Lucius dreams of that which he had all but forgotten, the scent of the forest rich around him and turf digging beneath his claws as muscles bunch and release like coils, always running in his dreams, running for the hunt, for the pure joy of it. Lucius remembers freedom.

Then he wakes.

He is coiled up inside this place, this box, stifled by Peter's human stench. He is choked by hatred and need, the need to be free, to run, to burst out of this skin with muscles bunching, loosed into the forest and the wild once more.

Lucius waits. He smolders within and he knows Peter can see it, sense it, taste his hatred for this place, for Peter, even as he pulls the desire thrumming from his body, rolling that and the taste of Lucius' hate along his tongue.

He wakes now and it is three days after the receding of the full moon; he is curled up in a corner of the apartment. Lucius tenses. It has been nearly five days since Peter left; a business trip, a human obligation. Now he is back and the apartment reeks of different smells, subtle and seething. Peter is back, but all is not right with his world.

Something has happened. Something has wounded him.

Lucius scents the salt-tang of blood. Peter bleeds, unbound, and it exults and terrifies him in equal measure. It isn't like Peter, this sick smell of defeat hovering, warning that Peter is giving in to something dark and internal and entirely un-Peter-like. There is a touch of apathy in the air, a deathly smell of defeat.

The Peter that Lucius knows is conscientious, he does what he is "supposed" to do, whatever that is, he does not stay home from work without reason, he does not stay abed without eating, dressing, bathing. He does not stink of defeat.

It's not Saturday or Sunday, but Peter is here.

Lucius is afraid and the fear makes him angry, rising scent of crushed cinnamon, cracked pepper on the air, he does not care if Peter smells it. He would rouse him from this paralyzing thing that has taken hold of him with his anger because it is the only weapon Lucius knows to wield.

He seeks him out, stands at the end of the bed, glowers at the shapeless figure of Peter trapped beneath the bedsheet and suffocating though not from want of air. Lucius tests him, climbs onto the bed, crawls over Peter's muscled legs, skulking, eyeing him from the edge of peripheral vision. Peter's face is neutral, shuttered. For once Lucius feels powerful, in control. He feels he could conquer by this act alone, sitting on him, provoking response.

Peter tips his head back and his eyes are dull, incurious, Lucius could be but another fixture of the furnishings of the apartment.

"You stink," Lucius begins, sitting across his thighs, verbally prodding him. The Peter he knows will smack him down in an instant, reassert his dominance, then that *look* would cross his face, that longing, senses telling Lucius that Peter only wanted him to give in, to expose his throat willing. Never.

A faint shadow of a smile crossed Peter's face, humorless. "Excuse me for living."

Somehow, that answer makes Lucius yet more angry. Clothed, Lucius straddles his thighs. It is, he thinks, a position Peter would not allow were he feeling well. "What have you done?" He investigates, finds the source of the hurt, locates Peter's hand and notes fingers rimmed in red.

He hisses as he pries Peter's fingers open, raw blisters weeping blood down his palm. The metallic answering tang of saliva springs to his mouth, he wants to taste it, lick Peter's palm clean. "This is..."

Silver wounds, rubbed raw.

Peter looks away. It was the full moon, I was away... Lucius knows he gets a little crazy on the full moon. He remembers. He remembers the last time, sizzle of silver against soft flesh, slither of the chain as he hurls it beyond the balcony. He remembers. But duty calls for Peter and it doesn't matter if he's going to go crazy, sometimes Peter doesn't have the excuses not to answer. He went away, and Lucius stayed, and the full belly of the moon made its dash across the sky with Peter far from here.

"Don't," Peter says flatly.

"You did this to yourself," Lucius replies with a sneer. He could lap up the blood of his alpha, take him in, win that way.

No. No. He wants Peter to be sound when he defeats him. This thought makes its way through his head though Lucius knows without thinking that on some level, he has already accepted the fact that he will never win a dominance play. Alpha, he has accepted. This is my alpha. If he ever allows himself to realize this, something might change.

"Go away," Peter tells him. There's no force behind it.

What will make Peter whole?

Why should he care? Peter wants him, Lucius knows, wants something more than sex, wants beyond the dimension of things he can take. Lucius places his hands to either side of Peter's face, thinking for an instant he could squeeze this human face and turn it to ruin. Right now he might even let him. The thought disgusts him.

"What are you doing?" Peter demands, a glimmer of anger surfacing, as if he scents that thought rising from Lucius' pores.

He has no answers, for himself or Peter.

"I didn't want this," Lucius tells him. And it is true, and that look crosses Peter's face, that horrible human wanting, and it is mixed with the scent of despair and defeat and he can't stand it anymore. Lucius leans in and kisses him to erase that look from his own vision, from Peter's face, from being.

He did not want this, and his feelings of hatred and passion were tangled up inside so intensely Lucius is surprised on occasion that his own guts don't strangle him. But he understands the language of desire and he is learning, perhaps, that there might be one person in this world who won't betray him.

Perhaps.

This is the first time he has done this with Peter and he knows by the way Peter responds hungrily, frantically, slick blood of his palm wet against Lucius' upper arm as he seizes him to reel him in closer.

Lucius kisses him, raw, powerful, like an appetizer to sex and dominant for this moment because something in Peter will let him for this moment alone. Let him, he entertains no illusions; he knows in a heartbeat he could be rolled. But for this illusion of power, there might be no kiss, none of this heat radiating between them, Peter growing quietly desperate beneath him.

Lucius proves that he remembers how to kiss.

Hands grip at him, hands are tight on his reedy arms, forcing space between their bodies. Peter's mouth is swollen and he breathes, looking up at Lucius, something shuttered and unreadable moving behind his eyes. The Peter that Lucius knows wears his emotions on the outside. He does not like this Peter, even more than he hated the Peter he knows, and his anger rises in a choking tide.

"Where were you?" Lucius demands of him, and he is not asking after details of a business trip he cares nothing for.

Now he gets a whiff of anger, bitter like the dregs of coffee as Peter's eyes turn flat.

"There was a pack," Peter spits at him, releasing his arms, closing his fist over the wound that had broken open on his palm. "On the night of the full moon, there was a pack outside. I heard them."

Bitterness rank enough to raise the hackles on Lucius' neck fills the air. He has imagined this, the acrid scent of defeat rising off Peter; he hates this, sitting here, charged air between them, confronted with that which is not like Peter, not like him at all.

Lucius lifts a hand to scrub at his upper arm, at the blood, Peter's blood, that marks him. "And you burned yourself with silver, again and again, keeping yourself inside," Lucius says softly, words falling from his tongue like pebbles, hard and discrete. This time, he knows why, can almost approve the human logic keeping the wolf inside while the others howled under the moon. And he hates Peter again, sudden and brief, a spurt of burning balefire in the night there and gone. Sometimes he feels as if he cannot endure it, this two-person pack, but then he knows if he left he would be killed by any other and he hates Peter for it even more, being the only wolf in the world he can cleave to. A crossbreed.

And you're a crossbreed's bitch.

Anger rises him up from the bed, necessity keeps him moving. If Peter's bloody hand touches him again, he thinks, he may bite it and so he'll do what he should do, what Peter would order him to do, instead of his instinct's promptings. He fetches bandages and salve and binds Peter's hand, he watches Peter through narrowed eyes, peripheral vision again.

"Go away," Peter says again, when he is done and Lucius has let the first aid trimmings fall to the floor.

Lucius sneers. "Why should I?" You can't make me, he bites down on the outright defiance. Almost, Lucius would challenge him. Almost, but Lucius acknowledges -- on a conscious level, even -- that that is not the change he wants.

It is a diluted form of challenge that makes Lucius slide down the length of Peter's body, peel back the sheet and ignore Peter's sudden, startling growl, menacing enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck again. He growls, but he makes no movement to stop Lucius as he gravitates to Peter's cock, heavy between his thighs and flaccid on its nest of crisp, brown curls.

This is a form of power too, the thought occurs to Lucius abruptly, making Peter, the alpha, want him with such a hungering look. And maybe there is no part of Lucius that has to bend, after all, and excitement takes him, the same kind of swooping feeling that throttles him when Peter tells him to beg. This is a different brand of freedom.

Peter says nothing, but his lip is peeled back from his teeth and he seems to scent something that puts a frightening look on his face. Desire is filling the air, thick enough to constitute a layer between them, bridging their bodies.

Lucius realizes he is angry again before he ducks his head, not at himself as perhaps he should be but Peter because somehow, Peter is making him do this. Making him submit, though he has not compelled with word or gesture. No, it is more subtle than that, and Lucius knows, and he is furious.

He slides Peter's cock into his mouth to the root, working him with soft suction, plying lips and hand and friction, moist, easing him back and forth until he stiffens, thigh tense against Lucius' braced hand. Lucius' eyes are slitted, looking up the length of Peter's muscle-ridged body, riveted on the contorted expression that sweeps over his face as he fills Lucius' mouth with his hardening length.

Peter's hand, clenched again, slides into his hair, the rough of bandage burring against softer strands.

A rattling growl rumbles through Lucius, rolling over the cock on his tongue, making Peter shiver, his hips juddering up into the pace Lucius sets. He doesn't want Peter's permission, tacit or not. He is lapping at Peter's flesh now in long slow strokes, wet heat of his tongue teasing along the length of swollen fat cock, tasting Peter, breathing in Peter and it is so acute and painful he wonders if it is anger he feels, after all.

The thought vanishes in the moment as Lucius rolls the taste of sex on his tongue, sex and Peter, working his cock back into the constrictive warmth of his throat. His eyes tear, lull closed as Peter cants his hips up into the sway of Lucius' mouth, filling him. For a brief moment they move in perfect harmony.

Then Peter's hips thrust, slamming his sex into Lucius with force, and Lucius begins to claw at Peter's thighs with both hands, wanting him to hurt even as he comes.

They tear into one another, more blistering than silver, savage as the wolves they are, locked in an unbroken circle because Lucius cannot escape and Peter will never let him. So they make one another bleed body and soul, wounds that never heal cleanly, and Lucius thinks ultimately he is beginning to tire, give in, and it makes him fight even harder.

He swallows the taste of Peter down more out of habit than lack of choice. Peter's hands are buried in his hair and he is still making those low growling noises as he finishes, begins to soften. Abruptly, he pulls away and leaves Lucius alone on his half of the bed.

Separate, sitting apart with thighs splayed, Lucius considers his own body's needs and decides he is too lazy to pull pleasure from himself after working so hard. He lays down on the bed and knows by the tension in Peter's body that right now, his presence discomfits him, and so Lucius cleaves the distance between them and spreads himself against the broad planes of Peter's back, not cuddling, not something so fucking human, but touching. Because Peter does not precisely want it.

He touches himself, but not for completion. Eventually his erection subsides.

Peter's head is tucked into his arm, he hides his face, his body is wracked with soft shudders, making Lucius press against him, frowning, because he can scent the tang of salt and despair but Peter is not crying, not crying. He is gulping air and whispering "Why? Why?" Wanting answers. From Lucius. From the world.

Lucius has no answers for him. He lays there, curled against Peter's back, face pressed to his skin and thinking only that Peter has gotten inside and he hates it, hates the scent on his skin always, he is lost inside Peter's world.

"Alpha," Lucius murmurs, it is his only reply. Yours, he could say instead, if his lips would ever shape the words.

You are the alpha, and I...I am...

They shift. Peter makes their bodies fit like puzzle pieces, something Lucius used to hate but has gotten used to. There are too many things to hate, he thinks; he is spreading thin over it all and has nothing left for the things that don't matter so much.

Yours.

A bandaged hand smoothes over the tangled mess of his black hair and Lucius does not know if Peter can read the words, pluck them from the silence between them, but that terrible tension is gone from his body.

Lucius nuzzles his face into Peter's armpit and sings them both to sleep. Almost, he can speak the weight of the truth to bind them together. Almost.

Instead he gives Peter what he can for now: his body, and the song.

+end+