“It smells like I’m sick?”
“I don’t know. Yeah? I guess? It’s not sour or anything,” Todd explained, moving around the room to get himself ready as he spoke. “It’s super weird though. It’s making me feel funny.”
“Sorry,” Jackson moaned, apologizing for what felt like the millionth time. He burrowed himself beneath his blankets, drowning in the warmth of his duvet while trying to trap some of his own scent in behind it. Todd wasn’t sensitive to smells, but Jackson had learned that the man had a temper when he was around scents he didn’t like.
Traces of Micah’s smell were still trapped in the fibers of the blanket, and subconsciously, Jackson tilted his nose up and ran it along the cotton cover. Suddenly, as if shot in the chest, there was a sharp pain behind his rib cage. It ached as if someone shoving a knife into the divots, the soft areas of skin between his ribs, just jabbing him over and over with it.
Jackson wanted Micah with him. He was devastated by the omega’s absence.
It was a good idea to try and soothe his alpha, but Jackson didn’t have enough energy to talk himself down out of the panic that was rising like bile from his gut. He started to sink beneath it, whining in the back of his throat like a wounded animal until Todd said, “Jax, what the fuck?”
“Shit,” Jackson said immediately. “My chest is killing me.”
“Dude, I’m not joking. You need to see a doctor.”
Going to the doctor felt like overkill. He’d been sick since this morning and was just a few hours into the discomfort, so the least he could do was wait, even if it was only to prove that he was still capable of exercising an ounce of restraint.
The dark underside of the blanket was forcing Jackson into a chaotic head-space. The frustration of the morning - no, the whole damn month, was starting to pile onto him. Brick by brick, it was building. Jackson felt like he was drowning slowly, submerging himself in water and sinking to the black bottom of a pond or a lake or the ocean, and hoping to find something or someone at the bottom that he could hold on to.
This was all so unlike him. He was buckling under an invisible pressure.
As Todd shuffled around him, he drifted in and out of lucidity to the white noise of it all. He tossed and turned, occasionally stilling in a spot that didn’t aggravate his skin, only to find that a moment later it did. The restlessness was worse than anything. It seemed to touch every part of his skin too intimately. No one position was better than the other, but with a leg hiked up over a mound of pillows and his face pressed into his most malleable pillow, he did his best.
Jackson dozed like that, almost mistaking the soft knock at his bedroom door for Todd bumping into something on his desk. It was only when Todd crossed the room, feet padding loudly across the floor, and opened the door with a gruff, ‘Oh, Hey’ that Jackson realized they had a visitor.
“Hi. Good to see you again. Is Jackson here?”
Jackson shot up, body screaming in protest at the sudden movement. He craned himself awkwardly so that he could look at the door. Fuck. He’d been waiting to hear Micah’s voice so badly that this felt unreal. The omega’s voice washed over the room like a cool mist and immediately, a part of Jackson’s anxieties chipped away.
His omega was here.
“Baby,” Jackson croaked.
“Fuck, Jackson,” Micah breathed.
It was as if the omega weren’t saying a name at all, but instead singing an incantation. It was such a short word and yet he spoke it so sweetly, with so much reverence, so much adoration. Their gazes latched and it was as if all the air had been sucked from the room. This was another layer, Jackson thought wryly. Another side-effect of their mating. It had to be, because he’d never felt so desperate to get his hands on someone as he did right now.
But wasn’t that okay? Even if it was just a temporary feeling.
“Come here,” Jackson begged. “God, I need to-”
Micah stepped forward, but bit his lip and glanced up nervously when Todd was still in his way. He’d obviously forgotten that there was an alpha standing between him and his mate. He opened his mouth, likely to ask Todd to move aside, at the same time that Jackson growled. It was a series of short, rumbling vibrations in his chest and they were a direct threat for the alpha to move aside.
Todd whipped his head around to double check that what he was hearing was Jackson. It seemed like such a trivial thing to be challenged over, standing in the doorway, but Jackson’s demeanor must have been a saving grace because just as soon as Todd fixed him with that angry, confused gaze, the alpha deflated and raised his hands in surrender. He stepped aside with enough space for Micah to comfortably pass.
“Thank you,” Micah murmured, bowing just slightly. Then he rushed to the bed.
The closer he got, the more clearly Jackson could see how harried he looked. He was short of breath and his chest was heaving, his forehead was twinkling with sweat, bangs stuck to his creamy skin from the moisture, and his cheeks were heavily flushed. He looked beautiful. Jackson was enamored. He’d have spent a long while looking at Micah if the omega wouldn’t have climbed up onto his bed and into his lap, latching onto his neck and digging his nose right into the juncture to scent him.
“Oh my god, you asshole,” Micah muttered, and his lips tickled Jackson’s collarbone. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What…?”
“You can’t say you’re dying and then go mute, Jackson. You seriously scared me half to death. I didn’t know you were joking.”
Jackson wrapped his arms around Micah’s lean body and pulled him a bit closer, tilting his head to expose his neck to the man’s nose. Micah was chuffing, the air catching in his throat and releasing in tiny spurts as he tried to dissect the strange new smell coming from his alpha. It took a moment, but eventually he pulled away with a frown on his face and said, “Oh. It’s not a joke. You’re really sick.”
“You’re the third person to suggest it,” Jackson groaned.
“You don’t smell like me at all,” Micah huffed. The omega shook his head and then paused, as if mulling over something. Suddenly, he leaned in again and licked at the alpha’s neck, teasing the skin with his teeth for a second before nibbling on it. Jackson growled again, and Micah apologized with words lost against the alpha’s skin, but still couldn’t seem to stop marking him up with soft bites.
“You really gonna keep biting me like this when I’m feeling bad?” Jackson asked.
Sitting like this, a usually comfortable position for the two of them, was starting to aggravate his skin. Physically, Micah was feather-light. Emotionally, he was a pound of bricks. Now the omega seemed to be weighing on him from all sides, and Jackson’s body could feel every ounce of it.
“I don’t like it. I want your old smell back.”
“I know, babe. But that’s not how this works. If I’m sick, I’m still gonna smell sick.”
“Ugh,” Micah groaned, forcibly pulling himself back and looking somewhat ashamed. “I’m sorry. I usually don’t - I mean, I’m not - fuck. I hate this. I’m not like this, alright? I’m usually better than this. But I just… I don’t like you not smelling of me.”
“I get it.”
“I don’t think you do,” Micah said quietly. He pulled his coat over his wrist and dabbed tenderly at the sweat against Jackson’s brow, cleaning him up. Then, with a hint of humor, he said, “You’re just… totally okay not smelling like me at all, huh? ‘snot like you did it for some twenty plus years, walking around out there without my marks on you.”
Micah was being playful. Jackson wished he could reciprocate properly. Instead, he was feeling thoroughly depressed. “Well, if it’s a consolation, I can’t smell much of anything right now.”
“Look at all of this sweat. Seriously. This isn’t good,” Micah said.
“You know alphas run hot.”
“They run warm, not hot,” and as a last minute addition, Micah mumbled, “And they’re certainly not sweaty like this.”
“I’m under a blanket.”
“Why are you arguing about this? I slept under a blanket last night, too, and I didn’t turn into Niagara Falls.”
“Look, I can just sleep it off,” Jackson said clearly. He reached up and gripped Micah’s chin, and then bumped his nose against the omega’s jaw. If he had something contagious, Micah was long overdue to catch it anyway, climbing into his lap and sitting as closely as he was. To be honest, it looked as if the man didn’t care one smidge about getting sick. He just wanted contact from his alpha. “I’m asking you to take my word for it.”
“But-”
“Please,” Jackson begged, at the same time as his skin flushed hot and started to prickle. The sensation was so strange that he dipped his head and grit his teeth. It only took a moment or waiting before it passed, but Jackson was mortified by the noises of discomfort he’d made in front of his omega. Jackson had been sensitive before, but never like this.
“Jackson, listen to me. You can’t be this sick and not go to the doctor.”
“I’m not really sick, I’m just… ill.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Micah hissed. “They’re the same damn thing.”
Pride was such a stupid thing to rally behind. Jackson knew it. Still, he hesitated to take his omega’s advice, convinced that a trip to the doctor was less useful than a day in bed. Strong, capable alphas didn’t need to go to the doctor so often. A small cough, a little headache, a low fever, they wouldn’t kill him.
“Baby, I’m not going. Sorry.”
Micah looked primed and ready to argue. Jackson turned his head and looked down at the blankets, frustrated by the persistence. He liked that trait in the omega, really but it seemed his alpha didn’t quite feel the same way. It’d been a long few weeks that both of them were on different pages.
“Okay. Fine,” Micah said slowly, “Lay down. I’ll go grab some pills from the front desk.”
“Don’t you have class?”
“I’m not gonna go today,” Micah said as if it were obvious. He was already climbing out of the alpha’s lap, fumbling with the buttons on his coat so that he could worm his way out of it. He hung it over the back of Jackson’s seat and then toed his shoes off next. When he ran his fingers slowly through his hair to straighten it out, Jackson averted his eyes. He was too uncomfortable to make a move, and too recently mated to not try if he kept watching the omega like this.
Micah turned and bumped into Todd, gasping as he tripped out of the way and apologized. Jackson had honestly forgotten that the man was in the room with them. The other alpha was moving alarmingly quiet, avoiding eye contact at all costs, just now shoving the remainder of his school materials into his bag so that he could hook it over his shoulders and hightail it to the other end of campus. As he went to the door with his coat balanced over the crook of his arm, he said, “Feel better, Jax. If you need something, just text me. Micah… it was good to see you again.”
Jackson appreciated the attention. Truly, it was like a complimentary sweetener to all of the salty bullshit he was going through.
“You should go to class, too,” Jackson tried.
“Weren’t you just saying that you needed me?” Micah scoffed. “Jackson, I mean this in the most gentle way possible, but don’t rile yourself up about all of this, alright? I get that you’re feeling under the weather, but don’t kick me out. It won’t do either of us any good. I’m your mate now, it’s my job to take care of you.”
“Is it a job?” Jackson asked.
It wasn’t as if he’d meant to talk at all. What Micah had said wouldn’t have bothered him on any other day, in any other place, with any other person and in fact, he was certain that he’d heard his mother refer to his father as the exact same thing, albeit in a more… comical way. A job. That’s what an alpha became to an omega once they’d bonded.
It hadn’t ever really been an issue to Jackson. He understood that they all had roles to fulfill, and he was more than willing to play along if it meant a harmonious mating.
But there was something strange happening to him right now, and just the thought of Micah viewing this - their relationship - as a job was upending his philosophy. He hated to hear it. He wanted Micah to see him as more than that.
Micah paused and then tilted his head, perturbed by the outburst.
“No. Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it like that. You’re not just a job, but you are a part of my responsibilities now.”
“I don’t wanna be that.”
“It doesn’t matter. You are.”
“I don’t have to,” Jackson continued. His voice came out quiet and unsure, and Micah leaned against the alpha’s desk and folded his arms over his chest in a mimicry of the position Jackson had taken a few nights ago. Back then, they’d been reversed, both in position and approach. Now, they weren’t so quiet about their feelings. It was terrifying - that the position they’d found themselves in a month ago was now breaking the surface with an uglier, more uncontrollable head.
Still, it was important for them to talk about it.
If either of them had been hiding beneath the illusion of a perfect bond, it was the right time to criticize that image.
“If I weren’t your mate, you wouldn’t be here, right?” Jackson said.
Micah didn’t hesitate for a second.
“Of course not, Jackson. That’s the whole foundation of this relationship. Neither of us had a say in this,”
“Right.”
“That’s not just a me thing - I didn’t choose you. My body chose you and I’m trying to keep up with it.”
“Right. So why are you changing your habits over it? Don’t upend your life for a person you didn’t know a few months ago.”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“You do have a choice! Stop coming here if I’m just an impulse! The hormones, they’ll wear off, but I’m - I’m beginning to think I really like you. Like really, really like you. You’ve always fascinated me and I just… I don’t want for this to get a year in and dissolve down to nothing. I’d rather meet you again later if it gives me more of a chance to make this work in the long run.”
The room went awkwardly quiet. Out in the hallway, the telltale signs of early morning were clear; the drowsy chatter of recently woken students, the scratching sound of shoes against the carpet, the occasional thudding of a passerby dropping something on the floor. Jackson tried to focus on that instead of the desperate, inconsolable howling inside of him that was begging him to stop pressing the issue and to just let it all be. They were too young, their relationship too tender, for the both of them to start questioning it now.
Each word that hung in the air between them felt like a raw and open wound.
This was so unfair.
Eventually, Micah said, “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Jackson, I’m-” Micah choked off, standing up off of the desk. The omega bit his lip and turned away from the alpha, looking at Todd’s side of the room just so that he would have somewhere to put his eyes. Even in his profile, Jackson could tell that he was beginning to crumble. His eyes glistened a bit too clearly, lip gave a little too much under the pressure of his teeth. Jackson, the very human man on the bed, wanted to reach out and apologize. He wanted to say that it wasn’t a big deal, and that he’d only brought it up because it was the logical thing to do. But Jackson, the alpha, was too fiercely conflicted to think straight. His mate was upset. His mate hated him. His mate didn’t want to be with him. His mate thought of him as a chore, a job to be taken care of. And now, a month after giving into his instincts and marking his omega, his mate was going to turn him away.
“That’s not how mating works for an omega,” Micah whispered. His voice was void of the any emotion, just plain and even. “I’ll tell you how mating works for me. I get so horny I can’t think straight, and then you swoop in and save the day, just fill my ass with cock so that I’ll shut the fuck up and stop begging for it.
You bite me and I spend the next few weeks getting down on my knees to thank you and my world just… flips upside down. Then, after that, you get to fuck me stupid whenever you want, until I’m desperate enough for you that a text sends me fucking running across campus so that I can fix you. When you hit me with this stupid… stupid bullshit, think of what I am right now. Look at me, Jackson. Look at what that bite did to me. I wish I could just stay the fuck home, but I can’t. And to tell you the truth, you could’ve met me three times over in that classroom before we mated, and you still wouldn’t know the man that was standing in front of you right now. Because that’s. what. mating. does. That’s why I wasn’t going to… I was never gonna…” Micah said, closing his mouth and taking a deep breath.
Jackson shook his head and laid back in his bed, nose burning, eyes stinging, head aching. Fuck. What was he supposed to make of this?
He hated everything that Micah was saying, and yet had no logical argument against it. Mating was a pair of shackles in more than one way. They both wore the chains of it around their wrists. Micah had every reason to be frustrated, and yet Jackson hated that frustration all the same. His alpha wanted to be good enough for Micah to overlook the unfortunate circumstances of their mating.
To find out that he wasn’t enough - well that wounded his pride just a bit.
“I’m sorry, Jackson. I like you, too, but I can’t act like this was a choice for me.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ve been trying to keep my emotions out of it just to see where it goes. I don’t want to write it off.”
“That’s fine. I get it,” Jackson admitted. Then he said, “I think you should go home, Micah.”
“I don’t think I should. I know you’re sick and you’ve - you’ve got a headache. I probably shouldn’t have said those things, but I can’t leave you here alone like this.”
The Omega Awakened: A M/M Omegaverse Erotic Short Fiction (Omegan Tales Book 1) Page 12
