heaven ain't close in a place like this
pairings: alpha!ubbe x omega!reader
warnings: a/b/o dynamics, heat, oral sex, sex, cursing. no use of y/n.
a/n: so this sprung from @ritual-unions-gotme request of sacred love moments, and i sort of been wanting to write alpha!ubbe for a while now. i have no frigging clue if this works or nah, but i hope you like it!
word-count: 3,3k+
xx
This could not be happening.
It’s the one thought that echoes as your mind starts to lose focus while the strain in your lower back and stomach tightens. You have been through it many times before, but never in a big house crowded with alphas that had their maws dripping, wide open to devour you. Never without the pain herbs that soothed the worst of the drilling waves of pain. You had, perhaps, minutes. An hour if you were lucky. Not that having time was useful, you couldn’t run away from here.
Ragnar’s wife, Aslaug, had brought you under her tutelage. She had insisted that if you must marry into her family, the least she could do was prepare you to be a fine wife. Neither your mother nor father argued. They were wealthy, though their name would fade away when they died, so this marriage-to-be plan was devised. Your father had heard one of Ragnar's sons required a partner. He wanted his genetics blended with those above his, so his grandchildren would grow to do great things. You hated that he treated you like livestock, like something he could trade for fame, or more gold.
At least you were tended with the utmost care. Aslaug and her ladies taught you their ways, their language. They washed you clean, braided your hair, painted your face. In a few months, you were no longer a wild, spoiled thing sprung from Mediterranean lands, you were an altogether Viking woman. Torvi, your closest friend around here, had also trained you in the fighting dance. She spent long afternoons lapidating your brute use of a sword until you became a lustrous diamond. Fierce enough to press the edge of your blade to her pulsing point.
When the men returned home, they never would’ve guessed your origins.
Only after almost two years do you get to know the man you are meant to marry. Ubbe. Broad, untamed Ubbe. He’s tall enough that you have to look up to see his face, a breath-taking face, at that. You’ve met alphas before. This… He was a prime specimen. Reeked of effortless power. Held himself up as if the world was meant to bow before him. The long braids pointed to a never lost battle. His blue eyes were hard, though when fixed on you, you could see the smallest hint of tenderness.
He courted you for weeks. Bouquets arranged outside your door, silent walks down the riverside and up to a small clearing. Ubbe was never improper. His touches were limited to the bare of your wrists, the round of your cheeks, and his words appeared to be produced after deep thought, too. You weren’t sure when it happened, but you felt yourself fall for him. A shy emotion that bubbles in your throat. That doesn't leave you alone once you've realised it's there.
Regardless of the obviousness of who was your chosen husband, his brothers never walked away from flirting with you. They complimented you, kissed your hand, tossed wild words that made your face warm in embarrassment.
The slaves that cared for you whispered about them. Most had been bedded by at least one. If not all. You would’ve been lying if you said it hadn’t sparked your curiosity. All three men, Hvitserk, Ivar, and Ubbe were easy on the eye. Each of them owned a distinct set of alluring features. Though your heart belonged to only one, your late-night fantasies were dappled by the trio.
You shouldn’t have been so surprised that your heat came sooner. Not enough herbs in the world could stabilise the heavy presence of strong alphas. Soon your smell would linger and they’d come up to your chambers. Less man, more beast. There was no way you could outrun them, even if they fought, your body was too frail, too unable to put up a fight. Your mind was the single thread tethering you to what was happening around you.
Wood from the stairs creaked under the weight of someone walking up. Perhaps you could order a group of slaves to take you to the hidden cottage if the footsteps belonged to one of your ladies. Had you been already married, this would not be an issue. You wouldn’t fear whoever was about to come into your room.
Then it hit you. He smelled like fresh pine trees and seawater. A saline tang that settled at the bottom of your tongue. Ubbe knocked twice at your door.
“Is everything okay, sweet darling?” His voice is rich and low, a tinge of concern concealed in the urgency of his question. “May I come in to check on you?”
“‘M fine,” It’s a pathetic answer, cut through by a pained moan. “No need to worry.”
“May I come in either way?”
A grunt spills past your lips as the door screeches open, his towering presence worsening your condition. Sweat trickled down your forehead, temples, beneath your nose. Your blood pumped so hard you could feel it in your ears. The fragile grasp to anything other than the crescent need between your thighs gave way when he touched you.
“P-please,” You beg, his hand holding yours. Ubbe looks bothered, his fair blue eyes reduced to petite rings around his blown pupils and nostrils flared while he downs the smell of you. “I didn’t know… Didn’t know…”
“‘S okay, doll, you don’t have to be scared,” He tries to reassure you. “No one is home but me.”
“If t-they come back…”
“You’re mine, I would tear their throats out if anyone tries to touch you.”
Ubbe scoops you to his arms. You part your legs to settle on his lap, wrapped up around him like a frightened animal. You let him scent you. The bite of his beard prickles as he rubs his cheek against your feverish neck skin. He croons soothing words, meant to make your heartbeat slow down, meant to make you calmer, pliant. It works far too well. You tip your head back to grant him more of you. While one arm is curled around your waistline, the other is free, so he undoes the laces of your woollen chemise, exposing your collarbones and the curve between your breasts.
The pain still tugs at your lower tummy, but the gentle thrum of him underneath you placates it. You had never been this close to a man before, never let anyone but your parents scent you. And even at that, it had only happened when you were a child. He had made you leap to the feral side, the omega in your bones begging, pleading, imploring for him to claim you.
You look at him, his nose bumps against yours. He’s got an easy smile on his face. Now his hands are rooted to your love handles.
“Better?”
After a meek nod, you lean into him, your lips feathering from the hollow of his throat up to his chin. He indulges the light touches, rubbing your lower back. You didn’t want to tell him that you’ve never been knotted. Hell, you’ve never been fucked, let alone knotted. But you don’t feel brave enough. You didn’t know if you had enough words to voice it.
"I know I shouldn't be here," He muses, rocking your body back and forth like one does to a crying babe.
"But you are," Your voice has descended to something akin to a whine, gods know if tears weren't streaming down your cheeks. "Stay, please."
“Can I take you to my chambers?” His nose trails down to your collarbones, drinking your smell. “We can stay here if you want.”
“Ubbe,” You try, voice quivering. “I-I…”
“What, sweet darling?”
“I never… I-”
“That’s okay,” His comforting tone, or maybe it was the heavy scenting, put you into a much calmer state of mind. “Didn’t think you had. Do you want me to? I can take care of you.”
“You’re to be my husband,” You say in a hushed tone. “Don’t you find it inadequate to bed me before we marry?”
“I would’ve married you long ago, my doll,” He kisses the tip of your nose, then your eyes, then your forehead. “Would’ve married you as soon as I came back home.”
A sob rattles you. You’re growing desperate, it’s obvious. None of your heats had been similar to this one. Not easy, never, but never so distressful. Ubbe starts anew his slow rubs, though this time his mouth finds the mating gland at the juncture of your neck and shoulder. His tongue flickers around it, soft, smooth. Like a wolf licking its wounds.
This vulnerability should make you scared. You’re nothing but a defenceless thing perched on his lap. Your legs close the circle around his waist, your arms link behind his neck. It’s like his warmth has become a bodily necessity for you to function. His face is still burrowed on the crook of your neck. His lips travel up to find the shell of your ear. He whispers sweet words, words of care. When you realise, Ubbe has risen to his feet, his arms tightened around you as he walked towards the door.
Cold air dances over your skin, or it might’ve been that you were too underdressed for the weather outside your room. His home was always a nice, lukewarm temperature, but the fever starting to break made everything colder.
You hear another door creaking, then your nose is flooded by the strong smell of him. It must be his room, though you keep your eyes closed, your face smashed against his shoulder. He locks it behind him with a click. A few seconds after, your back meets the plush comfort of his mattress, you dare to open your eyes at this point. He’s settled between your legs, hovering above you like a lulling force. So close you can see the freckles splashed on his cheeks, the subtle flare of his nostrils. His eyes had shifted to a lighter shade of blue, pools of crystalline water.
Time rolls as raindrops, his presence enough to divert your attention from the coiling pain in your belly. Spams of conscience that you wanted this force of a man to a point it hurt. Regardless of what your body needed, your mind yearned for him. You pull him down, his weight dropping on you so you were almost crushed. Ubbe laughs at how eager you are.
“May I take this off?” He tugs at the hem of the chemise, his fingers lingering a second longer on your skin. You nod, but you don’t loosen the grip on him. “Not going anywhere, sweet darling.”
Your arms fall to each side, a groaning-alike noise spilling as his body ceases to cover yours. Ubbe drags it up, unveiling bit by bit your secrets. You have to lift your hips, and your shoulders, so he can remove the woollen shift. It does not feel foreign as it should. You don’t mind being bare in front of him. His eyes are trained to your face, locked with yours. By the gods, he’s handsome. Carved out of fine marble.
This is better, you think. To have him take you before you have to consummate the marriage in front of ravenous public eyes. It wouldn’t have felt this nice. This also meant delaying the marriage until you could bear to take him again. It only happened every other month, lasting for about a week. Marriages were often arranged to be made on the tipping point when the guests wouldn’t be too bothered by the released pheromones, but you would be able to take his knot. And a claiming bite.
Your preceptor taught you much about marriage, though never had you ever thought you’d marry a Viking man. Still, she used to tell you tales of wedding nights, about the fulfilling swell of a knot and the mind-shattering high of a claiming bite. This only happened, however, if done during a heat, otherwise, it would lead to moments of unimaginable pain.
“Ubbe,” You call for him. He has your feet on his hands, his thumbs dug into its soles, reaping sounds that make you warm on the cheeks. “W-wait.”
“What is it, dove? Do you wish for me to take you somewhere else?”
“No. I just wonder,” A wrinkle on the linen bed sheets seems more interesting, so you focus on that instead of his peaceful face. “You won’t claim me now, will you?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know,” You answer, dumbly. Your head begins to spin again, the nagging pain growing into discomfort. “We should wait until we are married. What would people think, if you did it before?”
Ubbe looks amused at your concern, “What would it matter? You’re my wife either way. It would just show you’re mine.”
You hiss an agreement, sighing when his touch moves up to your thighs, parting your legs. You’re sure he can see the sopping mess you’ve become, so wet and swollen and redden. Ubbe ignores it, massaging your thighs instead, vigorous, precise. The sounds you’re making are new to you, the mindless gripping on his forearms just to squeeze something, too.
When he does touch you, you release a sharp breath. Air you had no idea you were holding. His fingers trace lazy shapes, he spreads slick around, taunting your snug entrance, though not on purpose. It’s nice. His features are schooled to tranquilness as if he’s not palming your sex, as if he’s not trying to make you fall apart on his hand. You’ve done it before, alone in your room, in the middle of the night. You know that’s what he’s trying to do.
But he stops. You grumble like a little kid being denied a treat. Ubbe dismisses your complaining, pushing you further back, your head snuggled between pillows. Something heavy hangs in the air, you’re not quite sure what he’s going to do. A rather unpredictable man, that’s what your husband-to-be was. He presses his cheek to your inner thigh, blowing hot air to the heated skin. Your head lolls back, your eyes falling shut.
His tongue finds the pulsing point that aches, uncared for. It’s soft, fluttering licks at first, warm spit that makes the jut of your belly tremble. Then his lips wrap around it to suck, and you’re sure this must be paradise. A foretold place of eternal satisfaction. If his hands were good, this was better. You moan, fisting the sheets, enduring the crescent turmoil in your chest.
Ubbe is relentless. Dirty, titillating noises fill the room, both yours and his. He growls like a wolf, each of his hands rooted to the base of your thighs, his face buried between them. This man eats like he’s known hunger. Eats as Thor goes through a feast. You’re aware that one finger has slid in, its tip rubbing a tender spot inside you. Your mind is slowly going blank.
You’ve heard women describe how this feels. You imagined it must be good if they kept doing it, but up until now, it had been pure fantasy. It’s the sort of pleasure that builds up, high and high and high, then it breaks you. It’s voracious, it takes away all the grown pressure to spend it. Your muscles feel like lead afterwards, you end up resting like a limp corpse on his bed. Still twitching. Even then, Ubbe is unwavering, suckling, fingering.
The pain subsides. Though you still long for him, it’s now dormant in your bones. You’re not making any sense anymore. The last thread of sanity was shaved away. He moves away from you, though he leaves a throbbing bite on the soft flesh of your inner thigh as a memento. You hear the rustling of fabric. It sounds so distant. You sob again, needing him to be close. Needing his warmth.
Words fall from his lips, your muddled brain recognises they are loving, they are tender. He’s back hovering above you. His mouth finds yours in a restless whim, tongues swirling together. It’s passionate. You feel him hot and heavy on your hip, he thrums with need, his cockhead wet on your lower belly. It knocks a moan out of you. The kisses last a while. As if you are teens fooling around.
Then you’re switched, he helps you lie down on top of him. One hand rests on your back, the other smears your slick around him, jerking himself once, twice. After it, you feel him bully your cunt. Ubbe is careful. Though you are pliable, ready to take him, he breaches you inch by inch. It burns, stings. You didn’t think he’d fit all the way, so a hint of surprise cuts through the fog of your hazed mind.
Your muscles fight to adjust to the new fullness. Ubbe has your head pressed to his chest, and he grunts when rooted deep in you, though he rubs your back as if unaffected. This quiet moment stretches, he doesn’t move. Your shift, which makes his cock, so deep into you, move in the smallest of movements. Unlike you had thought, it doesn’t hurt. You do it again. At the third time, he takes over.
It’s a rhythmic, deliberate pace that he chooses. You’re back to the small thing perched on his lap, but you know, as the fever breaks and you grow feverish, that you’re safe. So safe.
He holds your waist to prop you up, fucking into you. Your hands splayed on his chest, trembling groans filling the room. Like this, he goes so much deeper, it weighs your consciousness down. You feel cared for, each clutch of your cunt around him a silent plea for the bittersweet pain of his knot. Each month alone felt agonising. Hollow release after hollow release. This, however, threaded deeper. Reached places that soothed.
“Sweetness,” Ubbe croons, squeezing further the patches of skin he’s holding. You know. Gods, you need him to.
It’s palpable how much he needs this. Just as much as you do. His snaps are less contained. They stutter as you’re pushed down on him, the hot stretch burn lighting a fire that grows at the end of your belly. You didn’t think you’d get this again. A flickering current of pleasure that starts at the very tip of your toes.
Ubbe cracks before you do. The swell is a flashing, molten thing that fills your sex. It binds you to him, it makes sure that not a drop of his spend goes to waste. It’s too much. Too much, you know you are saying it out loud. Each fibre of your body comes alive. A wild wave of genuine pleasure that shakes, that wrings, that topples you down. You can’t hold yourself up anymore, falling to the hard chest beneath you shaking like a leaf in the summer breeze.
You’re cradled in the afterglow of the first hot wave of your heat. You drift between consciousness and sleep, the pulsing of his knot deep into you deterring true rest. You feel content. Satisfied. Your mind swirls to a stable line of thinking. You notice the gentle lift and fall of his chest while he breathes, the slow beating of his heart.
“Good, dove?” It is a deep, rumbling voice. Ubbe asks only after a long while has slopped by. “Just a few more minutes, okay? Then I’ll get you something to eat. Something to drink.”
“Hmm,” You nuzzle to his neck. “Not hungry. Just sleepy.”
“Bet you are,” You feel a kiss on the crown of your head.
“You didn’t bite me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
There’s a beat of uncertain silence.
“Why?”
“I will only claim you if you’re sure about it,” He says, lifting your chin to meet the blue waves of the feral sea that are his eyes. “If you want to wait until we are one before the gods, then so be it.”
You press your lips to his in a gentle kiss.
“And if I become with child?” It’s a timid question.
“You’ll bless my life.”
He pulls you to lie down again, your head on his shoulder as he lures you into sleep by softly stroking your back. You give in. This is what happiness tastes like.
