Archive of Our Own

It’s been years since Eddie thought himself a monster, but he does feel monstrous when he wakes up in the morning, body warm, skin tight and hunger stretching as if it will burst out of him.

He’s still conscious enough, despite the flush on his skin, to recognize what is happening. Eddie raises his hands from his bed, not surprised to see slashes across the covers, and covers his face so he can loudly groan – maybe not that loudly. Chris is at home –finally– and Eddie wouldn’t want to bother his sleep.

His cheeks are clammy, as are his palms, and even now Eddie can feel the drum-beat of his heart, threatening to jump out of his chest. He drags a hand from his scratchy stubble –it always grows quicker during this time of the season– down to the bum-bum-bum inside his ribcage. Eddie’s chest is warm too. His boxers feel tight. He doesn’t drag his hand any lower than his heart.

Eddie’s father was never good with hard conversations – or conversations in general. He was likewise bad with being present when it mattered. When Eddie presented as a werewolf –they always suspected it (hoped), from the moment he got along so well with dogs and knew when his mother was pregnant by smell alone– it was Helena that taught Eddie everything, even though she didn’t have the firsthand experience her husband had.

How to go through the overwhelming experience of a shift, how to pay attention to the moment, not the sound a street away, or the smell in one’s clothes. How to hold himself. How to hide. And, when he became a teenager, along with the bird-and-bees –of course Ramon wouldn’t be present for that either– what was a rut.

Even now, Eddie feels embarrassment at the memory. He feels embarrassed in general. The feeling is never as thick as times like this.

Eddie gets up, restless even as he makes himself go through the same rituals of every morning: ingrained in him ever after years of not being in the army, or in Texas for that matter.

Take a leak; take a shower (ice cold–still does nothing to the heat spread across his body). Check the phone for calls or texts or fatalities that he has missed. Good-morning whatsapp-stickers from his tía and abuela, and a text message from Buck. morning!! omw to work, meet u there ❤. Eddie makes himself put the phone down before he really does combust from the inside.

Eddie drinks three glasses of water, but they don’t put out the fire inside himself. He follows his morning exercises, but double the amount of pushups don’t do away with the extra energy either. By the end of his last round of situps, he’s stinking again. He doesn’t rub the inside of his wrist all over the house like he wants and instead takes a second shower.

It’s still useless, because when Eddie finally goes into the kitchen to make him and Christopher breakfast, the first thing the kid says when he ambles out of his room, hands on the walls and then kitchen chairs for balance is, “Ew.” Christopher’s nose turns like he’s seven, okay with being called cute and his dad's biggest fan again. “Why doe–es it sm-smell like dog in here?”

Eddie sighs, scraping against the bottom of the frying pan. “G’morning, Chris.”

Chris takes a seat at the table. His hair is up in all directions, like Shannon’s used to, if she didn’t put it up before sleeping, or Buck still does, whenever Eddie has the joy of falling asleep right beside him. Thinking about Buck right now will do him no good though, so Eddie finishes making bland eggs and plating them for Christopher, before picking a big carafe of water from the fridge and an entire parcel of ham for himself.

Chris is kind –or sleepy– enough not to immediately say anything about it, but his nose keeps twitching, right to the moment Eddie finally sits across the table from him. “Dad,” Chris starts, after a moment of trepidation. His voice is much more thoughtful than his first greeting. “Hav-e you check-ed the calendar?”

Chris tries to be tactful, bless his soul. Eddie just feels more ill at ease. It’s his first rut since Christopher’s came back from Texas, fully past the middle-gap of being a pre-teen, or someone who generally trusted his father easily. Eddie doesn’t know what’s worse now.

He scratches roughly at the shirt over his chest, the material feeling as bad as fleas. “I know,” he tells Chris. He forgot how to be effortlessly open with his son. “I might…need the house for myself. For a few days.”

“...Want me to call Tía Pepa?”

It’s an earnest offer, but Eddie insists on doing it himself. He didn’t have to last year; Eddie was alone at home, and so down, he might as well not have a rut at all. It was at least convenient that Marisol had left him already. He was always hit worse when he was in a relationship. Which is Eddie’s second problem.

He calls Pepa after breakfast while Chris gets a night bag ready (he can get back in the morning to pick new things). Pepa, of course, agrees to take Chris in and to bring him to school – Eddie would rather not deal with side-eyeing from other parents and their barely hidden distaste if he goes into public himself.

He wanders through the house after that, nothing to do while waiting for Pepa to get here, but too much instinct in him growling for him to keep moving. Eddie is aware that Chris watches him when he’s finished with the bag, right to the moment Pepa finally arrives, and Eddie walks him out.

When Chris was little, Eddie would indulge in making him smell exactly like him, his baby, marked so no one could possibly be mistaken. But that was when Chris would giggle while Eddie dragged his wrist across his temple and cheek – Eddie doesn’t really hear Chris giggle at all anymore.

He doesn’t want to mark Chris if he’s old enough to want independence –even if came back home– but Chris hugs Eddie first when he hesitates too much, already outside the door, Pepa waiting by the car.

The hug lasts longer than any self-respecting teenager would allow. By nature of wrapping his arms around him, Eddie leaves some of his smell on Christopher’s jacket, which settles a part of his chest at least.

Chris watches him for a moment after pulling back. “You’ll c-call Buck?” he asks him.

“I’ll talk to him,” Eddie assures. It’s all for Christopher’s own comfort, but it works – Chris nods and steps back, and then Pepa is backing away from the drive with one last wave, leaving Eddie alone.

Terribly alone.

He goes inside the house, scratching at his shirt again. He needs to warn Cap that he can’t come in, an awkward conversation even if Eddie doesn’t have to use all his words. Chim more or less got all the background of what having a werewolf in the team would entail when he succeeded Bobby, but Eddie is used to telling it to the latter, who understood him better than anyone, maybe; Bobby’s human, but he’s catholic too. He knows how it is to live a life in penance.

Bobby is a high-risk, compulsorily-retired civilian now though, and Eddie’s current captain is also the brother-in-law of the man he’s dating. Chim answers Eddie’s discreet warning that he won’t be coming in today and maybe the rest of the week with a thumbsup, and then the much more stress-inducing text of have you already talked with Buck?

It takes less than five minutes from that one for Eddie’s phone to chime with a new notification from Buck, asking are u okay?

Eddie goes to his room without marking that text as read. He begrudgingly takes his shirt and boxers off on the way, feeling suffocantingly hot either way.

The Buck thing is new; or as new as anything can be, when Eddie and he have known each other for close to eight years. Eddie knows the face Buck makes when he’s gassy, his favorite food (Bobby’s lasagna), the fact he can’t handle the usual heat of Abuela’s alcoholic salsa but he’ll try eating it anyway. Buck knows Eddie well too, but not like this: ravenous, greedy, untiring, un-human. He’s careful with who he lets know that.

It’s a tight rope between the werewolf thing being a turn-on or turn-off. Shannon thought it was fun when they were kids (even when Eddie ended up ripping a condom–which everyone knows how that ended) right to the point everything bittered between them. Ana purposely didn’t pay attention to it, which Eddie always thought was an attempt at being respectful, but it ended up just feeling like distance anyway. Marisol liked it –really liked it– but that wasn’t a  strong enough basis to save their relationship from Eddie’s mistakes.

If Eddie puts his mind to it, which he tries not to do when he gets to his room –Eddie is trying to scratch an itch instead– it’s not that he thinks Buck is going to be weird about it. Buck is, well. He’s weird – but in the good way. Eddie never met a person as seemingly as intense as himself until Buck sat by his side in front of a bomb because he wanted to show off.

Buck has been intense about Eddie long before they kissed. Buck has also been pathologically accepting of everything about Eddie –fur in all– since they first became friends. Eddie knows there’s nothing he can do to, or show him, that’ll push Buck away; maybe that’s what scares him so much.

It’s hard not to think about Buck when the first image Eddie’s head conjures, when he lays down on bed –window blinds down, door locked, blankets thrown on the floor– is him.

Eddie trails his hand through his clammy chest and thinks of Buck looking at him from under his lashes. Eddie lets his hand hover over the hair between his belly button and navel and thinks about Buck laid down on the bed right beside him. He lets his nails graze the base of his dick and thinks of Buck pink and bare right for his taking.

The image is as satisfying as frustrating, and Eddie doesn’t know if he’s trying to have fun or slap at himself as he gives himself a rough squeeze, no finesse.

He and Buck haven’t been together long enough to do anything but over the clothes stuff –the time is never right– and Eddie doesn’t know if that’s better or worse; he doesn’t have direct memories to use as inspiration, but his head doesn’t fail in creating him some of the most tantalizing images. Yet, you can’t physically grasp a thought.

Buck on his knees, Buck on his back, Buck on his stomach, Buck looking at him or with his eyes closed. Eddie might as well be watching a slide-show, because his upstairs head fails at holding one image and his downstairs head really wants to get to business.

Eddie makes do; he never needed to be elaborate when touching himself, especially not during a rut. He gets to come in about five minutes, but it leaves a frustrating feeling in his chest, somehow bigger than before. It hasn’t helped at all.

Eddie wipes his hand across his stomach before covering his face again, hiding from he doesn’t know who. It’s no use; with his eyes closed, his head is just more intentful. Buck, Buck, Buck. Eddie would groan, but he’s filling up again. Whatever. He takes himself in hand again, trying to forget the feeling of having a popcorn kennel right between his teeth, impossible to ignore.

He should have guessed it would be just as pointless to keep Buck away from him as his own head away from Buck. It’s only hours later when Eddie wakes from a restless sleep to the sound of the bedroom door creaking open. He’s been sleeping lightly enough to notice that, but not the sound of the front door that must have come before.

Eddie feels muddled inside his head. Still, he knows it’s Buck, if not because he’d obviously come here, then because of the smell – cloying like sickly perfume. Eddie wants to roll around in it naked. Instead he grits his teeth and raises his head, squinting his eyes at the light coming from the hallway.

The color around the window drapes is more blue than when Eddie closed his eyes. It was already some hours well into noon when Eddie exhausted himself enough to rest but he is hopeless to know how many more since then.

His head feels stuffy and his mouth dry – drier, because Buck is leaning against the door, uniform rumpled over his body. Eddie’s stomach, twenty loads of come dried across it, squeezes.

“Sound off,” Buck says, like they’re in a fire, or waking up right after a hangover – like it’s the same as always. But Buck’s voice holds more trepidation than usual, even if he tries to hide it. Buck sounds small. He’s still holding onto the doorknob.

Eddie makes a sound deep in his throat before dragging his face into the bedsheets. Better to be assaulted by his own smell than Buck’s.

“You should be at work,” Eddie croaks, or some approximation of it, from the blankets. He’s not looking at Buck –what the eyes can’t see his heart won’t say take it take it take it– but he still hears him come closer. Eddie curls further into himself. He realizes, belatedly, that he’s very much still naked.

“It’s eight.” The bedside table creaks with Buck’s weight, too close and yet not close enough. “You’re that out of it? Do you want, uh, a glass of water?”

“Chim told you.”

“Chris told me. He does have a phone of his own. He didn’t say that you, you know–” small mercies, “-- but I did, uh. The math. Chim told me after.”

So he still agreed that Buck should drive to Eddie’s house for some banging, apparently. Eddie smothers a grunt against the sheets, but is unable to stop a body-wide shiver when Buck –hesitantly– puts a hand over the last knob of his spine. “Buck,” Eddie croaks.

Buck doesn’t retrieve his hand, but he does halt it, bumpy knuckles over Eddie’s burning skin. “You’re really warm,” he mutters.

“It’s not a fever.”

“I know.” Buck ignores the brashness in Eddie’s voice and the insecurity too. “I brought soup from the station though. Google said you n-needed to eat. And drink. I also bought some electrolytes from the firehouse, but the fridge only had lime, because it’s Johnson’s and–”

“Buck.” Eddie drags himself away from Buck’s touch, although it feels as hard as pulling away from glue, careful to keep angled away not to see Buck just as much for Buck not to see him. “‘m not thinking of food right now.”

“And I’m here to get you covered on that. T-this is like every time we– we take care of each other. Right? Unless…”

Eddie shakes his head. Even a suggestion of rejection in Buck’s voice is enough for him to want to relent. “Y’know is not that,.”

Eddie is not a romantic – maybe. The jury is still out. He did, quite literally, get married in his parents’ backyard, wearing a hand-me-down. He usually isn’t allowed romanticism. It’s kind of the reason he and Buck haven’t still– well.

What got them together after eight years was Bobby almost dying, Buck almost following him in sheer pain and Eddie in guilt. They got to their own respective feelings realizations because life wasn’t guaranteed, and it continued not to be. Buck and Eddie’s dates until now have included pizza in the firehouse parking lot, a movie night with Christopher tagging along, and sleeping together –really just sleeping– after a bad week. They've literally had no chance to do anything more.

Eddie likes fooling around with Buck –he really likes fooling around Buck– but he also wanted more than that. He doesn’t want to just fuck. He wants to make Buck feel good, special, not just a piece of meat.

“sn’t supposed to be like this,” Eddie mumbles.

“We’d get around to it either way. It can’t be roses all the time. And you have to know this isn’t a turn off, Eddie, come on – do you remember who I am?”

Eddie’s tongue feels thick, and his head thicker (the other one too), and it takes a moment for him to get words into order. “When I’m like this…I can’t be sure it’s fun for the other person. My body’s only thinking of itself.”

“It’s your special date,” Buck says, as if that’s simple. Eddie shakes his head and the table creaks, Buck leaning closer. “Hey, maybe I want to think about you too, what about that? I like doing that. You’re always thinking about me too.”

Buck’s hand is on the bed – close, but not touching Eddie because he moved away. It’s so Buck; casually understandable, like the easy gentleness in his voice, despite the fact, Eddie knows, Buck still doesn’t think so highly of himself in relationships, he has no choice but to turn his head, hair all messy and splayed over his face.

Buck, when Eddie finally looks him in the eye, immediately softens and brightens.

“Hi.” Buck abandons the table, taking a seat on the bed. Eddie lets his head tilt into his hand as Buck cups his cheek. Buck giggles at the feeling of his unmitigated stubble. “Scratchy.”

He’s barefoot already and climbs completely on bed as he brushes Eddie’s damp hair off his forehead. Eddie's throat feels tight but he still forces himself to work through it. “It might not be fun.”

Buck’s expression doesn’t change at all.

“I always have fun with you.”

Buck smells of the firehouse and of everyone there. There’s notes of what must have happened through the shift in his uniform: a bit of smoke but no fire, copper water, no blood but the stink of antiseptic. Eddie can’t smell the station’s cheap soap on him – Buck came right here without taking a shower.

Eddie moves with him, turning on his back as Buck’s hand drags across his head and face. Buck keeps his eyes on Eddie’s face instead of his bareness, but his throat moves in a dry swallow.

“Food first.”

Eddie doesn’t really care about food, but he finds himself surprisingly docile at Buck’s side. He had the forethought to bring a tupperware with himself to the bedroom –Eddie’s nose is too full of Buck to notice or even appreciate the smell of food– and Eddie gulps the broth in one go before scarfing half the solid bits down. Eddie prods the rest towards Buck, insistently enough that he eats it with amusement on his face.

Eddie watches him finish the leftovers like it’s his job, still feeling something pressing at himself when Buck puts the container away. It’s not outright lust, but a need, and his tail might have been waving restlessly on the bed if he wasn’t human right now.

Buck thumbs at what might have been a dribble of soup on the corner of Eddie’s mouth, and his finger comes away smelling a bit like him – and that’s it. Eddie huffs, gives a lick to Buck’s thumb not to taste the soup but leave a bigger mark of himself.

The smell of family on Buck’s uniform was comforting, but right now it just feels like an intrusion in Eddie’s space. He bundles a hand at the hem of Buck’s shirt, holding himself from just tugging it away himself so Buck can do it, even if he’s too slow. Buck unbuttons his dress uniform so he can slip it off himself and then tugs the shirt underneath over his head, all that expanse of skin all for Eddie’s taking. With no shirt hem to hold, Eddie's hand just rests uselessly on Buck’s lap, hesitant to move. Buck is the one that brings it to his own chest, palm first.

“You have Chris so I know you’re not a virgin.”

It’s such a tactless way to get Eddie to move, it gets a human snort out of him. Buck smiles at the sound. He brings Eddie’s palm across his heart –thump-thump-thump–, collarbone, carotid. By the last, Eddie is moving on his own; wrist tilted to drag across Buck’s skin. Buck doesn’t know that it isn’t the palm that werewolves use to scent.

Buck’s carotid thumps too. The sound is just too strong for Eddie not to bring his head close, licking a stripe over the other side of Buck's neck. He shivers whole-bodiedly, but still cups Eddie by the nape, holding his head –and mouth– close. Leading him on.

Eddie has been given every sign of trust he could have since Buck stepped into his room. Buck deserves his own.

Eddie licks over his dry lips, hovering over the wetness he’s left on Buck’s neck. He’s tentative despite the part of himself that’s entirely impatient. “Pants,” he croaks. Buck gets it.

Eddie doesn’t pull away from Buck and neither does Buck from him, which means he has to shuffle on the bed to get his pants off. Eddie helps just after Buck has already opened the zipper, tugging a leg down.

Off his uniform, Eddie can focus on the smell that was underneath, spread all over Buck; hours of his own sweat, a different taste to it than Eddie’s. On his tongue it’s just as heady, entirely because it’s Buck’s. When Eddie gives in to lick him all over, Buck goes down, down, down the bed, until he’s laying on his back, Eddie hanging over him.

“You’re dripping,” Buck says, chin pressed to his chest as he looks down between Eddie’s legs. Buck is too damn pink for Eddie to take his eyes off of him, but he believes the words. Eddie’s cock feels like a bottle of soda someone stuck mentos inside before shaking; it’s miles worse than when Eddie just had Buck’s image and not his actual body underneath him.

Buck reaches his hand down, careful to look at Eddie. It’s unneeded; there’s no way he would react with anything but a satisfied shiver when Buck takes him in hand.

Buck grazes his fingertips curiously where Eddie is thicker at the base, but shows incredible restraint in keeping his questions. He wraps his fingers around it instead, tight at the palm but looser –teasing– as his fingers crest. Each slide across Eddie is simultaneously all that he wants and not enough.

Buck lets one of his nails drag against the underside of Eddie’s cock, and his head thumps heavily on Buck’s shoulder, gripping the bedsheets so tightly they’ll also have to be all clawed up after.

Buck noses gently at Eddie’s taut cheek, voice so soft he almost doesn’t hear him. “Eddie.”

It’s a request and an encouragement, and Eddie gives in to rut against Buck’s hand, once, rough, and then twice, more desperate. Buck keeps his grip, and his nosing.

Buck’s hands are smaller than Eddie’s, with shorter, plumper fingers, but they’re just as calloused. It’s an amazing drag against his skin, only helped by the fact it's Buck. Eddie is marking his hand with all the pre leaking from himself, but by the end he’ll be just as claimed.

Eddie heaves as he keeps thrusting, teeth aching to snap around Buck’s shoulder; he doesn’t do it. Eddie grinds his teeth instead –tries to focus on the grinding of his cock against Buck’s hand– and squeezes his eyes forcibly enough to hurt.

It’s taken but an instant to forget how he’d been resting just moments before. He’s on fire again. All Eddie’s body knows is this, a want that’s always there, waiting and wailing beneath his skin. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t last too long, pleasure strong and sharp as it rises like a flash flood.

His vision whitens and Eddie’s body sears in flames. He just halts himself at the last moment, hips stuttering, before he can go too far and knot inside Buck’s hand. His orgasm cuts off in the middle, sputtering over Buck’s stomach as his relaxed abs flex at the feeling. Shorter like he wanted, Eddie’s come soon trickles into dejected drips from his cockhead. He’s still hard; less than before, but not depleted.

Eddie stops himself from rutting still and pulls back from Buck’s grip awkwardly, dick aching between his legs. It will go down in one moment –at least enough to try again safely– but not if Buck keeps holding him

Buck rises to his forearms, following after Eddie. “What was that?”

He zeros in where Eddie is still hard, particularly on the firm redness at his base. Eddie shakes his head wordlessly, wiping his forearm across his sweaty face. Breathing deeply, at least he can think a little more clearly now. “You know dogs?”

He’s Evan Buckley – there’s almost nothing he doesn’t know. “I don’t mean that,” he says, face red. Buck knows what a knot is, evidently – although dogs probably weren’t the canids Buck was thinking of when he learned that tidbit. “I mean– why’d you stop?”

Buck’s boxer is damp at the front, and defined enough Eddie can more or less see him beneath it. He’s tempted to just return the favor –and stop the conversation– but he can still feel a prickle across his skin, the full release he stopped himself from reaching, and that’s always too distracting. Makes Eddie vulnerable, especially when he’s not by himself – even more when it’s Buck nudging his thigh.

“Too much of a mess,” Eddie rasps in his direction.

He’s clearly thinking farther than just washing his sheets, but Buck just looks at him incredulously.

“So we use my mouth. You’re still purple – I wanna do the full job.”

It’s commendable enthusiasm, but Eddie can’t really appreciate it when he’s already trying to calm his dick down without the image of knotting Buck’s mouth. “Don’t wanna hurt you,” he finally says when he feels a little less breathless.

“You won’t.” Buck’s blind trust is frightening. He just eases off when Eddie doesn’t slack even an inch of his body, unwilling to take that risk.

Buck purses his lips, earnest despite being obviously frustrated at Eddie’s stubbornness. It’s another idea that comes into his head, leaving Buck tentative as he approaches again.

“And this instead?”

Buck drags himself right to Eddie, covering his knees with his hands slowly so Eddie has time to warm up to what he’s offering, as he lowers his mouth to the head of his cock, and only the head.

He kisses the slit before swallowing it down, but it’s just the tip that ends up resting heavily over Buck’s tongue. One of Buck’s hands drags to the pulsing ring at the base of Eddie’s cock, but he keeps his mouth away from it.

Sensitive, Eddie feels himself flinch from head to toe at the touch. Buck’s grip is strong, the pressure Eddie would need to lock onto something, but his mouth is gentle. Buck gazes up to see Eddie’s reaction, so close to one of the images he had conjured up in the start of the morning, Eddie almost feels drunk with it.

When Eddie doesn’t pull back or pushes Buck away, he dares to sink a little deeper. Eddie’s whole body thrums as Buck’s mouth slides down around himself, a bit awkward in the way of someone who’s only dated one guy before Eddie, but so cautious with it Eddie can’t read the contact as anything but tender.

Buck lets saliva gather in his mouth and a drip of it slides at the corner of his mouth as he sinks down, working his tongue and the inside of his cheeks around Eddie, never too close to his knot with the stopgap of his own hand. As Eddie’s cock throbs like a living thing, Buck lets his tongue graze a little more down, hand squeezing. Eddie closes his eyes with a groan.

Letting himself relax is the direct road for his knot to grow. It doesn’t always happen and when it can, Eddie usually stops it –he isn’t kidding when he says it’s too much of a mess– but now he lets the heat build up again, a heady tightness in his stomach, crawling down, down, down. He likes to think he has better self-control than this, but obviously Buck would be the one to destroy it so easily. He groans when Eddie’s head skirts his soft palate, and Eddie grasps his shoulders blindly as he feels the tremors follow through him like echolocation, calling Eddie to Buck Buck Buck Buck–

He pulls Buck back as his knot pops, not letting his mouth be even an inch too close, cockhead slipping out for a second and spilling freely on the bed before Buck manages to latch himself onto it again. Buck squeezes his hand just as he swallows Eddie’s spurting tip, giving the pressure and the space inside his mouth Eddie needs.

It’s like a door has opened inside himself – a load lifted out of Eddie’s back, leaving him heavy with tiredness, not effort. The strength of the –most of all– relief urges him to squeeze his eyes closed, but Eddie still finds his eyelids fluttering, wanting to look at Buck, the downright focus in his face as he rhythmically swallows everything that Eddie is giving him.

After the immediate release, the stream always turns into shorter pumps, time enough for Buck to catch his breath. The spilt come from before glistens on his chin, but Buck refuses to allow any more spills.

Eddie watches his throat working through swallows, but for once doesn’t get more worked up. He just feels something pleased inside his stomach, satisfied in the way of a predator that just came back from a hunt, belly full and ready to rest. Does that make Buck his prey?

He pulls off, eventually. As committed as Buck was, his hand is not the same exact lock that a knot needs, and it lasts shorter than usual–a relief for Buck’s jaw, if nothing else. Buck hangs it open for a moment as he pulls away, trying to catch his breath. A drop of white clings to the corner of his mouth, and Eddie thumbs it away, although what he really wants is to press it onto Buck’s skin, finish marking him up as his.

Buck looks up to Eddie, and the image of devotion lasts for just an instant before Buck is smiling smugly instead, even as he’s still out of breath. “Look at that – no mess.”

Eddie’s chest rumbles through a snort. Nevermind that Buck looks like the mess itself – cheeks pink, mouth all glossy and hair sticking to every direction. Eddie loves him so much, he feels it in his teeth.

He takes his hand off Buck’s face. It's a reflex to take his hand down, make Buck feel good too, but instead of melting into Eddie, Buck winces in an oversensitive way as he grazes his damp underwear. 

“Ah, no–don’t worry about that. I, uh. Already got that covered.”

Eddie’s eyes focus, awake enough to get stuck in that. Buck looks sheepish – and his underwear did feel really damp.

“Just like that?” Eddie rasps.

“I told you – I always have fun with you.”

Buck says the last part more quietly, somewhat abashed. Eddie doesn’t know what he did to deserve him–if he even does deserve him–but he’ll cherish that privilege.

Eddie hides his smile into Buck’s neck, although he misunderstands the sentiment. “Hey–you can’t laugh.” But it’s not laughter–not entirely, anyway. Eddie can admit he’s enough of a little shit to want to tease Buck about it, but he’s also honored –always is– at the trust and love Buck gives him.

He presses Buck onto the bed again. He didn’t get to touch Buck’s cock –yet– but he does have the entire stretch of his stomach in short reach, the extent of flushed skin that still has Eddie’s spent from way before, flaky where it has already dried and just slightly cool where it still hasn’t.

Eddie gives in to the pressure to leave Buck all marked, moved still by that satisfaction in his chest. Buck remains limp beneath him, breath only fluttering somewhat when Eddie’s hand draws across the dip of his waist and the curve of muscle over his ribs, dragging the cooled come and the perspiration gathered on his skin with it, and pressing harder when he gasps. The mix of Eddie and Buck, gathered on him like a prize, is exhilarating to see and scent. Eddie imagines it like new tattoos crossing over Buck’s skin.

He knows he’s getting hard when the cycle yet again restarts, although his eyes never unlatch from Buck, the one that actually looks at him. “O-oh – that was fast.”

Eddie can’t parse if Buck sounds more impressed or intimidated. His chest arches as Eddie runs circles over one of his pecks, flickering close to the nipple, but Eddie otherwise doesn’t move ahead.

It’s Buck that touches his hand, raising Eddie’s eyes to his flushed face. It’s hard to know if the color is all from embarrassment or the come down from, well, cumming, but Buck looks pretty –and tentative– either way.

“Uh, I still need a while. But while we’re waiting for that…”

Buck lets his words trail off, as if leaving Eddie to pick and choose. It’s true that he –and Buck– have a variety of things they can do, and so many possible results too. Buck thought Eddie recovered quickly, but it was still a longer pause than when Eddie was alone, or when he stopped himself from knotting in Buck’s hand. Knots last longer than a standard climax, but they also take longer to recover from, even one on the shorter side like Eddie just had.

Ruts were made for fucking – proper fucking. Eddie still barely went through them with a partner, arguing that it was so he didn’t get anyone else pregnant (which wasn’t a lie) but really, the prospect of just letting someone in during this time was staggering by itself.

Buck has already seen a part just now. He evidently had his fun, but Eddie still isn’t entirely enthused with the idea of having Buck sucking him dry like a capri-sun every ten minutes. It’s partly due to his own selfishness too. Eddie doesn’t know how to explain it to Buck, but, even with his mouth on Eddie, he feels too far away. Down on his legs when Eddie wants to grasp him close, fuse the two of them together.

Buck tilts his head back against the mattress, half-lidded eyes still so attentive as he looks at Eddie. He’s still holding Eddie’s hand, fidgeting with Eddie’s fingers in the always-alive Buck way. Buck’s feet were planted on the bed since he was led down, but he opens one of his legs now, letting his thigh fall; like he knows exactly what’s inside Eddie’s head. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s more kind or cruel that he’s seemingly leaving Eddie to say aloud what is that he wants.

“I don’t want–,” to hurt you, Eddie begins to repeat instead, but he’s stopped somewhere on the want, Buck already finishing the sentence in his head, and blocking it right then.

“Nuh, don’t start. I already said you won’t.” As if just the promise, said out-loud, will make it true.

It’s a romantic thought, but Eddie genuinely isn’t wrong to worry about that. Werewolves were, generally speaking, very sturdy. It was alright for them to be left aching after coupling – the hurt would go away soon enough. Buck, instead, is frighteningly human.

“We go slow,” Buck insists, head seemingly already made. He has that overachieving confidence in his voice; always ready to try, most of the time stubbornly enough to even succeed. Eddie isn’t sure confidence is what it takes here though, but Buck at least is somewhat aware of this. “You can stretch me.”

It’s impressive how Eddie’s ears always manage to hear Buck’s words as simultaneously casual and still so earnestly romantic. Buck is already arched off to the side, reaching to one of Eddie’s bedside tables –where, he already knows, Eddie keeps a bottle of lube– and he scrambles messily through the drawer until he has it in hand.

Even making a warzone of Eddie’s belongings, Buck manages to look charming; even barging through Eddie’s defenses and making himself at home past them. A curl fallen over his forehead –the rest plastered to his face– he turns back to Eddie with promise, holding the lube, and Eddie wants to kiss his cheek and simultaneously bite onto it.

“We can make a game out of it.” Was Buck always so playful with all his previous partners? Eddie believes so – can imagine it and get possessive at the mere thought, as astounded as he is that he’s the one that gets to have this now. “You can try to get me hard again – or I can prep while you watch.”

It’s true that Buck always has fun with Eddie – even with his boxers pathetically wet and painted all over like a Pollock piece, he’s positively enthusiastic, ratting ideas off. Buck heaves out a big breath as Eddie just falls onto him, latching himself to his neck again. Buck is just as ready to hug an arm across Eddie’s shoulder, arching into his touch. “O-or we can do this!”

Every mark Eddie leaves in Buck’s neck, he wants it to be a bite instead. Buck has lived a life of physical labor, and doesn’t have a delicate skin in any metric, but to Eddie’s teeth he’s still too soft; he doesn’t want to take the risk. It’s a hard focus to take the kisses he wants, but no further.

Buck writhes under him, managing to take off his underwear without Eddie’s notice. He just takes in attention the new, freed shape beneath himself, hot and still a bit soft, but giving an admirable twitch as Eddie’s blunt canines drag through Buck’s neck.

Buck raises his hips, dragging himself against Eddie, but only accidentally. “Oh–shit.” He certainly doesn’t mind the contact –Eddie groans himself, a bit of a growl in it too– but his eyes are squeezed into focus when Eddie looks at him, not pleasure. He’s reaching down to his own rim, Eddie recognizes.

He heaves one of Buck’s legs under his hand, opening up. Buck seemingly expects Eddie to watch him, and actually yelps when Eddie drags himself down instead, nose going to Buck’s curly pubes.

“Oh–ah!” Buck smells good enough here to serve as a distraction, but Eddie pulls his attention to reach his tongue down right where Buck’s fingers are still only hovering over his hole, stopped in their path. “Ok, t-that’s–that’s great too.”

Beneath Eddie, Buck breathes deeply when the blunt surface of his tongue laps across his furl, and more deeply still when the tip pushes inside, nudging it open. Buck’s air leaves him in stutters as Eddie reaches as deeply as he immediately can.

Eddie pulls back, looking up, and sees Buck’s squeezed eyes, the way his chin digs almost painfully into his chest, the tight coil of his body. His cock looks fatter over the softness of his stomach.

Buck opens his eyes with a shaky exhale. His lubed fingers, abandoned by his rim, just grip onto his own flesh instead. “‘s good,” Buck reassures, correctly guessing that’s what Eddie wants to know.

He ducks down again, taking Buck’s fingers with him this time. They leave Buck’s skin glistening where Eddie drags them and slip inside Buck with just a little resistance. Buck doesn’t move his fingers himself –although that might just be from being overwhelmed again– so Eddie controls them as he wishes, as if they were his own. From this position, they can’t reach very deeply, but, together, they’re a thick enough intrusion on their own, already plenty of help.

Soon enough, Eddie adds his tongue inside again, nudging past the plushness of Buck’s fingers. Despite how heavily he’s already breathing, Buck keeps himself relaxed, as little resistance as he can offer Eddie. His hole still twitches, a quick pressure around Eddie, and just that –and the suggestion of it happening again– is enough to leave Eddie feeling drunk twice over.

He ruts against the bed, unable not to do so. His cock weeps in abandonment, throbbing hard enough to genuinely hurt. The bed still fails to be anything but an insufficient distraction when Eddie is looking right at where he could be driving into instead. Make him ready, Eddie keeps repeating in his head, not letting naked instinct spur him on, even as it’s biting at his heels, more strongly every time Buck sighs or groans. Buck might be doing this for him –and making his own fun too– but it isn’t written in Eddie’s person to let it be a miserable experience for him.

Buck is still his own impatient sort of person though. “Okay, okay,” he breathes, pushing his fingers against Eddie’s hand, pulling them back and him away. The room feels like summer; a line of sweat runs down the dip of Buck’s eyebrow when Eddie looks up, Buck’s birthmark pomegranate red, and his sweat slips onto his dark-looking eyelashes as he blinks blearily at Eddie. “‘m ready, ‘s alright, come on.”

The urging is just as much for Eddie’s sake. He’s breathing heavily, limbs stiff and aching. He can’t be sure Buck is as ready as he promises, but Eddie’s head is getting too loud to call that into question.

He rises over Buck, crowding over him as Buck slips his hands behind Eddie’s shoulders, grabbing onto him. Eddie lets his cock hang a little beneath Buck’s own, by now also burning red, curled over Buck’s leg and twitching when Eddie touches it gingerly to move it a little more out of the way. Eddie is fever focused in Buck’s hole, heaving Buck’s legs so their hips can slot better together. Just a nudge of Eddie’s head against Buck’s rim makes his mouth water like he’s been walking in the desert.

Eddie drives in, less gently than he would want, but still more than his body aches for. It still strangles a breath out of Buck – even as he keeps his body relaxed. He tries to ease his own position, making them settle better together, partly to distract himself, Eddie knows. Buck hands grip Eddie tightly, short nails digging into his flesh. Eddie slots his head right beside Buck’s and latches his teeth onto a mouthful of the bedsheets, pretending that’s the softness he’d rather be biting.

Buck exhales at the first slightest of movements. Even biting into the bed, Eddie opens his eyes just to look at him – the profile-view of his face, angled back, the open arc of his mouth, the curl in his brow, sensitive to every little nudge of Eddie’s hips. Eddie drives further into him, impossible not to when he’s right over Buck, but even then, half his focus is on watching Buck react. Eddie is the one making him look like this. Buck allowed him to do that. Buck is his.

Eddie presses the side of his head against Buck’s, huffing into the sheets. A drag of Eddie’s cock makes Buck shiver as strongly as an outright flinch, and one his hands scramble up, grabbing onto Eddie’s nape. He doesn’t grip Eddie’s hair, longer and looser now that it is slick with sweat, but dig his fingers in, like he’ll spin too far off orbit if he doesn’t.

Buck spills some version of right there, right there, right there as Eddie keeps thrusting, words more bitten off and fragile as it goes on. He’s always been a talker –a yapper– and any strong emotion makes Buck’s stutter act up, but Eddie never heard him like this, not outside of moments of sheer desperation. Eddie far prefers this version and the way it’s him that’s causing Buck’s breathlessness. Even if he barely understands him by the end.

For Eddie, coming is like a water balloon that fills until it explodes. His muscles lock and then release, and he follows right with them. A knot feels stranger, in a way he can’t explain and very well couldn’t just go to another werewolf with the same apparel as him and ask what it feels like for them. He learned to know when it’s building up for necessity, but the way he feels his cock throb, like a physical pressure that swells and swells, is usually stronger than an orgasm. Now that he doesn’t actually need to stop or mitigate it, and has the exact heat and pressure that his knot needs, Eddie feels like an entire choir that finally managed to hit and hold a note.

He digs his head further against Buck’s, as conscious of the way his knot is fattening as of Buck’s reaction, body tensing around Eddie with a cut-off gasp. But he’s not pushing Eddie away, but grabbing even more tightly to him. Buck hides his own face against Eddie’s neck, raspy ah-ah-ahs fluttering by his ringing ears, right until Eddie’s knot pops and locks – and he can’t pay attention to anything else beside the sheer satisfaction rushing across him.

When Eddie opens his eyes –and manages to see anything past static– he’s distantly aware that the entire weight of his body is on top of Buck. He doesn’t seem to mind. Buck’s arms are still a vice around Eddie, his hand pressing against Eddie’s nape. Buck’s breath sounds no less heavy, but now it’s with an undercurrent of tiredness.

Eddie unlatches his teeth from the bedding and Buck’s head moves with the movement. He lets Eddie’s hair go so he can properly look at him.

“Hey.”

Buck looks no less pink than he did before, but there’s a sheen to his eyes that Eddie guesses must have also covered his own. Even moving their heads nudged their bodies around, sending Eddie’s knot in an unyielding tug, and Buck shivers through the aftershocks.

Eddie is still coming and will continue to for—he doesn’t even know. He’s only ever done this with another person three or four times, and none of them were Buck. He kind of throws a wrench to Eddie’s numbers.

“Hi,” Eddie rasps back, tongue thick and dry. The bedsheets probably didn’t help with the taste. Eddie smacks his lips leisurely, laying his head on Buck’s shoulder.

“How’s the fever?” Buck asks, like he’s the paramedic, and Eddie just puts his forehead forward for Buck to feel it firsthand. “Sex-hot but not flu-hot. That’s probably a good sign, right?”

What a scientist. “What’d Google say?” How did Eddie ever think he’d get to hide in his bedroom like last year when he’s got Buck? Of course he’d come with soup and articles read ahead of time, always eager to help and even more to please. It’s hard for Eddie to still feel a tug of guilt in his stomach at being his source of attention now –for having accepted it too– when, right against Buck, he just feels his chest rise with a snort, Buck’s hand mindlessly playing with the hair on Eddie’s nape.

“You’re the werewolf.”

“‘m not good a source.”

Eddie lets his head fall back onto Buck’s shoulder, cheek squished. He wants to yawl and close his eyes, the undercurrent of pleasure running through him leaving him heavy and peaceful. It’s a feeling hard to come by.

Buck smiles endearly at him. He doesn't look that different –maybe just a bit more sensitive, cheeks flushed– but that smugness comes back again, made a tad softer. “I guess this was good?”

“Hm.”

“I feel like I’m with drunk-Eddie. I’m gonna assume that was a good sign.”

“Sure.” Eddie digs his nose onto Buck’s collarbone, content to only feel the scent of himself. “Did I hurt you?”

“Of course you didn’t. I’m just, ah– sore. Crossfit’s worse.”

On any other occasion, Eddie would banter right back, but now he just answers honestly with, “That’s good,” sighing with relief.

With his eyes closed, he can’t see Buck’s reaction, but his fingers turn achingly gentle against Eddie’s hair.

“Hey. I said that wasn’t gonna happen.” Buck’s voice lowers into something feather-soft too; the tone he used with Chris when he was little and sad, and the voice he used just last week with his nephew, when Maddie brought him to the firehouse but he got scared by the ambulance’s sirens. “You’d never hurt me.”

Eddie hums non-committably; he can’t make this promise, when it may very well kill him if he ever breaks it. Eddie has found that he can hurt people plenty without intention. Buck, mercifully, doesn’t force the point on him. He must realize that locked together right after sex is probably not the best place.

He still wipes Eddie’s hair back from his face, insisting, “Maybe after today you’ll believe in that a bit more,” in a whisper. Eddie opens his eyes, but by then Buck’s already moving in, just the sight of his chin as he presses his lips to Eddie’s forehead.

The space between Eddie and Buck is freshly wet, damp with their combined perspiration, but Buck’s own release – having seemingly followed not too late after Eddie’s. He hadn’t needed to be touched, the same easy, eager satisfaction as when he was still locked away in his boxers.

It might be hard for Eddie to see how Buck can enjoy himself so easily –how he can enjoy himself with Eddie– but maybe it’s not that hard a question. Eddie said it to himself, only a few hours ago; when he was still pretending he wanted to spend this day (and the ones to follow) alone. Buck is a person as intense as Eddie – just as ravenous, in his own way, even if his teeth are blunt in the human way.

Buck has always wanted to be wanted. Maybe what reads to Eddie as unbecoming hunger when it comes out of himself to Buck just feels like finally being chosen, and with the exact excess Buck always felt bereft of.

As it turns out, it takes thirty minutes for Eddie’s knot to go down. He and Buck spend it dozing and then, right after, having a quickie in the shower, defeating the purpose of trying to clean themselves.

Eddie’s hunger ebbs and flows but he generally feels better than this morning. The need in him, slightly more fed, can just as easily be answered with breathing in Buck’s neck or holding him close, enveloped in Eddie’s arms and scent.

While that’s true, Buck rushes to get Eddie to down two cups of water and Johnson’s gatorade, bringing back a packet of animal crackers and whole cereal for them to snack on the den that Eddie’s bed has become.

They latch beside each other, neither a novelty to having sex or becoming boyfriends. Buck enjoys it while Eddie doesn’t feel like a horny dog to show him the awkward texts –hilarious to Buck– that he received after leaving work to go to his house, when everyone more or less knew Eddie had just started his rut.

Chimney’s reads as a very responsible captain –Take care of yourselves, don’t bother coming to work tomorrow!-- in spite of the fact he most certainly has gossiped about it with Maddie as soon as he got off from work. Hen just sent Buck five wincing emojis (😬😬😬😬😬).

“If you’re having this much fun I’m just gonna tell ‘em to keep all the teasing we’re going to find on Thursday to you.”

“Knock yourself out,” Buck shrugs, still grinning. “I don’t mind being made fun of half as much if it’s over you.”

It’s such a sweet thing to say, even as Buck keeps looking at his text history, Eddie has to watch him for a moment, so full of love he aches. He has to agree with Buck – the ache isn’t as bothersome when it’s about Buck.

Buck taps away at his phone, going on to show Eddie the pages he read before coming here, as if fact-checking them, or presenting Eddie with stuff he didn’t think of first himself. “And we can call Chris before bedtime so you don’t miss him too bad, and mark up the house a little bit. Next time we can do it on the couch too –over a sheet!-- so you don’t miss Jeopardy. Ah – remember me to fill up some water bottles.”

Eddie would be content to listen to Buck for one consecutive year, but he still needs to say this outloud. “Hey. You know, hm. How much this…how much I appreciate this. Right?”

Eddie knows it might not show, when half the time he’s trying to keep Buck an inch away – scared to hurt or frighten him.

Buck just nods, not teasing him for once. He lets go of his phone to hold one of Eddie’s hands instead, pressing his lips to his knuckles. “I know.”

They’ve been sitting against the headboard, Buck leaning against Eddie’s chest with one of Eddie’s arms wrapped over his shoulders, and Buck turns around in the hold to meet face-to-face as Eddie nods.

“I a-appreciate this too. I like seeing you this way. It’s what, uh, I hadn’t got to know yet.”

Eddie shakes his head, although he doesn’t really have the words to explain to Buck that none of his ex-girlfriends actually saw him like this – exactly like this. The 34-year old Eddie, widowed and divorced at once, broken up enough times to make a less-than-savory reputation, but still in bed with Buck, someone willing not only to try, but to keep pestering Eddie when he’s otherwise uncertain to show his belly. Shannon might have known Eddie when he was bright-eyed, but it feels just as important for Buck to meet him like this – more uncertain and with more to lose.

He kisses Buck’s hand back instead. Eddie has always been better with actions – it seems fitting to find someone just as good in understanding them.

Buck melts into Eddie, sighing contently, and then twitches, feeling Eddie’s cock twinge right by his hip. His head perks up again as he looks at it, and then Eddie’s face. Buck doesn’t pull his hand from Eddie’s hold and neither does Eddie let it go, content to just linger in the moment a little more.

“Can we try doing it in my mouth again?”

Eddie can’t exactly count the hottest things he’s ever seen when Buck keeps hitting it right out of the park, but when he closes his eyes, the image of Buck peering up from under his lashes as Eddie cock steadily comes in his mouth would come right up there. It makes him throb even more.

But Eddie can’t say he’s still entirely devoid of the same worries as before. As tight as Buck’s hole was –and how sore he is going to be– at least that’s a muscle. He doesn’t want to risk too much when Buck’s mouth and primary airway are involved.

But Buck is looking at him, expectant as ever, and has trusted Eddie right here – he wants Buck to feel trusted too.

“We can work up to it,” Eddie says, still unsurely. Buck perks up with a neat smile. “Until we make sure it’s not going to hurt.”

Buck kisses the side of his mouth, nudging his cheek against Eddie’s stubble as pleasantly as he first felt it.

“Alright with me.”