Chapter Text
You’re well aware that you’re wounded; guts and blood spilling out on the floor as you nurse a skull that’s so broken anything less than an alpha would still be laying on that cool, unmoving escalator. You know that you need help. You need fucking help.
But hell, you’ve always known this but your needs have also never really mattered so you just push the agonizing pain to the side and clamber after the other wounded alpha as he tries to escape. You manage to track him out of the building and a block away from your body starts to shut down from the sheer stress.
It’s cold outside and your shirt is ripped and you’re so weak that the breeze feels like ice against the ripped open portions of your chest. You need help. Your head aches and pounds and writhes and you can’t summon the strength to stay sane anything, falling back into something a little less conscious and little more primal as your legs begin to move by their lonesome, tracking something of a different kind.
You may have passed out a few times in pursuit. A couple at most, but the side of that trash can had felt solid enough and the passing caterwauling of that stupid cat woke you up within a couple of minutes. You growl low enough that it scrams. Gritting your teeth you rise and stagger forward, again and again. You repeat this process a couple more times, with a couple more interruptions.
It’s hard not to believe you’re walking, that you’re not still on that frozen escalator waiting for something a little more peaceful than the sudden shuffle beside you that signaled the alpha you’d nearly killed yourself getting rid of wasn’t as rid of as you’d liked. You refuse to admit it, even know, when a low rumble builds slower and slower beneath your skin, that some part of you had hoped that this had finally been it. That all this fucking stress and warmongering had been over. At least for you.
You don’t realize you’ve stopped moving until something hot and desperate curls under your skin, making your eyes open wider to see her walking towards her car, her presence devoid of bitter sorrow or restless cruelty. It’s refreshing, you realize, even as you start to reach out for her to somehow steal it away.
Blood smears on her window.
It’s surprisingly apt.
The English teacher that she is, you hope she understands that this is a warning as much as it is a cry for help. Your head swims as the full extent of your wounds hits you. Her image stays clear. The curling need beneath your skin and blood and teeth screams as she steps out from the car and you’re struck with the entire feeling of her, the smell and sight and god please the touch, please—
You fall. She follows. You think in some vague way that this means something.
But then she’s looking down at you, eyes wide and light and concerned and your only thought is ruining them, how many places on her skin you can kiss and bite and scar until those eyes went dark with wanting and she shook with something a little different than fear—
You realize suddenly, before you black you, that this may not have been such a good idea.
.
.
.
Memory hazes from that point onward.
But you can feel her arms under your shoulder as she drags you to the backseat of the car, can feel the rumble as it starts and screams and you growl a little at the sudden gasoline rush that taints her scent, can hear her start and smell her fear, can feel your mouth moving, a simple ‘sorry just take me to—‘ and you can’t finish cause agonizing pain is hardly the best motivator no matter what Peter thought, can see through feverish gaze her stop the car and bite her lip, can feel all too well the sudden urge to move and stretch and chase the tongue that darts out from her mouth to lick her dry and chapped lips, can—
The car stops. She unbuckles your seatbelt as you lay silent still in the back. When she moves you last, she presses a hand to your neck to check for something. A pulse maybe. You curl into it, clutching the appendage like a lifeline, pressing yourself against her wrist to check for life of your own, smelling the subtle undertones of fear-concern-confusion-her-her-her-her and brushing your lips teasingly across her skin like you’re scared it’ll disappear if you press too hard but you can help it and you do and so you feel rather than hear her heartbeat explode.
You feel like an open wire suddenly, so full of energy but hurting so hard that you couldn’t even twitch without it sending waves of pain rocking through you. You need help. You need medical attention. Somewhere in your mind this registers, but the sudden flare of consciousness is pushed down by the more powerful urge of instinct. You’re still holding her by the wrist.
It’s easy enough to pull her downward, hearing her breath hitch in the small space of the car as she leans over you. Her hair spills out from over her shoulder and you can’t hold back the groan that escapes as the smell of concern-attraction-confusion-her-her-her-her hits you like a strike to the senses, clawing deeply at what little self-restraint you had left. This isn’t fair, you think vaguely as the distance between you shrinks, this isn’t fair to either of you.
There’s an open wound on your chest and you’re conscious enough, human enough, to still feel it screaming when you bend to kiss her, but the sound of your combined hearts pounding drowns even that out.
She’s soft, you realize with a flare of panic mixed with a dark desire that you refuse to acknowledge for too long. She’s surprised and confused and you kiss her so hard that you taste blood as your split lip breaks open again. There’s that desperate burn curling coolly under your nails and chest and skin and god, you think bitterly, this shouldn’t feel this good. You’re hurt and you need help but you need her too and you can’t deny that anymore, at all.
Breaking away from her mouth, feeling each gasp of her breath like a gunshot of sound and please, you plead as you start to press your lips down the curve of her jaw until you feel the ticking of her pulse under your teeth and you feel the urge to stretch and bite and drag your teeth on her skin like a promise, you need her to stop you.
With a shuddering breath, she does.
A part of you keens desperately, thinking no-no-no-please-more-why and other more needy things that you’ve denied yourself so long already that it shouldn’t feel this skin-wrenchingly awful when you do it yet again. You ignore it. She slips her hand out of your hold and presses it quickly against your forehead to check for something like fever, but you want to laugh because the heat building up in you wasn’t caused by those alphas, they couldn’t break you.
She could.
You’re barely in control of anything anymore, your consciousness slipping in and out, in and out, rocking slowly like the other delirious thoughts that find purchase in your aching skull. It was common for you to feel like this, like the heat trapped in your skin would burn you alive given half the fighting chance, but only after a couple of life-threatening wounds or two, and it had never, should have never, gotten this bad. With a shuddering rasp, you realize that your own instincts are going feral, seeking her out, needing her, going against all reason to have her.
You need help. You shouldn’t be around her. It’s too easy to let treacherous thoughts slips forward and believe them, like how she was only hovering over you still like she was waiting for another move, like how cloying the smell of want was mixed in with that strange her scent that made your blood want to roast with the current as you remembered wide, trusting eyes as she held your bloodied hand and smiled slowly.
But now your chest hurts even worse, if not from the wounds than from the sheer frustration of having her so close and not being able to lift yourself up and pull her close and kiss-bite-fuck whatever this was out of your damn system. You almost try to sit up in an effort to just get closer now that she was moving away to push the door open, but then your own body manages to scream harder than your mind and before you know it you’re blacking out again in sheer pain and this time your last image is the bloody outline of your hand still outstretched, waiting for something to fill it, and that’s not nearly as pleasing as sight as her.
You need help.