even though he wishes it was. He just wants to be honest about his daughter with everyone else.
He can’t tell her that he doesn’t like it because she’s right. And he doesn’t want to get into that fight with her. So instead he just reaches out and he touches the bite wound that he made on her body, brushes his fingers over the fresh wound. She’s beautiful standing there with her hair a mess and her skin bright red where his teeth sunk into her skin. A part of him feels like wrapping her up and keeping her safe with him but he knows that he can’t make her stay. Maybe she doesn’t even want to stay. She may have just been caught up in the moment when she bit him back.
She looks at him for a few moments and then she averts her gaze from him, her hair falling over the spot he’s brushing his fingers over and he pulls his hand away. “I can’t, Noah.” She whispers it like she really regrets it but it’s still a punch to the stomach. “Not right now. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I still care about Finn.”
“Of course you do,” he scoffs. “It’s always Finn. Everyone always wants Finn. Not me. Because I’m a fucking asshole. I’m a fuck up. I’m a freak-”
“You’re not a freak.” She bites it out, her eyes going back to his, flashing yellow. “If you are then so am I.” He thinks that maybe they’re both freaks. Maybe they’re both fucking freaks that deserve to be miserable. But they’re sort of under each other’s skin now. You can’t break a mating bond. They’ll always be stuck with each other.
“I’ll keep Beth a secret,” she tells him. “She has to be a secret. And as for us…” She trails off and looks at the innocent child in his arms. “I have to work Finn out of my system. I don’t know how long it’ll take. I wish I had a time frame for you. But I don’t. But once he’s out of my system….once he’s out of my system I’ll really be yours. Bite or no bite. I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine. It just wouldn’t be fair to you if I was yours now when he owns such a big part of me.”
“Right.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice if he tried.
“I care about you, Noah,” she tells him and he can tell that she means it. But in that moment it doesn’t mean anything. Because he still has to keep his daughter a secret. And the only person his wolf really, truly wants can’t be his. Not for now at least.
Maybe he’s just not meant for his life to be easy. Maybe he’s just not meant to have something good.
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Puck centric, Rachel/Puck
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7, 302
Summary: AU Puck is part of a little-known subculture: shifters, people who can turn into wolves. It's hard keeping his secret from his friends. Even harder to keep the fact that he kept his daughter after she was born. (Post season 1)
Author's Notes: Written for this prompt at the glee_angst_meme drabble meme.
His muscles ache. He wakes up on the cold kitchen tiles with the sun burning his eyes, every muscle in his body hurting. He had gone out running the night before. The urge had become too much and so he had stripped off his clothes, threw open his back door and went running. And there was never a problem with that. It was waking up on the cold tile floor that was always horrible. But it wasn’t even so much that it was cold. It was waking up there and hearing the distinct sound of crying upstairs. Soft and whiny, almost like a whimpering puppy.
Groaning he rolled over onto his hands and knees and pushed himself up, ran his hand over his face once he was standing. Every muscle screamed with the sudden movement. That was the worst part about shifting. He had discovered it the first time it happened, involuntarily, when he was eleven. Puberty had just started to hit him hard and he felt something inside of him he couldn’t explain.
All of the boys in the school were going through hormonal changes. They started to notice girls and their voices were changing. They started to grow hair in new places and they started to get turned-on at weird things. But he felt different than them. He started to notice things. He started to smell things that he hadn’t before. He noticed things he shouldn’t have been able to notice. He could even tell when girls were starting their periods by their smell and it was so, so weird. (That stopped once girls got old enough where they started to wear deodorant and perfume. It masked the other scents.) He could smell when someone was cooking down the block when he never could before. And it scared the hell out of him. He thought something was wrong with him. Especially when he felt like there was something inside of him. He felt like there was a living being curled up in the pit of his stomach just waiting to burst through his stomach like something out of Alien.
It wasn’t until about three months after that all started that his mother sat him down to talk to him. She had him sit down on the couch and she sat next to him, took his hand in hers. And that’s when she started to explain to him that they were different from the rest of the people in town. She explained that they were special, that they were capable of things that others weren’t. And at first he didn’t believe her. At first he thought it was some sort of a sick joke and there was just something wrong with him. That had to be it.
And then he woke up one night with pain coursing through his body. It felt like each bone in his body was about to break, like his skin was going to split open. He woke up screaming and fell out of his bed, tried to stand but couldn’t. So instead he crawled. He crawled down the hall to his mother’s room and nudged the partially open door open all the way, called out to her in the most pathetic voice he had ever heard come out of his own mouth, the sound almost like the whimper of a wounded animal. His voice sounded strangled, his throat feeling like it was on fire. He was dying. He was absolutely positive that he was dying.
His mother was standing there looking out the window, her back to him. And then she turned to look at him and he screamed. Or he tried to scream but it came out as a howl. His mother was standing there looking at her son, her eyes glowing, the irises yellow, the pupils thin, inhuman. And for the first time in his life he was scared of his mother. He wanted to skitter backwards but he couldn’t. He was in far too much pain to even try to do that.
“Oh, baby,” his mother cooed at him. Her voice sounded so much more gravely, almost like a growl. And he thought for sure he would be afraid of it but he wasn’t. For some reason that growling voice like she had gargled broken glass was comforting. It made him feel good to hear. Like maybe she could make everything all better. Maybe she could make the pain stop. Maybe she had a secret cure for whatever was wrong with him. He knew that seeing her with her eyes like that should have been a giant indication that she couldn’t help him but he was still holding out hope. How could he not? He was scared and he was in pain.
She moved towards him and then she crouched down in front of him, reached out and took his face in her hands. She brushed her thumbs over his cheeks, sighed heavily. “I know this is scary, baby. I know that this hurts. But it’ll be alright. The pain will pass. And you’ll be alright.” She smiled at him and that’s when he got scared. Her teeth were sharp like an animal and he tried to scream but it came out a pathetic, pain filled sound. He hated what was happening to him and he didn’t even know exactly what it was. He just wanted to feel better. He just wanted the pain to stop. Was that too much to ask?
But the pain didn’t stop. And it didn’t go away. That night his skin felt like it was being torn apart. It felt like his entire body was on fire. He shifted, changed. He was no longer human. He was an animal. And he hated himself for it. For a long time he wanted to crawl into darkness and just hide there for the rest of his life. And then in time he learned to accept what he was. He didn’t like it but he accepted it. But what he knew was that he was forever changed. And that his life would never be the same.
That’s why he didn’t do relationships. Everyone else in town was human and he could hurt them. He could rip them to shreds if he wasn’t careful. He could crush them. Great emotions made him start to change. And he was warm. He was so warm that it was unnatural. And if he spent too much time with a person the heat could overwhelm them. That’s why he started to sleep around. It was a way to feel human, a way to have contact with a person that was normal without putting them at risk, without hurting them. Because if he actually hurt them he’d never be able to forgive himself. And he could definitely hurt them. Because he wasn’t human.
Eventually his mother sat him down and explained to him that they were special. They looked human and lived much like humans but they weren’t human. They were part animal. They changed, shifted into wolves. And there was an order to things. He got used to that order rather quickly. The leader was the alpha and you respected the alpha. And his mother was his alpha since his father had left. His family was a pack.
When Quinn got pregnant it wasn’t that his mother hated her. She had no reason to really hate her. It wasn’t that she hated humans- and Quinn was most definitely human. But she hated the idea of him fathering a child with someone that he hadn’t claimed as a mate, someone he would spend his life with. She hated the idea of him fathering a child with a woman who wanted to give the baby away. And so when she lived with them his mother wasn’t really very nice to Quinn. She wasn’t overly cruel but she wasn’t nice either. She didn’t know how to be nice to her.
His mother didn’t show up to the hospital when Quinn had that baby. And he stood with her and looked into the window at that tiny little baby that he had helped create, the baby that would be cursed in the same way he was. Quinn told him she didn’t want to keep Beth and yet when she asked if he did he couldn’t answer. How could he explain to her that no one else would know how to handle a baby like Beth? That it had to be him? She would never understand. No human could ever understand. They didn’t know what it was like to have a monster inside of them. So it was safer to say nothing at all. It was the only way that he could handle what he was going to have to do. It was the only way that she wouldn’t interfere with what needed to be done. It wasn’t fair that he had to lie to her but life for him had never been fair.
Somehow he finds his clothes as he stumbles through the kitchen, tugs them on hastily, banging his side into the wall as he moves, his body screaming in protest. It doesn’t want to be up yet. It wants to go back to sleep but the crying isn’t about to stop any time soon and its instinct that drive him forward, an instinct he still can’t explain.
Trudging up the stairs he pushes open the door to the room that should be too small to be a bedroom but somehow had been turned into a halfway decent one. For now. Eventually there would need to be a bigger one for her, when she got too big for that one. But for now it was just fine. Making his way across the room he reached down, still half asleep and picked up the crying little girl. He held her against his still bare chest, the baby’s head resting on his shoulder and he patted her back. “Can’t sleep past six in the morning ever, can you?” He wasn’t actually upset. After the last few months he had gotten used to it.
He smells his mother in the doorway before he sees her and turns around to look at her through half lidded eyes, his daughter still crying on his shoulder. The exchange between him and his mother is unspoken. The entire summer he had tried to convince his mother that someone else should know about Beth. He wanted to be able to tell his friends that he still had his daughter. But she insisted Quinn would never understand. She couldn’t be told. It had to be a secret to keep them safe. The problem was that keeping a secret that big was eating away at him from the inside out.
His mother reaches out wordlessly for her granddaughter and Puck passes off the baby only because of the look on his mother’s face. She doesn’t have to tell him to get his ass dressed and get ready for school. She had been on his case about his attendance ever since Beth came. She was determined for her son to graduate so he could take care of her on his own one day. She didn’t want to be supporting them both their whole lives.
Puck couldn’t blame her.
School is hard. Football is harder. School is always filled with smells that get to him the second he walks inside. He can smell what they’re serving in the cafeteria the second that they start cooking it. He can tell when someone hasn’t bathed properly or when they have a new cologne on. He can smell hormones. And the bathrooms are the worst. Sometimes they smell to humans but they smell worse for him. That’s why he prefers the girl’s bathroom. Somehow they always manage to keep it cleaner; somehow it always manages to smell better.
Football is hard because of the natural aggressive nature of his kind. They’re faster, they’re stronger and he has to be careful so that he doesn’t reveal that to anyone else. And if he gets hit too hard the wolf in him wants to come out and attack. He’s learned over the years how to keep it in check, how to hold it back and not let the wolf come out. If it does then he’s going to kill someone and he knows it. He’ll rip them apart and what he is will be revealed to them all. And none of them will accept it. None of them will understand it. They’ll all just be afraid of him. All the people he has known his entire life will think of him as a monster.
Football is hard but glee club is harder. Not because he’s afraid of getting angry but because it’s so hard not to let them all know the truth. He’s never told his mother this but he feels like he’s a part of two different packs. His family is obviously the first and more important one. His mother is in charge and she is the one that he finds himself having to listen to. But the glee club is another pack. It’s another family to him. And Schue is their leader. And the worst part is lying to that pack about his other one. It’s hard not to tell them about the fact that he kept his daughter.
It gets even harder when he sees Quinn. She doesn’t have to say anything for him to know that she’s hurting. He can smell the sorrow on her like she had bathed in it before coming to school. She puts on a brave face, puts on the same attitude she always used to wear. And for the others it seems as though she’s fine, that she’s moved on from giving up their daughter. Sitting in the room and looking at her makes him feel guilty, makes him want to tell her more than he’s ever wanted to tell anyone. But it’s not just her.
Puck wants to tell all of them about his daughter. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep the existence of his daughter in his life to himself. He can’t have his friends over to his house anymore. He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from talking about Beth. He doesn’t ever even bring her up because if he does then he won’t sound nearly as upset as he should be for a man who supposedly gave his child away. But he wants them to know about her. He wants to be able to talk about her, to show them pictures of her, to let them see her. He wants them to be alright with it. He wants Quinn to be alright with the fact that he kept her but he knows that she’ll never be alright with it. He knows that she’ll feel betrayed by the fact that he decided to keep the baby she had decided that they should get rid of.
Most of the time he’s positive that he’s keeping the secret quite well. He doesn’t mention her, he doesn’t talk about her. He puts on the same type of a mask that Quinn does. He acts the same way as he always had. He doesn’t act sad but he doesn’t act like he has a little girl at home that he’s raising, waiting for her to be a monster like him. He doesn’t let them all know how much it hurts him to know that he has a child that will end up being cursed simply because of what her father is. He doesn’t let them know that he hates himself for that every day.
But there are times when he feels like he might not be hiding things as well as he originally thought he was. Because he’ll be sitting there sometimes in class and Rachel will just look at him. He’s never sure why she’s looking at him like that- it’s not the scary, stalker look she would always get on her face when she was looking at Finn. It’s something else entirely. But she looks at him like she’s looking through him, inside of him. She looks at him like she can see something that no one else can and there has never been a time when he felt that uncomfortable around the tiny little brunette diva as when she just looks at him in glee club. Sometimes he wonders just how much she can see.
Puck goes running almost every night. He never used to go running that often- it was too easy to be spotted- but after Beth came home to live with him he started to need a way to blow off steam, to get rid of some of the stress he was feeling. The stress only seemed to get worse after school started back up. He went from just taking care of his daughter to having to actually do homework so his mother wouldn’t rip him apart- possibly literally.
He comes home from school every day and his daughter gets handed back to him so his mother can go to work. He sits down and he tries to keep Beth and his sister occupied while he’s doing his homework. Sometimes he ends up having to let Beth sit on his lap the whole time. Sometimes he has to take long breaks in the middle of his work just so he can keep his daughter occupied, so he can keep his sister out of trouble. It means that he has to do work for much longer than he probably should have to. His homework shouldn’t take most of the day- it’s not like he works that hard to begin with anyway. But with a baby and his little sister to keep busy he doesn’t really have the liberty of getting everything done quicker.
So every night he does his homework and he watches the two girls. He watches them and he makes sure they all eat. And it’s not until after his mother is home and both Beth and his sister are soundly sleeping that he has a chance to actually relax for a while. He slips downstairs into the kitchen, he throws open his back door, he strips off his clothes, gets on all fours and he lets the wolf out. It rips through his skin, contorts his muscles and bones. It shifts his organs around and causes him so much pain that he feels like he should scream but he’s so used to it that he barely even registers the pain anymore. He doesn’t envy the pain both his sister and his daughter will feel when they shift for the first time.
It’s only then, once he’s sure that both of the young girls are safe and sound in their beds, that he actually goes out for his run. He’s always careful. He stays in shadow in case there are people still outside. It’s not as though he could pass for a large dog if they saw him in the light. In shadow they could think he was a stray. In the light there would be no mistaking him for anything but a wolf. And the last thing he ever wants to have happen is for someone to notice him, to know what he is, to spot him and have someone try to hunt him.
Every night he goes on his run he ends up in the park. It’s always empty that time of night and he can run himself into circles as much as he wants to. He can chase after squirrels, hunt them down and rip them apart, devour them. It’s something he would find disgusting if he was in his human form but the wolf is a hunter. The wolf likes raw meat and in that form he never thinks twice about it. He gives into his natural instincts. It’s nice to have privacy for once.
It’s the third week of October when something unusual happens. He’s laying on one of the picnic tables in the park, his head resting on his front legs when he sees something move at the edge of the park. At first he’s not sure what he’s seeing. Maybe it’s an actual stray dog. He’s not sure. But when he lifts his head up and actually looks he can tell that it’s not a stray dog. It’s a wolf. It’s another wolf and he stands up instantly.
A few times when he was younger he had smelled other wolves in town but he could never find them in human form. People with their perfume and their cologne hid their natural smells. But he hadn’t seen any in years so for all he knew they had moved out of town. But standing there he definitely sees another wolf standing there at the edge of the park, its dark fur looking shiny in the moonlight. And his first, wild instinct is to attack but he’s not a vicious person unless he feels threatened.
His instinct after that is to bark, to howl a little bit. But as soon as he opens his mouth to let out a sound the other wolf takes off running. For a moment he’s stunned into silence and then he hops off of the table and takes off running after it. Wolves aren’t indigenous to Lima so he knows that it’s either a wolf that escaped from a zoo or sanctuary or something or its someone like him, a being that’s part man and part wolf. Either way he wants to know and he runs after that wolf, chases it through the shadows. He’s not exactly sure where he loses it but he loses sight of it and ends up standing behind Lima Bean looking for it. But he doesn’t find it and he can’t pick up the scent no matter hard he tries.
He wonders if he didn’t hallucinate seeing another wolf.
Puck wakes up again naked on his kitchen floor to the sound of Beth crying. He’s gotten used to waking up to that sound basically every single day. But he’s exhausted, as usual, and when he gets to school he feels like he might pass out. He sleeps through most of his classes just so that he can stay awake during football practice.
The problem is that when he’s that tired it’s harder to actually control himself. They’re in the middle of running a play at practice and he plows into Karofsky. He sends the much larger boy flying backwards and for a moment it’s like the world slows down and then speeds back up. The boy lands hard with an audible exhale and then everyone is rushing over to make sure that he’s alright. All except for Puck. He just stands there and watches the team make sure Dave is alright, beats himself up for what just happened. He had never lost control that way before. Not once. He knew if he lost control he could really hurt someone.
It’s not until they’re sure Dave is alright that he breathes again. The guy is a dick but that doesn’t mean that he wants to do permanent damage. Still, he’s in a foul mood as he’s heading out of school that day. He wants to rip something apart but he holds that urge inside of him. He feels like he can handle it until the little diva that can drive him crazy comes skipping over to him in the hall, puts one of her hands on his arm. “Noah.” Her voice sounds so very far away. “I heard what happened in football practice. Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
When he looks at her though she doesn’t seem to believe him. And he wonders if it’s because he doesn’t believe it himself.
For the next month he sees the other wolf almost every night that he goes running. For the first week he can’t get near it without it running off. After that they get near each other and they start playing. It doesn’t take him that long to figure out that this wolf is like him, too. It’s like him and it’s a girl. He can tell by her smell. And so every day when he’s in human form he tries to find out who it is but he just can’t. He can’t find that smell anywhere else around town and it’s not the first time that he hates the way humans cover up how they really smell but it makes him hate it even more.
He has to admit though that he enjoys being able to run around with another wolf. His mother spends too much time looking after his whole family to go out running and his sister is too young yet. But it wouldn’t be the same if it were them anyway. They’re family and family is important but it’s not as fun. It seems like more of a responsibility. He loves them but running with them wouldn’t be fun. It’s nice to have someone else around who is just like him.
But the wolf likes another one of its kind far too much and what starts out as playful friendship feels like so much more. After nearly a month of seeing that wolf he knows that what the wolf is feeling changed. He knows how hormonal the wolves can be but he’s never been around another one of his kind that wasn’t family so he didn’t realize that it would get stronger when they were around. And he sort of wishes that wasn’t the case because his hormones had never gotten him anywhere good. But he can’t stop the hormones from acting up as he chases her around the town. And she seems to know what is going on with him because she does this little prancing sort of run, almost dances around him.
It stops being playful quickly after that. He starts to chase her. He starts to chase her with the intent of catching up to her, with the intent of doing something though he’s not sure what he should do. He chases her through the town, him guiding where she’s going because he’s faster and he can cut her off if he has to. He’s not even aware of the fact that he’s chasing her towards his house until they’re there, until they’re in his backyard and she bolts into his open door. Her claws clack across the kitchen floor and he pounces on her, lands on her back and sends her to the floor. He hears her growling under him and she uses all of her strength to roll over, to swipe at him with her paw. Her claws scratch open his muzzle and he knows that it’ll be healed on the morning but it still stings, his skins till splits and bleeds. But she lay on her back beneath him, her paws raised in defense and he feels his wolf start to slip away. His skin shudders with it and beneath him her skin shudders, too. It’s like his wolf is chasing hers away, too.
He shifts back to his human form first but not all of him shifts back. His eyes are still glowing yellow, his hands are still clawed as they press against the floor. He knows he should make the claws go away so he doesn’t accidentally rip her to shreds but he can’t make himself push them away. He just wants to be careful and he knows that he really has to watch himself. With the wolf acting up he knows if he wanted to he could kill her. But he doesn’t want to kill her. The wolf wants something else, something more. The blood runs down the side of his face from where she scratched him and he growls down at her, wanting to watch her shift, too. He wants to know who she is.
When the fur recedes he sees the person he least expected lying there beneath him. And he hates that girls cover their scents up all the time because if they didn’t then he would have known before that she was the wolf he was seeing running around. He would have smelled her as clear as day wandering around the school, walking up and down the street. He looks down at her eyes that are normally dark brown and he thinks that he should push the wolf away because she’s so, so innocent but he can’t. The wolf has always been stronger than him and that hasn’t changed. And when Rachel’s hands grip his arms and her claws dig into him he knows he couldn’t stop the wolf if he tried. And he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want him to anyway. At least not the wolf in her.
So with the wolf in control he crushes his mouth against hers, all teeth and aggression. Her bottom lip gets caught on one of his teeth, splits open and he can’t stop himself from sucking it into his mouth and sucking on it, her blood running over his tongue like candy. If he had been more in control he would have felt bad for that. But then he remembers that she’s like him and that anything he does to her will heal. She’s not human. She’s not as fragile as the others. She may look like a little ragdoll but she can take more than most people give her credit for.
He thinks that maybe if she told him to stop he just might be able to but she doesn’t seem inclined to and he’s not sure how much of it is her and how much of it is the wolf. But her claws dig in more, break the skin. Blood runs down his arms and she presses her body up against his and he knows that she whichever part of her is in more control doesn’t matter anymore. Because the human part of him is so deep inside of him now that he couldn’t stop himself no matter how hard he tried. He’s all wolf in human form right now and there’s nothing he can do about it.
He hands move down and they drip her thighs, his own claws digging in and breaking the skin. She howls into his mouth and then whimpers pathetically like a wounded puppy, her body pressing more firmly against his. Her blood is warm beneath his hands and it should make him pull away from her but he can’t. Not entirely. His mouth moves away from hers and he nuzzles his nose against her neck, sniffs at her skin, inhales the scent of her and drags himself down her body, his tongue lapping at her skin like a puppy. She growls and whimpers and squirms beneath him and he knows it has to be more wolf than anything else because she’s not like that. She’s so much more reserved than that. She’s not a sexual being by any means. But the wolf is sexual. The human side and the wolf side aren’t always the same thing. And maybe she’ll regret letting her wolf form control her when all is said and done but at that moment he can’t seem to care.
He settles himself between her legs, runs his tongue along the puncture wounds that he made, her blood running over his tongue and down his throat. From where he is he can smell her arousal and it makes him close his eyes, arch his back. The smell was different than with other girls and he knows that’s because she’s like him. It’s because she’s got a wolf inside of her. And so he knows he can’t stop himself. He wants to because she’s never been in that position before but he can’t.
He pushes her legs further apart and buries his nose between her legs, inhales the smell of her like it’s the most amazing smell in the world. Then he wraps his hands around her thighs and he flattens his tongue against her, runs it along her opening, laps at the moisture there. She howls again and he worries that she might wake up his mother but he can’t stop. He refuses to. He dives in entirely, runs his tongue up and down, swirls it around, sucks her clit into his mouth so very careful not to bite down and make her bleed there. Blood is fine but it would ruin things if he made her bleed down there. And he doesn’t stop. He can’t. Not with the way her hands move to run through his mohawk, claws scratching against his scalp, her hips arching up against his mouth. He doesn’t stop until she’s a panting, whimpering mess and her body shakes with her orgasm, his name a whisper from between her barely parted lips. And even then he keeps lapping at her until she starts to calm down. But it’s not enough. Not for her and not for him. The wolves aren’t satisfied yet and he knows that because she claws at his arms to pull him back towards her mouth.
Instead his hands move to her hips and he grips her tightly, lifts her up as he switches positions so he’s sitting on the floor and she’s in his lap. His mouth goes back to hers and he fully expects her to flinch away at the taste of herself on his mouth but she doesn’t. Her tongue touches his instantly and she grinds herself against him. He’s hard against her thigh and he knows she can feel it. How could she not feel it? He’s not so sure she’s going to do anything about it though but she surprises him, throws him for a loop when she puts her hands on his shoulders, digs her claws in and lifts herself up only to bring herself down on top of him so he’s inside of her. When she lets out a pained whimper into his mouth he knows that she really hasn’t ever done that before, that they’re not assuming more but it’s too late to stop anymore. What’s done is done.
It sort of goes in a big rush after that, a blur of muffled sounds and sweat. Both of them dig their claws into each other’s skin, scratch each other up. Blood slicks both of their skin, drips down onto his mother’s kitchen floor as she rides him right there in the kitchen, his hands gripping her waist to guide her from time to time. She rides him hard, like maybe her life depends on it, like she’s trying to get somewhere, like she’s trying to accomplish something. And maybe she is. Maybe it’s more than wanting release. He’s not sure because he’s never understood what’s gone on in the mind of girls. He only ever pretended to.
He can feel tension building in the pit of his stomach and he knows that he’s about to release and she is, too. He can feel it in the way she tenses around him. He crushes his mouth against hers again and they both howl into the kiss, both of their bodies rocking and shaking with their orgasms. He’s never been able to be that aggressive with a girl before and it makes his orgasm shake him even harder than it ever has. It’s amazing and for a moment he sees white.
They sit there panting, their foreheads pressed together for a while in complete silence. But then the silence is broken by the familiar sound of a baby crying. His eyes slowly start to shift back to their normal color and she just looks at him. But she doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as he thought she would be. Instead, she opens her mouth and in a breathy, exhausted voice she whispers. “I knew you kept her.”
They don’t talk about what happened the next day at school. He still has deep scratch wounds on his back beneath his shirt and he’s sure that she still has puncture wounds in her thigh but they should be healed soon enough. He spent an hour that morning cleaning up the blood off of the kitchen floor and he knew that his mother smelled it but she didn’t say anything. Still, they don’t talk about it in school. She greets him the same way that she always has and she smiles at him in a friendly way as she moves down the hall to go to class.
It’s not until that night after his sister and Beth are in bed that he ends up speaking to her. His doorbell rings and when he opens it he should be surprised to see her there but he’s not. He just lets her in and they look at each other for a while, just stand there in the living room and watch each other. But then he can’t help himself. He asks her how she knew that he kept Beth. And she smiles serenely. She smiles at him and she tells him that she could always smell him. Because men are so much easier to smell than women are. Because the women wear perfumes and scented soaps, shampoo. Men have much more subtle bath products.
He’s not really sure how they end up in his bed, scratching at each other, him buried deep inside of her, both growling and panting, sweat dripping off of their bodies. He couldn’t explain that if he tried but he knows that his sheets are going to have to be replaced. They’re getting blood on them and when her claws dig into them she rips them apart. His mother will probably be pissed off about it but he can’t bring himself to care about that as he thrusts inside of her, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, his own glowing yellow in the dim light.
When she comes around him and he starts to come undone he doesn’t even think about the next move. His wolf is driving him forward and he leans forward, bites down with his sharp, sharp teeth on the juncture between her neck and her shoulder, marks her as his, his wolf’s. Her blood spills into his mouth and she lets out a strangled sound before he feels her biting down on him in the same spot, the opposite side. He had never intended to claim someone as a mate, let alone her, but once it’s done he can’t take it back and when she effectively claims him back the sensation is too much and he comes undone, all but collapsing against her.
For a while they just lay there, their skin cooling in the evening air, her fingers running through his hair, his head resting against her chest, the sound of her heart beating in his ear. He should feel guilty for everything knowing that his best friend still loves her but he can’t bring himself to in that moment. She’s not really Finn’s anymore. And she’s the only person in Lima who can actually understand him. She’s the only one in Lima that’s like him outside of his family.
Beth starts to cry and he worries that he may have woken her up. Climbing off of the bed he grabs his boxers and pulls them on, heads down the hall to go see his daughter. He picks his daughter up, glad that the blood is only on his back and that it won’t get onto her. He just holds her against him and tries to soothe her, runs his hand over her back to try to calm her down. Sometimes it seems like she just has nightmares. And his whole life is a nightmare most of the time so he can relate.
Rachel appears in the doorway with his t-shirt on. It reaches mid-thigh and she looks strangely sexy and innocent at the same time as she moves closer to him and reaches out, runs her fingers over Beth’s feather soft hair. It’s a familiar gesture that seems so weird to see towards his daughter from someone who isn’t family but he doesn’t stop her. It’s just nice to see someone else outside of the people in that house to be around his little girl. But it’s still strange despite all of that.
“You know you can’t tell anyone about her. Not yet. They wouldn’t understand. You have to wait until Quinn can’t take her back. It’ll take time. And we both know she can’t raise her. She’s not like us. And if the others know then she’ll know.” He knows she’s right but he can’t bring himself to want to hear those words from her. It hurts him not to be able to tell the others. It’s nice that Rachel knows but it doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe it will never, ever be enough even though he wishes it was. He just wants to be honest about his daughter with everyone else.
He can’t tell her that he doesn’t like it because she’s right. And he doesn’t want to get into that fight with her. So instead he just reaches out and he touches the bite wound that he made on her body, brushes his fingers over the fresh wound. She’s beautiful standing there with her hair a mess and her skin bright red where his teeth sunk into her skin. A part of him feels like wrapping her up and keeping her safe with him but he knows that he can’t make her stay. Maybe she doesn’t even want to stay. She may have just been caught up in the moment when she bit him back.
She looks at him for a few moments and then she averts her gaze from him, her hair falling over the spot he’s brushing his fingers over and he pulls his hand away. “I can’t, Noah.” She whispers it like she really regrets it but it’s still a punch to the stomach. “Not right now. It wouldn’t be fair to you. I still care about Finn.”
“Of course you do,” he scoffs. “It’s always Finn. Everyone always wants Finn. Not me. Because I’m a fucking asshole. I’m a fuck up. I’m a freak-”
“You’re not a freak.” She bites it out, her eyes going back to his, flashing yellow. “If you are then so am I.” He thinks that maybe they’re both freaks. Maybe they’re both fucking freaks that deserve to be miserable. But they’re sort of under each other’s skin now. You can’t break a mating bond. They’ll always be stuck with each other.
“I’ll keep Beth a secret,” she tells him. “She has to be a secret. And as for us…” She trails off and looks at the innocent child in his arms. “I have to work Finn out of my system. I don’t know how long it’ll take. I wish I had a time frame for you. But I don’t. But once he’s out of my system….once he’s out of my system I’ll really be yours. Bite or no bite. I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine. It just wouldn’t be fair to you if I was yours now when he owns such a big part of me.”
“Right.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice if he tried.
“I care about you, Noah,” she tells him and he can tell that she means it. But in that moment it doesn’t mean anything. Because he still has to keep his daughter a secret. And the only person his wolf really, truly wants can’t be his. Not for now at least.
Maybe he’s just not meant for his life to be easy. Maybe he’s just not meant to have something good.