“Fuck it,” he mumbled, opening the drawer and taking out his razor, shaving cream and a sharp pair of scissors. He chopped off his beard with ruthless determination, clumps of blond hair falling into the sink, and then used the razor to finish the job. He considered cutting his hair himself, but he decided to take a shower instead and leave cutting it to a professional.
Standing in the shower, the hot spray beating down on his back with delicious pressure, Bjorn closed his eyes and sighed. His headache was nearly gone, and with his hair washed and body scrubbed, he finally felt something like himself.
It feltgood. Stepping out of the shower and drying off, Bjorn turned and looked at himself in the mirror. Without the bushy beard and with his hair wet and slicked back, he looked like his old self again.
It was a relief.
Getting dressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a loose hoodie, foregoing socks and leaving his feet bare, Bjorn set off to find Viggo.
He was nervous. His wolf had royally fucked up by not telling Viggo about the attack that led to his feral state, and as a result, Viggo hadn’t had a clue how to fix him.
It must have been hell.
Then there was the human. With Bjorn feral and Viggo clueless about how to help him, it hadn’t been an ideal time to expand their pack.
Then again, given how wonderful Sebastian’s scent was, Bjorn could see how it must have happened. Viggo must have caught Sebastian’s scent somewhere, the exquisite perfume probably catching him completely off guard, and then somehow managed to convince the boy to join their pack.
There was an ugly, insecure voice at the back of Bjorn’s mind which insisted that Viggo had gotten sick of waiting for him to come back to normal and replaced him with Sebastian, but that voice was easy to silence.
Viggo would never replace him. Their relationship could weather worse things than a few months of being feral, and the fact that Viggo had kept quiet about Bjorn’s condition instead of reporting him to the council proved it.
Only someone head over heels in love would even think to defy the council.
Sebastian wasnotBjorn’s replacement. Bjorn reasoned that Viggo intended the two of them to share the delectable human, and he for one had no objection to the idea. Sebastian was a snack.
He thought back to when he’d played with Sebastian in the lake – remembering how easy it had been to pick him up and manhandle him – and the crotch of his jeans grew tight with excitement.
He was glad Viggo hadn’t let Sebastian pass them by just because Bjorn’s wolf was inconveniently in control.
After searching both the first and second floors, noticing as he went the dust and mess that his wolf had been oblivious to and frowning at the sloppiness of it, Bjorn finally found Viggo in the basement where he was lifting weights.
His husband stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror taking up the length of the back wall, in the zone and oblivious to everything around him, allowing Bjorn to see him from every angle.
Viggo’s eyes were closed, his face flushed and his skin slick with sweat, his expression set in a grimace of concentration as he hoisted a massive set of kettlebell weights over his head. His arms trembled, the kettlebells swayed unsteadily, and Viggo’s muscles quivered as he struggled to lower the weights to the floor in a controlled manner.
“Fuck!” Viggo growled, his arms giving out and sending the kettlebells crashing into the concrete floor. The sound made Bjorn flinch, but Viggo just rolled his shoulders and wiped the sweat from his brow, bending down to pick the weights back up as though there was nothing unusual about a werewolf pushing themselves to the point of failure.
Viggo must have been at it for hours for him to be this tired.
Crouching down, breaths coming in exhausted, ragged gasps, Viggo grabbed the kettlebells by the handles and rose back up, preparing to do a set of alternating bicep curls before he noticed Bjorn watching him. Bjorn followed Viggo’s gaze in the mirror, and he could see the exact moment Viggo registered his presence at the top of the stairs. His eyes widened, his grip on the kettlebells faltering, and his ragged breathing came to an abrupt halt.
He didn’t look like himself. Tense and wide-eyed, there was something almost fragile about him that had Bjorn feeling like he was looking at a stranger.
“You shouldn’t push yourself so hard,” he chided, the words banal and not at all what he wanted to say.
Rather than be upset at Bjorn’s grumpy chastisement, Viggo’s mouth split into a wide grin and his whole face lit up with pure, unadulterated joy. He let go of the weights and rushed across the basement, all signs of his previous exhaustion gone, jumping over the weightlifting bench and bounding up the stairs five steps at a time like an eager puppy in his haste to get to Bjorn.
They collided, Viggo’s impact forcing Bjorn to brace himself against the wall or risk being knocked on his ass.
Viggo wrapped him up in a bone-breaking hug, getting his sweat all over him and rubbing his face into him like they hadn’t seen each other in months.
Which in a way, Bjorn supposed they had not.
“I missed you,” Viggo mumbled, the words almost lost as he inhaled Bjorn’s scent like it was all that stood between him and drowning.
“Sorry about that,” Bjorn said, rubbing Viggo’s back and pressing his cheek to the top of his head.
They stood like that for a solid thirty seconds, balanced at the top of the basement stairs, Viggo’s arms around Bjorn only getting tighter.
