Chapter Text
The moonlight filtered down through the reaching branches, painting the forest silver. In the dead of night, few sounds were heard, and his footsteps were silent upon the thick, soft moss. Deep within the forest lay a small lochan. The trees grew close to the edge of the water, and they looked as if they were leaning closer, staring into the dark surface unable to tear their gazes from it. It was a truly dark surface, pitch black despite the clear night that left the moon unobscured. The flowers that grew around the waterbody seemed to be doing the same, leaning in an attempt to see their own reflection. It was not a peculiar thing; lochans like this were not only pools of water, they were also pools of magic, naturally attractive to any life form.
Gwillym put down his satchel onto the moss, and crouched down by the side of the lochan. He uncapped one of the rose-tinted crystal vials he had brought with him, and slipped the lip of it against the bottom of one of the leaves of the irises that grew in the shallows. With patience many of his similar-aged brethren did not seem to possess, Gwillym collected dew from the underside of the iris leaves, until he had filled the entire vial. He replaced the cap, and put the vial back into his satchel, and he took out another empty one, crystal dyed into a faint blue. In it, he gathered the dew from the flowers of the golden arum. He held the filled vial up toward the moon, and observed the specks of pollen floating in the dew for a few moments. The dust glittered with the magic that the roots of the flowers sucked up from the lochan.
“What else was it?” Gwillym murmured to himself, searching the moss covered lochan beds for the other plants he would need to collect parts from. Finding a slightly larger vial in his satchel, he moved along the lochan, and bent down beside a few cardinal flowers standing tall and sleeping in the night. He collected some of the petals, carefully placing them in the vial.
It was when Gwillym turned to return to his satchel that he realized that he was no longer alone. The large, dark shape of a beast had emerged from the forest, and was investigating Gwillym’s satchel, pushing it open further with its nose. Gwillym froze in place, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from crying out in surprise. Druids worked close with nature, animals included, of course, but never before had he seen such a large wolf. Was it better to stay put, and wait until the wolf tired of investigating his things, or what was it he had been told about wolves by his teachers?
Deep dark eyes the same color as the lochan met his lavender ones. Too late to escape before his presence was known now. Though he doubted that the wolf had not already noticed him before that. Gwillym’s grip around the vial of cardinal petals tightened, and he realized that he had been holding his breath when he suddenly became dizzy when he stumbled and lost his balance. The vial landed in the moss, crystal unharmed, and so did he. To his surprise, the wolf made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a snort of amusement.
“As if you’d fall elegantly in the same situation,” Gwillym grumbled, despite feeling apprehensive. He wasn’t certain how good an idea it was to talk to a wolf like that. The wolf scoffed at that. He was sure it scoffed at him. It was not a hallucination. Gwillym slowly climbed back onto his feet, brushing dirt off his robe with one hand and reaching for the vial with the other. The wolf watched him with unblinking eyes. Suddenly and without warning, it leapt toward him. Gwillym yelped, caught by surprise, and he lost his balance once again when the wolf barreled into him.
This time when he landed, it was much harder; he landed on his back, and he groaned. He registered the sound of a plop, but he didn’t have the time or wherewithal to save the vial of petals right that moment.
The wolf leveled its face with Gwillym’s, its nose nearly touching his. He felt its hot breath against his face. A large paw pressed against his shoulder. Gwillym swallowed hard.
“Yeah, not elegant at all,” he heard a dark voice grumble, and his already wide eyes widened further.
“Wh-wha-how——”
Gwillym stammered, shocked and a little amazed. How was it able to speak?! Wolves were not supposed to be able to articulate human words.
Druids could communicate with animals and he knew how to talk to several kinds, but while they called it ‘talking’, the animals didn’t actually speak with human words. It was simply possible for druids to learn to understand and convey intentions between them. This was different.
“You’re making a lively expression,” the rumbling voice said, and it was definitely coming from the wolf. Gwillym swallowed down a nervous laugh. “W-well it’s, you’re, um, surprised me…. Also you’re sort of...a little heavy...” He trailed off, unsure of what he was supposed to do about this situation. Unsure of what this situation he was in even was supposed to be. The wolf turned its head, the canine version of tilting it he supposed, and after a few moments of intense staring, purposefully sat down on top of Gwillym. “I meant that the pressure of your paw is a bit painful, I’m sorry, I formulated that wrong— Could you please, perhaps, remove—” The wolf opened his — because surely it was a male wolf because surely no she-wolf would have a voice that deep — maw, and Gwillym cut his words short. His eyes crossed when he stared into it, and at all of the teeth in it. There were so many of them, and they were so sharp and large. If the wolf decided to attack, he would be able to tear Gwillym’s throat out with a single bite and there was no way that Gwillym would be able to defend himself. The wolf’s tongue curled at the end, and Gwillym realized that he was yawning. Gwillym tore away his gaze, and he saw out of the corner of his eye how the wolf snapped its mouth back shut again.
“What’s up with your face?”
Gwillym stiffened. He turned watchful eyes toward the wolf. After several, far too short moments of silence, Gwillym’s reply was a tense and short, “None of your business.” He hated to talk about the scar that covered half of his face. Usually he kept it covered with a veil, but alone in the woods at night, he was able to uncover it and feel the fresh air against his skin. But because of the unexpected situation, he had entirely forgotten about the veil which lay at the bottom of his satchel. He hated talking about the scar, so even though the largest wolf that he had ever seen was currently sitting on top of him and effectively was trapping him against the ground, he couldn’t help but get defensive and deny the wolf the truth. He didn’t know the wolf, and Gwillym’s past, particularly this piece of his past, had nothing to do with him.
Unexpectedly, the wolf laughed. And when he licked his maw, his tongue touched the tip of Gwillym’s nose. It was probably due to the startled look that Gwillym was certain was written all over his face that the wolf laughed again. “Talking back in this situation? So you got some spunk in you, human. Not a lot of people do when I’m all up in their face. Most people would’ve passed out or pissed or shat themselves, or all of it at once.” The laughter hit Gwillym’s face in a warm breath. “I guess I won’t eat you tonight after all.”
A shiver of trepidation ran through Gwillym. “Tonight?” After all? He froze up again when the wolf ruffled its nose into his hair, into his ear, and Gwillym bit his lip when he grumbled right into his ear, “You do seem pretty tasty,” and Gwillym bit back a worried sound. A sound that close, a rumbling voice right in his ear, was confusing to his body, particularly in combination with the dread at the danger he was in. “What are you doing?” He managed to get the words out eventually, though his tongue felt both thick and clumsy in his dry mouth, and the wolf still had his nose running across his skin and through his hair. “None of your business.”
For some reason, that retort pulled Gillym out of his paralysation, and he slapped a hand against the wolf’s side. It was a feeble action and probably a stupid action on top of that, but he did it without thinking. “Yes it is,” he protested. The wolf started to laugh even harder than the previous times it had laughed. His paws pressed further against Gwillym’s shoulders, and he could feel the hard points of claws through his cloak. The wolfs nose touched his. “You think so, huh?” He had gotten this far, and Gwillym really did believe that he had every right to know why the wolf had been all up in his hair. “I do.”
“You’ve got an interesting scent.” What? Gwillym had to wonder what it was that made his scent any different from other people. The wolf licked his mouth again, and when he did, his large tongue came in contact with Gwillym’s lips. Gwillym sputtered at the sensation, and at the wolf saliva. “Really! Manners!” he protested. In response, the wolf licked him again, this time deliberately, from his chin to his forehead. “You were saying?”
“I was saying,” Gwillym said slowly, once he had regained his composure, voice just as deliberate as the second lick had been. “That you can’t simply threaten to eat people or lick their faces without permission.”
“I’m a wolf. Why should I care?”
“You should care because it is common courtesy.”
“Maybe for humans.”
“It applies to any sentient being. This includes you as well.”
The wolf tilted its head in its wolf-way again, and it seemed to consider Gwillym, or perhaps it was considering his words. It was difficult to know for certain. The beast shifted, and there was the repeated sound of snapping twigs and branches, loud in the silent night.
Except it wasn’t twigs, nor branches, Gwillym realized. It was bones. The wolf was shifting, its shape changing, and past the thought, Werewolf, Gwillym’s face went very red when he realized that he was staring down at a completely naked man’s body. “Oh my.” Although he had a much larger space for movement, Gwillym couldn’t really move. For completely— not entirely completely but largely— for different reasons than previously, when the werewolf had been simply a wolf with a strange capability with speech. He could very clearly see something very large dangle freely between the very large man’s legs. He was indeed very, very naked. “Oh my.”
“I’m impressive, I know.” The wolf— the man— grinned, managing to look just as much the wolf in this form as well. He had scruffy facial hair, and a substantial amount of muscle mass. All in all he was a very substantial man. And no matter how William tried to not think about it he was well aware, very aware, that the man remained incredibly naked. “So, little druid. Am I still included?” Gwillym shifted uncomfortably below the man, and stopped moving just as uncomfortably when he felt the man’s cock brush against his robe. He had to force his gaze away from it, as well as force himself to stay perfectly still.
It was a very valid question. Werewolves were not exactly well appreciated among the people. They had forgotten the old legends, legends that even many druids had forgotten. People did no longer remember that werewolves once were considered benevolent beings that protected children, the wounded, the lost. Kings once upon a time recruited werewolves to fight for them. They were merely wolves, nor ravenous beasts that would lose their minds. —years ago, and still to some extent today, Gwillym had been very lost, though he had known exactly where he had been, his position, his standing.
Gwillym didn’t know if his knowledge of the old stories, the old views of the men and women who had the ability to take on the form of wolves, influenced his answer, but even if it did, it didn’t matter.
“You are.”
The wolf-man looked down at him, ran a hand through messy dark hair, and the expression on his foreign face was unreadable. Then he suddenly dipped down his head, and Gwillym let out a startled squeak when the man ran his tongue along the side of his neck. “Manners!” he repeated, and the werewolf responded with a nibble, which sent a ripple of electricity through Gwillym’s body. “I guess,” he said, and the rumbling vibration of his voice against Gwillym’s skin was simply unfair— “You’ll have to tell me off some more, little druid.”
“Don’t call me that, I’m Gw—”
A large, large hand covered Gwillym’s mouth, and the wolf’s gaze locked with Gwillym’s. Gwillym could feel calloused skin against his lips. “I think it’s better if we don’t exchange names. Considering what I’m about to do to you,” He licked his lips and the tone of his voice made Gwillym’s whole body heat up way more than the implications of the words. “Little druid.”
Nervously, Gwillym licked his lips to wet them, but his mouth was too dry for it to be of any use. He tasted, briefly, skin against his taste buds, a strong earthy taste taken right out of the wilderness. He noticed the werewolf’s pupils widen in the darkness. He bit his lip and finally, he managed a nod. The man removed his hand from Gwillym’s mouth, slipped it downward and along the curve of his shin, along an artery, a nail scraping it lightly to cause shivers down Gwillym’s spine. He felt the other man’s stomach crush up against his just barely, and realized that it wasn’t because the man had leaned closer, but because Gwillym’s back had curved slightly. The deep chuckle brushed his throat again. “So,” the voice rumbled, and between light bites, the werewolf continued, “my lesson in manners?”
Gwillym managed a huffed-out, breathy almost-laugh, and he realized that his fingers were digging into the moss beneath him, and that he could feel the man’s cock head against his belly, twitching slightly and he glanced down, barely managing to see how hard the man was. Oh...my.. “First—” His voice came out raspy and a somewhat strangled whimper, and he attempted clearing his throat before attempting to speak again. The mouth on his neck, the teeth, did not help in any way, beyond making his undergarments feel more and more restrictive. “First of all, you don’t simply accost someone—” Oh, that spot felt too good— “without their permission, you have to ask—” like that, ooh— “before you make advances, particularly physical ones...” His voice faltered on a whimpering moan. The man was barely doing anything, all he was doing was lavish attention onto Gwillym’s neck with lips, tongue, and teeth, but Gwillym still felt that he had no strength in his entire body. The man could devour him for real and Gwillym wouldn’t be able to act like anything but a boneless mass of meat as long as the werewolf kept lavishing him with this sort of attention and touch among the bites. Touches like this, he had never— The man’s voice, both sensation and sound, made it all that much worse. “No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that. Seems like I don’t need to anyway, you’ll obviously let me do anything to you.” Did werewolves have the ability to read minds? He had not heard of that. “What’s the next rule?”
“You’re only going to tell me that you will not adhere to it either way,” Gwillym protested. He wasn’t sure he would be capable of listing things properly, in his current state. “Yeah but,” He pressed his hips into Gwillym, and through the cloth of his garments he could feel their cocks rub up against each other. How big was his cock able to become, anyway? “I like your voice. It’s very smooth, sounds good,” He ground their cocks together again, and Gwillym was unable to suppress the groan — was it just in his ears that he sounded utterly shameless and wanton? Even though that was the opposite of what he was like. “feels good.”
“Spea— speaking so crudely,” Gwillym attempted. His voice was shaky and he couldn’t hold it in a firm volume. When the werewolf licked his lips, his tongue also brushed against Gwillym’s now highly sensitive throat. “Is im-impoli-..te-..! Te-rrible ma- mannersss.” His last word came out a hiss, the result of a sharp bite. He felt the sting, and wondered somewhere at the back of his foggy mind if blood had been drawn. The tongue lapped against his skin, and Gwillym realized that he had started to shift on the ground, searching friction between their bodies and faster release. Because his body ached. “So saying I want to turn you on your stomach and cum on your ass is no good? I bet you have a perfect ass for cumming on. Or in, for that matter.”
“Don’t- be cru-..cruel.. You’re a terrib— terrible man I should, should-...” He didn’t get out what he should, he wasn’t even sure what he should. His body decided then that it couldn’t bear the touches, the words, any longer, that just this much was overwhelming, and his body curved into the man’s body without his willing it, his voice escaped him without his permission— His undergarments, his thighs, felt cold and sticky, and the fingers in his hair were soft. “That was fast,” the voice rumbled in his ear. “You druids never get laid?” Gwillym’s body was limp, and more boneless than ever. “Not— not like this, I’ve never-...” Never been held by anyone that cared enough to actually care to make him feel good... The man made an inquiring sound, but Gwillym couldn’t get the words out. Instead he managed to croak, “You didn’t- didn’t...” but he got no further than that. The werewolf’s fingers bent around the blond curls of hair on Gwillym’s head, his other hand groped around further down and momentarily grasped Gwillym’s cock through fabric, Gwillym yelped in reaction, and the werewolf lifted the rough fabric, showed a stain on the faded blay. Thankfully not too easily spotted, but Gwillym would still have to launder the garments he was currently wearing. The color that rose to Gwillym’s face was far more discernible, and would likely remain so unless he managed to control it around people.
He had probably thought about it somewhere at the back of his mind earlier, but it was a disaster for anyone to have any form of carnal relation with a werewolf. Most of all for a druid. He would be in so much trouble if he were to be found out, and then his family—
All thoughts shattered into millions of pieces when firm, warm lips pressed against his, and a warm wet tongue delved into his mouth. Gwillym’s moan was startled, but he couldn’t pull away— and he probably didn’t want to. His mind was a fog and his body limp, when the kiss sadly— when the kiss finally was broken. “Why- did you do-... that—?”
“No reason,” the wolf said, and Gwillym somehow doubted that, but he didn’t even know, in truth, why the werewolf had done anything that he had done to him tonight.
“W— not do-.. lessons in ci- civility....” The wolfish grin returned to the werewolf’s face, accompanied by a wolfish laugh. “Daybreak’s near,” he commented and Gwillym grasped at bare shoulders growing rough fur as a nose turning to a snout nuzzled his hair. “They’ll have to be over, little druid.”
The forest bathed in the gold of the early dawn creeping through it, and Gwillym brushed dirt off of his robe. He blinked in surprise when he saw the vial that he thought he had lost glistening wet on top of his satchel. The woods were waking up, the sound of birds chattering, small animals scurrying about. The large wolf was nowhere to be seen. Though he ought to be relieved, it was only disappointing.