i'm not here anymore.

The first thing you do is apologize for the weeks of silence. “Sorry I haven’t reached out. Work was crazy for a bit, and then—…ah, it doesn’t matter. Sorry though.”

“That’s fine, love. Bit calmer now?”

“Uh…yes and no,” you answer cryptically. “That’s, um…that’s why I wanted to call you actually.”

“Yeah?” he prods, curiosity piqued. It’s second nature to always wonder what you’re up to. If it was possible to live in someone’s head, he’d make yours a second home.

“Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”

He puts you on speaker phone so he can check his calendar at the same time. “I can move some things around. Can’t tell me whatever it is you wanna talk about right now?”

You’re quiet for a moment before you speak again, voice a little tinny through the speaker “I just…it’d be better if we could talk face to face.”

Words like those never bode well, but Gaz shakes it off, giving you the benefit of the doubt. It might just be embarrassing or sensitive news that isn’t easily disclosed over the phone. He’s never begrudged you your privacy before; it certainly isn’t going to start now. 

Besides, whatever it is won’t be private for long. 

“Sure, love. We can have lunch. What time?”

There are things he associates with time—seasons, death, taxes. Faces too, when they change with each time he sees them, months separating his visits and meaning that each time he comes home, there are new lines and new wrinkles in familiar faces. Piercings that weren’t there before. Tattoos and pregnancies and blemishes and drooping cheeks. 

Your face, however, is a constant. Not just in that it never seems to change, but that it never leaves his mind long enough to be forgotten. 

After all, how could it leave for even a second with what you are to him? 

He’s gotten that question before. What do you think you’ll do when you find your mate? When you come across an omega that smells just right, so delicious and ripe that you have no choice but to sink your teeth in and hold? 

Gaz doesn’t have to imagine. He’s known longer than most. It’s been more than ten years since he first met you—ten years since his keen teenage nose caught the tail end of your scent and followed it down the hallway and around the corner until he could put a face to the smell. 

His memories after that moment come in snapshots. A passing teacher dragging him into an empty classroom after recognizing the look in his eye, pupils dilated and mouth agape, his whole body thrumming with desire. Sitting in the principal’s office with his hands in his lap, fists clenching and unclenching while waiting for his mother to join them, the other adults in the room watching him with blatant distrust, as if he weren’t a child too; as if this wasn’t new and overwhelming and terrifying. His mother doing her best to console him in the car on the drive home, Gaz both too old and too young for the torrent of emotion washing over him. 

He blocks that week from his memory lest those same emotions surge up and paralyze him in his tracks. It gives him nothing but grief to remember that day. If the agony of an unconsummated mate bond weren’t enough, the sheer indignity of being treated like something to worry about even to this day comes as a crushing blow. 

It’s taken a lot to move beyond those years. 

It isn’t something Gaz would wish on anyone else. His life has been shaped by a very specific kind of longing. Agony in the shape of a neck. His burden since youth has been to stave off the hunger pangs, but that hasn’t always come easy, and it’s come at a cost. 

In the months following that day, he formed a kind of tentative friendship with you, trying not to let the devastation overwhelm him when you never seemed to recognize his scent as your mate’s. To just be in your orbit was better than nothing at all. 

He lasted all of a year at the same university as you before dropping out and enlisting, his instincts steadily becoming too powerful to ignore. The military was where he learned to manage the hunger—long, sleepless nights and rigid protocol hardening him, reinforcing his weak points. Learning to live with a certain kind of absurdity, and sucking up the urge to argue when given asinine tasks like mopping up rain water in a thunderstorm or being put on pencil sharpening duty. 

Since then, time and distance have helped him soothe the ache and leash his instincts. If he couldn’t be your mate, he could be your friend at least, and he’s taken to that role with zeal. 

Hunger still clings to the inside of his rib cage though. Cramped hunger crouched beneath his lungs. All breath, all pneuma. Tight clustered and tumorous. 

These days he’s just better at managing it. 

A day after your call, you meet on neutral territory, a coffee shop around the back of a busy street in Shoreditch, a neighbourhood he’s only visited a few times in years past when you felt inclined to drag him to the Sunday market. It’s not terribly busy for mid-morning on a Saturday, but the steam wand keeps hissing in the background and the music is cranked up a few decibels higher than Gaz would usually like. The whole place smells of hazelnut and toffee. 

You though—you smell like something indescribably delicious. Floral and fragrant, so succulent that his mouth waters when he inhales a lungful of your scent. Sweet like dandelion wine. 

Time has made it easier for his heart to cope with not having you, but not his hunger. 

You make pleasant conversation for a few minutes before addressing the elephant in the room, avoiding it at first in favour of talking about old friends and family—you ask him how his sister’s PhD defence went and light up like a thousand watt bulb when he tells you that it was successful—anything to avoid the real reason for inviting him to lunch. But there comes a point when you have no choice but to suck in a deep breath and finally get to it.

“I need to ask you for a favour.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a big one,” you warn him.

“Okay,” Gaz repeats, smiling. His acceptance comes easy because there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.

“I wouldn’t—God, this is so awkward,” you start, a heavy sigh steaming up from the back of your throat, head collapsing into your waiting hands to hide your face. Anything to avoid looking at him. 

Gaz sits and waits patiently for your courage to return. Unlike you, he doesn’t fidget or cross and uncross his legs. His urges are strictly regimented, impulses beaten out of him after years of exposure therapy, so to speak. 

You pick your head back up and his heart thumps in his chest. Mostly beaten out of him. 

“Please don’t feel like I’m pressuring you into this.” His lips twitch with a suppressed grin. “I’m only asking because you were the first person I thought of, but I can always figure something else out, or go to, um…—go to a heat centre.” 

He straightens at those words. “Heat centre?” 

“Yes. My, um—” You go quiet again, the words not coming easily to you, but his mind is already racing, mouth dry when he considers the implications of what little information you’ve already offered up. “I’ve been on suppressants for a really long time. Ever since high school. I was supposed to get my prescription renewed with my doctor this week, but I’ve only been seeing her for a few months, so when she realized how long I’ve been on suppressants for, she…—it’s apparently not healthy to be on them for that long.”

“Not healthy,” Gaz repeats, his rational mind somewhere else. 

You shake your head in confirmation. “No. She said long term suppressant use can lead to different cancers and other health complications, and that I should’ve been spacing it out rather than just…suppressing my heats altogether.”

The shrill whistle of blood through his ears muffles all but your words. 

It barrels into him at full tilt. Drives the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his head. 

“Your heat is coming up,” he finishes for you, lasering in on the microexpressions flitting across your face. Blinders on. Nothing else in the world matters as much as your next words. 

You swallow. Look away. “Yep,” you chirp, voice catching in your throat and breaking. 

A chair scrapes loudly against the floor when someone nearby scoots back. 

“You aren’t going to a heat centre?” 

“…No.”

His heart beats so hard against his ribs that his chest nearly hurts. 

“You want me to help you through your heat.” He doesn’t have to ask; your trepidation says as much, and he’s always had an eye for details. 

“I know this is awkward, and I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

Gaz reaches across the table instinctively to take your hand. “No, love, it’s fine. You know you can tell me anything. I’m glad you came to me first.”

Glad hardly touches the depth of the emotion coursing through him. Honoured comes closer. It’s not like he’s never thought about you in heat before, but he’d been away so often and for such long stretches of time, that he assumed you’d gone the heat centre route. He would’ve known if you’d gotten an alpha to help you through it—would’ve smelt their stench on you whenever he was back in the city. 

But as grateful as he is that you entrusted him with this knowledge, it also nearly takes his breath away. 

“You’ve never had a heat before?”

It almost seems unfathomable. He’s had plenty of ruts before—a couple of times with a partner, usually another alpha or a beta—and never once assumed that you’d gone your whole life without experiencing a heat. 

You shake your head. “No. I got on suppressants as soon as I presented and it was just easier to live life without having to, you know…deal with heats and all of that. Just seemed like a hassle.”

His head is spinning. He grips the edge of the table to keep himself upright, but it’s almost not enough. At any moment, he might tip right over.

He won’t ask if you’ve ever slept with someone before. It’s none of his business. Even if it were, he wouldn’t want to know. 

Besides, even if you have, they haven’t had you in a way that mattered. There’s no mark on your neck or ring on your finger, and you’ve never spent a heat with someone else. 

Never until now, that is.

The answer is right on his lips when you cut him off at the pass. “Don’t answer now. I wanted to ask you in person, but I don’t want you to feel on the spot.”

“Love, you aren’t putting me on the spot.” Not when the choice is so obvious. 

But you don’t let him finish, holding up a hand to get him to stop talking. There’s a tremor in your hand, your fingers quivering slightly, and noticing that makes him pause. 

“Please just—just think about it,” you insist. 

“…Fine, I’ll give it a think,” Gaz rasps, acting like his whole entire world hasn’t changed in a blink. 

“Thanks, Kyle.” 

Your relief is palpable, so undisguised that he’d be insulted if he wasn’t viscerally aware of how much the conversation has taken out of you.  

You hug him on the way out—a gesture so natural to your friendship that you don’t notice the way he pulls you closer than normal, every inch of your body plastered to his—and he stays for a bit longer, finishing his lunch alone. He needs the time to think after what you just told him, time to digest that news without the blood ringing in his ears.

When he leaves, the sky is different. Silver sheafs of light paint the streets on the walk home, the noise of the traffic and clatter of conversation louder than ever before, the cacophony of a whole world happening around him. But it’s distant somehow, like the trickle of a brook off somewhere deep in a forest. 

He’s on the threshold of a new world, one foot dangling over the edge. For now, he keeps his balance. It remains to be seen in the days to come. 

A late, gold sun bathes the street with ribbons of light and warmth in the early hours of the evening. There’s a bistro across from the building where Simon works the evening shift in the underground parking lot, and they meet there once a week for food and a cig before Simon has to clock in. 

Gaz savours this hour and a half more than most. There’s never a guarantee that Simon will show up; his friendship is a deliberate and intentional act, not easily given but easily taken away. It’s not something that Gaz takes for granted. There may come a day when the other man never shows up again and Gaz eats at a table across from an empty chair. 

He has faith though. Their relationship isn’t so tenuous that every day he expects the worst. More than once, they’ve travelled together—one of Gaz’s fondest memories is sitting with Simon in a piazza in Florence and conversing over espressos and lemon tarallucci. For a time after leaving the military—close to around six weeks, give or take a few days—Simon even slept on Gaz’s couch until finding his own place. 

Suffice it to say, they’re closer than most people would guess. Close enough that Simon doesn’t need to be told that something’s up when Gaz is more brusque with the waiter than usual.  

“Are you ever gonna spit it out or what?” Simon finally asks, a touch annoyed with having to be the one to broach the subject of Gaz’s mood. 

The bigger man sits across the table from him with a mullish look on his face. Cantankerous as always, likely in a mood from a combination of bad sleep and old aches flaring up. He’s always touchier between the seasons, the sudden shifts making his skin go painfully dry and old injuries act up. 

Gaz’s smile is slightly sheepish when it creeps onto his face. “You could tell?”

“‘Course I can. You’ve got stupid look on your face,” Simon grunts, taking a messy bite of his sandwich. Pepperoncini slices and mayonnaise drip from the other end onto the plate. 

The one downside to eating with Simon is having to mask his reaction to Simon’s complete lack of table manners. It's a skill that's come with plenty of practice.

“My—” he pauses, choosing his next word carefully. “A friend of mine asked me to help her through her heat.”

It’s not a topic they’ve ever broached before. His raunchier conversations are usually relegated to Johnny, Soap usually the initiator. Simon keeps his exploits private, cards close to his chest; it doesn’t seem impossible that he has a girl squirreled away somewhere, but Gaz would never know if he did. 

“Ever fucked ‘er before?” Simon asks, blunt as usual. 

Gaz laughs, shaking his head. “No. It’s not like that.”

“But you’re gonna fuck ‘er now?”

“Yes. Maybe. It’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated about fucking an omega through a heat?” He talks with his mouth full for a second before pausing to finish chewing and swallowing. Then he takes another bite, talking through that one too. “Knot ‘er a couple times, wear a mouthguard if you ‘aven’t got enough control, then go home. Simple.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why the fuck not?” 

He mulls over the best way to say it before deciding to just mirror Simon’s usual blunt approach. “She’s my mate.”

Simon’s indifference sloughs off all in one go. “When the hell did you bag someone, Garrick?”

His laughter this time borders on derisive. “Haven’t yet, actually.”

Simon stills, staring at him from over his sandwich. More ingredients spill from the bottom and onto the plate but he pays them no mind. The silence stretches on for a while, long enough for Gaz to catch on to the fact that Simon has no intention of responding, either too baffled or appalled to muster up a response or simply waiting for Gaz to justify himself. Likely the latter. 

“We were both too young when we met,” he explains. “Must’ve just presented when I first scented her and everyone told me to wait until she made the first move. Then time passed and…obviously she didn’t, and I didn’t want to pressure her.”

“How young?” 

“Uh…” He doesn’t have to think, but he knows how Simon will respond and that makes him hesitate. “Eighteen?”

“Jesus fuck, Gaz,” Simon groans, letting go of his sandwich in disgust.

“Look—”

“You’ve waited ten bloody years to bite her?”

Simon looks at Gaz like what he’s saying is anathema, like even the thought of not mating his omega doesn’t compute. For him, it probably doesn’t. It’s not the way things usually go. Gaz knows he’s been more patient than most. 

“I didn’t want to force her into a mate bond.” He shrugs. His own sandwich grows cold on the plate, barely a third of it gone compared to the scraps Simon still has left to eat. 

Gaz knows the excuse doesn’t hold water, but for as close as he is with Simon, he doesn’t have it in him to get to the real heart of the matter, the truth that his heart is still bruised. That there’s still a part of him that doesn’t believe this won’t all get ripped away from him in the end. That his own doubts might be the reason it all falls apart. 

“Fuck that,” he scoffs, pointing at Gaz with a mayo and buffalo sauce covered finger. “Have you told ‘er yes then yet? Never mind, ‘course you ‘aven’t, bloody fuckin’ moron. You’re gonna call ‘er after this and tell ‘er yes. Then, on the day of, you fuck her and bite her.”

Gaz rolls his eyes. “I can’t make that decision for her.”

“Someone’s gonna eventually. Has to happen. If it ain’t you, it’ll be some other bloke who gets to fuck and pup ‘er while you sit around with your dick in your hand. That how you want this to play out? Cucked by some bellend who won’t treat ‘er right?”

He nearly gnashes his teeth at Simon’s words, but he’s more civilized than that. He goes stone-faced instead, nostrils flaring.

“What was I supposed to do? Bite her the next time I saw her in the hallway?” Gaz rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that would’ve played out really well for me. Not like I wasn’t on thin fuckin’ ice the whole time with everyone.”

“Been a few years since then.” Simon picks his sandwich back up and takes such a big bite that he squeezes most of the ingredients out, tearing off a chunk of bread and meat.

“Yeah, I’m aware.” His tone is abrasive, but Simon shrugs it off, unbothered by a little vitriol. “Seeing as how I’m the one who’s been suffering through those years. Nobly, might I add.”

“There’s nothing fuckin’ noble about suffering,” he scoffs, upper lip curled. “You do the hard shit and then you get out. No sense in letting it drag on.”

He very nearly argues that point. Has to bite his tongue at the last second to keep from being crueler than warranted. As if suffering weren’t Simon’s main export; his main claim to fame.

He’s better than that though. And, if he were being honest with himself, there might be some truth there. 

When Simon leaves for his shift, Gaz sits there until his coffee goes cold and the manager comes by to gently inform him that they’ll be closing shortly, offering to pack up the rest of his food for home. Gaz nods absently, still miles away in his head.

He drives home in that headspace, mulling Simon’s words over. 

Justice is a core tenet of his. Fairness another. He’s lived his life up to this point guided by a strict set of principles, hardly breaking his rules of conduct unless forced to do so, unless given no other recourse. 

But he’s given so much of himself to the world and asked for so little in return. Is it not fair that he receive this? 

And besides, the beast in his chest rumbles, licking its chops, did you not ask for his help? 

He clicks the button on his sun visor to let himself into his condo’s garage. In the elevator on the way up, he stares at his reflection in the door and chews the inside of his cheek. 

Ten years now he’s sat on his hands and waited for a sign, rejecting the urge to simply take what his beast sees as his. The patience of a monk. Now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A white flag waved to signal the end. And rather than take that white flag for what it is and head into the sunlight, he insists on staying put and ignoring the way fate beckons him forward. 

There’s no glory in torturing oneself, no prize to be won for self-abnegation. 

And though his answer was always yes, Gaz allows himself a moment to consider what it would take for him to say no and send you off into the arms of another man. 

He hasn’t got that kind of strength in him. He’s dangled out of helicopters with his head mere inches from the ground, jumped out of a chopper hit by an RPG, fallen through the floor of a building on fire, and been under heavy fire more times than he can count, but that would be the thing that killed him. Seeing you with someone else. Knowing that the opportunity to make you his was truly lost, beyond recovery. 

And he’s tired of the way things are, his sacrificial nature bleeding into every facet of his life. 

There has to be a time for change. 

The next morning, as soon as it’s socially acceptable, he calls you, holding the phone so tight that he accidentally lowers the volume all the way down before fixing it. 

“Thought about it enough. I’ll do it.”

Two weeks until the day.

He circles it in red on the calendar in his office and it colours his peripheral vision every time he turns his head. 

And every night leading up to that day, Gaz puts his head down on his pillow to rest and he dreams. 

Fragmented dream; images of soft thighs and sweat matted hair, lips and tongues pressed together, glutes and buttock squeezing with each thrust, panted breaths getting louder and louder, the air humid and electrified. 

Always, waking at some undetermined hour, jaw clenched, the flameform of a woman left burning in his throat. 

Anticipation whets his appetite. His stomach growls like the beast in his chest and it paces restlessly as the days stretch out endlessly, only stopping when the sun finally dips below the horizon, that time coming each day later and later like some sadistic torture levied on his soul. 

In the weeks leading up to the event, Gaz comes with you to pick up supplies even though you swear that you’ve got it all under control. A lot goes into preparing for a heat. You have to stock your fridge, make your nest, lock away your valuables in case you break anything in the throes of your heat. At the end of your Costco run, the trunk of his car is stuffed to the brim with water bottles, groceries, blankets, wet wipes, chafing cream, sports drinks, and moisturizer. 

At the door to your apartment, he moves to come inside with the bags and only stops when you protest, insisting that your nest isn’t ready yet. His lips twitch into a grin. 

“You don’t want me to help carry everything in?” Gaz asks.

“No, it’s fine. I’d rather—well, just bring everything to the door and I can do the rest.”

He humours you this time because things will be different soon. When your heat is over and he’s no longer just a friend that you can keep at a distance but a red blooded man who tended to your weeping cunt and kissed every inch of your body, things will be different.

Until then though, he can give you this. 

Sometimes he finds himself hypnotized by the tantalizing glimpse of skin that he gets when your neckline pulls and the mating gland sitting in the divot between your neck and shoulder is exposed. 

Every moment in your presence is excruciating now that he knows that the waiting has come to an end. The two week interim period feels almost flimsy, false; the veil has dropped though, and he knows what’s on the other side of it now.

Though his rut is months off, the resonance of your scent must rouse his dormant instincts and throw his hormones into whack because he puts on a couple kilograms with ease, his body preparing for your heat. He overstays his allotted time at the gym by half an hour every session, so lost in his own head that he runs ten kilometres without even realizing it. Sweat runs off him in rivulets, the front of his shirt stained a darker shade of its original colour. 

In the locker room, Gaz sets his towel down on the countertop and stares at his reflection in the mirror. The sudden uptick in mass that he’s put on in the last week is noticeable even to him, his thighs and arms bulkier, and his abs a little less defined with the added weight around his midsection. His skin is smooth and buttery from moisturizing religiously before bed every night, a nice sheen to it. 

He rolls his shoulders back and flexes, preening for the imaginary viewer in his head that looks remarkably like you. 

Johnny would taunt him mercilessly if he could see him now. As if Johnny weren’t twice as vain and pompous as Gaz on a good day. 

He looks good though. Strong. Virile. Capable of seeing his mate through her first heat. If that self-assurance makes him seem cocksure or arrogant, so be it. 

There are plenty of worse things to be. 

“Did you put in for time off?” you ask, still sweaty from a brisk walk through the park to meet him. 

“Yeah. Did it the same day I called you. Took the whole week off.”

Even for as early as it is, the park is busy. Mothers pushing prams jog by in front of the bench the two of you are sitting on, all dressed in the same leggings and puffy vests, headbands holding their hair back. The city has barely woken up from winter’s tight hold, the air brisk and the ponds gelid; small mounds of ice-encrusted snow spread throughout the park like an inverse archipelago. 

In a few more weeks, there might be buds on the trees.

The pretext for spending so much time together in the lead up to your heat is so you can integrate his scent into your system. Gaz barely suppresses a laugh when you give him that excuse. As if you haven’t had a lifetime of acclimation. As if his scent hasn’t immixed with yours by now, and yours with his. 

“I took an extra couple days off after. You know, just in case.” You shrug like it’s no big deal. 

Gaz knows better though. Your ambivalence doesn’t read as wholly true. He can see the way your throat bobs when you swallow and your fingers tighten around your coffee cup. You haven’t made eye contact with him yet despite ten minutes having passed since you sat down beside him. Despite the mild weather, your coat is zipped up to the top, the metal nearly biting into your throat.

You’re doing a bang up job of acting like this isn’t some long preamble before jumping into bed together. He can’t fault you for the fact that it’s all he can think about. It runs through his mind twenty-four-seven, running an endless track that only seems to get easier the more laps he does. 

It’s strange being with you now. Humbling. There’s almost something fascinating in knowing that though you now insist on keeping a polite distance, in a week’s time, he’ll have you flat on your back and whimpering. There’s no harm in allowing you this final bit of grace, so Gaz doesn’t protest, even though—

In a week, you’ll be his.

“Are you nervous?” Gaz asks.

You stiffen, either offended or shy. He settles on the latter when you hesitantly reply, “No. I think we got everything I needed. Um. Not much more to do now other than wait.”

“That’s good.”

“Plus…I trust you.”

His heart clenches at that, stunned into silence for once. 

“You’ve always smelled good too,” you admit. “From what I can tell. I’ve always had a pretty poor sense of smell—really, it’s shit—but you smell better than most people. And I know you’d never hurt me.”

“I wouldn’t,” he stresses. 

You smile and finally meet his eyes. If only he could tell you it with his eyes alone. Nothing could be further from his intentions. If he has his way, you’ll be better off by the end of your heat.

“It’s going to be rough though,” Gaz says apropos of nothing when you go to take a sip, nearly making you spit out your coffee. 

“Huh?” you ask, looking over at him. You wipe your mouth off on your sleeve. 

“First heats always are.” A gust of wind makes you shiver. “You'll probably be worse too, since you put it off for so long—” He chuckles under his breath when your eyes widen. “Sorry, love, I’m not having a go—I’m just being honest is all. Have to know what you’re getting into before it happens; that way you don’t freak out when it’s too late.”

“Too late?” you repeat.

He nods. “Yeah, love. Once your heat hits and my…my alpha takes over, I’m not going to be able to, uh…control myself. I’m going to want to knot you as many times as I can. It’ll be the only thing I’ll want to do.”

All you can do is stare at him, beyond words. Mouth open, teeth separated. One day he’ll have you on your knees like that, tongue out as well to run up the underside of his cock. 

“But I’ll be good to you. I promise.”

He pats your knee before standing up, and you stare up at him with your mouth slightly agape, eyes round. 

“You’re leaving?” you croak, dry throat making your voice crack. 

Gaz smiles. “Gotta head out, love. Got some errands to run. Remember to do your stretches and call me if you need anything before Saturday, alright? And thanks for the coffee.”

He tosses his cup into the bin on his way out of the park, every instinct in him screaming to turn around and go back. It isn’t time though. 

It’s coming, he reassures himself on the walk home. It won’t be long now. 

How does it happen that an alpha can have his omega within biting distance for years and still keep their hands to themselves? He asks himself this question every day, but the answer remains out of reach.  

It takes a strength of will not easily called up. A sense of honour and duty that few can touch, never mind possess. He has it in spades though, chock full of the stuff, and it’s moulded him into the kind of man capable of taking care of you. 

The only thing left unanswered is whether that strength has served its purpose. Whether now is the time to let it go.

He runs his tongue over the point of his canines. 

It’s too soon to tell.

He wakes more alert than any time in nearly thirty years of life, daylight engraved into the side of his face.

Close enough to touch. Gaz’s skin itches when he brushes his teeth and packs his weekend bag with his last few things. An hour—two tops—and you’ll be under him, soft thighs parted and slick hole stuffed full of his cock. Then days more ahead of him to do the same thing over and over and over. 

He drives to your place with a sense of caution that borders on neurotic, coming to a full stop at every stop sign and yield, on the lookout for any reckless drivers lest today be the day that he gets into an accident. There’s no margin for error today. 

The roads are clear this early in the morning though, so he breathes out when he pulls into the parking lot of your building. It’s overcast now, the sun receding behind the clouds. Everywhere around him, life keeps on happening like the world isn’t about to irrevocably change. 

Gaz lets himself in using the spare key fob you gave him a week prior. Even the halls are quiet, the day not yet started enough for people to be on their way out. It’s a Saturday after all. 

His legs seem to move without conscious thought, like he’s being pulled towards your flat, a magnet of opposite polarity. There’s a prickling awareness of another consciousness at the back of his mind. He’s been aware of it all his life, but it’s as real now as it’s ever gotten, the prospect of its omega in heat at the end of a hallway and beyond something as trivial as a door giving it more cognisance, more influence. 

Even from the other side of the door, your scent sets his teeth on edge. 

You answer the door bleary-eyed and sweaty, housecoat cinched tight around your waist and fuzzy slippers making it look like you just woke up. Visibly teetering on the edge of your heat. It’s so obvious and the smell of it so fragrant that Gaz’s instincts kick in and he pushes you back into the apartment, slamming the door shut behind him. His bag drops to the floor beside him. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, already palming your cheeks and tilting your head this way and that. He tugs down your lower eyelid gently, checking your sclera for anything abnormal.

“A bit hot,” you admit. 

“What’s your temperature?”

“Just a little over ninety-nine degrees. What’s the matter with you? Did you go to med school without telling me or something?” 

A slight temperature is entirely normal for a heat, the body working overtime to support the increased production of estrogen.

“It’s your first heat. I’m taking it seriously.”

You roll your eyes. “It’s not a baby. I don’t think you need to ask me every five minutes if I’m dilated enough.”

He ignores the baby joke because there’ll be danger if he doesn’t. The situation is already tense enough without thinking about you swollen with his pup. That’s a dream for a different day. Instead, he helps you take off the housecoat (which must have been adding five degrees to your internal temperature) and herds you into the kitchen for a cold glass of water.

It helps but barely.

Your first wave of your heat doesn’t crest until mid-morning, and by then Gaz is practically breathing smoke, the scope of his attention shrinking until you’re the only thing he can focus on. When you twitch, his head snaps in your direction, eyes vacant apart from a slight glimmer of awareness. 

It’s getting harder to think through the fog. It’d be worse if his rut overlapped with your heat, but even just being in proximity to an omega in heat—his mate, no less—forces him into an equivalent headspace. Ears peeled for any noises in the hallway outside your apartment. Wary of another alpha intruding on you in this state.

“C’mon, baby, we’re gonna get one last snack in you before it hits,” Gaz murmurs soothingly, urging you up off the couch and into the kitchen. You stumble slightly on your way there and his heart skips a beat.

You squirm in your chair while trembling fingers bring slices of manchego and chorizo up to your lips. His gaze is intense and unwavering. Any desire to glance down at the spot between your legs evaporates when your eyelashes flutter shut and your cheeks bulge as you chew. 

You’re so sweet like this. A tender thing for him to open up and ply with victuals.

“Just a couple more, okay?” he urges, pushing the plate closer to you and shushing you when you whine. 

You turn your head away when he brings a slice of cheese to your lips. “M’full,” you complain. 

“I know, baby, but it’s gonna be a long time before you’ll wanna eat again.”

“You smell weird,” you grumble instead, turning your head into his armpit and taking a deep inhale. 

“What do you mean ‘weird’?” he asks, slightly perplexed.

“Dunno. Different.” You drag another deep breath in. “Did you put cologne on or something? Smells…uh…really good.”

His dick throbs. “No, baby. Didn’t even shower before I came over.”

“Mmm. Good.”

His arm drops to the table, the force of it making the plate rattle. Fuck but how that nearly gets him. He’s not infallible. Eventually something is going to tip him over the edge from sanity into delirium. 

If this is any indication of the days to come, there’s a chance neither of you will come out entirely unscathed. 

It happens gradually, your sentences slowly degenerating and fragmenting, and your eyes glazing over. Even the smell of your skin gets richer. 

The effect that your heat is having on him is staggering. No one told him it’d be like this. No one told him it’d be like unzipping himself and letting you inside. Like sitting still as a fire blazes around him, the flames licking closer and closer to his skin.

Then your fever spikes and all bets are off. 

“Up,” Gaz growls. He doesn’t wait for you to listen, lifting you up from the chair from under your arm and hunching slightly to scoop you up into his arms. 

You moan, clinging to him. “It’s, uh—Kyle, I…I’m really hot.”

His legs are heavy beneath him, lead weights that he has to drag across the apartment, each step tougher than the last. 

Your nest is a soft, sumptuous garden of blankets and pillows and assorted clothes dragged out of the closet and spread across the floor and bed. You must have pulled the mattress off the bed frame at some point in the last two weeks because it’s pressed into the corner of the room, draped in every single sheet and blanket you own. The bed frame sits quite awkwardly on the other side of the room, pushed out of the way so as to not get in the way, and there are foam panels plastered all over to soundproof the walls. 

Clever girl, thinking of that. 

Everything’s been rearranged. He’d caught that you’d dragged a bookshelf into the living room when he came into your apartment, but even your dresser and nightstand are tucked away in the corner of your room. It’s like you took inventory of everything you own and moved everything apart from the barest essentials needed for your heat. 

He comes down onto one knee on the edge of the mattress before setting you down. You come up onto your elbows almost immediately. There’s a look in your eyes that he’s never seen before except in his dreams. Besotted, devotional. In his wildest dreams, he couldn’t have imagined that you’d ever look at him like this. 

You sit up when he comes down onto the mattress, constantly orbiting and orienting towards him. 

“Gonna take this a little at a time, okay, love?” Gaz rumbles. 

“Yeah, yeah,” you rasp, climbing into his lap when he softly urges you up. An arm braced behind him keeps him from collapsing when you sag into him. 

Pseudo-rut makes him a bit dumb, a bit clumsy. He palms the back of your neck a bit too roughly, murmuring an apology against your lips when you whimper before drawing you into a deep, toe-curling kiss. 

His stomach seizes up when he realizes that he’s kissing you for the first time. Ten years of anguish and heartache and delirious need finally culminating in your lips parting against his, the soft melt of your tongue against his when you let his tongue slide into your mouth, his blunt fingers tilting your head higher up. 

Gorgeous, perfect mouth. Kissing it feels like coming home after years away. 

God, he’s wanted it for so long. And God, your mouth tastes good, and when your tongue touches his, his head goes cloudy and his cheeks go hot. 

Clothes fall to the wayside, slowly added to the nest one by one—his pants are shoved into the crease between the mattress and the wall, your shirt tucked under a pillow. He has to reach down to readjust himself through his boxers and your eyes follow the path his hand takes, going half-lidded and hot.

He smirks, only a little bashful. “See something you like?” 

“Uh-huh,” you mumble, barely taking in his words. 

His chest puffs involuntarily, the beast in him preening. 

Touching your bare skin for the first time, Gaz realizes that he’s never felt so moored and ready. This is where he’s meant to be. Every agonizing moment of the last ten years has prepared him for this moment; not even the bite of his pseudo-rut could make him flounder. 

He traces a nipple with his thumb, following the path with his tongue when he lifts his thumb away, round and round the areola until you’re practically sobbing his name. Not enough. It’s still not enough. 

“Baby, I need to get you ready,” he murmurs when you pull at the waistband of his boxers. 

“M’ready now,” you half-snarl, tugging more forcefully, trying to rip his underwear right off. 

Gaz laughs. “No, you’re not.”

You don’t have a choice but to indulge him though. It’s his way or the highway. He’d told you that back at the beginning, after ringing you to tell you that he’d help you through your heat—it had to be under his terms or not at all. 

Your knickers get shoved under the pillow as well. Something for him to toy with later, when you’re tuckered out and not raring to go just yet. It’ll tide him over when you’re too sensitive for him to play with your pussy. 

He barely grazes a knuckle over your clit and you come, hiccupping through your first orgasm. You’re quick to come, like everything up to this point has just been foreplay. 

“Oh lovie,” he coos, pressing his lips to your temple. “It’s alright—I’ve got you.”

You jolt when he thumbs your clit again. Too sensitive. He pulls it away just long enough for you to catch your breath and for the twitches to subside, but when you start to pant again, your smelling ripening in that telltale way, he strums his thumb across it again, tucking a finger into your hole and groaning when he finds it scorching hot.

He dreamt of fingering you all the time back in high school. Thought of sitting beside you in the auditorium during assemblies and sliding his hand up your skirt until you spread your thighs and let him push your panties out of the way; cornering you in the bathroom between classes and pressing his fingers into you from behind, muffling your cries with his mouth; jiggling your pretty clit in the backseat of the bus, draping his jacket across your lap so no one else would see your wet pussy. 

The reality is so much better than he ever could’ve imagined. 

Three fingers and still you beg for more. You’re clamped so tight around his fingers that he can barely move them, not without exerting a bit more force than he’d like. You must like it though because you squeeze around his neck almost intolerably tight when he forces his fingers in.

“Good girl,” he grunts, shoving them back in. “You can take it.” 

“A-alpha?” you stutter. 

Gaz pulls you close, tucking your face into his neck. “Come here, I’ve got you. Just hold onto me, love, okay? Can you do that?”

“Y-yeah,” you breathe. 

His whole body jerks when you bite his neck. Your teeth don’t break the skin, but still he shudders, squeezing his eyes shut. Just barely keeps from telling you to bite down harder.

You have to take another break after you come, limp and satiated. Gaz uses that time to fluff the nest a bit, getting it nice and comfortable. He even leaves to fetch you a glass of water, bringing you into his chest for a nice cuddle while you recharge.

When you start staring too much again, he knows it’s almost time. 

Nervousness has no hold on him though. You came to him because you trusted him to take care of you through your first heat. 

That assurance settles him. Grounds him. There’s no one more equipped to do what he’s about to do because he’s waited his whole life for this. Whether consciously or not, his whole life has been in preparation for this moment, every choice, every heartache, every sleepless night. It’s all been in anticipation of this. 

It nearly undoes him though, despite everything. Despite the weeks spent mentally preparing, despite the strength in his body and the muscle he’s tacked on, despite his own fervor even. 

Because when he climbs on top of you and your thighs part, your hole is wet and waiting, ready for him to use it and leave a little mess behind. Just looking at it makes his balls throb. It almost doesn’t seem right that he’s about to spoil something as pretty as your pussy with his dick. Leave it stretched out and full of come. A little puffy from being knotted so many times. He should’ve gotten you a plug for after, something to keep his come inside of you. 

If his cock wasn’t so heavy, Gaz would be tempted to lean down and kiss it a bit too. It feels wrong to push inside without at least a little send-off kiss, something soft to set your mind at ease before he fucks you six ways from Sunday. 

He doesn’t have the luxury of taking his time though; your temperature is rising again, skin hot to the touch. 

Your patience is thinning too. “Kyle, I can’t wait—I can’t. I need you—” 

“I know, baby, I know.”

He strips off the last of his clothes quickly, boxers getting tossed behind him somewhere, before crawling over you again. The head of his cock looks brutish against your slick opening when he lines it up, but it stretches so prettily when he starts to sink in, gravity doing the work for him. 

Your legs girdle his waist, pillowy thighs catching him when he sinks to the hilt, breasts moulding to his chest. You’re scorching hot inside, a sweltering, blistering wetness that squeezes his cock like a vice. 

“Baby…” 

He sounds broken, eviscerated. Gutted like a gralloched animal. 

Gaz is barely able to move, barely able to pull his hips back and hump forward, the mattress shifting under him. He could probably knot you just like that. It wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge. 

“Ohohohohoh—” you squeak when he grunts low and deep, bearing down on top of you.

Two strokes into the softest, wettest cunt of his life and his resolve fractures into a thousand parts. Shards too splintered to ever piece back together again. 

At the back of his mind, he thought he might be strong enough to resist temptation. Thought he wouldn’t need anything as barbaric as a mouthguard or a collar around your throat to keep him from giving in to his baser urges. 

Strength isn’t what kept his urges fenced in though. Fear is what’s haunted him for the last ten years—the fear that he wouldn’t be enough for you, that he wasn’t allowed to have you for some reason, doubt crawling into his ear like an insect and whispering to him that he had so much more to do in order to prove himself worthy of you, that you needed to be the one to invite him in. 

But you have, haven’t you? 

Two strokes into the love of his life’s pussy and Gaz relinquishes himself to instinct, dropping his head, teeth sinking into the mating gland sitting pretty at the crook of your neck. It gives almost too easily under his teeth. Soft and tender skin, and then the secretions fill his mouth, blood and ambrosia all at once. Sweet dandelion wine and honeyed nectar. 

You tense up around him instantly, a garbled, watery gasp jumping from your lips, and sharp fingernails bite into his shoulders.

“Oh fuck,” Gaz gasps into the side of your neck when he relaxes his bite, head spinning as it all snaps into place, every strand finally tightening into place, draped in fate like samite, ermine, and brocade. “Oh God, baby, I’m so sorry. Oh God, baby, fuuuuuuck…”

“Alpha?” you wheeze. 

“Yeah, baby, I’m here,” he sighs, laving his tongue over the hurt. Your pulse thrums under his tongue, nervous and fast. “You just felt—hng, fuck—felt so good. Couldn’t help m’self.”

“A-alpha, you—you bit me—”

“Sorry, love, I didn’t mean to. Just couldn’t help it.”

“It hurts,” you whimper. You sound like you’re on the verge of tears.

“I know, baby, I know—I’m sorry. M’gonna make it all better, okay?”

“You’re gonna make it better?” you ask, almost pathetically, the tears beading in the corners of your eyes. 

His goddamn heart nearly breaks at the sight of your tears. “Of course I will, baby. Not gonna let anything bad happen to you—not my omega. My mate.”

There’s blood on his lip but not an ounce of regret in his being. Gaz sits up on his haunches, hands digging into your waist when he repositions you. He rolls you over onto your side and lifts a leg over his shoulder, swollen lips splitting open with the stretch, and fuck if you aren’t dripping wet. His head lolls forward as he stares, tempted to put you right back down and drink straight from the source, hook both legs over his shoulders and just go to town. 

But he has a job to do and his knot is already fattening up at the base of his cock, desperate to be wedged in a soft, warm hole. 

One hand palms your belly while the other holds your leg in place as he shuffles forward, turgid cock still slick with your juices. He pulls his hand away from your stomach briefly to readjust his cock, lining it up with your hole against before sinking in, letting the weight of his body carry him forward. 

Your eyes roll back in your head, the whites so white that his teeth ache. Not a hint of iris or pupil. 

He bottoms out this time on the first stroke, the curly hairs at the base of his cock damp with your slick. Warm, wet walls squeeze around his cock, sucking him in deeper, and Gaz curses softly under his breath. 

“With me, love?” Gaz asks.

When you don’t respond right away, he gives your cheek a light tap. “M’okay…”

The first few thrusts are mindful, slow enough to gauge your reaction and ensure you aren’t overwhelmed. His instincts dig like a spike into the back of his head, but Gaz grits his teeth, forcing back the impulse to rut between your thighs like a mindless beast. There’ll be a time for that in the coming days. 

Then he bucks forward a bit rougher, his shoulders tightening, tendons in his neck straining when his jaw clenches. 

Your breath comes short and sharp. “Oh god, oh my god…”

“There we go,” Gaz purrs. “That better, baby?”

“H-huh…?” Disoriented, your eyes roll around in their sockets until they land on him. Recognition comes slow, if at all. Poor thing, so horny that you can’t even think straight. 

“That feel good? That feel better, baby? I’ll take care of everything in the morning—get all the paperwork sorted, tell your parents and friends, everything. Not gonna let you stress about anything. Just have to lie there and take it nice and deep.”

The thought alone nearly makes him come. He’ll do everything by the book in the morning. It appeals to him on a base level, the idea of taking care of everything for you, so entrenched in your life that you don’t even have to think with him around. 

No more holding back, his beast rumbles in his chest.

We’ve always been worthy of this.

The thing under his skin has gone hungry for far too many years. It has known where to go to satisfy itself, but waited instead for the meal to come to it. 

And it has. You have. Wobbly-lipped and desperate for him to bite and hold. 

His pace is frantic now, mind turned off and glutes flexing with every thrust, thighs burning with the effort to keep the rhythm. All that matters is burying himself in you as deep as physically possible. 

Sweat drips into his eyes. Blinking doesn’t help. The air compresses around him, squeezing him to the point of bursting. 

Your pretty tits bounce with every thrust and he has to touch them. Grab them. Mould his hand over them until his palm always remembers what your nipple feels like. He loves the sounds you make when he pinches them and slides them between his fingers. 

“Wanted to touch these for years,” Gaz growls. He cups his hand under your breast, plumping it up all nicely. “Every summer you’d wear these, uh, these low cut tops…and I’d be so fucking hard, thinking about how much I wanted to pull your shirt down and suck on them.” 

“You never—oh, oh, oh—” you start, interrupted when you come again, walls contracting around his length. Gaz has to grit his teeth to keep from coming as well, not ready to come just yet. 

This one leaves you near breathless, too spent to finish your sentence. Your channel milks his cock. 

He wants to hear it though. “What’s that, baby?” 

“You…you never…said anything.”

“Wasn’t sure you wanted me back.” His vulnerability is ripped from him without warning, so used to giving you everything that he doesn’t even stop to think about what it’ll do to him.

You scrunch up your face, pouting up at him and it’s bad for his heart, it’s so bad for his heart how smitten he is with you. “‘Course I did. I just thought—I thought you didn’t—I’m, ah…”

So close to coming again, you lose track of your words, but Gaz understands, and the implication leaves him short of breath. 

So much lost time. So much to make up for. 

He leans down, bracing himself over you again. Your skin tastes salty when he runs his tongue over the shell of your ear. “You gonna take my knot, baby?” 

“Yesyesyesyes—”

“Gonna let me come inside too?”

“Yesssss—” you hiss through your teeth, tears spilling over your waterlines.

“‘Course you are, perfect girl. Gonna let me come inside and knot you because you’re mine. You’re my girl—my omega—my mate—”

It’s right there, barely a klick away. His balls are drawn up tight, thighs tensed and burning, every inch of him poised on the edge, desperate to come. 

When you reach down to grab a handful of his arse, trying to pull him in closer, Gaz chokes on his breath, tipped right over the edge. His groin pulses when he comes, that first spurt so good that his vision goes spotty. 

It’s so good—

God.

It’s hard to think. Hard to breathe. 

The breath is punched out of him, the sudden swell of his knot winding him. It locks his hips in place, the swollen flesh snug in the wet embrace of your cunt. Under him, you gasp for breath, wide eyes staring up at him.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Gaz coos, cupping your cheek in his hand. “I’ve got you, love.”

His hips grind forward in absence of any movement. Your walls flutter around his knot, too stretched out to squeeze any tighter. The energy is sucked from his body with his come, each pulse making him shudder and gasp. You must be full to the brim with how much he comes.

When there’s nothing left in him to give, Gaz slumps forward, only his elbows catching his weight, hips pinning yours down to the bed until he rolls over tentatively, making sure to keep you pressed tight to his chest. 

There’s nothing he could say that would be better than just this—draped over you, forehead to forehead, soothing his omega. Rubbing the bridge of his nose against yours. Massaging your thigh when you shift, a little cramp in your hip. 

It comes like second nature to him. It’s always been his favourite part after all—the afterglow. Pillow talk and cuddling; sweet, slow kisses with swollen lips. The fact that it’s with you only makes him enjoy it more.

When his knot softens enough to dislodge, he pulls out of you and strokes your cheek when you whine in discomfort. The sight of your poor, battered cunt makes him wince. 

He wets a hand towel in the bathroom and comes back to find you in the same place as when he left you, dazed eyes watching him curiously. Kneeling at the edge of the bed, he parts your legs to either side and crawls in closer, starting with the mess along your inner thighs and the fold of your butt. 

“Stay still,” he growls when you squirm. You go still at the subtle command in his voice, alert even under the fog of heat.

Your legs still twitch when he swipes the cloth between your legs, wiping off his leaking spend and the slick still wet on your inner thighs, but you hold yourself as still as possible, nearly biting your lip off in the process. 

“T-thank you, alpha,” you whisper, chewing on your fingertip. 

He feels his cock twitch at that, still wet with your juices. Doesn’t take much for you to work him up. 

It isn’t long before your heat crests again and you’re crawling over Gaz, hands pinning his shoulders down to the mattress. He laughs. The sound dies in his throat when you line his shaft up with your hole and sink down in one smooth motion, shutting him up oh so effectively.

Cheeky little thing. 

A few days go missing, only recalled in chunks when he’s a bit more clear-headed. Feeding you fresh fruit and slices of cheese from his fingers as you whined on his knot. Licking his own spend out of you while holding your trembling thighs open, digging his fingers into your plush inner thighs. Sucking your beaded nipples into his mouth while gliding his fingers over your clit, your cunt a bit too sore to take his knot again; not so soon anyway. Carrying you into the bathroom for a quick soak before emptying the tub and bringing you back to the bed. 

All the while, feeling your presence like a phantom limb. Like an extension of himself. Every inch of your pleasure rippling across his skin, amplifying his own. 

If Gaz had known it would be like this—

he’d have moved heaven and hell to have it. 

It’s his now though. You’re his. Mated and bound to him. So intrinsically and indelibly tied to him that no earthly force could pull you apart. 

It’s why now he can feel your mounting anxiety like a prickle at the back of his head. It’s what wakes him up so suddenly, creamy golden light spilling across the sheets and furniture when he opens his eyes to the door to your bedroom ajar. 

You’re in the bathroom when Gaz walks in, touching the mostly healed mating mark on your neck. It’s barely a puckered scar, so subtle that he might have missed it.

“Did you mean to do it?” you ask. It’s not the question he expected, but then again, Gaz isn’t sure what he expected from you. 

He nods though. No sense in lying to you. “Yeah.”

It’s clear now that this was always going to be the natural end, that any tryst between the two of you would always end here, with his mark on your neck. 

He wraps his arms around you and pulls you into him, moulding you to his chest. In the mirror, you look exceptionally fragile, still shaky and brittle from your heat, and it makes his heart ache. 

“I didn’t think I would, but I wanted to. I never would’ve if I had any doubt.”

One day he’ll tell you everything. He’ll tell you why he waited so long, what held him back all these years when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing else would come close to this. 

“You didn’t used to smell like this,” you murmur, cold nose pressed into his collar bone. You seal your words with a deep inhale, drawing all of your breath into your lungs and holding it there for a moment before expelling it. 

“What do you mean?” Gaz asks. His lips twitch when you press your nose harder against his skin. 

“It’s different. It changed.”

“I swear it hasn’t,” he laughs. “I’ve always smelled like this.” 

He can feel the way you wrinkle your nose against his skin. “Liar. You used to smell… I don’t know. Maybe like this, but subtler. Fainter.” You exhale again, more contemplative this time. “It must’ve been my heat. Everything smells so much stronger now. It’s like breathing after being sick or something. Like my nose is clear or something.”

Gaz stares at your reflection from over your head while it washes over him. Of course his life would be ruled by a comedy of errors. What might’ve happened had you not gotten on suppressants all those years ago? Maybe nothing. Maybe the past is what it’s always been and there’s no sense in looking back and asking what if things had been better. Maybe regrets are like false idols in that way—there’s nothing holy in worshipping at the altar of them. 

He makes a mental note to keep this from Johnny. Gaz will never hear the end of it if he finds out. 

“What are we gonna do now?” you whisper.