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rsadelleSummary: Sean sits on the arm of Tom's chair, on the side between her and them, putting him close to her and higher than both of them. He can't see her as well as if he'd taken the other side, but he's in a better position to protect her. She's pack. (And just that, only pack, he keeps trying to make his wolf understand.)
Disclaimer: Fiction.
Notes: Parts of this were originally posted here and here.
Sean tries to give Tom her privacy. She didn't grow up with wolves where everyone can smell or hear almost everything you do and feel. But that doesn't mean he's above keeping an eye on her, metaphorically speaking.
He's hanging with Ryan, who knows him well enough that "Tom" is enough of an excuse for Sean to abandon him - and who doesn't in the least mind being abandoned in the middle of a party - when he hears her heartbeat spike and catches the scent of her adrenaline.
Tom's pretty easygoing. She tends to lounge - Sean's seen her lounging in this particular chair before - but now she's sitting ramrod straight. Once he spots her, it's easy enough to see what's making her freak out. Mike and Bill are on the couch that corners her chair, Bill closer to her and relaxed, Mike slightly farther away and somewhere between a slouch and a sprawl.
Sean sits on the arm of Tom's chair, on the side between her and them, putting him close to her and higher than both of them. He can't see her as well as if he'd taken the other side, but he's in a better position to protect her. She's pack. (And just that, only pack, he keeps trying to make his wolf understand.)
Sean swaps Tom's plastic cup for his beer bottle. She was gripping it tight enough that he thought it might actually crack and spill her drink all over her jeans. It's also a signal, sharing scent, sharing taste. It's really for Tom, what Sean would do with another wolf, and probably too subtle for Bill, but Mike's been around wolves enough that he should notice it. Anything that warns Mike away from Tom is a good thing, because Sean's not sure he has enough control over his wolf not to rend Mike limb from limb if he hurts Tom again.
*
Sean turns on the nights of the full moon. It's not like it is in storybooks or bad horror movies, where he rampages the countryside. He just becomes a wolf. He's more inclined to run, those nights, or to snarl at anything that comes close to Tom. (It's not an empty phrase. Tom's come with him to wolf gatherings, and while most wolves know better, Sean's had to put himself between some of them and Tom, to keep them away from her.) He lets people - some people - get close ever since Tom bopped him on the nose after he growled at Max: "Dude, it's Max. Chill."
On the full moon after they run into Mike and Bill, Sean can't settle. He paces the apartment, back and forth, while Tom sits cross-legged on the couch with a guitar in her lap, beautiful as always and playing softly.
Only the fact that he has to be there to protect Tom keeps him from jumping through the window, racing down the fire escape, and finding Mike. He wants to hurt Mike the way Mike hurt Tom.
It's harder, on the nights of the full moon, to retain human thought processes, human modes of operation.
"You know nothing's going to happen," Tom says over the sound of the guitar. "You gotta chill, man."
Sean stops pacing and watches her cock her head and look at him. Her hair falls over her shoulder.
"It's too bad you can't smoke up." After a moment where she plays the beginning of "All Night Long," she adds, "And that we're out of weed."
She switches chords, softer, softer, plays him "Spit the Dark." She puts the guitar down when she gets to the end. "Come," she says. "Come here."
Sean drops his head. He'll do anything she wants when she asks like that. He slinks across the room, hops onto the couch, and drops his head into her lap. He breathes in the soft girlsmell of her. She's pack, but not a wolf. (Not his mate. Not, his human side reminds the wolf.) He can't nuzzle into her skin the way he wants to.
"You're not going to be a macho douchebag in the morning, are you?"
Sean's human side flashes into control and he both barks a laugh and whines in apology.
Tom's hands stroke through his fur, scratch behind his ears. This is better. This is how he usually spends the nights of the full moon.
He tips his head up to dislodge one of her hands. She holds it out to him, open, like you would with a child or a dog to show there's nothing there. Sean licks across the inside of her wrist, as much of a taste as he dares to take, as much of a mark as he dares to leave.
She looks at it, then starts petting him again. "I don't know why people think I'm the weird one in this band."
*
Sean wakes up human, naked, and alone. He panics, then stills, listens. He can hear Tom's breathing, even in sleep. If he stretches, he can smell her, the real scent, not just the echos that hang around the spaces she inhabits.
He won't sleep longer. Part of being a wolf is that he has more energy on nights of the full moon, and if he sleeps then, he won't sleep now. He gets dressed and makes a pot of coffee.
When he hears Tom's breath change, he throws two waffles in the toaster and pours a second cup of coffee. With both mugs in one hand and the plate in the other, he kicks at the bottom of her door.
"Yeah, come in."
He gives her the coffee and puts the plate on the nightstand.
She scrunches up her face in a look he usually only sees in photographs.
"I'll make you eggs, too, if you want."
Her face abruptly smoothes out. Sean tries not to see the way her hair, mussed by sleep, floats around her face, the way she's the most beautiful thing in his day.
"I get it." She waves her coffee cup between them. "You wolf, me pack."
He almost tells her, says instead, "You're your own person," and stamps down the wolf inside him that says otherwise.
"Mmmhmm." She puts the coffee down on the bed, probably drunk down low enough she won't spill it everywhere, and picks up the plate. "I want my eggs over easy."
"I'm not sure we have eggs," Sean admits.
"Bad planning." Tom licks syrup from where she's managed to stick her fingers in it.
Sean's eyes follow the path her tongue makes. "I'll buy you some if we don't."
She shrugs. "You don't have to." She shoves at his shoulder with the hand she was just licking. It's not as good as a real mark, but any wolf who gets near him today will know it's her scent on him. "Just don't be a douchebag when you don't have to."
Sean just nods, because he can't promise her that and won't say things to her that he doesn't mean.
*
Ryan, Max, and Danielle come over on the third night of the moon. Sean slinks around the edges of the living room, sure they're there because Tom doesn't want to be alone with him for another night, and wrestles with his need to get between Tom and the boys.
Danielle asks, "Do you still have that scarf you never wear? The blue one?" and drags Tom off to her room. They close the door behind them. Sean doesn't even have to strain to hear them.
"You know he can still hear us, right?"
"Mmmm," Danielle says. "I really do want that scarf."
"It's in the closet somewhere."
The next time Danielle speaks, Sean can hear the echo of the smaller space of Tom's closet around her voice. "There's this guy at work. I think you'd like him."
"I don't need you to set me up."
"Well," Danielle says briskly, "you need to get laid."
The hair along Sean's spine stands up, and he has to fight the urge to growl, to howl down the moon.
"I'm not going out with some guy you know because you think I need to get laid."
"You do need to get laid." Danielle's voice is clearer, like she's stuck her head out of the closet, before it echoes again. "A good orgasm would do wonders for you."
"I don't need some guy you know to have an orgasm. I do just fine on my own."
Sean knows that much. He's heard her. He's smelled her.
"Tom, this isn't just about sex. Aha! I knew you would never wear this." Tom's closet door closes. "You need to get out there. This thing you and Sean are doing isn't healthy. You should go out with someone. He should go out with someone."
"Someone like you?" There's a dark note in Tom's voice that Sean can't quite read. He's never heard it from her before.
Danielle's laugh is sharp and short. "No, calm down. Fuck, if you were a wolf you'd be growling at me right now. I'm just saying, if you two are going to dance around each other forever, you should give someone else a chance."
"We're not. That's not what this is."
"Sure you're not." Even from two rooms away, Sean can tell Danielle doesn't believe it for a second. "And in the meantime neither of you is getting laid."
Sean doesn't know what Tom's answer to that is, because Ryan chooses that moment to wing a bottle cap at him. "Dude, eavesdropping is creepy, unless they're having sex."
Sean yips at him, not quite upset enough for a real bark, and Max says, "That's my sister you're talking about."
"Yeah, and your sister's hot."
"And smart enough not to sleep with you," Danielle says.
Sean was distracted enough by Max and Ryan that he didn't notice Tom and Danielle coming back. Danielle has a scarf in her hands, which she stashes in her purse before getting herself a beer.
Tom sits on the couch, between Max and Ryan but not touching either one of them.
Sean puts his head on his paws and watches her, watches them move slowly every time they move toward her.
Being who they are, Max and Tom eventually bring out guitars. While Ryan's in the kitchen trying to find something to bang on for percussion accompaniment, Tom slides onto the floor with her acoustic. Sean takes that as an invitation and slinks across the room to lie next to her. Tom adjusts the guitar so he can put his head on her thigh, and she scratches behind his ears between songs.
*
Sean doesn't sleep much that night, but he still wakes up before Tom and makes the coffee. She comes out dressed, with her messenger bag and a camera bag slung over her shoulder. She pours her coffee into a travel mug without speaking to him.
"Tom?"
"I'm going out." She shrugs her shoulder, making the camera bag bounce against her hip. "Taking pictures."
Sean moves close to her, his wolf wanting to trap her there, his human side wanting to let her have choices. "Tom." He doesn't know what to say other than her name.
"I'm going," she says, and then, "please."
She doesn't look at him and she shouldn't have to ask him for that. He makes himself move away.
"I'll be back later," she says, just before she closes the door behind her. He wouldn't have heard her if he were human.
*
Sean's in his room, trying to write and getting nowhere when Tom comes back. He hears her come into the building, into the apartment, and he waits until he hears her put things down and start rinsing out her cup before he goes to see her.
If he's not paying attention, he tends to walk silently; he makes sure not to do that, so she knows he's coming.
"You get anything good?"
She shrugs without turning around. "Maybe." She washes out the cup with a studiousness she doesn't usually apply to dishes.
Sean wants to push, to demand to know what's going on, but he pulls that back and waits.
Tom turns around, slides down the counter to where it's not wet, and leans against it. "Last night," she says, her arms crossed, more hugging herself than defensive, "what Danielle said." She glances up at him. "You were listening."
"Yeah." He walks toward her, unable to stay away when he doesn't know what's coming.
"What we're doing." She bites her lip. "We shouldn't. You have a mate out there somewhere."
"No." Sean gets close enough to touch her, reaches past her to put his hands on the counter on either side of her, to keep her there.
She shakes her head and won't look at him. "You do."
Sean looks down at the top of her head. "Tom, she's not out there."
She looks up at him, uncertain and vulnerable. He shouldn't do it, should keep letting her make her own choices, but he stops fighting it and kisses her, too hard, too demanding, too possessive. She makes a noise so soft he wouldn't have heard if he were human, and then he's flooded with the scent of her arousal.
Maybe he isn't the only one who's been hiding things.
Sean kisses her frantic and hungry, biting at her mouth and flexing his fingers against the edge of the counter. Tom bites back, her hands gripping at his shoulder blades. Sean takes that as a signal and lets go of the counter. He leaves her to hold them together while he works his hands between them. His fingers get caught on the denim of her jeans before he gets the button open, the zipper down. Her scent only gets stronger at each step.
She makes a noise and hooks one heel behind his hip when he boosts her up onto the counter. It drags up his back when he slides to his knees.
Sean can smell her, and he doesn't have to pretend he's not breathing in her scent, taking it deep into his lungs. Tom's muscles twitch under his touch when he presses his lips to the inside of her thigh. When he pushes lightly, she slides that leg out, making more space for him. Sean's mouth waters, even before he puts it on her.
It's the strongest he's ever smelled her, the strongest he's ever gotten to taste her. He pays attention while he licks at her, noticing what makes her wetter, what makes her scent sharpen, what changes the tone of her voice. There are words in it, but they don't matter. He doesn't need them to figure out what she likes.
Tom shudders and falls apart under his tongue, her heel digging into his back. Sean stays where he is, tasting her, smelling her, until she pulls on his hair and says his name sharply. He stands, hands sliding up the outside of her hips, over her ribs.
She doesn't shy away from his kiss.
"What do you want?" Tom asks. "Do you want to fuck me or do you want to come on me?"
Sean groans into her neck.
"Yeah?" Tom pulls her shirt off, the movement of the fabric forcing Sean's hands off of her until they can come back to bare skin. She unhooks her bra next, slides it down her arms, drops it on the floor.
Sean drags his lips down her chest, skates them over the curves of her breasts. Tom lets him for a moment before she pushes him away just far enough that she can slide off the counter. Sean has to take another step back when she gets to her knees.
He almost comes right then, with Tom naked and looking up at him.
He gets his jeans open instead, shoves them and his underwear down just far enough to get at his cock. It takes nothing, a few quick strokes of his hand, before he comes across her breasts, up to her collarbone.
Tom just takes it, calmly, and then she rubs it in, smoothing it into her skin all the way up to her neck.
Sean falls to his knees next to her and buries his face in her neck. He licks over her pulse point where the heat of her blood makes her taste - her taste with his taste over it - that much stronger.
Tom rubs the back of his head, then unfolds herself and stretches her legs out. Sean moves with her, sitting next to her and pulling her back against his chest.
"There's a way to make this permanent, right?" Tom's hand rubs up and down Sean's thigh. "I don't have to walk around with your come on me all the time?"
Sean's heart beats faster. "Yes."
"How?"
"Bites. Here," Sean closes his teeth gently over Tom's shoulder, "or here," he curves his hand over the inside of her thigh, "or both."
"What's the difference?"
"This," Sean bites again, lightly, at Tom's shoulder, "is more public. Where you do it if you want to show off. This," he squeezes her thigh, "is more private. Wolves will still know. Both is a stronger commitment, public and private, bound together every way possible. They won't actually turn you into a werewolf, but the ties they create are probably where that myth started."
"Is there a time you're supposed to do it?"
"It's supposed to be stronger with a human if you do it during the new moon."
Tom shifts away from him, stretching across the floor to yank at the legs of her jeans.
"What are you doing?"
Tom digs her phone out of her pocket. "Looking up the next new moon."
Sean's breath catches. "Tom," he says, "if we do that, it's done. There's no divorce. There's no going back from that."
Tom looks up from her phone. "There's no going back from this."
Sean closes his eyes and puts his forehead down on her shoulder. "Tom."
"Sean." Her hand runs through his hair. "There was never any going back."
*
They're at Nick's again, and Sean can hear Tom's heartbeat spike. She's in the same chair as last time, and the only difference is that this time Christine is between Mike and Bill on the couch. Sean takes the arm of Tom's chair, and this time Tom swaps out their drinks, her bottle of beer for his.
Tom's heart slows, and Christine is socially adept enough to cover any awkwardness in the conversation.
Tom's hand creeps into Sean's.
"You two?" Christine asks, nodding at their hands. "I heard you were together, but didn't know if it was true."
Tom tilts her head back, looks up at Sean. "It's true."
"When's the wedding?" Mike probably thinks he's being funny.
Tom looks at him, steady, her hand not even tightening on Sean's. "Three weeks ago. We're new moon bound." She's resting her beer on her thigh, just over the bite mark there. She has their hands resting on the one on Sean's thigh.
All three of them know enough about wolves to know what that means.
Christine recovers first. "Are you going to do the human version?"
Sean glances down to see the way Tom's nose scrunches up.
"Danielle would probably make me wear a white dress."
"You should be able to wear whatever you want for your own wedding," Bill says.
Sean happens to agree with him, but he can't help imagining Tom coming toward him in a simple white shift, something that bares the mark on her shoulder.
Tom looks up at Sean again, the smile she only ever gives him playing across her lips. "Maybe."
Disclaimer: Fiction.
Notes: Parts of this were originally posted here and here.
Sean tries to give Tom her privacy. She didn't grow up with wolves where everyone can smell or hear almost everything you do and feel. But that doesn't mean he's above keeping an eye on her, metaphorically speaking.
He's hanging with Ryan, who knows him well enough that "Tom" is enough of an excuse for Sean to abandon him - and who doesn't in the least mind being abandoned in the middle of a party - when he hears her heartbeat spike and catches the scent of her adrenaline.
Tom's pretty easygoing. She tends to lounge - Sean's seen her lounging in this particular chair before - but now she's sitting ramrod straight. Once he spots her, it's easy enough to see what's making her freak out. Mike and Bill are on the couch that corners her chair, Bill closer to her and relaxed, Mike slightly farther away and somewhere between a slouch and a sprawl.
Sean sits on the arm of Tom's chair, on the side between her and them, putting him close to her and higher than both of them. He can't see her as well as if he'd taken the other side, but he's in a better position to protect her. She's pack. (And just that, only pack, he keeps trying to make his wolf understand.)
Sean swaps Tom's plastic cup for his beer bottle. She was gripping it tight enough that he thought it might actually crack and spill her drink all over her jeans. It's also a signal, sharing scent, sharing taste. It's really for Tom, what Sean would do with another wolf, and probably too subtle for Bill, but Mike's been around wolves enough that he should notice it. Anything that warns Mike away from Tom is a good thing, because Sean's not sure he has enough control over his wolf not to rend Mike limb from limb if he hurts Tom again.
*
Sean turns on the nights of the full moon. It's not like it is in storybooks or bad horror movies, where he rampages the countryside. He just becomes a wolf. He's more inclined to run, those nights, or to snarl at anything that comes close to Tom. (It's not an empty phrase. Tom's come with him to wolf gatherings, and while most wolves know better, Sean's had to put himself between some of them and Tom, to keep them away from her.) He lets people - some people - get close ever since Tom bopped him on the nose after he growled at Max: "Dude, it's Max. Chill."
On the full moon after they run into Mike and Bill, Sean can't settle. He paces the apartment, back and forth, while Tom sits cross-legged on the couch with a guitar in her lap, beautiful as always and playing softly.
Only the fact that he has to be there to protect Tom keeps him from jumping through the window, racing down the fire escape, and finding Mike. He wants to hurt Mike the way Mike hurt Tom.
It's harder, on the nights of the full moon, to retain human thought processes, human modes of operation.
"You know nothing's going to happen," Tom says over the sound of the guitar. "You gotta chill, man."
Sean stops pacing and watches her cock her head and look at him. Her hair falls over her shoulder.
"It's too bad you can't smoke up." After a moment where she plays the beginning of "All Night Long," she adds, "And that we're out of weed."
She switches chords, softer, softer, plays him "Spit the Dark." She puts the guitar down when she gets to the end. "Come," she says. "Come here."
Sean drops his head. He'll do anything she wants when she asks like that. He slinks across the room, hops onto the couch, and drops his head into her lap. He breathes in the soft girlsmell of her. She's pack, but not a wolf. (Not his mate. Not, his human side reminds the wolf.) He can't nuzzle into her skin the way he wants to.
"You're not going to be a macho douchebag in the morning, are you?"
Sean's human side flashes into control and he both barks a laugh and whines in apology.
Tom's hands stroke through his fur, scratch behind his ears. This is better. This is how he usually spends the nights of the full moon.
He tips his head up to dislodge one of her hands. She holds it out to him, open, like you would with a child or a dog to show there's nothing there. Sean licks across the inside of her wrist, as much of a taste as he dares to take, as much of a mark as he dares to leave.
She looks at it, then starts petting him again. "I don't know why people think I'm the weird one in this band."
*
Sean wakes up human, naked, and alone. He panics, then stills, listens. He can hear Tom's breathing, even in sleep. If he stretches, he can smell her, the real scent, not just the echos that hang around the spaces she inhabits.
He won't sleep longer. Part of being a wolf is that he has more energy on nights of the full moon, and if he sleeps then, he won't sleep now. He gets dressed and makes a pot of coffee.
When he hears Tom's breath change, he throws two waffles in the toaster and pours a second cup of coffee. With both mugs in one hand and the plate in the other, he kicks at the bottom of her door.
"Yeah, come in."
He gives her the coffee and puts the plate on the nightstand.
She scrunches up her face in a look he usually only sees in photographs.
"I'll make you eggs, too, if you want."
Her face abruptly smoothes out. Sean tries not to see the way her hair, mussed by sleep, floats around her face, the way she's the most beautiful thing in his day.
"I get it." She waves her coffee cup between them. "You wolf, me pack."
He almost tells her, says instead, "You're your own person," and stamps down the wolf inside him that says otherwise.
"Mmmhmm." She puts the coffee down on the bed, probably drunk down low enough she won't spill it everywhere, and picks up the plate. "I want my eggs over easy."
"I'm not sure we have eggs," Sean admits.
"Bad planning." Tom licks syrup from where she's managed to stick her fingers in it.
Sean's eyes follow the path her tongue makes. "I'll buy you some if we don't."
She shrugs. "You don't have to." She shoves at his shoulder with the hand she was just licking. It's not as good as a real mark, but any wolf who gets near him today will know it's her scent on him. "Just don't be a douchebag when you don't have to."
Sean just nods, because he can't promise her that and won't say things to her that he doesn't mean.
*
Ryan, Max, and Danielle come over on the third night of the moon. Sean slinks around the edges of the living room, sure they're there because Tom doesn't want to be alone with him for another night, and wrestles with his need to get between Tom and the boys.
Danielle asks, "Do you still have that scarf you never wear? The blue one?" and drags Tom off to her room. They close the door behind them. Sean doesn't even have to strain to hear them.
"You know he can still hear us, right?"
"Mmmm," Danielle says. "I really do want that scarf."
"It's in the closet somewhere."
The next time Danielle speaks, Sean can hear the echo of the smaller space of Tom's closet around her voice. "There's this guy at work. I think you'd like him."
"I don't need you to set me up."
"Well," Danielle says briskly, "you need to get laid."
The hair along Sean's spine stands up, and he has to fight the urge to growl, to howl down the moon.
"I'm not going out with some guy you know because you think I need to get laid."
"You do need to get laid." Danielle's voice is clearer, like she's stuck her head out of the closet, before it echoes again. "A good orgasm would do wonders for you."
"I don't need some guy you know to have an orgasm. I do just fine on my own."
Sean knows that much. He's heard her. He's smelled her.
"Tom, this isn't just about sex. Aha! I knew you would never wear this." Tom's closet door closes. "You need to get out there. This thing you and Sean are doing isn't healthy. You should go out with someone. He should go out with someone."
"Someone like you?" There's a dark note in Tom's voice that Sean can't quite read. He's never heard it from her before.
Danielle's laugh is sharp and short. "No, calm down. Fuck, if you were a wolf you'd be growling at me right now. I'm just saying, if you two are going to dance around each other forever, you should give someone else a chance."
"We're not. That's not what this is."
"Sure you're not." Even from two rooms away, Sean can tell Danielle doesn't believe it for a second. "And in the meantime neither of you is getting laid."
Sean doesn't know what Tom's answer to that is, because Ryan chooses that moment to wing a bottle cap at him. "Dude, eavesdropping is creepy, unless they're having sex."
Sean yips at him, not quite upset enough for a real bark, and Max says, "That's my sister you're talking about."
"Yeah, and your sister's hot."
"And smart enough not to sleep with you," Danielle says.
Sean was distracted enough by Max and Ryan that he didn't notice Tom and Danielle coming back. Danielle has a scarf in her hands, which she stashes in her purse before getting herself a beer.
Tom sits on the couch, between Max and Ryan but not touching either one of them.
Sean puts his head on his paws and watches her, watches them move slowly every time they move toward her.
Being who they are, Max and Tom eventually bring out guitars. While Ryan's in the kitchen trying to find something to bang on for percussion accompaniment, Tom slides onto the floor with her acoustic. Sean takes that as an invitation and slinks across the room to lie next to her. Tom adjusts the guitar so he can put his head on her thigh, and she scratches behind his ears between songs.
*
Sean doesn't sleep much that night, but he still wakes up before Tom and makes the coffee. She comes out dressed, with her messenger bag and a camera bag slung over her shoulder. She pours her coffee into a travel mug without speaking to him.
"Tom?"
"I'm going out." She shrugs her shoulder, making the camera bag bounce against her hip. "Taking pictures."
Sean moves close to her, his wolf wanting to trap her there, his human side wanting to let her have choices. "Tom." He doesn't know what to say other than her name.
"I'm going," she says, and then, "please."
She doesn't look at him and she shouldn't have to ask him for that. He makes himself move away.
"I'll be back later," she says, just before she closes the door behind her. He wouldn't have heard her if he were human.
*
Sean's in his room, trying to write and getting nowhere when Tom comes back. He hears her come into the building, into the apartment, and he waits until he hears her put things down and start rinsing out her cup before he goes to see her.
If he's not paying attention, he tends to walk silently; he makes sure not to do that, so she knows he's coming.
"You get anything good?"
She shrugs without turning around. "Maybe." She washes out the cup with a studiousness she doesn't usually apply to dishes.
Sean wants to push, to demand to know what's going on, but he pulls that back and waits.
Tom turns around, slides down the counter to where it's not wet, and leans against it. "Last night," she says, her arms crossed, more hugging herself than defensive, "what Danielle said." She glances up at him. "You were listening."
"Yeah." He walks toward her, unable to stay away when he doesn't know what's coming.
"What we're doing." She bites her lip. "We shouldn't. You have a mate out there somewhere."
"No." Sean gets close enough to touch her, reaches past her to put his hands on the counter on either side of her, to keep her there.
She shakes her head and won't look at him. "You do."
Sean looks down at the top of her head. "Tom, she's not out there."
She looks up at him, uncertain and vulnerable. He shouldn't do it, should keep letting her make her own choices, but he stops fighting it and kisses her, too hard, too demanding, too possessive. She makes a noise so soft he wouldn't have heard if he were human, and then he's flooded with the scent of her arousal.
Maybe he isn't the only one who's been hiding things.
Sean kisses her frantic and hungry, biting at her mouth and flexing his fingers against the edge of the counter. Tom bites back, her hands gripping at his shoulder blades. Sean takes that as a signal and lets go of the counter. He leaves her to hold them together while he works his hands between them. His fingers get caught on the denim of her jeans before he gets the button open, the zipper down. Her scent only gets stronger at each step.
She makes a noise and hooks one heel behind his hip when he boosts her up onto the counter. It drags up his back when he slides to his knees.
Sean can smell her, and he doesn't have to pretend he's not breathing in her scent, taking it deep into his lungs. Tom's muscles twitch under his touch when he presses his lips to the inside of her thigh. When he pushes lightly, she slides that leg out, making more space for him. Sean's mouth waters, even before he puts it on her.
It's the strongest he's ever smelled her, the strongest he's ever gotten to taste her. He pays attention while he licks at her, noticing what makes her wetter, what makes her scent sharpen, what changes the tone of her voice. There are words in it, but they don't matter. He doesn't need them to figure out what she likes.
Tom shudders and falls apart under his tongue, her heel digging into his back. Sean stays where he is, tasting her, smelling her, until she pulls on his hair and says his name sharply. He stands, hands sliding up the outside of her hips, over her ribs.
She doesn't shy away from his kiss.
"What do you want?" Tom asks. "Do you want to fuck me or do you want to come on me?"
Sean groans into her neck.
"Yeah?" Tom pulls her shirt off, the movement of the fabric forcing Sean's hands off of her until they can come back to bare skin. She unhooks her bra next, slides it down her arms, drops it on the floor.
Sean drags his lips down her chest, skates them over the curves of her breasts. Tom lets him for a moment before she pushes him away just far enough that she can slide off the counter. Sean has to take another step back when she gets to her knees.
He almost comes right then, with Tom naked and looking up at him.
He gets his jeans open instead, shoves them and his underwear down just far enough to get at his cock. It takes nothing, a few quick strokes of his hand, before he comes across her breasts, up to her collarbone.
Tom just takes it, calmly, and then she rubs it in, smoothing it into her skin all the way up to her neck.
Sean falls to his knees next to her and buries his face in her neck. He licks over her pulse point where the heat of her blood makes her taste - her taste with his taste over it - that much stronger.
Tom rubs the back of his head, then unfolds herself and stretches her legs out. Sean moves with her, sitting next to her and pulling her back against his chest.
"There's a way to make this permanent, right?" Tom's hand rubs up and down Sean's thigh. "I don't have to walk around with your come on me all the time?"
Sean's heart beats faster. "Yes."
"How?"
"Bites. Here," Sean closes his teeth gently over Tom's shoulder, "or here," he curves his hand over the inside of her thigh, "or both."
"What's the difference?"
"This," Sean bites again, lightly, at Tom's shoulder, "is more public. Where you do it if you want to show off. This," he squeezes her thigh, "is more private. Wolves will still know. Both is a stronger commitment, public and private, bound together every way possible. They won't actually turn you into a werewolf, but the ties they create are probably where that myth started."
"Is there a time you're supposed to do it?"
"It's supposed to be stronger with a human if you do it during the new moon."
Tom shifts away from him, stretching across the floor to yank at the legs of her jeans.
"What are you doing?"
Tom digs her phone out of her pocket. "Looking up the next new moon."
Sean's breath catches. "Tom," he says, "if we do that, it's done. There's no divorce. There's no going back from that."
Tom looks up from her phone. "There's no going back from this."
Sean closes his eyes and puts his forehead down on her shoulder. "Tom."
"Sean." Her hand runs through his hair. "There was never any going back."
*
They're at Nick's again, and Sean can hear Tom's heartbeat spike. She's in the same chair as last time, and the only difference is that this time Christine is between Mike and Bill on the couch. Sean takes the arm of Tom's chair, and this time Tom swaps out their drinks, her bottle of beer for his.
Tom's heart slows, and Christine is socially adept enough to cover any awkwardness in the conversation.
Tom's hand creeps into Sean's.
"You two?" Christine asks, nodding at their hands. "I heard you were together, but didn't know if it was true."
Tom tilts her head back, looks up at Sean. "It's true."
"When's the wedding?" Mike probably thinks he's being funny.
Tom looks at him, steady, her hand not even tightening on Sean's. "Three weeks ago. We're new moon bound." She's resting her beer on her thigh, just over the bite mark there. She has their hands resting on the one on Sean's thigh.
All three of them know enough about wolves to know what that means.
Christine recovers first. "Are you going to do the human version?"
Sean glances down to see the way Tom's nose scrunches up.
"Danielle would probably make me wear a white dress."
"You should be able to wear whatever you want for your own wedding," Bill says.
Sean happens to agree with him, but he can't help imagining Tom coming toward him in a simple white shift, something that bares the mark on her shoulder.
Tom looks up at Sean again, the smile she only ever gives him playing across her lips. "Maybe."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 03:21 am (UTC)What I like here, and especially about Tom switching their beers at at the end, is that it's a fabulous mirror of earlier. It's a nice way to tie it up and that's one thing I always admire about your writing.
More than that, it's a good show of how far Tom comes in the story, even though we don't know how long it stretches over. It shows that Tom's comfortable, certainly comfortable enough to let Mike (and to a lesser extent, Bill) know exactly what's going on.
I love it. This is fabulous, Ruth!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 03:26 am (UTC)I hope this answered some of your questions about how Tom deals with Sean being possessive and werewolfy!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 03:33 am (UTC)It so very much did!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 06:02 am (UTC)And nary a mention of clavicles...
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-22 03:37 am (UTC)Ha! Not one!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 06:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-22 03:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-23 09:58 am (UTC)I really like what you did with the social cues/culture of werewolfiness here :D
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-23 02:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-26 10:35 pm (UTC)Above all, I love the initial defeatism, that Sean being a werewolf is something he sees as a negative in this situation, especially the sadness of the line ""I'll be back later," she says, just before she closes the door behind her. He wouldn't have heard her if he were human."
Also, I don't know if you meant to be indicating a previous Mike/Tom connection or if that's just how I read it, but Tom facing Mike so calmly and matter-of-factly in the final scene as opposed to the first is one of my favorite parts.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-27 12:48 am (UTC)I deliberately didn't put exactly what the Mike/Tom relationship was in the story so people could read it any way they wanted. The end mirroring the beginning, though, was deliberate, and one of my favorite kinds of endings.