Chapter Text
On most days, Yuuri Katsuki loved the woods around him. He would traipse through the undergrowth, inhaling the fresh scents on the air of leaves and earth. He would hunt for mushrooms or fill his pack to bursting with berries and chestnuts: the perfect ingredients for the sweets and breads that his mother baked to serve the guests at their inn. When the weather was warm and the sunlight soft, Yuuri would find a log and open the small satchel around his waist to eat his lunch and commune with nature. In the forest, Yuuri was free, unhindered by his unfortunate circumstance. In the forest, Yuuri could pretend that he was not an omega, tethered to the expectations that came with that unfortunate gender. In the forest, Yuuri was not beholden to a society insistent on its need to be controlled, tamed, locked away behind marriage and mates, kept by a well-mannered alpha to be sequestered away when his lust turned insatiable.
As if omegas had ever been so unhinged that something as simple as a heat could rip their sense of reason away from them. And yet, because an omega in heat was considered irresistible to the rest of society, it was the omegas who were deemed unsafe, untamed, uncontrolled. Yuuri hated the idea of being tied down, crippled by his lot in life. Heats could not be so bad, he thought. After all he had experienced the tremors of a few already, quelled easily by the herbal tea his mother supplied him, and left to rest in his room until it passed. Perhaps that was why, as his senses began to heighten and his body began to warm, he chose to ignore it. The woods had been calling to him, and Yuuri would heed that call. It had been ages since he collected mushrooms, and the chestnuts had just begun to drop from the trees. He left his home at sunrise, the entire day before him, to make it to his favorite thicket, with plans to return just before the full moon rose.
Perhaps that was why Yuuri went to the woods today, to escape into the forest and defy his omega birth.
On most days, Yuuri Katsuki enjoyed the woods around him, but today was not most days.
Yuuri was about to go into heat, and he had entirely underestimated its ferocity.
What was gentle in the safety of his home hit him with the intensity of a waterfall. The normally quiet melody of the birds above grated against Yuuri’s hypersensitive ears, and the quiet scent of earth and greenery burned against his nostrils, as his body readied for the sex he was not prepared to have. Even the gentlest of breezes scratched against Yuuri’s skin as the burn of his lust spread, limb by limb, until he felt engulfed in an inferno of unquenchable desire.
The thicket of chestnut trees had not been worth this risk.
I am hours from home and in the sorriest of states, Yuuri whimpered to himself. He had mispredicted the rapidity of this heat, thinking there was time to make it home to a suitable nest, where he had his special scent pillow and apothecary’s herbs to blunt the worst of the blow. The fire in his blood crackled and snapped, demanding his attention, but there was nothing to do. It was claimed that omegas in this state could go mad, something that Yuuri scoffed at, but as the buzzing under his skin became more insistent, an echo of fear clawing its way up his flesh.
If Yuuri didn’t find shelter, he might not survive.
Yuuri tried in vain to swallow his tears, his desperation. He did not choose to be born an omega, he did not choose for fate to foist this wild wantonness onto him. He hated heats, hated that it made him feel weak and helpless, hated that he could not live free. That was why he ventured into the woods, to prove to himself that he could overcome his body.
The fever was coming on, draining away Yuuri’s energy, making each and every movement more onerous than the last. His legs trembled and twitched, until finally they gave out, collapsing under the power of his lust. Unable to hold himself up, he let himself fall, the blow to his body softened by the squelch of the undergrowth.
This was it, he had played with fire and gotten burned alive. He was an omega. Consumed by his untamed heat. Pathetic. Exactly what everyone always said about omegas.
Get up, Yuuri shouted to his fogging mind. Get. Up.
He would not let himself die in the woods, sick with a heat he did not want. He would find the shelter he needed, and he would overcome his body. Because Yuuri was stronger than his heat.
Yuuri pushed himself up, groaning at the effort. Every fiber in his body fought him, begging him to still, begging him to give in.
I am not a slave to my heat. One foot in front of the other, blinking away the fog, another step and another, ignoring the burn, seeking, searching for safety, Yuuri pressed forward. I am not a slave to my heat. If he concentrated, he could ward off the fog long enough to survey his surroundings until… until…
Chestnuts, roasting. And petrichor. Intermingling and wonderful. The scent hit Yuuri’s nose, soft and only detectable in his heightened state. Soothing, so soothing. It wrapped around his body like the arms of a lover. This way, it said. Follow me to safety. I will take care of you.
Perhaps on a different day, when the haze of heat did not cloud all of Yuuri’s reason, he would have thought on following a strange scent with the suspicion that it deserved. Instead, Yuuri let the scent wrap around him and guide his feet through the forest. Every moment the scent grew stronger, ribboning in and out of the trees, and lapping against Yuuri’s senses. Every inhale cleared Yuuri’s mind enough that he hurried his steps, closer to the origin of the scent, one so divine that Yuuri wanted to snuggle into it and make it his own.
“Oh.” Yuuri understood now: the reason that his heat calmed and still his body sang from that scent. It was the scent of a compatible alpha, like the special cloth Yuuri kept in his bed when he was forced to ride out other heats, and yet this scent—of chestnuts and petrichor—was far more wonderful even than that.
His realization almost stopped his steps.
Yuuri was heatsick and following the scent of an alpha. He was every bit the animal that all seemed to claim omegas to be. But still he needed to press forward. Were he to stop, to fight, to run away, the heat would immolate him. And so Yuuri followed, enticed and deeply ashamed, to the origin of the scent.
If Yuuri blinked he would have missed it: the seam in the hollow of an enormous oak tree, just large enough for a human to slip inside, but entirely unnoticeable to any who were not seeking it. It was from this hidden place that the soothing scent came, and to Yuuri’s omega nose, no less obvious than if the entrance was marked with a bright red X.
He shouldn’t venture in, he knew that. It was dangerous enough lingering outside this place. He could climb the tree and hunker down amongst the branches, close enough to the calming effect of the unknown alpha’s scent to blunt his heat but far enough away that if the occupants of the house inside of the oak returned, he might have a chance to flee. Yes, to climb into the tree was logical, it was the right choice, it kept him the safest.
Yuuri stepped through the seam, into the hollow of the great oak.
“Oh.” The word escaped his mouth before he could swallow it down. The tree’s hollow led into an expanse that was somehow both spacious and cozy, a regular snuggery. There was a hand-woven wool rug that sat upon the floor, patterns of mushrooms and flowers dancing around its edges. The torches that lined the antechamber were carved like flowers, and the lights inside of them seemed to glow of an inner fire.
And the smell of the place made Yuuri dizzy. All around him now was the chestnut scent, soaked into the wooden panels, the wool rug, the… everything. Already this place had returned Yuuri to himself, as if his heat was but a pleasant bath in which he could submerge.
I shouldn’t be here, Yuuri reminded himself. He was intruding on a place he was not meant to be, but now that he had entered this place, he knew he would not leave, because with every new wave of heat crashing over him, an equal force quelled the burn. As if Yuuri was meant to find this place.
No. Not him. Yuuri was not a slave to his heat. He would not follow a scent to an alpha and pledge himself. This was just a lapse. Yuuri had not been expecting this heat to be so strong, or he would have been prepared. Because heats did not define omegas, and being an omega did not define Yuuri.
Yes, Yuuri would leave just as soon as he had ridden out the worst of it. If the owner of this place returned, he would deeply apologize for the inconvenience and offer the very best of his family’s honey cakes and bread in payment. And from now on, Yuuri would always carry the special mixture of medicinal herbs that took the edge off, to nest alone, in peace, no more, no less human than any alpha or beta.
But right now, Yuuri needed this place, this scent.
So he removed his shoes and placed them in the cubbyhole next to the door, and ventured further into the house. Soon he was facing three doors: the first large and looming, natural ebony with a glossy lacquer. Yuuri opened the door, glancing around the room within. It was stark, with a utilitarian table and harsh wooden chairs, and a large unadorned bed. The room smelled like an astringent. Yuuri backed away.
When he opened the second door, bright yellow and ornate, he found a small bed in the corner, a patchwork quilt of garish animal prints oversized for the mattress, and several hand-felted cat dolls peppered over the bed’s surface. The room smelled of concentrated lemon, not unpleasant per se, but not exactly right. Yuuri closed this door too.
Finally Yuuri stood in front of the last door, natural wood shimmering silver and blue, as if the very sky reached out and kissed it. When Yuuri touched the handle, a handsome polished silver, he already knew what he would find. The bed inside this room was enormous, a coverlet with embroidered blue roses lay atop the mattress, with plush goose down pillows covered in silk cases. The bed was decadent, and its scent, petrichor and chestnuts. Yuuri could almost make out the shape of the scent, laying in this bed. His head on the pillow, his body curled up. Was the scent lonely? Had he been waiting for someone to fill his bed?
Yuuri couldn’t think upon that. Shouldn’t think upon it. There was no reason to make this scent out to be anything but that: a means to an end. A way to ride out his heat and get back home and safe. Perhaps after this ordeal was finished, Yuuri would return to this place and leave a something here as a thank you to his unknown savior and host.
But only on his terms.
Yuuri closed the bedroom door, and crawled beneath the covers of the bed, letting the scent soaked fabric hug his body, nuzzling his nose into the pillow where chestnuts and petrichor were the strongest, and he let sleep take him.
Hopefully by the time he awoke, his heat would be over.
That was the plan, anyway.