A/N: Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'werewolves'. I used a bunch of artistic license here. First of all, werewolves are seen as a cultural minority. Mating pairs have a psychic connection, and to a degree, the wolf inside the human has a mind of its own. Werewolves have also developed the ability to compel the change in them, no longer slaves to the full moon. But this story is actually less about werewolves, and more about Kurt and Sebastian.
Warning for sexual content, mpreg, angst, hurt/comfort, talk of biting, and minor mention of the death of Kurt's mother.
"One tablespoon Anchovy paste…" Kurt mumbles, reaching to his left as he continues reading down the page, groping at items on the countertop to locate the tube of Anchovy paste he put there. Kurt's fingers fidget over jars and bottles until he finds it, excited that he's finally getting the chance to break open his new recipe book and make the Cioppino that Sebastian has been raving about ever since they had it for lunch three weeks ago during their trip to San Francisco. It was nice to get away from New York for a while, from the crowds and the congestion, the commute and the noise, even though they temporarily exchanged one city for another. But California has an energy that New York doesn't, especially at this time, when Kurt's wolf and Sebastian's wolf long for solace and seclusion.
Kurt's body prickles when he feels the rhythm of his husband's heart beating inside his chest. He smiles. Sebastian is coming home, his entire body flush with raw desire. Kurt breathes in, and over the smell of garlic and onions, crabs and muscles, he smells Sebastian – smells his wolf's insatiable hunger - approaching from miles away. Kurt can pick out his husband's scent anywhere, but he's partial to it in particular now, as the time for breeding draws near.
That's one of the reasons Kurt and Sebastian had left the East Coast. With one of the tightest and most massive clusters of their kind inhabiting the Atlantic coastline, they thought the heat of the mating season wouldn't be as overwhelming if they went somewhere less densely populated with wolves. California ended up being one of those places, with West Coast wolves choosing to travel steadily up and down the coast, keeping their numbers spread wide along that portion of the continent. Sebastian's wolf wasn't too picky, though he probably would have chosen France if given the chance, but leaving the U.S. wasn't an option. Since Kurt's wolf has a need to be near the water, they went there.
They rented a bungalow near the beach, where they could hear the waves, wake up to the sun rising over the Pacific, and feel completely at peace. It worked for a while. They did all the touristy things – ate breakfast at Fisherman's Wharf, saw the sea lions at Pier 39, rode bikes along the Golden Gate Bridge. They let the salty sea air scrub them clean, and curled up together as their wolves at night, calm and carefree. Kurt had never felt so relaxed, so at ease during this time, in his life. But Sebastian was called back to New York early when one of his patients – an older, extremely respected wolf in their community – started suffering complications from an already existing heart condition, and they had no choice but to cut their trip short and come home.
Sebastian told Kurt to stay and wait it out without him, but Kurt couldn't bear being away from his husband. Not now, but then again, not ever. From that first moment when Sebastian scented Kurt, from the second Kurt sank his teeth into Sebastian's shoulder, claiming his alpha as his own, Kurt couldn't stand to be away from Sebastian for longer than the eight hours a day he spends at the hospital. And sometimes, not even then, with Kurt taking the train into the city to stalk the halls of Mount Sinai, just to have the scent of his husband stronger in his nostrils.
It's a painful time for Kurt and Sebastian, knowing that they'll never likely have a cub of their own, not unless Sebastian can find a willing surrogate to mate with. Kurt has been tested, but for some reason, though he's an alpha, too, he's unable to sire a child. Some people blame the fact that Kurt and Sebastian are both alphas, that the genes of one mate somehow suppressed those of the other. Kurt doesn't think that at all, but he sees himself as defective. Sebastian has explained numerous times, from a medical perspective, how that theory is garbage, and even if it wasn't, there would have been no way to predict which mate would have been stricken. Kurt is a prime, healthy, male alpha, with no family history of reproductive disorders. Whatever has happened to Kurt is an aberration.
Kurt knows his husband is probably right; after all, he is a doctor. But Kurt's heart says differently. It says there's something else, something more that they don't know.
That the fault is entirely his.
Sebastian outright refuses to mate with any other wolf, stressing that there are tons of cubs, or even human children, who need homes. But Kurt can see it in his eyes, and in his wolf's eyes, how much Sebastian wants a child. A child of his blood, to carry on his family lineage. Kurt wants that, too. They're both only children – one of them should have that chance. Sometimes Kurt thinks he'd be willing to sacrifice one night with the love of his life. That's the way it would have to be. Medical science has yet to produce a werewolf child via artificial insemination. Besides, many in their culture see copulation for the purpose of having a child as sacred, a ceremony essential for the creation of life, the passing of spirit from parents to child. Kurt and Sebastian wouldn't want their child to be an outcast, regardless of how revolutionary its birth would be, so even though Mount Sinai has been performing clinical studies of new procedures and medications, and a longtime friend of Kurt's has already offered to be a host, as she puts it, it's a route they've yet to explore.
But even if Kurt would be okay with Sebastian mating one time with another wolf solely to have a child, there'd be nine months of watching that woman carry their child, of watching Sebastian bond with her to be close to their cub, of feeling Sebastian crave taking her to bed at least one more time to recapture that moment when they created life. It's said to be a powerful experience, nearly intoxicating. She'd be in their penthouse, she and Sebastian would be so close, it would only be a matter of time…
That thought alone makes Kurt want to gouge out his own eyes so he'd never have to see it.
Kurt!
His husband calling his name, preceding the shrill beep of the fire alarm, knocks Kurt from his daydreaming. His fingers close around homemade tomato base, and glass from the jar he crushed in his hand. A splotch of cold tomato glop stains his shirt, running down his jean leg and into his sock, while large chunks of glass litter the tile floor. He can hear Sebastian's wolf in his mind, mewling, trying to calm his anxiety, even as he races from subway to subway to get home to his mate. Kurt looks at the dinner boiling over on the stove, the mess of splattered stew creeping from the range to drip on to the floor, and knows he's never going to salvage their meal. So much for the romantic dinner he had planned before his horny husband attacks him.
Like that was even a question, Sebastian laughs in his head. That's alright, beautiful. We'll want to work up an appetite first anyway. Then we'll order take-out in bed.
Kurt shakes his head, bitter that he just destroyed a meal he's been trying to prepare for weeks over the thought of a paramour that doesn't exist.
Then why don't I just answer the door naked? Kurt replies, his wolf reaching out to touch Sebastian's.
Well, duh, Sebastian says, his wolf huffing a laugh. We've been doing this every night since we got back. You'd think you would have learned that by now.
Their penthouse isn't far from the hospital where Sebastian works. His wolf could make it home in about fifteen minutes, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, skirting the dark alleys, jumping over fences in a single bound. But Kurt is willing to wait the hour so that Sebastian doesn't get assaulted. For the most part, werewolf/human relations are good, but there are still extremists lurking the city streets, those who see them as unnatural. Unlike the myths and the legends, the only way to become a werewolf is to be born a werewolf, but there are still those ignoramuses who hold on to the belief that a werewolf bite can cause it, or that werewolves feed on humans. Only mere decades earlier saw vast werewolf populations gathered up and herded into camps, werewolves hunted on the streets with guns and crossbows. Countless innocent wolves and humans died because of those mass exterminations.
Including Kurt's mother.
But werewolf activism has gone far in a short time. Maybe because the romantic notions of creatures like Kurt and Sebastian turns them and their lifestyle into something that godless people want to protect. On the one hand, Kurt is glad about that, because it means less time spent looking over his shoulder, or wearing comfortable shoes when he goes out in case he needs to run. On the other hand, it disgusts him to his core. Nowadays, it's safer to be a werewolf than it is to be most other minorities. People might not hate him when they discover he's a werewolf, but they'll still malign him for being gay…or his friend Mercedes for being black.
He doesn't even want to think about the Otherkins, and how they appropriate his culture.
Kurt starts cleaning the kitchen, giving himself something to do while he waits. He knows he won't make too much progress before Sebastian comes home, but he needs this in the interim to erase these thoughts from his mind, so that he can relax in the presence of his lover – so that he can enjoy him. This is their time, when night falls. When the two of them are alone, nothing else matters. When they're one, they create a world of their own - a world without culture clashes, without discrimination, without needs, only wants. It's the world Kurt wants to live in, the one he gets to have when his husband comes home.
Kurt hears him in his mind. His heart races to keep pace with his. His senses fill with the scent of him before he walks through the door. When Kurt turns to lay eyes on him, it's like the very first time – though, awkwardly, that time, Kurt was with his boyfriend, and Kurt and Sebastian hated each other. But their wolves – their wolves knew. Their wolves fell in love with each other at first sight, and from there, it was only a matter of time.
It makes sense, looking back on it now, since wolves act on instinct. Their motives are primal; their intelligence comes from a history of relying on a 'sixth sense' that humans leave undeveloped. Kurt's wolf never warmed up to his ex-boyfriend's wolf, and Sebastian's wolf – well, he was sick of one-night stands.
Their wolves came together on their own, and after that, their stubborn human sides didn't have a chance.
Stubbornness is no longer ever an issue.
Sebastian barely locks the penthouse door when he gets home. He starts to disrobe at the sight of his mate, taking long strides across the room to be near him. Kurt opens his mouth to say hello and Sebastian kisses him hard, with a growl in the back of his throat, his wolf rearing up to get his fill of Kurt. Sebastian half-drags, half-carries Kurt to their bedroom, though he wouldn't have minded at all taking his husband on the hard kitchen floor. Sebastian puts Kurt down and takes a step back. While Kurt starts to undress, forgetting about petty things like the stains on his Brooks Brothers button-down, he watches Sebastian, his blue eyes lust-blown as his husband transforms into his wolf – strong and powerful, covered in sleek brown fur, and with magnificent green eyes, eyes that Kurt has never seen matched on anyone.
Seeing Sebastian transform compels Kurt to change, with Kurt's wolf chomping painfully in Kurt's brain to be out, to have his turn. Kurt's wolf is slightly smaller, his fur a bit lighter, but he's no less powerful, and his eyes no less piercing. Sebastian would say that Kurt has the more glorious eyes. There's a magic to them. He's seen Kurt work it. With a single blink, he can make you feel like you're the only person in the room. With another, he can make you feel like you never existed.
He's done both to Sebastian before.
Sebastian's wolf pins Kurt's to the ground. He nips Kurt's ear and pulls, growling low, biting hard. Kurt nips back. He growls. He finds Sebastian's shoulder and latches on, but without much of a scuffle, Sebastian manages to mount him. Kurt would normally tease Sebastian a little, put up more of a fight, but he can't this time. He doesn't have the will to resist, even to make this last longer. That's what his need is. It's physical, it's emotional, it's consuming, a way to wash away his sadness and frustration.
They don't always make love this way. Kurt is as much of a giver as a receiver. But there's a strange compulsion in the air around him – not in the apartment, but in his mind, in his body. He needs to have his husband this way. He needs to be taken. It makes him feel more fulfilled, less broken.
Kurt feels his husband knot inside him, and he chokes on air, sadness devouring him. He can already feel his husband's thoughts, knows that Sebastian imagines filling him up, creating a child where there is nothing – no seed of life, no field to grow. He feels Sebastian cum, locked deep inside him, but Kurt can't, and desolation drowns him, cementing into the empty corners, so while Sebastian floats down on the cloud of his euphoria, Kurt bites back tears, clamping them down like his tongue behind his teeth.
But it doesn't matter where he tries to hide them. His husband knows.
"Oh, Kurt," Sebastian says, transforming after his husband does, his wolf accidentally leaving scratches on Kurt's right shoulder in the midst of the change. "Oh, baby. I'm sorry."
"No," Kurt says, sniffling back tears, wiping them away with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that things aren't different. I'm sorry that I can't give you what you want. I…"
"Kurt," Sebastian says, putting his forehead to his mate's back, carefully licking his wounds clean, "all I want is you. All I need is you. My wolf and I can fill our minds with fantasies, but that's all they are. Fantasies." Sebastian chuckles. "In fact, they belong to him more than me." Sebastian wraps his arms around him. Putting a hand to his chin, he turns Kurt's face towards him. "We would never do anything to hurt you. I swear. We only want you." Sebastian rests his forehead against Kurt's. "There is no us without you. Do you understand?"
Sebastian's wolf whines apologies in Kurt's ear, and Kurt gives him a shaky smile.
"We understand," Kurt says, nuzzling against Sebastian's cheek.
"Come on," Sebastian says, turning his husband over gently, "let me make it up to you."
"Could you just…" Kurt stops and swallows, watching the eyes of his lover change, and his wolf make an appearance, begging for forgiveness. Kurt doesn't finish his request. Sebastian doesn't need him to.
"Of course," he says, grabbing the comforter off the bed and wrapping his husband in it. He puts his arms around Kurt and holds him close. "Is this what you want?"
"Yes," Kurt says, feeling safe in his husband's arms and in his cocoon. Safe to indulge himself and his wolf by crying himself to sleep.
Night after night, Sebastian comes home and finds his husband waiting for him, in various states of undress, the need to have him growing stronger as the night of the full moon draws close. They no longer talk about children. Sebastian's wolf forgoes his fantasies. Their hearts beat together, shattered, but the cracks don't deepen. Sebastian falls asleep inside his husband most nights to keep the tears away.
When the moon is full, hanging heavy and bright in the sky, when the final night of the heat is upon them, Sebastian returns home to find their penthouse empty. Sebastian is desperate for his husband, the want in him crawling up to his skin from underneath, scratching to break through. Twice on the subway, Sebastian's wolf almost forced his way out just from the thought of his mate's fur beneath his tongue, his smell that never seems to leave his nostrils nearly snapping him into a frenzy.
And now he's arrived, but his mate is nowhere. There's a mass of confusing signals – a smell that's foreign, a sound that's muffled, a combination of laughs and tears and hearts racing that Sebastian can't lock on long enough to follow.
Where…? Sebastian's wolf scans their home with his mind, trying to locate his mate. Sebastian touches the surfaces where Kurt spends the most time – the kitchen, his cutting table, his sewing machine, his drawing chair, the piano. He picks up Kurt's sweater and sniffs it. Sebastian feels him, but there's something else – like an entity around him, making Sebastian unable to hone in on Kurt's location. Kurt! Kurt, where are you?
Sebastian waits a moment for a sound, for a voice, but when he hears nothing familiar, he turns back to the door, ready to run out into the street in search of him. But then he hears Kurt laugh, high and trilling and with an underlying, undefinable joy, and the world is right once again.
Follow me, wolf, Kurt beckons. Follow my voice. Follow my scent. Look through my eyes. If you want me, come find me.
Suddenly, Kurt's smell becomes stronger. It's tainted by something, but that's definitely him underneath. There's a flash of vision and sound – the night sky, a passing breeze, cars honking, distant but present. Sebastian follows it – follows the smell, follows the sound of their city, follows Kurt's laughter. It takes him down the hall to the elevator. Sebastian touches the button for the roof, his fingertips barely pushing, and feels Kurt's presence there. He presses the button and knows he's on the right track. Kurt's excitement pours through him and becomes his own. There's something Kurt wants to tell him. God, he can't wait to see him, to have him, and end this misery.
Sebastian gets off the elevator at the roof level. There's one more hallway, and then a small staircase leading up to a metal door.
By the time he gets to the metal door, Sebastian is about to tear it off its hinges.
He opens the door, steps out on to the roof, and there's his husband, shirtless, on a gingham blanket, beneath the full moon. Sebastian simply stares for a moment, stares at his husband's beauty, his skin and eyes glowing in the silver light of that blessed full moon.
Kurt's wolf starts to blush, but Kurt's eyes don't look away.
I thought you might like it better up here, Kurt says, speaking directly into Sebastian's mind. Under the stars.
You know me so well, beautiful. Sebastian locks the door behind him. It's been so long since I've had you outdoors beneath the full moon.
Sebastian hurries over, and Kurt rises to meet him, but Sebastian doesn't give him the chance. He likes Kurt where he is, lying down, waiting for him. Sebastian kneels over him and kisses him, takes a moment to breathe him, to taste him, to swallow down the essence of him. Sebastian works his way down Kurt's chest, down his stomach, kissing a trail to his waist band, ready to pop the button of his jeans with his teeth. But before he gets to that point, he takes a breath in…and stops.
You smell, different, Kurt, Sebastian's wolf whispers in Kurt's brain. You taste different.
I would imagine I do, Kurt's wolf responds, flippant, but with an immeasurable amount of unnamed happiness.
Sebastian and his wolf – for all of their combined brilliance, don't seem to understand. Not that they would. It doesn't make sense to either of them. Even as realization dawns in their minds, Sebastian, a scientific and practical man, tries to think of any other way to explain it. But he can't. There is nothing else.
Are you really…?
Sebastian looks up, Kurt's eyes giving him all the affirmation he needs.
"But…how?" Sebastian asks. "How can that be?"
"I don't know," Kurt laughs, louder when Sebastian wraps his arms around his middle and presses his ear to his stomach, his wolf listening in for any sign, any gurgle. "Adaptive genetics? A miracle, maybe? I've been Googling it all afternoon. You're the doctor. I was hoping you'd tell me."
"I…I can't," Sebastian says, resting against Kurt's stomach, trying not to put too much weight on him. "I've never heard of this before." Sebastian shakes his head, trying not to hope. It is possible – among amphibians and insects, sure. Not in something as complex as mammals, as far as he knows. But if one creature on Earth can do it, then why not another? Werewolves have been around for as long as humans, it's speculated. So why not? Maybe this step in evolution is inevitable for all animals. Werewolves just got there first. "How do you know?"
"You mean, besides the fact that I haven't been able to keep anything solid down for days?" Kurt chuckles, knowing that's not a definitive answer. I've heard her, his wolf answers quietly. I've read her mind.
Sebastian looks up into the eyes of his mate, his cheek damp with tears.
"A…" Sebastian can't finish, pushing his ear back to Kurt's stomach.
"Yes," Kurt says, tears starting down his own cheeks when he feels his husband and his wolf tremble. "I'm carrying your daughter. You're going to be a father."