All the Things We’ll Leave Behind: ch 48, pt 21
Until then, drying his mate off! Moisturizing him! Actually going to get his stuff—toothbrush, pyjamas, and so on.
Unlike when he bathed himself—an always half-hearted and rushed affair, partially because he had so much to do all the fucking time and partially because touching his body and burns, ew—wwx was diligent in his drying of him mate. Slowly—but not too slowly, lest the man fall asleep standing there!—wwx lifted each limb. He wiped the man’s underarms, enjoying the sight of the deep black hair that stretched over the soft skin. He wanted to bury his nose there—smell his mate when he was all fresh scent and then bury his nose there again later, when sweat and pheromones had buried themselves within pores and hair. It was a little gross, but lwj smelled delicious—smelled like something that was his.
lwj was quiet as he worked, running the towel through each meeting of fingers, over every knuckle, into the grooves of his palm lines. Once, an old auntie had read his future, his personality, his everything in those lines. There had been a hesitation in the auntie’s words as she spoke on his romantic prospectives, long before he had fully accepted that he would never be able to make a relationship with an omega or even a beta work.
He was him, and if that meant he would be alone for the rest of his life, so be it; mostly, these days, wwx found himself a little sad that he would never have a kid, more than anything else. Children were adorable—sweet and full of smiles and tears and big feelings, and yeah, the world was kinda going to shit and he’d literally just been internally ranting about the way children were fucked up by everything, but having one he could raise himself? That… might be nice?
“Hey… do you want kids?” wwx asked, the question slipping free of him before he could snatch it back—he was always a speak first, think later sort of person, and his own tiredness and overwhelm from the evening wasn’t helping to temper his tongue.
“Maybe?” lwj mumbled, his eyes heavy lines that let only the smallest rays of gold fall from them, like the waning sunlight slipping through the curtains. “Having a child is something expected of me. Mostly… I do not look forward to having to make one myself, I suppose?”