On Sunday, they lazed around the house more like cats than wolves. It might just have been the longest time that Quinn had been able to clear his mind since Remi arrived. Even thoughts of when he would be leaving didn’t manage to penetrate his zen. That night they got to bed on time.
But Quinn was awoken suddenly. The fizzle of a bond tickling the back of his skull for a moment before he was fully conscious. There was no sun filtering in through his curtains, no alarm blaring, no bumps in the night. A feeling, deep in his gut, urged him up. Something was wrong, and not with him. He climbed free of his duvet and stumbled out into the hallway, pyjama shorts bunched at the tops of his thighs.
Flutters around the edge of the bond, fear and hurt. Part of the pack calling him without intent.
Soft cries were muffled by Remi’s bedroom door. Quinn followed the sound, keeping his barefooted steps as light as possible and pressing his ear to the door. The sad sniffling sounds continued and Quinn was compelled to knock.
The sobs stopped. Quinn waited on the other side.
“Remi?” he called gently through the door.
“Yes, Alpha?” A watery reply.
“Can I come in?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
A crown of black flicks stuck up around Remi’s head, adding a few inches to his swollen face. His cheeks were mottled red and tear-streaked. The white duvet was a cocoon around him with only his small round head poking out of the top. Quinn wondered if Remi had been hiding within it until he requested entrance.
“What’s wrong, Remi?” Quinn whispered. He crept to the bed and crouched at the edge with his hands resting on the sheets.
“I’m sorry, Alpha. I had a scary dream.”
“You don’t need to be sorry for that. Do you want to talk about it?”
Their voices remained low as though there were anyone near enough to hear them.
Remi sniffed. “No, thank you, Alpha.”
“Okay.” Quinn nodded with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Although with the light from his bedroom at his back he probably looked more like a super villain. “I’ll let you rest-”
“Don’t go!” Remi yelped, falling out of his cocoon like lava from a volcano. Small hands stretched out for Quinn’s legs, struggling to get a hold around muscle wider than Remi’s waist.
“You want me to stay?”
Shiny black eyes pleaded up at him. “I’ll feel less scared with you here.”
“I can’t stay all night, though, I have work in the morning.”
The pout probably wasn’t intended to manipulate Quinn’s heart into mush, but it did.
“Come to my room. This bed is too small for me if we’re both going to squeeze in.”
“Yes, Alpha!” Remi sang, hands still struggling to cling to Quinn’s leg.
Quinn bent down and pulled Remi up by the forearm until he stood atop the mattress. The top of his flicking hair still didn’t reach Quinn’s chin. He clutched his hands around Quinn’s wrist, refusing to relinquish physical contact. It didn’t seem worth the fight to pry him off, so Quinn looped his other arm under Remi’s butt and lifted him from the bed. In Quinn’s bedroom, he plopped him back onto white sheets. Remi crumpled onto his side immediately, curled up against a pillow, pulling Quinn’s hand down with him.
Quinn climbed under the duvet at his side, flicked off the lamp on his side table, and tucked them both in one-handed. Remi remained conjoined to the other. Settled in, Quinn released a pent-up sigh as a long and low breath.
“I dreamed of alpha,” Remi mumbled against his arm.
Quinn blinked. Alpha as in him? Scary? A fidgeting overtook him, wringing his hands under the covers as he tried to work out what to reply.
“My old alpha,” Remi clarified through a barely restrained yawn.
“Oh.” Quinn asked against his better judgement, “was he yelling at you?”
Remi made a non-committal noise.
“Do you miss him?” It filled him with mortification to even voice the question. But regardless of his old alpha being loud or scary… grief was grief. Quinn had no memories of his parents, but he still felt the loss of them. Especially at night.
Gooey lashes blinked up at him, slowing in their opening and closing until they remained shut, where they rested against blotchy cheeks. Quinn desperately wanted to run his knuckles over the skin. It looked softer than velvet, plush and puffed.
Deep breaths brushed the skin of Quinn’s forearm and the body against him sunk close. Quinn was envious. With an omega curled up against him, triggering a plethora of awful primal urges in all kinds of organs, he had to simply resign himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be getting a wink more sleep tonight.
Ridiculous wolf hormones or pheromones or some other stupid moans. A voice in his head scolded him instantly: do not think about moans. Especially not Remi’s.
Quinn’s entire body ran stiff even as the admonishing thought passed through his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists.
Not Remi moaning.
Not Remi writhing.
Not Remi clinging to him.
Tiny hands at his arm quivered, the ghost of a flex. Something rumbled in Quinn’s chest and he winced. Stupid alpha instincts. None of this was real attraction. There was a man in close proximity and he hadn’t gotten laid since he left his pack. His body was craving intimacy, and his genetic code called out for what it viewed as the most breedable member of any pack: the omega.
The humans would call this caveman behaviour.
Even though there was no way for someone to deduce his desperation, Quinn burned with humiliation anyway. A feeling of exposure, bared naked before the world in his torturous compulsions. Completely out of his control. He pried his eyes open, knowing it would lead to nothing good. Peeking down at Remi’s sleeping form was definitely a bad idea. He did it anyway.
Quinn wasn’t one for sweet foods, but Remi’s peachy skin brought a watering sensation to his mouth. Instead of bringing his teeth to Remi’s sweetness, he freed the hand that wasn’t trapped between them. Along the curved bridge of Remi’s nose Quinn trailed the tip of his pinky finger. Feathery eyebrows tickled the grooves of Quinn’s fingerprint. He dipped into the crease below his bottom lip and over the mound of his chin. When his finger reached the underside of Remi’s jaw, he could feel the slow beat of blood pulsing under velveteen skin.
Quinn choked on a breath and his finger shook as he fought to retract it. He forced the hand back under the covers and clenched it at his side.
With every ounce of willpower left in his weary body, he managed to keep his hands to himself until the sun rose and his alarm rang. A fluffy head of black hair jerked up at the noise and Remi’s disorientation was plain on his face. He rolled out of the bed without a word and tottered to his own room, assumedly to get ready for the day. Quinn remained stiff in the bed for a few moments, gathering the energy to drag himself up.
Instead of his morning meditation, Quinn used the time for morning masturbation in the shower. The concentration it took to keep Remi from the fantasies behind his eyelids almost dried up his orgasm despite the hot spray.
The release didn’t come paired with relief. Instead, Quinn’s exhaustion seemed to double. There was only one solace he could take on this chilly Monday morning: he was working from home. A slightly more relaxed day sat ahead of him than having to feign energy and cordiality in the office.
But in his home was Remi. The object of his affection. No. Quinn shook his head under the jets of water and scrubbed his hands over his face. The object of his asinine alpha appetite, he corrected.
Remi was sweet and lovely and kind, but Quinn’s attraction was biological and beyond intelligent reasoning. All that could be done to reign it in was practice self-discipline. He had lived amongst humans for years with his wolf form constrained. It wasn’t easy, but he was stubborn, and he would not allow himself to be ruled by doggy desires.
As Quinn set up his work station for the day at the dining table, Remi made himself comfortable on the sofa and promptly fell into a light snooze.
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