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It started innocent enough, if these things could, like, even start innocent. Maybe it was better to say it started with good intentions, if maybe misplaced ones. Steve had just wanted to help a friend out, right? And if it helped him out too, you know, then it was —
Well, it was what it was, okay? And what it was was a guy who was in a bit of a bind, and another guy helping him out, and if just so happened that it was a sex thing, too, and if it also so happened that it was with the only alpha Steve had ever harbored an itty bitty, teeny weeny, inconsequential crush on (which, like, kill him, a little, because riddle him fuckin’ this but why was he always holding a torch for dorkasses), and if it also also so happened that Steve putting himself in this situation made that like a million fucking times worse because Steve was, like, genetically incapable of not falling in love with the wrong person —
“This is a lot of ifs,” said the little Robin that lived rent free in his mind, because the real Robin was too busy being worried about him and his miscellaneous, vaguely rejection sickness and also heat-like symptoms — which was impossible, Bucks, remember? He had a whole slew of specialized doctors and endocrinologists and shit that labeled him at twelve as omega undifferentiated and said he was almost definitely never going to have a heat because of that, right, and also rejection sickness was like fuckin’ hysteria related kind of shit, it was shit alphas made up in the Victorian era to stigmatize them, wasn't that what she was always telling him? So like it can’t be that, check and mate — and trying to get him to get to the hospital to get looked at, because if it’s not a heat, Steve, or rejection sickness, than what else is it? Really long food poisoning? Some Upside Down related crap that had finally come home to roost? Rabies? Again?
Anyway, she was too busy freaking out and whatever to be snarky, so it was up to that little imaginary Robin to drag Steve in the privacy of his brain. And he sort of needed to roast himself, because otherwise this was a lot of bullshit he really didn’t want to unpack right now, was a lot of bullshit he didn’t want to unpack ever, thanks, because you know he’d really only recently started working past what being undifferentiated meant for him in therapy, and he didn’t want to touch the rejection sickness stuff with ten foot pole at all because there be dragons there or whatever, and it meant he’d really have to look at the Eddie of it all, which doubly count his ass out, and —
“Steve,” said the real Robin now, eyes huge, concerned. She’d cut herself off mid-word vomit about an article she read about a guy who had bats living in his attic and woke up with bites one morning. “Are you okay?”
“Um,” he said, and then threw up on her shoes.
When they got to the ER, it was busy, because it was nearly Christmas and damn near everyone in Hawkins and the surrounding county had the flu.
(“It could be the flu!” Steve had said. “Look, I have a fever right?”
“That could be like twenty different things, Steve, get in the fucking car,” she’d snapped, still looking a little green every time she looked near her own feet — clad now in Steve’s oldest Nikes and three socks — so Steve got in the fucking car and drove them to the ER.)
Robin gave the intake nurse a remarkably calm recitation of Steve’s symptoms from the last five days when they made it to the front of the line, and only offered one or two pointed remarks regarding what she suspected the onset of said symptoms was.
“He’s been boinking this absolute dirtbag loser alpha we’re all good friends with because he needed help with his rut, the loser that is, which was why they’re boinking, not why were friends with him, that’s mainly circumstantial because this dingus adopts every dweeb he crosses paths with, and anyway then they just kept hooking up, and now the dirtbag is going out on dates with this alpha chick because his other set of friends set them up, and this one can’t do anything by halves so I think he’s got rejection sickness, like some sort of Gothic heroine,” she’d said. The ambiguously gendered intake nurse had raised one sculpted eyebrow and offered back, “Actually that’s a much more common disorder, and a much more common set of circumstances, than anyone would probably like it to be,” before sending them back to the waiting room to fill out Steve’s medical history.
“Why would you put me on the news like this,” he hissed at her, miserable. He was feeling appreciably worse than he was this morning, which was also, regrettably, way worse than he’d been feeling for the last few days too. There’d been a brief bit of relief, what with the horking, but alas such was the way of horking, wasn’t it? It never really quite made the reason why you needed to hork fully go away, and it really seemed like he was in some sort of vicious cycle right now.
He had a sneaking suspicion he was about to spend the holidays in the ER, which was some bullshit for sure. He’d been really excited about the presents he’d gotten the kids too, and there was a new dessert recipe he’d wanted to try, and —
“They need all the facts to diagnose,” she was telling him archly. She was tapping her foot at speed, and clutching at his hand, betraying her nerves despite the way her voice remained strong.
“Yeah, but you didn’t need to, like, editorialize,” he said.
She shrugged, a jittery thing. “Just be glad I got it out of the way before your parents got here.”
Which — fuck him, he guessed, but, yeah, fair enough. His parents already didn’t exactly love that Steve was buddies with Eddie Munson — for all their positives and progressive views on omega rights since Steve was born in all his glory (they were both betas, from long lines of betas with exactly one alpha in either known family tree, back when Steve’s ancestors hadn’t yet made it over on the Mayflower; Steve was several types of a genetic anomaly, apparently, and, though he didn’t know it at this exact moment in time, also well on his way to being a medical one too), they were still kind of uncomfortably squeamish about Steve hanging out with anyone not in their tax bracket. They tried, bless ‘em, and Mom’s church manners and debutante years did some of the heavy lifting, plus the fact that she and Eddie were the two most dramatic people he’d ever met and Dad was wired to love anyone like Mom. But every once in a while the company face would crack, and his parents would be forced to face their differences head on.
Didn’t help, of course, that Eddie lived for creating that crack, and was on a, quote, one man mission to turn your parents into class traitors just like you!
(“They’d probably get over it faster if it wasn’t for those pesky murder allegations,” Steve had told him once, and Eddie had snorted pop out of his nose and then cursed Steve out until he was blue in the face.)
So, like, if they heard that Steve was currently probably about to catch a rejection sickness diagnosis, and got enough context clues to realize the only alpha that could be causing it was Eddie — well, to say they would be upset would be an understatement. Christ, Steve was actually a little worried his dad would try to pay Eddie off, and whether it was to stay away forever or to play house with Steve? God —
And Steve wasn’t sure his dumb heart could take either option, you know? It’d kill him, right, to know there was a price tag on him for Eddie’s friendship — one that could take him away, or one that could make him throw away his feelings and principles and stated romantic leanings to shack up with the guy who gave himself fucking rejection sickness over a friends with bennies situation.
Because yeah: he didn’t really want to admit it, and he could make it as complicated or as simple as he wanted to, when he tried to break it down, but that right there? Those two little words, rejection sickness, and those three other ones, friends with benefits? That was the facts, plain and simple. He quite literally fucked around and found out, and got his heart skewered in the crossfire. And also yeah, okay, he almost definitely should have seen it coming, what with his history with Nancy (and Robin, a little, and Jonathan, also a little, and maybe Tommy and Billy and Steve wasn't exactly loving this analysis of himself right now so). But the other thing was that Steve had never been good at keeping himself from the stuff that would hurt him. It was why he went back into the Byers house that night, and why he followed Dustin that day, and why he went beneath the mall or into the lake or through a horrific gash in the ceiling of the Munson trailer.
It was why, when Eddie had complained, three months clear of the hospital and down a kidney, that he could feel his rut coming on, his hormones all fucked from everything, and he didn’t have any of the stuff he used to have help him through it anymore, what with the trailer and all its contents now property of the US government, and he didn’t have time to get to Indy to pick up supplies because it was Saturday night and it was just hitting him why he was more irritable than usual, he couldn’t believe he’d missed the signs but then again he’d just almost fuckin’ died so cut me some slack, Stevie —
It was why, then, Steve had only rolled his head back on the couch cushion and taken another puff of the joint they were splitting between them — an apology, right, for the aforementioned irritability after Eddie had snapped at Steve coming to pick up the kids, on time, thanks, from their game the day before.
(“Come get high with me tonight,” Eddie had said on the phone that morning, “because I’m an asshole, and you’re an angel, so come get high with me, and forgive me my trespasses, o golden one!”
“Man, shut the fuck up,” he’d laughed. “I’ll be over at seven. Make sure you got Doritos and shit.”)
He’d looked at Eddie, and looked at him some more, and he’d thought not very much indeed before he’d said, “Well, I could help you out.”
Eddie had blinked at him, stoned and owlish. “Je m'excuse?”
Wrinkling his nose, Steve had said, “What? I mean, yeah? What? Sure, I mean. I’d help you out. Is that what you asked?”
“Cause what’s a little knotting between buddies,” he’d said.
“Well,” said Steve, and then again, “Yeah. Sure. Plus I’ve never actually slept with an alpha ‘cause they usually get weird about the undifferentiated thing, and are you gonna be weird about it?”
“I don’t even know what any of that means,” Eddie had said sincerely.
Which was fair — he was the undifferentiated one, and he didn’t really absorb a lot of the particulars; or, at least, he’d fought hard to pretend he didn’t absorb it. He’d been a kid, right, and the horrors of puberty were already enough for him, thanks, without adding into the fact that they were trying to tell him at twelve that while he’d always had all the equipment that made an omega an omega, he was vanishingly unlikely to be able to use any of it because his presentation heat lacked a key critical element: namely, the heat of it all, and a lot of things didn’t happen the way they should in the aftermath.
“Well,” he’d ended up saying for the third time, “just, like, means I don’t have heats and shit. Some other genetic stuff. Probably can’t have, you know —”
“Six kids and a Winnebago,” Eddie’d said sagely.
“Man, fuck you.”
“Oh shit, I mean —”
“Anyway. Yeah. That. And fuckin’ alphas get weird about it because they think it’s like an indictment of their fertility or whatever when it’s really my body doing some genetic misfires, and I don’t, like, I don’t really want to get into it, really, okay, so, like,” he’d said.
“Don’t get into it!” he’d agreed, hands up, joint ashing carelessly to the floor. “So don’t get into it!”
“But I have to because you gotta know, and I don’t want you to get weird about it!”
“I won’t be weird about it,” he’d said, just as sincere as before, tacking on, “Your body, your choice,” which wasn’t really applicable when Steve didn’t really get a choice. Still, he’d appreciated the sentiment. “And, like, anyway, I genuinely don’t care about that shit, right? You know me, man, think I’d fuck anyone that moves if they’re down for it, right, but, like, I’ve always been an alpha kind of guy, if I gotta have a preference.”
Steve had narrowed his eyes. “So is that a no?”
“No!” Eddie had all but shouted. “No, like, so no. I will totally fuck you if you’re offering. You’re Steve Harrington.”
“I am,” he’d said. “And I am.”
“Dope.” He’d grinned at Steve, boyish and lopsided, and Steve had had a second to think, Oh. Oh, no, but he’d been high and Eddie was leaning in, and it had slipped away as they’d sloppily made out on Eddie’s new couch. He’d said again, their mouths slick and hot, “Dope.”
Steve hadn’t meant for it to start like this, because Eddie wasn’t there yet — would be, of course, a little after this, a day and a half, in fact, earlier than he thought, probably, they’d agree after, because of Steve’s pheromones and shit — but it had started like that anyway, and it had been — it had been good. Fun. Sweet. He’d been with a few other omegas and a plenty of betas, sure, but like he'd said he’d never made it with an alpha, before Eddie; but Eddie had said that, while he had mostly hooked up with other alphas, it was dudes and chicks and whatever fell in between, and there’d been some betas of the same too, so he knew what he was doing.
“Mostly,” he’d hedged. There were a few gaps in his knowledge, which Steve thought was a cute way to put it that he’d never gotten his cock or his knot actually into a person. Still.
They’d both thought it was better to be prepared, you know, and Steve’s tongue was already down Eddie’s throat, and they were high, and alone, and so Steve had nodded, when Eddie asked, bashful, if this was okay, and he’d said sure, kissed him again harder, wetter, sucked his tongue into his mouth now. Then he’d let Eddie pull his jeans and briefs down around his ankles and fingerblast him on his sofa.
Eddie had thin hands but long fingers, callused from guitar. Intelligent from it too, and nimble from rolling joints. He probably should’ve actually asked him to wash them, because of the second thing, but Eddie had started running this long fingers through the curly hairs of Steve’s bush as soon as his brief had been tossed over his shoulder, held the slight heft of his thickening cock gently in them, had trailed them along the hot, soft skin of his pussy lips, the edge of a callus catching on the inner ones, and Steve had gotten so fucking wet so fast. He’d always thought Eddie had good hands, capable ones, and then he’d been dragging one finger between the seam of him, splitting his lips, running it back and forth and back and forth, and shit, shit.
They’d kissed as he’d pressed the tip of his finger to Steve’s hole, pressed and pressed against the fluttering little entrance as he’d pressed his tongue into Steve’s mouth with the same pressure, same skill. One finger pushing in, curling, curving, crooking, dragging at the wetness of him, and then another, and then another. Eddie’s wrist had to have been cramping, been burning, but he gave it to Steve hard and fast all the same, before tucking his pinky in with his three fingers.
He had thin hands and long fingers and four of them had been inside Steve that night (would be inside him a lot of nights, after, because it was fun with him, and good, and hot). He’d barely been able to make a sound, when it happened, had gasped mostly, all the air punched from his lungs as Eddie’d worked his fingers inside him, worked them out again, in again. He’d been wet from his fingers to his elbows, Eddie; Steve could feel his own slick on the sensitive insides of his thighs as he had pumped arm between his legs, had worked him over slow and good and thorough.
They’d barely spoke, just fucked their tongues in and out of each other’s mouths as Eddie had fingerfucked his pussy. He’d wondered if he would get his thumb in there too; he could feel it pressing on his perineum: sometimes felt it pressing delicately, dangerously against his rim, a little harder, a little further; sometimes felt it higher, like he was thinking about adding it to his other fingers in Steve’s pussy too. He’d wondered if Eddie would do it, be able to put his whole hand in him, fuck him on his fist until he came from that, cock untouched as it was against his belly. He’d gotten wetter, and the sound of it —
“Eddie,” he’d said, and he’d swallowed up his own name, kissed Steve harder, fucked him harder, humped his cock, still trapped beneath jeans and plaid boxers, against Steve’s hip.
“You’re so fucking wet,” Eddie had said, wonderingly, as he’d hammered relentlessly into him. “So fucking wet. God, I wanna taste it.”
“Do it,” Steve had said. “Fuck, please.”
“I can? I can? God, let me suck your cock. Let me eat your pussy, Stevie, let me eat this tight pussy.”
“Eddie,” he’s said again, and he’d dropped to his knees before him. Hadn’t even spared a moment to look up at him splayed out on his couch, naked from the waist down, debauched and whorish and begging for it and so, so wet; hadn’t even pulled his fingers out of his clenching pussy. Had just dropped down to his shitty carpet and swallowed Steve’s stiff dick in one go. Which had been — well, probably not too impressive, really, considering Eddie normally hooked up with other alphas. Their cocks probably outclassed Steve’s by quite a bit, even though everyone who’d hooked up with Steve had always made a point about mentioning how big his dick was, for an omega.
But he’d been impressed nonetheless, and Eddie had sucked him expertly for a bit as he’d fingered him, and it was almost enough to tip him over. He’d thought Eddie could tell, because he popped off him with another wet, messy sound pretty quick, kissed his tip as if in goodbye, before unceremoniously spreading his four fingers and Steve’s pussy lips wide, so fucking wide, so he could spear his tongue straight into him. He’d moaned at the taste of him; Steve had damn near screamed at the feel of him.
He’d grabbed Eddie by the hair, rocked so hard against him he thought he’d break his nose with his pubic bone, and he’d come so hard it had soaked Eddie down to his t-shirt. Eddie had frenched his pussy through it, awful, beautiful slurping noises as he’d curled his tongue and swallowed down his slick and cum like he’d swallowed his cock, and when Steve had finally let go of his hair, he stood up.
Looming over him, one hand on the back of the couch by Steve’s head and his pussy slick one flicking open the fly of his jeans just enough to get out his cock, he’d looked manic, and insanely hot. His face had been shiny with Steve, and his hair was a mess, and he’d just stared down at Steve’s sloppy, puffy pussy as he’d stripped his dick so hard and fast it felt like it was blurring in Steve’s vision. It was blood red, almost purpling at the head, hard enough it probably had to hurt, and fat. His knot had already been forming at the base, thick as Eddie’s own wrist, and Steve had thought about both things inside his fucked open cunt. He was made for it, he’d thought hazily, riding a tide of weed and blissful endorphins; he could take it.
“Gonna cum on you,” Eddie had grunted. He bit his lip, the skin turning white under the pressure. His knot was growing still. “Gonna cum on your pussy.”
“Fuck yeah,” he’d said, and Eddie had spilled, hot and thick, on Steve. He’d moaned, when it did, the heat of him, filthy and sexy and so much as he’d squeezed fretfully at his knot to try to relieve the pressure. He’d reached down to touch it, to trail his fingers in his jizz along his spent, soft dick where it lay soft and waiting against his belly, to cup his mound and Eddie’s cum there too and press it into his skin, mix it with his slick. He’d slipped his middle finger between his lips, touched the place where Eddie had made him gape on his four fingers. It had been hot, and hotter still with his fresh cum slipping inside.
“Oh fuck,” Eddie had said. His knees had been shaking but he couldn’t take his eyes off Steve as he’d begun to play with himself and Eddie’s cum. His cock had given a little kick; Steve had wanted to feel it do that inside him. “Oh, fuck, you’re gonna fucking kill me.”
It hadn’t even been his rut, he’d thought dazedly then, already gearing up for another round, desperate for it, and he thought it now, here, in the hospital waiting room; it hadn’t even been his rut, and it had probably already been too late for him.
Steve’s parents got to the hospital a little after Steve finally got shown from a little curtained off cubicle in the overloud, fear- and pain-smelling ER into his own private room. The benefits, he supposed, of being an omega with weird ass symptoms and an even weirder medical history with an apparently rapidly rising fever and an increasing need to hurl into a bed pan. He honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Owens turned up within the next few hours; he’d always gotten such looks on his face when he would look at Steve’s medical charts over the years. His parents, though, his parents —
He glared at Robin as his mom elbowed a doctor out of the way to descend upon him, cooing, hissed at her, “When did you even call them?”
“Like, almost immediately,” she said.
“And we are very grateful to Robin, and have always liked her better than you,” said Mom. This sentiment was undercut by how she was petting his hair and already halfway into his hospital bed with him, tucking him into her neck, all ozone and fresh cilantro. Steve smelled the most like her, he knew, heavier on the cilantro, a little spicier, lime and cotton, from his dad, and rainwater.
Robin was smirking at him, basking in the verbal praise of Lane Harrington and then the warm, broad hand of Daniel as it came down on her shoulder. He was saying, “Yes, thank you, Robin, for taking such good care of our boy. Now, where is there a doctor to explain what’s going on?”
Steve had felt, for a long time, like he was an afterthought to his parents, a burden in the face of their wealth and status, especially after his presentation, or lack thereof, and his slow, subtle understanding of what life would look like for him. His parents, though, his parents had always understood, and they feared for him: his safety, his happiness, his future. It had taken him until very recently to realize that, and to understand how it manifested, how they’d tried to keep that fear from him and only came across distant and flippant instead. He’d spent a lot of time angry at them; they were working through it now.
But in this moment, right now? Their nature was comforting to him, a balm: his mom’s over the top touchiness and performative drama, his dad’s coolness because of course Daniel Harrington needed a doctor in here right now to explain things, he was Daniel Goddamn Harrington, he was your State Senator, so if you wouldn’t mind —
A doctor, unfortunately for everyone in the hospital, didn’t show, but a real battle axe of a charge nurse did. Dad and the nurse stared each other down for an extremely uncomfortable, and extremely long, time after she said the specialist was stuck in traffic and would be there shortly to explain everything but that she could get it started, before Dad apparently tipped his head at her, seemingly recognizing a kindred spirit in her steely gaze and flat affectation.
It was rejection sickness, mostly —
“Mostly?” asked Steve while Mom clutched him tighter with one hand and then pressed the other to her eyes, saying beseechingly, “My baby’s heart has been broken on Christmas —”
“Mostly,” said the nurse, mostly to Steve’s old man. “He’s imprinted on an alpha, and likely had that imprint back — but it’s been interrupted in some fashion, and the pheromone loop is no longer closed, sending him into a version of hormonal crisis. But like I said, the doctor will be here shortly to get into the particulars of his diagnosis. For now he just needs to stay as relaxed as he can, so try to avoid riling him up.”
She glanced at Steve’s mom, who was currently vowing retribution for her sweet only son while Robin egged her on. Dad grimaced and thanked her, and the nurse bustled out like she had a battle on another front that was more important than this one. Steve didn’t blame her.
“Steve,” Mom was saying very seriously now, “I need to know this cad’s name this instant. What young person has ensorcelled you and left you with rejection sickness? Rejection sickness! I never — well, not never, but in books! I never thought my own dear boy would fall to it. Oh, bubba, you’ve always had such a soft heart, you are too good for this world, and I will absolutely destroy this, this usurper of your happiness! Or at the very least have extremely strong words with their mother at the club.”
Cutting his eyes to Robin, she sort of shrugged at him, as if to say, “Hey, man, you made this bed,” and Steve started slowly, “I just thought I had a cold.”
“Well, evidently,” said Dad flatly.
“No, I know, I know, I uh.” He swallowed, picked at a loose thread on his blanket. “It was a few days ago. And it’s nothing! I wasn’t even — we aren’t even dating, I just helped him through his rut” — and then some, but Mom looked teary eyed and his old man was looking at him like he was doing math in his head, very fast, so he wasn’t gonna say that — “so I don’t know why my dumb body decided to freak out when he went on a date last week with that alpha chick —”
“Two dates,” said Robin, aiming for helpful, but really just getting the last pieces in place for Dad to finish the long division in his brain. Eddie had canceled on him, see, for the second date, and he’d complained to his dad about having to take Dustin to the Star Trek movie (a third viewing, for Dustin, nerd) alone.
Dad closed his eyes and sighed the deep sigh of a parent with a very trying child, which Steve thought was a bit much; he wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Mom. He said, “The Munson boy? Steven, really?”
Mom whipped her head between Dad, Steve, and Robin a couple of times. “Edward has broken your heart?”
“Ma, that’s, like, a gross overexaltation,” he tried, even though, yeah, all evidence seemed to point to Eddie breaking Steve’s stupid heart. It wasn’t, like, his fault. He didn’t know that Steve had come for the hot, designation affirming sex and stayed for the dumb jokes and late night joints and whispered conversations about their futures, after the kids graduated. Steve was thinking about a trade school, wanted to learn more about cars; Eddie thought that was cool. He’d recently started working as a bookkeeper at the plant on Wayne’s recommendation, putting his less than legal money counting skills to work.
His parents didn’t need to know any of that either, though judging by his Dad’s face and the way his mom was mournfully saying, “Oh, darling,” he wasn’t quite sure they believed him.
He wasn’t sure any of the lies he’d been telling himself over the last six months, and more pertinently the last six days, were going to hold up under the rejection sickness related scrutiny he was about to be under. Like, truly — what schmuck would get it after seeing someone through a rut? Well, Steve was pretty sure he could be that schmuck, but at least in this case he didn’t have to be. He was just the schmuck who offered to help a guy through his rut and then kept banging the guy.
“Was it, like, good for you?” Eddie had asked, when he’d surfaced from his rut at long last and found Steve still in his bed, thighs covered in hickeys and bite marks of a million different colors, purple and red and yellow-green, freshly showered and flipping through an X-Men comic and drinking his water. He’d had his hair pulled over his mouth, that shy thing he did sometimes, hiding behind it, though it was undercut by the way that even two washes of his hair hadn’t quite gotten rid of the scent of Steve’s slick from the mids and ends. He’d asked, “Did you like it?”
Steve had rolled his eyes at him. “I think you would have known if I hadn’t liked it.”
“I just mean,” Eddie’d said.
He’d rolled his eyes again. “I know what you mean. It was good, man. 10/10, would recommend the ride.”
Eddie had snorted. “Same. Phenomenal pussy, bro. Ass too. Five stars, both thumbs and a whole cock up.”
Laughing, Steve had whipped the comic at his head and they’d wrestled in Eddie’s stained sheets and Steve hadn’t rubbed his scent glands in it while they went, thanks, until they’d crashed to the floor, giggling and roughhousing all the while.
Eventually, when they’d calmed down, they’d laid side by side, staring at the ceiling, and Eddie’d asked, “Wanna do it again some time?”
“What, like your next rut?” Steve had asked.
Eddie had toed his carpet, kicked at a flannel shirt that had fallen out of the nest Steve had cobbled together in between marathon knot sessions. He’d said, “Or, like, I don’t know —”
“Hold on there, tiger,” he’d said, wry, “you gotta give me a couple of days to recover, first.”
“But then you’d wanna do it again some time?”
“But then yeah sure,” Steve had said. “Why not?”
Because, yeah, truly, why not? Even outside of rut, Eddie fucked him like a particularly nerdy machine, and ate him out like he needed his slick to survive. He would bend Steve in all sorts of shapes and make him cream at least twice when they banged one out, and he always made him laugh while he was doing it. Steve had never thought sex could be fun as well as funny, but Eddie made it that way, and then they’d smoke a joint after, have those late night gab sessions where they bore their souls.
Too bad Steve caught feelings in the fucking margins of it, and Eddie didn’t like him like that, because he preferred alphas, and now he was going on dates with some chick from some band that Gareth set him up with, and Steve was in a hospital bed with rejection sickness and, yeah, Ma, a broken goddamn heart.
Shit.
Shit.
What was he supposed to say? There was nothing. There was nothing.
In the face of Steve’s lengthy, sullen silence, Dad just said, “I suppose anything is better than the Hagan boy. I was worried.
“You thought I got rejection sickness from Tommy?” said Steve, affronted. Robin gagged in the corner, and Dad glared at them both.
“Well, he’s the only alpha boy I’ve seen you with, and statistically —”
“Steven has not been in Thomas’s dubious company in years, Daniel, do keep up —”
“Yeah, Dad, keep up! Christ, I wouldn’t touch his dick with a ten foot pole, let alone fuck him, his balls probably smell like corn nuts —”
“Steve, please, allow me to remain thinking you’re chaste,” said Dad, sinking into a chair.
“Yeah, chaste, so how’d I get rejection sickness then,” he countered. Dad, to Steve’s hysterical delight, flipped him off. Robin chortled too, and Mom said, “Danny, don’t be crude; Steven, bubba, stop inciting your father with tales of your sexual conquests —”
“Oh, now who’s inciting me, Delaney —”
“Not just rejection sickness, however, I’m afraid,” said Sam Owens from the doorway, like the Ghost of Nightmare Reality Christmas. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Oh shit,” said Robin. “Oh, oh my god, can rejection sickness kill you? I didn’t think it could kill you —”
“It’s more, Ms Buckley, that, to put it delicately — well, actually, I don’t know if I can put this delicately —”
“Shit, I’m, like, super actively dying, huh?” Steve said.
“Steve is going into heat,” said Owens. His eyes were wide, and his voice was baffled. Which, looking around the room, Steve thought was sort of a group sentiment.
“Are you fucking shitting me,” said Mom. Steve ralphed into his bed pan again.
Despite Steve and his parents loudly and repeatedly protesting it wasn’t possible based on literally everything any single doctor had ever said to them — which was, for the record, a lot; Danny and Lane Harrington had left no medical stone unturned when Steve was twelve and not experiencing any of puberty’s ole faithfuls vis a vis his secondary gender — it turned out that Owens was right, and Robin earlier by extension, and, yeah, Steve was going into a presentation heat at the ripe old age of twenty and a half. Which was, indeed, some bullshit, if you asked him.
But unfortunately for Steve, no one did. Mainly everyone started talking very loud and very fast at Steve as the room filled up with various other doctors and nurses in various states of alarm and agitation at what was apparently unfolding. Which was, again apparently, a heretofore unseen (or at least extremely fucking rare) pivot of omega undifferentiated to omega differentiated and how or something. His blood had already been sucked from him by the gallon back in the ER, it felt like, and now it seemed like they were all at work pumping him full of other liquids as people said shit like “hormonal imbalance” and “body temperature regulation” and “egg production” and just, like, the word “womb” way more than he thought anyone needed to say it. Someone said “medically induced coma for his benefit” which someone then followed up with “probably be better to get the alpha who started this in here but you know how these loose omegas are” which fuck you, actually, but then someone else booted that person from the room and then someone said something about radiation levels and the bat bitesand Owens sent that person out of the room, because they’d almost definitely violated an iron clad government NDA somehow, and —
He missed the battle axe nurse from before. She seemed cool. Probably would have punched that one guy out, instead of just kicking him out of the room.
“I’m sorry, what is happening?” said Steve for probably the twentieth time. Still, they kept talking at him, ignoring him, until Steve’s dad put both fingers in his mouth and whistled loud enough to shake the window panes of the room.
It took a minute, after that, but eventually Owens got the room under control and cleared out everyone who wasn’t Steve’s parents or Robin or himself. He sat down at Steve’s bedside, backwards in the chair, and Steve wanted to laugh. He was worried, though, that if he started laughing he’d start crying, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop, if he did.
So many things felt trapped beneath Steve’s breastbone: hungry, fearsome things: anxiety, fear, desire, self-hatred, hope. That was the worst one, he thought, and still he’d clung to it.
Years and years ago, Steve hit puberty and puberty didn’t quite hit back. He’d been taken on a whirlwind tour of doctors and specialists around the United States, and his parents had probably spent an absolute fucking fortune (and continued to, he imagined), and he knew, right, he knew there was a ton more to it than this, but when you spend your whole life being told you’re this thing and you’ll get to do this thing, it’s really hard to be told you weren’t actually going to. Steve had been born an omega, which wasn’t rare, except how he was a boy, which was statistically less likely than female omegas, but he’d been born an omega and he had all the right omega things, except for some of the hormones. And that — that meant more than a twelve year old Steve could really comprehend, at the time.
It meant more, he thought sometimes, than he could even comprehend now. It was probably why he never bothered to look at it straight on, to ask more questions, to question. Didn’t help that no one ever really tried to explain it to him in a way that he could get, even as he got older and he started realizing just what it meant, beyond simply no heats and extremely rare periods. Maybe it didn’t even matter. Maybe it only mattered that he wasn’t producing the full battery of what an omega should produce, and what that meant was what it said on the tin: he had all the parts, but he’d never go into those heats, and that meant he’d almost definitely never have his own kids. He could sire them, with some medical intervention, probably, but he wouldn’t carry. Which was — fine. It was fine.
Lots of people went through that kind of thing, he knew. He wasn’t particularly special, though his gender and shit did single him out a little. But he wasn’t alone in it. He kind of took comfort in that. Like, people of all designations and presentations and identities went through it, right? Hell, his own mom did, for years after Steve, trying to have another kid but never managing it. He wasn’t special for it. It was fine.
Still: it was strange, right, to miss something he never really had the chance to have.
So: hope. Anxiety, fear, fucking desire.
Nausea, a headache.
He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted a bag of chips. He wanted his blankets from home. He wanted to peel himself out of his skin. He wanted a hug. He wanted Eddie. God, kill him, was this heat?
When Owens got started explaining, it was like those appointments when Steve was twelve. A lot of information was coming at him very fast, and he didn’t understand half of it, even though Owens was a lot better than those old doctors at trying to let him keep up with him; shit, he was actually talking to him, instead of at him, like before.
Steve was in the middle of a hormonal cascade, Owens began. His body had been jump-started into presentation, and his body was now working overtime to create the hormones that a healthy twenty-one year old omega male needed — which was much more than what a healthy twelve year old would have needed, back when this sort of thing was supposed to happen, and honestly Steve was already feeling it and it sucked. His reproductive system, in particular, was manifesting a lot of new symptoms with those hormonal imbalances: it looked on paper, in fact, like Steve had a number of symptoms for polycystic ovary syndrome, very suddenly, though in reality it was simply one of the most intense cases of heat-crisis Owen’s had ever seen.
“Though of course we can’t also rule out the former just yet either,” he said, “as an additional diagnosis.”
“They just said he was undifferentiated, though, then,” Mom said. She’d slid out of his bed, finally, was sitting next to him with his dad behind her, her fingers wound in the sheets. “Could he truly have had this the whole time instead?”
“I don’t know, Mrs Harrington,” he told them. “He could have. He could not. It’s not a very well studied disease, unfortunately, and not everything aligns — honestly, if it was PCOS, or an autoimmune disorder of some kind, it shouldn’t have affected his heats to begin with but, at the risk of contradicting myself — well, it’s just almost impossible to say, without pointing a lot of fingers and even more guesswork. But equally, as I said, impossible to rule it out. So I don’t know if we will ever know. There are so many factors that we cannot test for, that could be beyond our understanding, given your son’s medical history and his, shall we say, interactions with Brenner’s experiments,” he said, delicate. Steve’s parents had gotten read in, after the last go-round, but some habits died hard, he thought. Owens continued, “There’s every possibility it’s not just one thing, though of course the scientist in me is suspicious given the alpha who has precipitated Steve’s rejection sickness. You’d never been with —? Well, it’s not important, Steve, we can debrief that later.”
Steve would rather gargle glass, actually, than discuss his sexual history, and particularly his time with Eddie, with Owens but, regrettably, he suspected he wasn’t really going to be able to get out of that one.
“But, yes, it could have been a heretofore unknown combination of that alpha, and Steve’s experiences, that triggered the hormonal cascade we’re in presently. It could have been stress. It could have been even stress that delayed it all those years ago. It could have simply been a genetic or hormonal misfire that need an extra jumpstart.”
“But what does it mean?” asked Dad.
“I don’t know,” said Owens, “beyond what we’re experiencing now: Steve is going into his presentation heat. What that might bring after — we’ll obviously need to run a number of tests. I know there’s been discussion, in the past, regarding fertility, and I know your menstrual cycle has been nothing short of irregular, but I can’t speak, now, to if any of that will or can change with what is happening. But what I can say is that it is happening, and we need to make some decisions regarding how that is going to be handled.”
He turned more directly to Steve now, who was thinking about throwing up in the bed pan again, and only a little bit because of this conversation.
Owens was saying, “Our options are limited, Steve. Normally, you could have worked through this presentation on your own, at home. At your age, yes, it’s not so simple to go through a presentation, aided by a parents and scent tokens, like you would have at puberty — late stage presentations typically involve sexual contact to ease through the heights of it, is what I mean to say. It’s not without its potential dangers, of course, these types of presentations are often excruciatingly difficult on the body and recommended to have a medical professional on call. Still, we could have tried it, with your parents or Ms Buckley nearby. But matters have had a wrench thrown in them by your rejection sickness as another type of hormonal crisis. We could still try it, yes, yes, I will allow, but again I cannot overstate how difficult these types of presentations are without additional factors, and the distress you might put yourself through by having contact with a partner who is not the one you have imprinted on, or even heat aids — that, coupled, yes, with your complicated medical history over the last few years — to put it plainly, Mr and Mrs Harrington, I don’t want to risk it. Steve, I don’t want to risk you.”
“So what are my options then?” he asked.
Owens pursed his lips. “Would you consider contacting the alpha —”
“No,” said Steve, even though he damn well knew Eddie would find out about this, probably within the fucking day. It was still a problem for whatever Steve he’d be after this shit was over. “No. So?”
“Medically induced coma,” he told him, which meant he’d heard that other doctor right afterall. “It’s not ideal, but it’s the best option. You’ll still experience all of the symptoms as your body works through realigning itself and sets to producing new, additional hormones, but with you under sedation we can work through them chemically without the additional mental and physical distress full awareness might incite — keep your body temperature regulated, introduce hormones and pheromones intravenously to stabilize you until you’re producing enough on your own, work to maintain your homeostasis until you are also able to do so on your own without undue stress.”
“And you can’t do it while he’s conscious?” asked Mom. “I just —”
Shaking his head, Owens said, “I know, Mrs Harrington. I know. But the rejection sickness, and Steve’s current hormonal imbalance — there are too many risk factors and simply unknowns. This is the safest, most comfortable way for him to experience it. He’ll go under, we’ll see him through it medically, and in a few days he’ll wake up differentiated.”
“A few days?” he asked. Owens nodded. Steve said, “Oh. I’m gonna miss the kids’s stupid holiday party.”
“I can’t give an exact date but yes. It’s likely,” he said, “that you’ll still be under for the holiday’s.”
“Kids’ll be pissed,” he said.
“Dustin can suck an egg,” said Robin. “I’ll handle it.”
“All of it?” he asked.
She set her jaw. She said, “All of it,” because they both knew what he meant. He wondered how Eddie was going to react, and dismissed it, again, as a problem for Future Steve.
“Okay,” said Steve. He was really rapidly feeling like absolute shit, couldn’t even pretend anymore. “Let's get this over with. How do you knock me out? With a brick, or?”
Owens finally cracked a smile as everyone else groaned. “I fear your head can’t take that particular method there, Steve. Just a few chemicals into your IV lines here, and then the next time we speak — it’ll be over.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he said.
“Mom?” Steve said.
She took his hand. “I’m right here, bubba. Your father and I will be right here the whole time.”
Robin, who had his other hand, the one with the IVs in it, said, “Me too, dingus. I got a few heads to crack together but other than that —”
“Thanks, Bobbin,” he said. “Okay. Let's light this candle, Owens.”
Owens pulled two syringes from his pocket and he wondered at that, just for a moment, how sure he’d been that he’d had it all ready, but it slipped away like so much smoke; and, between one blink and the next, Steve was gone.
(Later, he’ll wonder if he dreamt at all. He’ll think he must’ve: he’ll feel like he must’ve. Dreamt of something beautiful and kind even as things hurt, dreamt of someone cradling him, wiping sweat from his brow and pressing sweet kisses to his temple, his cheek, a lingering press once or twice to the mating gland at the crook of his shoulder and neck. He’ll have dreamt, he’ll think, of hands on his swollen belly, feeling something kick. He’ll have dreamt, he’ll think, of a future he’d wanted so desperately but had never given himself the space to want, beyond a few stray thoughts and awful desires slipped out between the sheets of other people and a speeding Winnebago and, once, underneath Eddie’s arm while he’d slept, hoping and hoping and hoping, though always telling himself he’d be fine with being a dad one way and not the other, and now —
He’ll have dreamt, he’ll think, of his nest at home, the one with Dad’s old suit jackets and Mom’s silk pajamas, scraps of their baby blankets, the one with Dustin’s cap and Max’s scrunchie and Lucas’s MJ jersey and Robin’s sweatshirt that was actually Steve’s first, all of it smelling like ozone and clean laundry and herbs fresh from the garden and the sweet, milky smell of unpresented kids. He’ll have dreamt of the nest he build for three days at Eddie’s, flannels and bong-water stained sheets and band tees and Steve’s jeans, cinder and juniper and lemongrass and cilantro.
He’ll have dreamt of voices, and singing, and warmth, and love, and it’ll feel so real, he’ll think later. It will have felt so real he’ll begin to wonder if he even dreamt any of it at all.)
When he woke, Steve felt tired and stretched thin but good, somehow. Like he imagined a rubber band might feel, maybe, after getting untangled from a ball of other rubber bands, finally able to relax back into the shape he was meant to be. Or whatever. Maybe. Something.
He wasn’t hungry, though his stomach kind of hurt like he was, and there was an ache between his legs, a sort of pulled groin muscle feel but one that happened a few days before. Really, maybe it was just that: he felt like he’d had a brutal workout but one he wanted, a good one, and now all the endorphins and shit were smoothing out the rough edges. He felt satisfied, content.
But he was still, he realized slowly, in the hospital.
There were three IVs in his arm and a couple other wires connected to beeping machines. The room smelled like ozone and clean things, which reminded him of Mom but he knew that was probably just because Mom and hospitals had one thing in common and that was a fondness for scent blocking. (“I have a sensitive nose,” she’d always sniff primly, and Dad would roll his eyes where she couldn’t see it and say quietly, “And that’s why every day is trash day, son.”) Sun was softly coming in between the blinds of his window, the cold quality of winter to it, something blue and young. It was early, he figured; he wondered what day it was, if the holiday party the kids were throwing had come and gone, if Christmas had come and gone. Someone had put a little tree on his bedside table, droopy little red velvet bows tied on a few of the branches, and there were two or three neatly wrapped packages beneath its little boughs.
Also, Eddie was there.
That took a minute, for him to realize. He was in the corner of the room, curled uncomfortably in a shitty hospital chair by the window, and so he couldn’t smell him, the distance and the scent diffusing too much. He was asleep, breath whistling through his nose, which was what Steve tuned into first, a weird rhythm beneath his beeping heart monitors.
Steve stared at him for a while, just watching.
It was only the two of them, and Steve wondered where his parents had gone, if they knew Eddie was there. They must’ve; his dad’s tan Barbour jacket was on a hook on the back of the room door, his mom’s newest addition to her collection next to it, a handsome salt and pepper Harris Tweed coat from their men’s line. They couldn’t have gone far, and so they must’ve let Eddie stay with him, long enough that he fell asleep in his awful chair. Must’ve let him be there for a while, even.
He looked like Steve had been feeling, before they’d sedated him: rough, to say the least. A little paler than usual, bags under his eyes, his hair falling limply out of a bun piled on the crown of his head, tied up with a rubber band, the animal. His leather jacket was tucked around his shoulders like a little kid, and there was a blanket on his lap, threadbare, hospital issue. Steve had nice blankets on his bed: one of his mom’s good comforters, a chenille throw from the living room. His pillow smelled like Robin and when he rolled his head he could see it was one of her flannel ones, with the dumb little bunnies she always said was too girly but she’d fight him for when he crashed at her place.
“Hey,” said Steve, when he got tired of just staring at Eddie. Then, louder, “Hey, Ed. Ed!”
Eddie came to with a snort and a flail, nearly going ass over teakettle from the chair as he startled his way into wakefulness. He looked like a one man Three Stooges act, the chair fumbling and scraping against the floor as he worked to gain control of what his limbs were doing, and Steve just watched him until he righted himself, breathing hard and blinking wildly.
“Steve?” he asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Stevie,” said Eddie.
“Yeah,” he said again.
Stumbling out of his chair, Eddie crossed from his chair to the hospital bed at a remarkable speed, considering he was rocking around on baby deer legs and socked feet, he noticed now. Steve asked, “Dude, where are your shoes?”
“Um,” Eddie said. “They’re, uh, does it matter?”
“It’s weird.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s okay.”
“They’re under the chair.”
“What?”
“My shoes.”
“Oh. How long have you been here?”
“Here as in this room? Or like the hospital?”
Steve stared at him. He was sat in the chair next to his bed now, hunched down into it and playing with his own fingers, picking at his cuticles. He had on a too-big flannel, and Steve could see the edge of something beneath the collar, green and gold and white. He asked, “There’s a difference?” instead of reaching for his buttons, trying to peel back and see what it was.
He didn’t have the right, he reminded himself, and that overworked good feeling took on a sort of bittersweet edge. He didn’t have the right at all.
“Uh, well, yeah,” Eddie was saying, “on account of how they wouldn’t let me in here until Owens thought I wasn’t, quote, a walking heat protocol violation.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
A flush had broken over Eddie’s cheeks as he spoke, and now it turned hot red. He said, “Well, um, they sort of thought I’d, like, uh, jump you a little? On account of, like. Stuff?”
“Stuff?”
“Stuff.”
“But you wouldn’t,” said Steve.
“I mean I almost definitely would.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah.”
“Steve,” he said, more than a little distressed. “I was — you were, are, in the hospital. For heat distress, and, and rejection sickness, and if I thought I could help — if I thought you wanted me — I would have. I would have. I, I know that I’m not the one who, like, I mean it’s neither here nor there, you can do whatever you want, whoever you want, but I would have helped you through it. I would have. But they wouldn’t let me, Owens said it was too dangerous, and I thought your dad was going to maybe try to castrate me if I took another step towards your room and your mom cried at me, Steve, and she was still somehow super pretty while she did it? And I — so I waited. After Robin got me, and told the kids. I waited. I wouldn’t leave, just in case, you know? They weren’t happy about that. The nurses, I mean, not your parents, though probably your parents too. Does that, does that answer your question? This room for the past six hours, since they lifted the sedation, and the hospital, for, um, three days and seven hours, give or take. I’ve been here.”
“Did you eat?” Steve asked.
“Wayne brought me some stuff,” he said. “And, uh. A flannel, for you, but they wouldn’t let me give it to you, because I’m not, like, the alpha that started this.”
This was too much, he thought. He felt so much better than he had, but still: he’d just woken up from being sedated through his first heat at twenty goddamn years old after spending damn near half his life thinking that would never happen, and he had rejection sickness on top of it, and the guy who’d triggered at least one of those things was looking at him like he broke his heart and Steve, frankly, couldn’t handle that shit. He said baldly, “But you are.”
“What?”
“You are,” he said again. “It was you. You started this. Some of it. Maybe. I don’t know. But I wanted you. I want you. You didn’t want me, is the thing.”
“I’ll kill myself,” said Eddie, kneejerk. “I — I didn’t want you? Steve, I would walk through glass to hold your hand. I would brave the world beneath this one again, with nothing but a six string on my back and I’m quoting Bon Jovi, Steve. Bon Jovi. I would crawl to the ends of the earth for a look from you. I would, I would do anything you would ask. I would be your dog, your whipping boy, if it meant you would give me a single scrap of your affection. I didn’t want you? I want you. I want you so badly my teeth ache.”
“But you like alphas,” Steve said. “You date alphas. You’re dating that girl.”
“No I’m not,” he said. He leaned towards him, but he didn’t touch him. He was gripping his own hands so hard Steve could see his knuckles, white and sharp. “I’m not dating anyone.”
“You went on a date,” he said. “Two dates.”
“Gareth said I look sad every time I look at you,” said Eddie. “He said it hurts to look at me, looking at you. He said you were going to break my heart, so he told me I needed to get over you. He didn’t know we are, were — he just thought it’d help if I got it out of my system with someone else.”
“Did I?”
“What?”
“Break your heart,” said Steve.
“Baby,” he said. “You’ll only break my heart if you’re not being serious, right now. You’ll only break my heart if you tell me everything you just said is a lie.”
He shook his head. “It’s not. Why would I lie about that?"
“You never told me,” he said.
“You never told me,” Steve countered.
“Then we’re both assholes,” said Eddie. “I like alphas, sure, but mostly I like you. I’ve liked you. For a truly embarrassingly long time, if we wanna get into it.”
Biting his lip, Steve said, “I kind of want to get into it.”
“The first time I ever saw you was in seventh grade, my seventh grade, your sixth, and you were missing your front two teeth because the day before you’d gotten hit in the mouth with a metal baseball bat because someone was practicing their swing and didn’t realize you were behind them, and you were behind me in the lunch line, and I grabbed the last pudding but then I gave it to you, because you couldn’t eat anything else, because of your teeth, and you smiled at me, with the gap, and I thought, oh, I’m gonna mate that boy,” Eddie said without pause. His eyes were earnest, shining and wide; Steve wanted to kiss him.
“Yeah?” he asked, breathless.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You didn’t know me,” said Steve. “We’d never even spoken. We wouldn’t, until high school.”
“Didn’t matter,” Eddie said. “I knew. Like, like a bolt from the blue. Like the first time I played the guitar, or DnD, I knew. You were it for me. You are. I’m kind of hopelessly in love with you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t think you were serious about me,” he told him. “How could you be? You’re Steve Harrington, and I’m me.”
“That’s what I like,” said Steve. “You’re you. I’ve never known anyone like you.”
“Oh,” he said.
“So?”
“So what?”
“You said you wanted to mate me, back then,” he said. “Do you still want that?”
“Is it an option?”
“Well, I mean, if you’re kind of hopelessly in love with me. Also, you did give me rejection sickness,” said Steve. “Seems like it’d only be fair for you to make sure I never get it again.”
Eddie gaped at him. “What? You want me to mate you on this hospital bed?”
“I mean,” he said. “I’m kind of hopelessly in love with you too, so —”
“Goddamn, Steve, baby, you want that, you want that, and I will mate you on this hospital bed.” He started shoving at him and, giggling, Steve let himself get pushed and pulled around as Eddie tried to wriggle his way onto the little twin-size hospital matress. “Fucking move over, lets go, I’m gonna mate you so good right now, okay, baby, mate you so fucking good —”
“I’d implore you to refrain, Edward,” said Mom drily from the doorway. She looked fond though when Steve whipped his head round to look at her, the corner of her mouth ticked up and sweet. Behind her, Dad was rubbing a hand over his bristly chin and looking vaguely constipated. Mom was saying, “We’ve barely gotten his dowry together yet.”
“Dowry?” said Steve. “I’m — what? Dowry?”
“Your mother thinks she’s hilarious,” Dad said.
“Well, I am, Daniel, so —”
Meanwhile, Eddie had begun trying to smother himself with one of Steve’s blankets from mortification. Robin promptly burst from between Steve’s parents to put an end to that, saying, “Oh, ho, ho, loverboy, none of that shit — we all had to hear you say that so now you gotta live with it. Were you gonna kiss him on my pillow? Those bunnies are innocent —”
“While Mr Munson assures me, Edward, that you are in good standing at the plant, I do think we’ll need to schedule a sit down for you and Steven with our financial advisor,” Dad said, settling into the chair by the window that Eddie had lately been sitting in. He was trying to look grave and intimidating, thought Steve, a throwback to speeches when he was sixteen and throwing parties he probably shouldn’t; it was ruined by Mom promptly spilling herself into his lap and dabbing at her eyes, loudly saying, “They grow up so fast, Danny! We’ll be grandparents before we know it! Oh, perhaps we’ll have a Christmas baby! That would be so lovely, his name could be Noel, or you know I have a Great Aunt Holly —”
Steve’s old man pinched the bridge of his nose. “We most certainly will not. Steve and Edward will court, and for a good long while, before mating, and then they will wait a perfectly respectable, oh, ten, fifteen years before making Mr Munson and I grandpapas —”
“Dan, I fear we’ll be lucky if we get them to wait until after the mating before a baby appears,” said Robin, still trying to smother Eddie on Steve’s hospital bed, “so I’d probably table the longish courtship.”
“Robin,” Dad said, despairing, “not you too.”
Pressing his face into Eddie’s bony shoulder, juniper and cinder, the sweet burnt Christmas smell of him, the voices of his bickering family lulled him back towards the warm embrace of sleep; and, like, it was cheesy as fuck, right, but Steve kind of thought that, hospital and rejection sickeness and heat crisis and all of it? Even with it, this was kind of one of the best Christmases he’d ever had.
Six months later, Steve was on the cusp of a heat. It was a little earlier than anyone thought it would happen, post his presentation heat, but not so early that it was cause for alarm. (It was, mainly, cause for Robin to high-five him as Owens side-eyed him at his appointment the day before and muttered something about alphas and omegas and teenagers, and a little something about soulmates even quieter than that, which Steve would like the record to show he did know that that was a myth, thanks, but, listen, after all this business with rejection sickness and becoming a genetic anomaly, again, well —)
He was on the cusp of heat, and the edge of Eddie’s stained sofa once again, the alpha between his legs and four fingers deep, just like the night that started it all. They’d actually been in that position quite a lot, since then. It had become something of a favorite: Steve, splayed out like a debauched, wanton thing, and Eddie, on his knees in supplication as he stared into the sweet, wet core of his god.
It was good, never stopped being good, or sexy, or sweet. Loving, caring, giving. Funny sometimes, hilarious, even, with Eddie drawing laughs and snorts out of Steve even as he was fingered or blown or eaten within an inch of his life. Depraved nothings whispered into his ear as Eddie fucked in and out of his slick pussy, or mundane ones, how good Steve looked, felt, was. How perfect he was for Eddie, how beautiful.
Right now, though, it was just blisteringly hot. Eddie was giving it to him relentlessly, those four fingers of one hand pistoning in and out while his other held his stiff cock steady so Eddie could lavish it with kitten licks and kisses against the sticky, spongy head. Steve had already come once, tacky down his shaft. spilling against his hairy lips, slipping inside with Eddie’s fingers as they moved and moved and moved; Eddie was threatening him with at least three more.
Spreading his fingers wide, Eddie said, “God, look at this cunt, babylove, so wet and hungry for me,” and spit between his fingers, into Steve. His eyes rolled back at the wet, thick feeling and he canted his hips up into it, wanting it to slide deep into him. Eddie didn’t give him a chance, diving in instead to lick it out with a slurp and twist of his thick, wet tongue, before spitting into him again and repeating his ministrations.
It felt even bigger this way, his tongue, speared between Eddie’s middle and ring finger as they held his pussy wide for his work. His thumb was pressing just at the bottom of his entrance, stroking absently, and Steve said, “Please, honey, please.”
“You want it?” asked Eddie, even though he knew well enough what Steve wanted — they both knew what Steve always wanted: to be full, one way or another. Be it Eddie’s cock or his fingers or his tongue or a toy, he craved the feeling these days. He wasn’t sure what it said about him, what kink he had, but sometimes he could barely think unless he was plugged up with something from Eddie, and preferably with Eddie’s cum in there too, leaking out of his well used holes.
This time, though, this time Steve wanted what he’d wanted that first time: his fist, and his thumb pressed up against his entrance in short order, pressed further and further and further, until it was tucked in with Eddie’s four fingers and all five began to work in and out together. Steve spread his legs wider, hips dropped wide, and he arched his back so much he was practically bowing, body bent near in half and still trying to go further, get more. Those fingers went deeper, to the knuckles, the widest part of Eddie’s hand, and it had Steve mewling and tossing his head back and just gushing slick down his asscrack and thighs, coating Eddie’s wrist and the well used towel that tried its hardest to protect the integrity of the couch. It never quite succeeded.
“In me, in me, honey, get in me, please,” he begged. “Fuck me with your fist, I need it so bad, Ed, please.”
“I’ll fuck you, babylove, I promise,” said Eddie. “Is it gonna be enough for you? Is it gonna be as good as my knot for you? Here, here, here you go, babylove.”
Moving him where he wanted him, Eddie got himself under Steve a little better, on his knees for more leverage, and worked his hand all the way into him. He curled his fingers, made a fist within him, and Steve pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, bit down to muffle his wail. Like the towel, he didn’t quite succeed, but Eddie just pressed his advantage, pumped his fist in his pussy and murmured, “Nah, let it out, wanna hear you holler on my fist, babylove.”
Steve looked down through teary eyes and saw the tendons of Eddie’s arm, shiny with slick and spit and lube, working as his wrist disappeared into his pussy. He thought he could see his fist working in his stomach, imagined he could see it in him, full and dirty and so fucking hot, and Eddie leaned down, kissed along the path that Steve imagined. He moaned, reaching down to grip Eddie’s shoulders, letting his voice break fully in the quiet of the room, backed by the gushy, wet sounds of his cunt and Eddie’s fist within it.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, so big,” he breathed.
“Yeah? Yeah? You like riding my fist like this, babylove? You like my fist filling up this tight pussy and getting you all gaping and slutty for my knot? Feels so good, fucking my hand like this, can’t wait to get my knot in this wet, messy hole of yours,” he told him. “This hot, slutty cunt, gonna fill it up good for you, babylove, gonna fuck it until you cream and scream, babylove. Wanna hear it, wanna hear how good I make you feel..”
“Please,” he said. “Please, please, you are, you are, so good, you’re so good for me, Ed, fuck me so good. Keep going, keep going. Give it to me. Fuck me, Ed. Fuck me with your fist.”
Eddie kissed his way up Steve’s belly, his chest, to the small swell of his hairy tits there — a little fuller than his chest had ever gotten, before he differentiated, and one of the first things that let Steve know something was up with his body. Eddie couldn’t get enough of them. A self professed tit man, in any shape or size or meaning of that, he already spent quite a bit of time on Steve’s chest when they were making love, and he always giggled and laughed and stared hotly at him after, as he picked the occasional hair out of his teeth and held it up for Steve’s inspection, wondering, “Now which bush did this come from?”
Even when they weren’t fuckin, Eddie was obsessed: Steve had actually woken up the other morning with Eddie biting loving marks into the puffy flesh, suckling on the stiff peaks of his nipples until they hurt. They were almost permanently bruised with his kisses and bites, and Steve honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. He loved looking down in the shower and seeing those marks, touching the hot skin and getting hard and wet when he pinched them, played with them and remember Eddie moaning over his chest. He was thinking about getting a bite tattooed for Eddie’s birthday, wondered if Eddie would be even more excited to suck his tits when they were fat with milk for their —
“That’s it, Ed,” said Steve, cupping the back of his head as Eddie suckled at his nipple, stinging little bites as he went. He had his free hand at Steve’s lower back now, and Steve leaned into it as he bounced himself on his fist. Tension coiled in his gut, and his pussy throbbed around the thick intrusion. He was so close, and he told him so.
“Then cum for me.” He licked a line up Steve’s sternum, bit him low at his throat, just shy of the place where Steve, inevitably, begged him every time to mark him. “Let me feel this pussy lock on my fist.”
“Want your knot,” he said. “Wanna cum on your knot.”
“You’re gonna, baby, promise,” Eddie told him. “Gonna make you scream on my knot, just you wait.”
He pumped his fist, twisted, spread his fingers, just a little, said, “Make you scream on this too,” and Steve wailed and came.
By the time he came back to his senses, Eddie was sat back on the couch and had him straddling his waist, his cockhead teasing his wide-open, creamy pussy. His own cock was still hard, leaking and heavy against his belly; he wanted to drop down into him, suck that thick cock into him and grind his against Eddie’s belly, grind them both together until they came at the same time. But Eddie had one hand on Steve’s hip, and his other, the slick, messy one was gripping the back of his neck, holding him steady, keeping him where he wanted him. Steve felt himself leak more.
“You ready, babylove?” he was asking. “You ready for me?”
“Yes,” he said. “Been ready. Fucking give it to me, Ed, honey. Give me that fat alpha cock.”
Eddie swallowed hard, eyes fluttering closed, and slid his hand down to rest lightly on Steve’s hip, with the other one. Steve braced his hands on the back of the couch, forearms resting on Eddie’s wiry shoulders. He said, “Look at me,” and Eddie did, so Steve sank down on his cock in one smooth motion, so slick and ready and open for him.
He rode him like that, bouncing slowly on Eddie’s lap again and again, while staring at his face. Eddie always had a hard time maintaining eye contact when they got to this point, overwhelmed by his desire, the feel of Steve’s sex all around him. He was weak for it, he told Steve once, always just felt himself sort of giving over to the moment and to the need to please Steve, to make sure his pleasure was always being met. Steve didn’t mind; he thought it was hot, how his eyes would flutter like they did before, drift up and down his body, stare at his mouth as he licked his own lips, get caught on his bitten red nipples and sore tits, linger on that meeting of their bodies as his cock pumped in and out of his pussy and his knot began to swell at the base.
How he’d start to babble, asking if he was good was Steve, if he was good for his babylove, if his sweet prince needed more, and god let me give you more, Stevie, please, let me give you everything, baby, I love this pussy, love this cunt so much, so hot and tight for me, fuck, I love it, I love you, I love you —
And nothing, nothing, turned Steve on more than that: hearing Eddie’s broken voice cry out that he loved him as Steve fucked his knot into him, as Steve rode him into oblivion.
“You’re so good, honey,” Steve told him. “So fucking good for me, my pretty alpha, with his big alpha cock, fucking my tiny little omega pussy until it hurts —”
“You like it,” said Eddie. “You like it, babylove, you like my alpha cock —”
“Love this alpha cock,” he breathed. He rose up on his knees until the tip of Eddie was all that was in him, sank down all the way again, rubbed his rock against Eddie’s belly. He pressed close, got his little tits close to Eddie’s mouth and he latched onto one without needing to be told, sucking and biting like his life depended on it as Steve just sat on his cock and his hips twitched in him, said, “Love it so much, love you, wanna ride it all day long, one feel this knot pump and feel me up so good with your hot alpha cum.”
“Steve,” he moaned around his breast, broken. “Omega.”
(“I know it’s, like, so regressive and shit,” Eddie had said, the first time he’d accidentally called him by his designation in the sack. He’d genuinely been wringing his hands, with a hangdog expression, and Steve had tried really hard not to laugh as he’d continued, “And, like, I need you to know that I’m not doing it because I want to, like, dominate you and make you barefoot in my kitchen, it’s just kind of hot to me, and I hate it, but also I don’t, and I will try really, really hard not to say it again if you hate it —”
Steve, who was more than a little into the idea of being barefoot in Eddie’s kitchen and all the shit that might come with it but it was still early days, right, hospital confession of wanting to be mated ASAP aside, had reached out to take his face in his hands, kiss the sweet cupid’s bow of his frowning mouth. He’d said, “If it turns your crank, I’m into it. But it is hot, so object me away, baby.”)
“Yeah, alpha,” said Steve, rocking back and forth on Eddie’s cock. “Yeah, give it to me, alpha, gimme your knot. Give it to me.”
“Gonna,” he grunted. “Gonna fill you up so good, gonna have you cum on my knot, babylove, gonna have you gushing, gonna —”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah —”
Eddie’s fingers dug hard into his hips, holding him tight as he humped his hips up into Steve. He mumbled against his chest, mouth hot and lush, “Touch yourself, baby, touch yourself and cum for me —”
Steve reached down, pumped his dick a few times, and then pressed his fingers lower. He touched Eddie’s swelling knot as it pumped and pressed against his lips, startling a wanton mewl from him, but didn’t linger; instead, he pressed two fingers delicately against his hole and then in. He gasped as Eddie’s knot slid in with his fingers. He came, wet and messy and prolific, all over his fingers, Eddie’s knot and cock, and between their bellies.
“Fuck, fuck, keep fucking me,” he begged.
Hips rocking, Eddie desperately tried to do as he asked. He got a few more pumps in, an ache beginning to form in Steve’s well-used pussy but not enough to make him want to stop (never enough the make him want to stop), before his breath started to go short and high. His mouth slid up Steve’s chest and, less than a minute since Steve came, Eddie followed him.
His knot popped into him one last time, for keeps, and Steve’s pussy locked around it, their bodies becoming one at long last. Hot, sweet warmth filled him, practically from crown to the toe, and kept on filling him as Eddie’s hips worked fitfully, trying to get them ever closer. His teeth grazed gently on that juncture of Steve’s neck and shoulder, a promise of things to come. They held each other there on the living room couch, until long after their bodies released one another — until they fell asleep, in loving, messy embrace.