Archive of Our Own

To be an alpha was to be of service. 

Matt had known this even before he presented, sitting in the pews and smelling heady myrrh from the pontifical incense and rubbing at his bruised knuckles as Father Lantom sat one row back.

“A mystery,” Father Lantom had called it, the obligation. Matt had not known whether to call it luminous or sorrowful. 

The world had already taken his sight and father, by then, and replaced them with the mess of smell-sound-touch-breath-heat, but if he pushed through the noise Matt could still picture the incarnadine Christ, the Virgin in her blue shroud.

It was a heady May Saturday, with Matt between one fight and the next, cane flat across his lap and nose still itching from the chapel lilies that Father Lantom had asked him to carry from one end of the center aisle to the next - “for Pentecost,” he had said - as Father Lantom sat and talked about the world and dabbed a thin square of cotton against his damp brow, the salt of his sweat catching on the breeze.

The Sisters had thrown the church’s doors open to the din of the street and the thick shower-room air of New York in late spring. Set against the overwhelming pulse of it all, the priest’s middle-aged omega scent was mild and comforting. Talc, lanolin, milk, violets. 

Matt would wonder, later, if that had been the point. To cool his blood. To settle him. 

It would only be a month or so before Matt finally woke in the dark, crying out in his first pre-rut to find no response, no help, but for weeks already he had been feeling a growing awareness towards the odd vein of omega sweetness that wafted in on the spring air, and the instinctual need that it brought out in Matt: to be a help, to root out any discomfort or danger. 

And, deep below that, a darker urge. A desire to take everything, good or bad, and replace it with himself. The hunger settled deep in his core and came so naturally to his heart. Even if it was wrong. Even if it was a sign of the devil in him.

Father Lantom had gestured at the lilies. Matt could feel the movement of his arm unsettle the stagnant air with the scent of powdered violets. 

“They need a good foundation. A place to root themselves. Steady ground,” the priest had said, detached, as if he was speaking about the flowers placed before the altar, or someone without his own designation. But Matt had understood implicitly. 

Be of use. Be a comforting heat-nest in which an omega could ride out their pain, if they so chose. And a gentle protection if they could not. But never with selfish intention. Never to sate the dark want inside yourself that is your nature, that is so weak before a compatible omega. A sacrifice of the flesh. 

It was a sacrifice that Matt would become accustomed to, years later, with the head wall of heat-scent creeping out from under the particleboard that marked the barrier between the hallway and their shared room at Columbia, during the 48 hours when Foggy needed a break from his tablet suppressants and a safe, nested territory in which he could ride out the resulting heat. Alone. 

48 hours that relegated Matt to the common room couch down the hall, listening to the electricity hum in the wires coiled behind the drop ceiling above him, body tensed to jump at the slightest noise of discomfort from down the hall. 48 hours of readiness, before it would all finally end and he’d return back to their room to find freshly-laundered sheets, and an open bedroom window letting in the smell of late September, and his friend laughing, laughing, laughing - with only the faint scent of honey lost on the autumn breeze to indicate what had taken place. 

Foggy, always hungry and looking for a return to routine after the chaos of the heat, and Matt still feeling clingy, still needing to stay by his friend’s side, no matter how exhausted he was. Foggy, ordering beer and cheap food for both of them from the barstool besides Matt, though the chemical memory of his friend’s heat-scent still left a residual, sedative buzz at the base of Matt’s skull that had him opting for water. Foggy, chatting with Matt and whichever law students happened to be next to them that night and ribbing Matt, in that sweet, precise way of his, until Matt eventually tried to trip him with his cane on their walk home.

Unbelievable, Foggy would say, with exaggerated seriousness, one arm thrown casually over Matt’s shoulder. The weight was a comfort more so than a burden. It was a reminder that his friend was close, and well, and safe. Just watch. We’ll be doing this when we’re 80. 

Hearing Foggy say it, it was easy for Matt to picture the decades unspooling before them. Just the two of them. Just two friends on the Van Am. 

As if Matt hadn’t stood there in the dark hallway for longer than he would ever admit, foreheard pressed to the cheap laminate surface of their door before he’d done the right thing and left. As if he wouldn't have done anything, anything to relieve his friend, if only to sate the hunger, the pool of want in his own stomach that told him to be a comfort, to chase the familiar smell of contentment - butter, honey - out in his friend and do whatever it took to keep it alight on the air. Anything, everything. 

He thought that he could still smell it, sometimes. 

Would bring the Mass card to his lips after another murmured prayer and catch a hint of honey clinging to it. So faint, like the wisp of scent that had tickled at Matt’s nose when Foggy passed them on his way out the door, during that last night in Josie’s. 

Before Matt and Karen stepped out to join him. Before Matt left. Before he heard the slide of the pistol’s action and returned to the acrid fear-scent of omega blood, so strong that it lingered on the pavement for hours after the ambulances left. Before he turned his focus to the one who had caused it all - on his stink - as his friend’s heartbeat slowed four stories down. 

“The perfect sacrifice,” Father Lantom had called it, on that Pentecost Saturday. “A total willingness to serve, unselfishly. Without hunger, anger. Without resentment, or … personal covetousness.” 

That is what it meant, to be an alpha. 

Matt had thought that he understood the words, then. He really had. 

They had just slumped into the pews when Matt first sensed that something was wrong. 

Wrong, not in the way that Matt knew this entire night was wrong, after blocks and blocks spent listening to the barking of dogs and the screech of AVTF radio static through the layers of stormwater and wiring above their heads. 

No - wrong in a deeper, far worse way. A danger that he could not yet define but felt unfurling, instinctually, in his gut with the scent of pale lilies. 

He pondered it silently, as Dex panted beside him. Panted and laughed and bled (though Matt noticed that the blood flow from the would had slowed, oddly, even if his heartbeat hadn’t) and somehow still found the strength to thrust his finger at his chest with the same self-centered, childish stubbornness that he’d had back at his shithole apartment, before he’d gone off to die in Fisk’s trap. I’m going to make things right. 

“Me, he kills me.” 

You idiot, Matt thought. How can you be so short-sighted?   

He found that he wanted to strangle Dex, again. Wanted to wrap his hand around the other man’s throat and squeeze, until that familiar diseased beta scent unique to Dex bloomed once again with dead-flower apprehension. Even with his mind hazy with desperation and fear, he had taken pleasure in the way Dex froze beneath his hand. Trembling, vulnerable, acquiescent.

He could get used to that look. Or Dex just shutting the fuck up, for once. Though it would be preferable to have both. 

“Us,” Matt corrected. “He’ll come for us. I was there. I took his kill - I took you from him.”

He was only just beginning to come down from the adrenalin high that had gotten him through the tunnels, to reclaim awareness of his own exhaustion. His ragged breaths hit the cool stone surrounding them and echoed back on their bodies. They made it easy to track Dex’s movements - the incline of Dex’s head towards him, the hitch in his breath, the slight tremor in his shoulders that betrayed how much he was really hurting, how much his body had taken. 

“He won’t forgive that.” As if Fisk could forgive anything. 

“Well.” Dex shifted in the pew with the slick sound of blood soaked cloth moving against polished wood, and nodded towards the altar, towards the place where Father Lantom had fallen. The Archdiocese had needed to remove the carpet and floorboards beneath it, there had been so much blood.  “That settles it. Time for your head start. ‘Gimme time to sit and reflect … before I get what’s coming to me. You’d love that.”

“No, you would.” 

He was really so sick of Dex’s penitent routine.

Let me save your life and leave you shiny, silver things and dead AVTF sparrows all over Manhattan and then tell you how much I hated the taste of clozapine, how much I want to die. Let me put a hole in Vanessa Fisk’s head as if that’ll reform your friend’s chest cavity, as if that’ll un-break the window, as if that’ll make everything right. 

“Doesn’t matter what I want. I’ve seen how this goes.” Dex coughed, dryly, and Matt felt his nose twitch. He’d caught an odd scent in the air. Was it more blood? No - he had grown familiar with the telltale smell of hemoptysis, of blood floating up through the respiratory track and curdling against saliva, over the years. This was different. 

“And why’s that?” It was a rhetorical question. He didn’t care to hear Dex’s answer. His ears picked up on radio static somewhere in the distance, and the whir of a helicopter a little further out. It was heading downtown, towards the village. But Matt knew that it would only be a matter of time. “Why's that, Dex? You’ve been on the other side of this, huh?”

And of course Dex had. This Matt knew. You had to put in to join FBI SWAT. You had to really, really want it, at least more than the one or two hundred other guys that would be vying for the same spot. For the opportunity to prove themselves.

It was easy enough to picture Dex, still in his FBI tactical kit, still pretending to be normal, with an apartment window in his scope as he waited for the space between the exhale and the next breath, for the glimpse of a pacing silhouette behind drawn curtains. Constitutional supremacy, plausible deniability, clean hands. No anonymous tips to screw things up for him, as they would later. 

“Yeah, something like that,” Dex wheezed. 

Here we go, Matt thought. 

“And you know what? It’s the same, every time. Save me, kill me - you’re just scratching your own itch. Doesn’t have anything to do with you, or me, or … this.” Dex moved his arm in an arc towards the altar, the sanctuary, the crucifix, the Virgin. But Matt could feel his hand trembling in the air, as if the strength required to lift it was drifting further and further from Dex. “And you think that we’re special? Well, brother, we’re not. This was always waiting. For you, for me. It means nothing.”

“Why did you save me, then?” Why did you come here, looking for absolution?

And, well, Dex didn’t have a response to that. 

Matt took a breath. Then paused. 

There was myrrh in the air. 

Styrax, frankincense. Crackling, burning, as if they had been freshly placed on a piece of hot coal. 

But that wasn’t right. 

Matt knew that the last Mass would have been hours ago, by now. He had sensed the thuribles hanging cold and empty from the ceiling when they’d entered through the crypt. And this scent - it was off, cut with something that Matt had never smelled in this or any church. White pine, roadside artemisia, the sour juice of crushed sumac on cement pavement. 

Something dark and warm pulsed in Matt’s gut, in the base of his skull. He thought of pollen on bruised knuckles. The bitterness of lilies. 

Stay focused. 

“We’ll need to get you some help - a doctor, a nurse.” If they even made it to Frank’s without getting killed, or worse. Would Claire even make it in time? Oh God, what would Karen say -

Dex laughed, again. That awful, piece-of-shit laugh with the little wheeze at the end. But there was a catch to it, this time. 

Matt caught a whiff of something acrid in the air, something singed, something burning, coming from further down the pew. Coming from Dex. 

Over the years, he had become disgustingly familiar with Dex’s own disordered beta scent, his bitter blood. 

That blood had flowed so freely in the tunnels as they ran, the heat of it exiting Dex’s side in sluggish pulses. It had been the only part of Dex’s body that Matt had attention for, as distracted as he was with searching for signs of danger. Now, with his breaths steadying, his senses sharpening, he found only the powdered iron of dried blood sloughing off of sweaty skin and the healthy pulse of blood through Dex’s body - so alive in the cool of the church, as if he hadn’t been bleeding out an hour before - and the wet slide of fabric against polished wood. The warmth of a body that had run so cool, before. 

And there was myrrh.    

No, Matt thought. No. 

And yet.

Dex was still droning on. He sounded half delirious. 

“‘Meant what I said, before. I’m ready for judgement, I - what are you doing?”

Matt stood. The carpet gave softly under the tread of his boots. He hated to dirty it, but he did so all the same.

“Get away from me - “

He expected a blow when he came within arm’s length of Dex, for the quick slice of a blade that he had overlooked when he had disarmed Dex, and would now have to deflect. But there was nothing. 

Dex’s head fell easily into Matt’s grip, when Matt buried his glove in the strands of hair and pulled. No resistance, no fight. Just warm skin and a trembling human body and the pulse, not only of blood, but of something else that called out to Matt and told him how stupid could you have been I was waiting for you all this time I was waiting for you do you know me now do you see me do you see what I am do you see me? 

Treasure up all these things and ponder them in your heart. Was that how the verse went? 

Matt could not remember. But he felt the shape of the man below him, in the lines of heat that marked his body in the cool air, in the fragrance of him, in his trembling. Matt saw these things, and he knew. 

Give it a name, a voice inside him said. Give it a name. 

He forced Dex's head back, until his throat was exposed to the cool, shadowed air and the full weight of Matt's perception. He could feel the jackrabbit pulse of Dex's blood pulled close to the skin by the unnatural arch of his neck, the trembling of strained muscles where they twined with the nerves and arteries. As if Dex was bracing himself against some great pain. And beyond that - 

Matt leaned in close and breathed. 

Male beta, infertile presentation. 

That’s what the government papers tucked in the safe at Dex’s sad little place in Chelsea had said. They were common enough among civil servants, and Matt had always found himself to be slightly relieved when he encountered one in the courthouse, the Hall of Records, the DMV. They were a clean, cold-water break from the invading musk of other alphas and the heady perfume specific to omegas, which always set something off in Matt and had him thinking of Father Lantom’s words, despite his best efforts. Talc and violets, cream and honey. Be a comforting nest. 

As with the rest of him, Dex’s smell had been a thinly-masked aberration. 

He was latex gloves depressing your tongue, lighter fluid on an uncleaned grill on Randall's Island. The exhaust that floated over to the Kitchen from Riverside Drive during rush hour, gristle and fat oxidizing on the side of a meat-picked t-bone. Ozone and burnt break pads. Hair singed on a lit match. 

Once or twice, Matt had smelled something similar on betas with cancer, with little tumors choking out their endocrine systems and lymph nodes. But in Agent Poindexter there had only been strong, healthy muscle and aluminum deodorant (no scent blockers, never scent blockers, betas didn’t need scent blockers) and drugstore hair product and starched cotton and a stink so bad that it had Matt silencing a retch as they fought, looking for something, anything, that could purge the horrible sense of dread that it brought about. 

Someone without Matt’s gift - Agent Nadeem, Hattley - would have gone a lifetime without experiencing the full spectrum of Dex’s stink. But to Matt, it had been unbearable. He remembered steeling himself against it as he hid in the dark of the tomb, Sister Maggie’s defiant omega scent - pomegranates, wine, oak - clashing against the rancid mess that Dex brought with him, everywhere he went. 

His own vicious hate for the man had only made it worse. Had made it easier to turn away, to limit the borders of his focus to the collision of his knee against Dex’s face, the impact of Dex’s cheekbone against the steel table. 

It was this same hate that remained alive within him now, as his nose brushed against the curve of Dex’s throat to find a scent gland pulsing with life and nothing but sweet, spiced heat. An omega’s scent. 

Fuck.

Below him, Dex panted. The breaths were ragged and warm and sweet against Matt’s cheek, heady with the scent of incense.

“What is this, Dex?“ Matt asked, though he knew already. God, did he know. Perhaps a part of him had known the moment he lowered his palm from Dex’s throat, in the tunnels. Even if he’d been too distracted by fear and hate to name it.  “What is this?”

Stupid. Stupid. He cursed himself. You’re so stupid, you idiot - 

“You’ve taken too many hits to the head, counselor.” Dex made a quick recovery, as always. He shifted against the wooden pew with a pained hiss, the movement slick with drying blood and something else. Something sweet. “‘S nothing. Now do yourself a favor and - ” 

I don’t have time for this.

Matt jammed his thumb into the pulsing gland. Ask for forgiveness later.  

Dex thrashed, tried to slide away from the pressure, but Matt, as usual, had the edge when they were within arm’s reach of one another. It was too easy to trap Dex against the wooden pew. He leaned in, jamming his knee against the apex of Dex’s legs to pin him in place. He tried - and failed - to ignore the warm damp that soaked through the fabric of his pants where their bodies met. 

His hand tightened in Dex's hair. Scruffing him. 

“You mother-” Dex started, before his words devolved into another animal whine. 

Matt felt an involuntary wave of discomfort through the pitt of his stomach at the sound, like the rush of gravity that would hit him during his first days on the cables.

His pain. The thought came to him with some horror. I’m reacting to his pain. 

If Dex noticed Matt’s reaction, took pleasure in it, he gave no sign. 

Let me figure out what I’m dealing with. 

Even to someone with Matt’s limited medical knowledge, the smell of chemical heat suppressants was ubiquitous - bitter but clean, and fading slightly as one dose reached the end of its 3 year cycle, when the patient would need to tend to their own heat and re-up. Barely worth noting. Matt had grown accustomed to it on Foggy or any one of the other omegas that he encountered during his daily life, but Dex had never been one of them.

He had been a beta, after all, Matt thought, considering. Or living as one, at least. There had been no need for them. 

And, even if Dex wasn’t a beta, Matt definitely didn’t smell their residual bitterness on him now. 

Ok, so no pills. 

He checked for the shifting of a long-term implant in the corded tissue behind Dex’s tricep, as he remembered sensing on Jack. Something that could have snapped with physical trauma, released an unexpected wave of hormones.  

But there was only the grinding of the cogmium-laced spine, the shifting chunk of metal that had remained inside Dex when the bullet split neatly in two.

The honeyed dampness that was now thoroughly slicking up his knee told Matt that Dex was intact internally. Which meant that - 

“You’re in heat.” The word felt dirty in a way that it never had for Matt, before. He yanked on Dex’s hair again before he could get a response, purely out of frustration. “This why you didn’t want to be in gen-pop? Why you asked for me to get you out?” 

He knew that Dex hadn’t smelled like this, then. But, if not then, when?

None of the makes sense. 

Dex’s head lolled against his palm, unresponsive. 

Eight, nearly nine years, Matt thought, trying to visualize an approximate timeline in his mind. Since Fisk broke him. How long was he in the psych hospital? 

Surely Dex would have gone into heat during that time, or whatever he was using would have shown up on a blood panel. If not the hospital, then the FBI, the army, the orphanage...

Unless - 

Matt knew of other options. Experimental applications and synthetic street drugs with shifting formulas that wouldn’t show up on a conventional blood panel, that you had to pray weren’t cut with cleaning solvents or embalming fluid, or something worse - something that didn't kill you immediately. Batches that were forced on omegas to increase their labor output or prevent reproduction without going through the trouble or expense of removing the scent gland and internal organs. Rumors, that Matt had heard as a boy, about shipping containers full of dead girls found in Red Hook and Newark with foam at their mouths and clean toxicology reports and acrid, bastardized omega scents. 

The army, the FBI, the orphanage, the clinic. The conspicuous absence of Dex’s designation from Dr. Mercer’s records or recorded sessions, like a black hole among the minutiae of daily habits and coping mechanisms that had been so carefully recorded. The convenient label on the papers in the safe that never quite seemed to match the smell of rotting, dead things that seemed to permeate the air whenever Dex came near. A locked metal box, full of secrets and a stinking suit. A sterile apartment. Dex’s silent, desperate expression in the tunnels, when Matt had taken his hand and wrapped it around - 

I couldn’t have, he thought. I couldn’t have triggered this. 

He hadn’t known, had no indication that Dex was any more than a beta - if he had, he never would have touched him. Right? 

“When was your last heat?” Dex’s head was still lolling, but he straightened some after the smack to his cheek. His skin was warm and slick against Matt’s palm, even through the gloves.

He’s burning up.  

“When was your last heat, Dex?”

“A while.”

Matt could feel Dex's eyes lolling in his skull. Unfocused. He sighed.

“When?” 

Dex coughed, and the movement sent the swollen, warm tissue on his neck sliding against Matt’s thumb. The hit of perfumed scent that followed hit Matt like a pull from a joint. He tried to steel himself against the heady rush. 

“A while.” 

He was lying, of course. Matt could feel it, in his heartbeat. But there was a slippery hint of truth in the words.

Dex had a habit of doing that - telling little half lies. Statements that couldn’t be disproven, but which still worked to conceal the actual truth. The lawyer and the Catholic schoolboy in Matt respected it, in a perverse way. 

He revised. “Have you ever had a heat?” 

The question itself sounded ridiculous - have you ever taken a breath, Agent, have you ever had a sip of water - and yet… 

If the admission before hadn’t been enough to send a knot of dread forming in the dark, pleasured weight at the pit of Matt’s gut, the silence that met him now did the trick. 

He had felt Dex’s birthdate in inked lines in the safe, alongside his designation, his height, his eye color, his place of birth. A winter baby, born only year and change after Matt - which meant…

Christ. How is he still alive? 

“You’ve never - you idiot.” 

“Did, didn’t. Why does it matter?” Dex jerked against his grip. "And why do you care?" 

“It matters because…”

Dex snarled before Matt could finish, as if he was about to say another useless, idiotic thing. But his whole body was taken in a line of tension before he could speak. 

Matt felt one of Dex’s hands jerk towards the fabric below his belt, before Dex smacked it back down onto the pew - like a fighter hiding a favored leg. He hadn’t done it quickly enough for Matt to miss the little movement, though - the trembling of Dex’s fingers, the jolt of fear-pain-confusion scenting the air, the rush of damp slick soaking both of them. 

A cramp, Matt thought. There was a growing haze in the base of his skull that Matt didn’t like, that he didn’t want to consider the implications of. He’s having a cramp.  

“We need to go, Dex.” We need to run. 

He was no longer certain that Dex would bleed out, with the coagulating factor designed to protect an omega’s body against heat injury slowing the flow of his blood. But, if Dex had gone so long without a heat, the strain on his body might do the job. Matt thought of the increasing pace of Dex’s heart, the sudden rise in his body temperature. Heatsickness.

And then, of course, there was the alternative - for Dex to be taken alive, as Matt was sure Fisk had given the order for his men to do. To be taken alive, in this state.

Fisk has spoken so often of legacy, of the importance of having a legacy. And now, with Vanessa dead...

Matt didn't want to follow that thought to its logical conclusion. 

Below him, Dex had recovered from the pain. And he had grown very, very quiet. Matt could feel the weight of Dex’s gaze leveled at him. Silent, considering.   

“You’re thinking about what they’re gonna do to me, right? The pigs? Fisk?” His jaw shifted against Matt’s knuckles as he smiled, creaking in the places where it had fractured on the pavement and reformed as if he hadn’t been curling in on himself a few moments before. “S’alright. Probably wouldn’t be anything that you haven’t thought of doing, yourself. I deserve it - for what she had me do, what Vanessa - ” 

“Shut your mouth.” Matt knew that the implication was another one of Dex’s digs, another attempt to push Matt over the edge, to stop Matt from throwing a wrench in Dex’s self-defined vision of how all of this should go. 

I’m not like them, I’m not like you, I would never -

 “Shut your mouth, Dex. We’ve got to leave - we have to -”

Dex smiled again. There was blood on his teeth, from when they’d fought, earlier. The smell of it mixed with his heady omega scent. Iron and sumac. 

“You wanna know why it took so long,” he said. “For him to die?” 

The words rang cold in the empty church. Matt should have hit him. Should have strangled him. His fingers twitched. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t pull his fist back and land a punch. His head was full of static, flooded with his hormonal response to the smell of a compatible omega. He was frozen.

Below him, Dex continued.  

“I got the other two in the head. Nice and clean. They didn’t feel a thing. Not your friend, though.” And Dex laughed. A quiet, ugly thing. “Don’t worry. I learned my lesson - I won’t say his name. He died ugly, though. He felt it. And he died knowing that he was alone. That you weren’t there with him.” 

Kill him. 

“I did that. Not because of the benzos or the flies or the voices or because Fisk had them stick a fucking ice pick up my eye while I sang the Star Spangled Banner. I did it because I had a job to do and I wanted to get your girl between the eyes and I knew that she’d be too busy with him when I came for her. That’s who I am.”

Kill him. Kill him. You’ve done it before, what’s one more time? Or leave him for Fisk, just let it happen. He’s right. He has it coming. No matter what they do with him. To him. 

Dex laughed. 

“And you were with me when he went. You didn’t get to hold him, scent him. He smelled sweet, didn’t he? Before I got him. Like honey. Not like me-” 

Dex’s cheekbone cracked like an egg under Matt’s fist. 

The punch landed off-center, the impact made unsatisfying by the other man’s lack of resistance, the way Dex just took it, as if he was already dead. Even worse was the reactive sensitivity - the hateful instinct within Matt that sensed the pain scent of a compatible omega in heat and alerted Matt with his own wave of nausea. It was as strong as a gut punch. 

Matt didn’t care, though. 

He went in again, hoping that it would feel better, this time. One, two, three, four, five, six times, in quick succession, like Dex was just a piece of meat hanging on the hook of Matt’s fist.

But every time was as empty as the last, and only sent a successive wave of nausea through Matt's gut. Maybe he deserved it. The hurt. 

He felt a bitter burning sensation in the back of his throat, and thought for a moment that Dex had struck him, had finally tried to defend himself. It would have been better if he had, if he’d given Matt another excuse to hurt him, a little resistance that would allow the successive blows to feel less hollow. But Dex’s arms were hanging limp at his sides.

Oh, Matt thought. His fist was still curled, fingers tight. Ready for another blow. Below him, Dex was silent. That was me. I was screaming. 

With a shout, he brought his fist down, one last time, on the crest of the wooden pew, a few inches from Dex’s shoulder. The wood splintered under the impact. Matt felt a sickening shift of the bones in his hand, but he was too far gone to absorb it. 

It felt good, to have something solid to hit, something that didn’t just take it. 

He collapsed forward, breath labored, his forearms bolstered on the top of the pew, on either side of Dex’s shoulders. He couldn’t bear to touch the omega in front of him. 

“God damn you.” He felt cold lines tracing down his face, where the mask ended and his skin began. “God damn you.” 

The rage had left him, and in its absence there was only pain.

They were so close. So close that he could feel the other man’s breath on his face and throat, wet with spittle and blood and smelling of iron from the new wound. So close that he could feel the pulse of the ripe scent gland. Calling out to him. Needing him. Despite what Dex had said. 

Below him, he heard a small breath. 

“Kill me,” Dex said. So small, so weak. “Just kill me.”  

But Dex’s body told the truth, even when his words lied. 

Matt could feel the involuntary spike of bitter fear in Dex’s scent, his new scent - his true scent. The one that had always been there, hiding, under all the rot. 

Dex was terrified. 

Even if Dex wanted to die, saw his death as some final act in a morality play that existed in his mind alone, his body only knew one calling: to live, to live. 

And, to his disgust, Matt’s felt his body returning the call. Making Dex’s urge to survive his own.

In another life, he might have extended a hand. Allowed Dex to consent to his own salvation. 

But they had no such privileges here, no time to rely on Dex’s will to meet Matt halfway, to save his own life. He was already too far gone, and only fracturing deeper into the pool of his own need as the minutes passed. 

And perhaps, Matt thought, feeling the heady sensation in his gut take on new depth, he's no longer entitled to make his own decisions. About his fate.

Wasn’t that why they were both here, in the first place? 

If there was a part of Matt, instinctual and selfish and base in its nature, that found this sweet new smell compatible, that heard the pained breaths below him and found himself gratified, he’d answer for it after all this was over. 

He fisted Dex’s collar, ignoring the spike of pain that shot through his knuckles. Dex’s body lolled towards him with another whine, the room spiking with the strange, virgin smell unique to the newly presented. It was perverse to smell it coming from a man Matt’s age, who in all other ways was so impure.

He hefted Dex’s weight against his body. 

“Listen to me, you piece of shit,” Matt whispered through gritted teeth. His mind was fogging with the perfume of Dex’s heat, but he still hadn't forgotten what Dex had said, what Dex was. “You don’t get to decide. You don’t get to sit there, leaking, and tell me what I would or wouldn't do to you. I’m not like you.”

I’m nothing like you. And I won’t let you die. At least not yet. Not like this. Not the way you want to. 

Overhead, he heard the whir of a helicopter, the fuzz of radio static, possibly a mile out. Maybe two.

In the last moments of clarity before Dex’s scent finally took him, Matt thought of an open window on an autumn day. The draft under the warped door of their building before they had walked out, to face the cold together.  

Mercy, mercy. 

He could give this of himself, too. 

Couldn’t he? 

Matt bore the burden of Dex’s body onto his own, and went into the night. 

Four and a half miles. 

Four and a half miles from the Church to Frank’s hideaway in Two Bridges. Four and a half miles of tunnels and rats and shadowed alleys ducked into and his own fear and fading awareness of the night’s events and the odd and the heady weight of Dex’s scent, sweetening by the minute. Of Dex’s head rolling against Matt’s shoulder and the pulsing of his sensitive throat that, with every wave of heat, commanded Matt to ignore his own pain, to keep moving, to obey, to get them both to safety.

The knuckles on his right hand zinged with electrical pain whenever he adjusted his grip on Dex’s forearm. Had they been attacked, earlier? Matt found that he could no longer remember. Even if he wanted to, the pain was numbed by the time they reached Chinatown, replaced by more warmth in his gut. His clothes felt too close to his skin. Too tight, too warm.  

There was a small blessing, he would think later, that it had taken until Division Street for Dex’s legs to give out completely, though there had been something very right about the way his body settled so perfectly against Matt’s, when it finally did give in to its exhaustion.

That feeling of rightness had lingered at the base of Matt’s awareness, even when he felt the disgust drifting off of Karen's body in waves as she turned from the punching bag.

It was a disgust that remained even as she handed him the scalpel so that he could slice Dex’s clothes off, exposing a wave of more heated, spiced sweetness and strong, lean muscles that twitched under Matt’s hands. As she picked up her phone to call Claire, while Matt wrestled Dex under the cold spray of the shower to break the heat fever, if only for the time it took before Claire arrived. As she opened the door to let Claire inside, because Matt was too busy vomiting in the corner - his body overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness emanating from the naked omega spread out on the cot. 

He hadn’t liked the thought of cuffing Dex. Something bitter and slick had jumped in his gut at the fearful whine that left Dex’s throat when Karen clicked the metal into place. It was the same instinct that had Matt gentling a palm against the omega’s side when the bullet was finally pulled from the wound, and the first Claire’s of staples clicked shut. 

He recognized, absently, that Claire and Karen were speaking, though Matt felt that he was listening to their conversation through a pane of distorted glass. His mind felt clouded, strange and his body wired with heat and scent and a light the he felt, even if he could not see it.

Past 40 with no heat? How is that possible?

Can’t we just sedate him?

Wish we could. We’re past that point.

The final staple clicked shut, and with it came another quiet whine from below them. Another thunderclap of sympathetic pain at the base of Matt’s skull.

Stop hurting him. 

He pulled off the cowl, and scrubbed his palms over his face. He was too warm, too hot. 

He must have been on some serious gear. That was Karen speaking. Nothing legal could do this.

Claire hummed. 

The bullet came out easy, the clotting slowed the blood loss enough that the transfusion will pull him through, if he doesn’t go septic, but this … Matt looked up to feel Claire waving her hand over Dex’s chest, where his heartbeat was continuing with its frenetic rhythm. If he dies, this’ll be what does it 

Unless I fix it, Matt thought. He tipped his head back, throat stinging, even after the glass of water he'd downed from the sink. Felt his own heart hammering in his chest, with more sympathetic pain. Unless I give him what he needs. Unless I give him my - 

Claire and Karen looked back at him, then at one another.  

And with Matt the way he is…

In rut, you mean? 

I wish. This is a sympathetic heat. Even if he does pop a - well, his body won’t be sated until the compatible omega’s is. We’re going to have to make a decision.

He felt Claire’s fingers meet the delicate pulse at Dex’s wrist and the dark heat that rose in him in response. A selfishness.

He’s not yours.

The room swam as he stood, as if he had been shot, but he ignored it. He could take this now. He could have this thing. Who were they to touch him, without Matt’s permission? Hadn’t Matt found him, saved him, brought him here? That had to have meant something, 

He vaguely registered more whispers between Claire and Karen. A voice that might have been directed at him, then two. A soft hand on his arm, cupping his face, threading through his damp hair. Then the side of a fist slamming on his chest, so far-off. Palms shoving at him. The smell of tears. Something hitting the wall. But he had no interest that extended beyond the omega in front of him. Until the door creaked, and they were finally alone.

You’re doing this because it’s right, he told himself, as he approached the omega cuffed to the cot. You’re doing this because he would have said mercy. You’re doing this because you betrayed yourself and have kept betraying yourself, over and over. Because the hate is still there and you can't allow yourself to be entombed by it. 

Because there was an omega in distress and he was a good man and a good alpha and not because of the spiced scent perfuming the room and the depth of his own want. 

The metal frame was skittering against the concrete with the strength of the omega’s trembling. Dex’s scent had grown more potent now that he was alone with an alpha, more insistent in its call. Matt’s knees hit the concrete floor, but he didn’t register the hurt. There were more important things to focus on. 

“Shh,” he stroked a hand down Dex’s side, feeling at the strong line of muscle, the ribcage. Dex whined, muscles tensing as he leaned up towards Matt. His scent unfurled once again, with new richness. 

How could he have hidden this for so long? Matt thought. Though what he really meant was, how long could he have hidden this from me? 

How could he have gotten the nerve to think that he would be able to hide this from Matt? As if, after everything he had done, everything he had taken, Dex felt entitled to demand this, as well. To ruin everything and think that he had a right to keep this to himself. 

Matt gentled a palm over the omega’s cheek, and frowned as he felt the deepening bruise at the crest of the cheekbone. He’d have to ask Dex who had done that to him, when this was all over. When their minds were clearer. 

The cuffs slid easily onto the floor. The thought of helping the omega through his heat while he was restrained made Matt sick to his stomach, but he still braced himself for the spring of coiled muscles, a hand wrapped around Matt’s throat. Though the events of that evening had become hazy, Matt still remembered who the man below him was. What he was; what he could do.

But the attack never came. 

Dex didn’t so much slide off the cot as tip to face the floor. His palms made a hollow slapping noise when they met the concrete. If Matt hadn’t dropped down, if his forearms hadn’t wrapped themselves around the other man’s chest and one of his knees hadn’t braced itself on the square of floor between Dex’s thighs, he was sure that Dex’s face would have smacked down between his palms. 

The shivering body fell forward into the brace of Matt’s arms. He heard a keen of gratitude. 

Free of his cowl, Matt’s nose brushed against the cropped hairs at the base of Dex’s neck. They smelled of scentless soap, hard water from the city, the salt of Dex’s heat-sweat, and fragrant tree resin. The scent left a wave of numbness spreading through Matt’s face, pins and needles, before he came back down.

And beyond it all, just below the curve where Dex’s jaw began, was the gland that had gone so neglected for decades. Untouched. Ripe. 

Fuck. 

Matt closed his eyes. Breathed. Another tremor wracked Dex’s body and Matt felt the spine below him arch, concave to convex, like that of a frightened animal. Matt held him through it all, riding out his own body’s reaction to the omega’s pain as best he could. Try to be an anchor, a refuge. 

“How does it feel?” Matt could feel the way his body was beginning to unravel in its own right as the omega rode out another wave of heat in his arms. “How does it feel?"

How do you feel? Tell me, tell me, tell me. 

Below Matt, Dex's muscled arms were shaking from the exertion of the heat. His gasps compressed against the cold floor, as they’d done when Matt had had him on the tar paper roof. 

No, stop, don't think about that - 

Matt could smell salt water in the air. Below the ragged breaths, he heard something wet hitting the floor between Dex's palms in time with the little jumping hitch in Dex's shoulders. 

Oh, Matt thought, feeling another wave of sympathetic pain. Against it, the twitch in his pants felt like a betrayal. Oh.  

Dex's head dropped down limply between his shoulders.  

“Hurts,” Dex finally said. The words were bitten back, as if Dex wanted to pull them from the air, and tuck them within himself. As if they were a admission of defeat. The strong muscles on his back jumped against Matt’s chest, cramping and jerking. “It hurts.” 

Then, as if that wasn’t enough to have Matt hard and aching in his suit - 

“Make it stop. Just make it stop.”

No kill me, no leave me. 

Make it stop. Dex was asking this of him. Begging him. 

It took everything in Matt’s power to resist the responding cry of yes-yes-I-can-do-it I can help you I can stop your pain I can satisfy you I can fill you up, though every point of his body screamed for him to just do it. To take care of Dex. To end his suffering.

He kissed at the spot where Dex’s hair curled against the curve of his skull, just to feel Dex’s side flutter under his fingers. 

“I’m going to need you to ask me properly, Dex.” 

He was so broad, so strong. And he’d put on muscle since they’d first met. But now, like this, under Matt’s hands, he felt like something fluttering and animal. Easily broken. 

“Can you do that for me?” 

Another hitch in Dex's shoulders, as if he was stealing himself against what he knew he needed, what had been kept from him. 

Go ahead. I can wait, Matt thought. Though he wasn't sure if he really could. 

He smelled more salt, and drummed his fingers against Dex's side in time with the wet patter against the floor. Eventually, he felt Dex's breath begin to steady. 

Come on. I know you can do it. 

“Please, please make it stop.” 

Please take me, please open me up.

It was unspoken, but they both knew what it would take to lift the heat. To stop the fever that had taken them both. Matt kissed at the sensitive skin again, - softly, as if he hadn't been waiting for Dex's response with his teeth working at the soft insides of his mouth - and was gratified to feel the other man’s heartbeat gradually slow with the contact. 

Ok. Ok, you murderer, you waste of life, he thought, though his fingers ached to feel more of Dex. I’ll save you again. I’ll give you what you need, even if you don’t deserve it. Because it’s the right thing to do, and not for the want in me, not because you feel beautiful, not because of your smell - 

“Alright, Dex.” The cropped hairs tickled at Matt’s mouth, when he kissed them again. “I’ll make it stop.” 

And then he stood. Dex whimpered at the loss of contact. Matt heard the scrabbling of hard callouses on the concrete floor, the slide of skin on skin, and - 

It happened so quickly. Large palms met the front of Matt’s thighs. He felt fingers pawing at the fabric, scrabbling for purchase. He tried to catch Dex, thinking for a moment that he could really be lashing out, this time. 

But then he felt the scrape of stubble catching at the kevlar on the front of his pants and warm, wet pressure just below his belt, pressing, licking through the fabric to where he was hard and god  - oh god - 

Dex was nuzzling him. Panting against him. Mouthing at him through the front of his pants. 

Matt pictured wet eyes looking up at him. Lines of tears. A furrowed brow. Clumping lashes. 

Hazel, that’s what the file said, he thought, remembering the slide of ink under his index finger. His eyes are hazel. 

How easy it would be to just reach down, open his fly, and give Dex what he wanted, what he was panting for. To fist the wavy strands in his hand and use Dex. To push him as far as he would go, and then further past that point, still. So pliant and sweet. Who knew when he would find the man in this state again? To feel him moan around it, drool on it, to feel his heartbeat slow and his body relax until Matt could really prepare him, really make him feel good. 

He knew that Dex would let him. Dex would probably let him do anything, in this state.

Stop it, stop it. 

Dex whined as Matt pulled his hair back, then surged forward against the pain, like an unruly dog going for a bone. Down boy. 

It had never been this way with Claire or Jack, or the other omegas that Matt had shared a bed with. 

Friendly, planned out heats and do you have a few hours and Matt always had. Placing a glass of water on the table and bringing the bag of delivery food back from the front door before a warm, shared shower and just drop the key back through the slot on your way out and nobody ever seeming to mind if he went days, weeks without contact after the fact. He’d always preferred to satisfy his ruts alone - he had learned early on that it was best to tend to all of his needs alone, even if it made the ones he loved feel abandoned, discarded. Another one of his failures. He found that the list grew every year. 

He just liked beautiful people, and he liked flirting, and he liked feeling needed. He liked the trust, liked the sweet press of their bodies and the sweeter taste of their slick and how the squeezed around the length of his, and feeling the heat scent dissipate as he satisfied them, and the way he could make them laugh, after, as tired as they were after the exertion of heat. It filled the emptiness inside him, at least for a while. It had him feeling as he did as a child, sliding the bandage onto his father’s cheek. 

You’re a good boy, Matthew.

And it had been fun, too. Even if there hadn’t been the raw chemical spike of compatibility that he had read about in books, the edge of self-serving greed that Matt had become acquainted with on that Sunday. The same want that had taken root in his chest the moment he felt Dex’s throat jump under his palm, and continued to grow with the same omega on his knees, wordless and begging. 

But still. He wanted to do this the right way.

In the corner behind the now cleared gun rack, there were a few bedrolls tucked against the wall. Camp cushions, sleeping bags. 

It was a labor to roll them out, but he knew that this was important - both for his own comfort, and to stop Dex from hurting himself, from getting too overwhelmed and breaking his skull open on the concrete floor. Matt’s chest had ached to see the bruise on Dex’s face, to feel the sharp pull of the stapled wound, and he’d do everything he could to prevent another injury. 

His fingers skimmed the floor for any loose pieces as he arranged the nest, searching for a bolt or shell casing or toothpaste cap that Dex might decide to lodge in Matt’s eye socket if he recovered from the heatsickness disappointed with the way things had gone. It was his first true heat, after all. Matt could smell the sweetness of it wafting over from behind him. Dex was still for now, shivering in the spot where Matt had left him. 

He's being good for me, Matt thought. 

His palms slid along the sleeping bags and bedrolls, shaping them into an approximation of a nest. He had no idea who had supplied Dex with his first dose of gear but he wouldn't be surprised if it had come after a violent bout of pre-heat, when he was still a child. Structure and routine. Take the frayed edges of yourself that don’t fit in among the coffee cups and starched sheets and suffocate them, excise them. Your body can betray you, but a void cannot. You are wrong. Everything in you is wrong.   

He understood it, in a sickening way. 

On the floor behind him, Matt heard the pathetic, wet noises of Dex struggling against the concrete. A thin plaintive whine broke through the air, questioning, searching out the alpha that had been hoarding him. Searching out Matt. It went straight to Matt’s cock.

He placed a few pillows against the wall, not wanting Dex to bash his skull against the radiator. Matt found that the pipes were strong and well-secured when he tested them against his own strength and body weight. If Dex noticed Matt retrieving the cuffs and key from besides the cot and placing them above the sill, where Matt would have easy access, he didn’t give any indication. 

Again - he didn’t want to restrain Dex. But he didn’t want Dex to hurt himself, either. 

“C’mon.”

Dex’s face tilted up in his palm, listless. Matt could smell fresh salt. Something cool and wet pooled in the space where his palm met Dex’s skin. More tears. Fuck.

He smeared them with his thumb. 

“C’mon sweetheart. You’ll like it better over here.” 

And Dex obeyed him. 

Matt was careful to avoid the man’s tender side as he gentled him into the nest, hissing in sympathy at the pained whine that came when Dex accidentally pulled at the staples.

I know, he thought. I’m sorry. You’re going to feel better soon.

Dex seemed to accept this makeshift nest. Matt crouched down on concrete floor, feeling the plush of the bedrolls brushing against his thigh. He heard faint rustling, the shift of soft fabric against skin, the slight decrease in Dex’s frenetic heartbeat, the scratch of stubble as Dex held the fabric to his cheek and - he’s scenting it, Matt thought, he’s scenting it. And then, he heard the distinctive chirp of approval.

Good. His shoulders dropped slightly.  

The omega’s pleasure brought out a pleased noise, deep in his chest. It deepened at the responding noise of contentment that came from within the nest, forming an addictive feedback loop. 

Matt felt Dex’s body turn, shifting back towards where he waited at the edge of the nest. The omega’s legs kicked out, assessing the boundaries of the nest, looking for the alpha that had been caring for him. Matt felt the impact of something strong and muscled - a leg - meet his knee where it was protected by the rubber padding, followed by a tiny whine of consternation. 

He’s sensitive, Matt thought. 

It would be easier to stay dressed, for this. Cloudy as his mind was, Matt knew that there would be much to do when he finally broke Dex’s heat, though he didn’t know what, really. He remembered something vague - a phone call, a fight? Either way, it wasn’t a priority. It could wait. 

He thought of the pain of cheap linen against his own sensitive skin when he rode out his ruts alone, and knew what Dex would be wanting, what he was searching out - the comfort of skin to skin, the smell of a compatible alpha in his nest. Warmth.

And, if Matt wanted that closeness too, it was just as well. 

He let Dex paw at him as he slid off his top, his boots, his pants and left them in a little pile on the floor. The heat would not compromise Dex’s vision, but just looking at Matt’s body didn't seem to be enough, for Dex. 

Dex’s body moved easily to accommodate Matt when he finally rolled into the nest. Palms ran along the line of Matt's abs, the base of his rib cage, his chest, cupped his face, carded through his hair. They were rough, calloused from heavy use, with finely formed, sensitive fingers. 

Perfect, Matt thought, as he felt them brush along his shoulder. They're perfect.

Dex gasped when Matt reached up to thread Dex’s fingers with his own. 

Break his hands. 

The thought rose cold in his mind. Besides him, Dex keened, happily. 

He can’t defend himself in this state. It’ll be so easy. You’ve done it before. That and worse, to less deserving men. 

And Matt knew that he had. 

You’d still be able to care for him, satisfy him, bring him through this. He doesn't need his hands to take a knot, to break his heat, to survive. And he can’t fight, not the way you do. His hands are too important, too sensitive. He relies on them too much. When he’s nervous, his right hand worries at the knuckles on his left. You remember feeling that, don't you? They’ll heal, but maybe he’ll be more docile this way, without the use of them. Maybe he’ll even be happier. Maybe he won’t be able to - 

Matt pushed the thought away. 

Besides him, Dex’s heart was still hammering in his chest, though Matt was relieved to feel that it had lost a degree of its intensity. The omega’s body responded so well to the skin to skin contact and the proximity of a compatible alpha and the promise of a knot. Wanting, waiting, settling. 

He was being so good. So perfect. Matt wanted to keep him close.

He brought his left arm around the omega’s broad shoulders. The short hairs on the base of Dex’s neck scratched pleasantly at the soft skin on the underside of Matt's bicep. Dex turned so easily in the embrace, his body angling naturally toward’s Matt, seeking him out. Matt felt the fluttering of something against his cheek, and realized that it was Dex’s eyelashes.

He couldn't help himself. His right hand traveled down, feeling the defined chest, the jump of Dex's abs. He was so strong. Larger than Matt, and taller, too. It brought a spike of involuntary pride in him. Besides him, he felt Dex’s nose twitch as he made a small, pleased noise - as if Dex sensed the approval of the alpha besides him and found himself gratified by it. 

“Touch me.” 

Matt startled. He had thought that Dex was gone.

“You want me to touch you?” It felt strange to be hesitating here, when he knew what he would have to do, what he had already started. He angled his body towards Dex's, nesting him between Matt's chest and the padded wall that he had created. Boxing him in. His palm skirted back up to Dex’s chest, fingers teasing at the hard nub of a nipple. Just toying with it. 

“F-fuck,” Dex panted the curse against the side of Matt’s throat. Matt heard his feet scrabbling at the fabric below them, and wondered if they were as finely formed as Dex's hands. “Yeah. Yes. Please.”

So he remembered from earlier, he though. Dex was trembling against him. Good. 

As with alphas and betas, the presentation of omegas was highly variable.

Matt’s palm passed back down, until it found the soft line of hair that trailed down from his navel. His fingers traced along it until he reached the place where his knee had trapped Dex against the pew - the center of his heat.

His fingers were throbbing with pain, his knuckles raw from some injury that had been inflicted long ago, in circumstances that Matt didn't remember. But Matt didn’t care. Let it hurt. 

What mattered was that Dex was wet. Wet, and opening his thighs.

His palm fit easily over the mound, the heel of it pressing snug against the little nub at the top of the slit. Matt liked the plush softness of the flesh between Dex’s legs, so different from the hard muscles that covered the rest of Dex's body. He ground his palm down.

Dex's hips thrashed underneath his hand as another gush of slick trailed over Matt's fingertips. 

That’s right, Matt remembered. He’s never - 

“Shhh. Easy.“ He didn’t want Dex to hurt himself. “Making you relax. You’re too tight.” 

“Don't need it - “ the other man gasped, his teeth scraping against Matt’s throat, where Matt’s own undeveloped mating gland lay. Dex’s teeth were blunter than Matt’s own. Between omegas and alphas, omegas often had the stronger biting instinct, their own reciprocal response to a knot. “Didn't want you to touch me like that. I want - I want - ” 

“Not yet. Don’t want to hurt you.” It was a lie. A part of Matt did want to hurt Dex. Very much. To rip him open, to throttle him into submission. To feel his body give way under Matt, around him. 

“Like hell you don't." Dex laughed against his neck, where he'd just been whining a moment earlier, because he had never been fucked properly, and his clit was so sensitive, too sensitive, under Matt's palm. “Go ahead. I won't fight you.” 

Matt found that he didn't like the sudden clarity with which Dex was speaking. He pinched Dex's clit between his aching fingers, and was rewarded with a broken cry. 

There, that's better.

He knew, strictly, that none of this was needed. That it would be better if he kept this impersonal, clinical. All that Dex needed was a knot, and nothing more. Not the press of Matt’s naked skin, or the warmth of the nest, or the gentling movement of Matt’s hand on his cunt. It could be over right now. But Matt found that he liked the way that Dex shivered against him, the way he turned his face against Matt’s throat and whined involuntarily, so perfectly lost, as Matt bullied his clit. 

The world compressed, then, down to the obscene, slick sound of Matt’s hand between Dex’s thighs, the shifting of their bodies over the bedrolls, the warm gasps against his throat, the shaking of the body in his arms. Dex was quiet now, his scent deepening, blooming in the containment of the room. It had Matt feeling warm and touchdrunk with every slide of Dex’s body against his own.

His fingers found a new angle against Dex’s clit, and the omega made another startled noise against Matt’s throat, as if he was surprised by how good his body could feel - how good Matt could make him feel. Dex's hips jerked, the air around him spiking with pleasure-scent. His strong hips were rolling, now, in low circles against Matt’s palm. Looking for more stimulation. 

Matt wondered if Dex had ever touched himself, like this. Had ever laid in the dark of his bed and brought a hand below his waistband, and tried to see what made himself feel good. 

I'll have to ask him, he thought, listening intently to the cries and the brush of skin against fabric and the slick movement of his own hand. I'll have to make him tell me. Show me. 

And if Dex didn't know how to make himself feel good, if that had been denied of him, as well - Matt would teach him. 

Dex whined in his arm. “Ah - I can’t.” 

“Yes, you can.”

Matt pressed his mouth to the pulsing gland. All of Dex was so close, pressed flush to Matt - his face, his throat, his mouth. He was shaking. In that moment, it felt as if Dex's body would break apart had it not been for Matt’s containing it, holding all the broken pieces in place. 

That was fine. If a time came when Dex’s body could no longer control itself, Matt could do that for him. Matt could take on that burden. His arm tightened around Dex’s shoulder. Just a little more - 

The opening had loosened some, so wet and inviting and warm. Matt traced it with his fingers, gently dipping them in when - 

Dex cried out against his throat, and the room was perfumed with the scent of myrrh. 

They lay there for a few moments - Dex trembling in Matt’s arms, Matt half drunk on the scent that came with Dex’s pleasure. Dex's slick was glossy and sweet on his fingers, when he drew them back and held them up in the cool air. As gone as he was, Dex still opened his mouth easily when Matt pressed his fingers to it. He seemed to like the taste of himself, he was so thorough with licking Matt clean, without a bit of teeth. 

It had Matt wanting a taste, too. 

Dex made a low sound of consternation as Matt pulled away. But his thighs parted easily for Matt, all the same. 

“Shh, shh, you're ok," Matt said, as he slide down Dex's body. 

He could feel the half-lidded gaze from above him. Every muscle in Dex’s body was pleasured and heat lazy and relaxed, exactly how Matt wanted him. He was gratified to know that he had created that space, for the man below him. 

It’s probably why I feel so confident in doing this, he thought, as he hiked Dex’s legs up over his shoulders. The strong calves kicked gently against his back. 

He knew how easily the thighs on either side of his head could twist together and snap his neck, if only to punish Matt for reducing the omega to this place, for not letting the heat take his body, for not letting him die.

He kissed the side of one thigh, felt soft hairs tickling at his face and thick muscle twitching under his mouth. From above him, he heard a hitched breath. 

In the haze of his own heat-drunkeness, Matt thought that he could catch a scent in the air - so unlike the smoky, perfumed scent of the omega underneath him. Something mild and safe, though he couldn’t quite place its origin. 

Honey, cream. Cool autumn air. 

Fleeting, ephemeral things that traveled through Matt's fingers and were gone as quickly as they came. It left a pang of sadness in his chest, though for what he could not name. He buried his nose into the soft curls below, chasing the grief away with the heated scent of the omega who was opening himself up for Matt so sweetly. 

He heard a tentative, inexperienced whine of assurance from above him. A response cry. 

Oh, he thought, absently. Dex’s hair tickled at his face. I was keening. 

It had been so long since he’d done that. Now, he couldn’t even remember what he was mourning for. 

And Dex had sensed his sadness and responded in turn, as was expected. Empathizing, though the noise hadn't come naturally to him. Though he had likely never used it, before. 

Perhaps this is the only way that he'd be able to do that. The thought made Matt sad. Feel what others feel. 

Matt’s eyes stung. He didn’t want to think, anymore. 

He nuzzled down, and buried his face in the tender flesh. 

Dex was a mess. His calves trembled on Matt’s back, thighs spreading wide to accommodate the press of Matt’s face between them. 

The slick from his earlier orgasm was fragrant on the soft curls that framed the slit and the warm flesh that it parted to reveal. Matt breathed against it, huffing on Dex’s perfect taste, the way his scent deepened with iron and salt at the core of him. Matt's own scent - angelica, leather, cedar - melded with it, creating something new, something better than either scent could ever hope to be in isolation. 

The skin was so thin here, so delicate, so unlike the thick roping scars that he’d felt on Dex’s chest and legs. Dex’s blood pulsed so close to the surface, here. 

Matt felt the heat of it in the press of the puffy flesh against his face, which pressed closer still when Dex’s hips rolled to grind against his face. He felt it in the thick femoral artery that rested under his thumb. He nuzzled and licked a single long stripe from the wet hole to the top of the slit, and felt the pulse of warm blood in Dex’s clit, too, where it was still erect and sensitive from Dex’s last orgasm. 

He lapped up against the underside of it, desperately, and was rewarded with another broken cry. Dex tried to shimmy his hips up and away, to relieve some of the overstimulation, but Matt was feeling greedy. His palms locked around Dex’s hipbones, denying him any relief from the pleasure. 

His cock was heavy between his legs, so hard it hurt, and -   

Fingers came down to card through Matt’s hair, a grip far more gentle than Matt’s own had been earlier, though he could feel the thick calluses on the palm drag on his hair. It made him shiver, every point of contact between them alight with the strength of their compatibility. He looked up, and felt lovely, strong fingers cupping his face. 

“Matt,” Dex said. 

His voice was thick with pleasure, and an emotion that Matt could not name. Another type of nakedness, so plaintive that Matt couldn't bring himself to punish Dex for speaking again. “Matt, come here. I - “

Matt heard the request on his voice, his scent, the heated points where his skin met Dex’s. I’m ready. Come take me.

And Matt could only oblige him. It’s what he was here for. 

Dex’s legs wrapped so easily around Matt’s waist, with a weight that Matt felt should always have been there. He was careful not to jostle at the fresh wound as he crawled up the length of Dex’s body until he could feel the light brush of the man’s breathing on his cheek, the hammering of the heart directly below his own, the inflammation of the bruise on Dex’s cheek - blood fragrant, so close to the surface of the skin.

He felt it pulsing when he kissed it.

“How did you get that?” Matt said. Who did that to you? How did you get hurt? 

He rolled his hips. The length of his cock slid along the slit and bumped against Dex's clit. Dex’s breath hitched at the contact, his legs opening wider for Matt’s hips. 

“D’know.” And Matt could sense the truth in Dex's words from the beat in his heart. “It’s always been there, I think.”

“Can it heal?” 

A strong arm slung itself around Matt’s shoulders. 

“Do you want it to?” 

And Matt didn’t know if he did.

Would it really be so bad, for the omega below him to have a place where the blood ran close to the skin, just for Matt. Where Matt could press his mouth and feel the strength of the life held against him? Wouldn’t it be worth the pain? 

“No,” he said, taking his cock in one hand. He’d splayed the other above Dex’s shoulder. His fingers worked in and out of the synthetic fabric, resisting the urge to tear. “No, I don’t.” 

He heard a small laugh below him. A private, hidden sound. Mean, with a softness to it, tucked among soft fabric. 

The laugh smelled of blood and weeds. The fragrance of it left Matt giddy, and high and before he knew it, he was laughing too, above Dex, delirious with the scent around them, with the warmth of their bodies. With the way that he and Dex were laughing together now, leaning in towards one another. With the curl of Dex's palms around Matt's own shoulders, before they moved up to cup his face, to thumb at the creases of his smile. With the brush of their noses and the gentle certainty that they had not been thrust, unwillingly into this state, but that they were co-conspirators. Not noticing when Dex’s laughter slowed, then faded into a thoughtful silence.

He was still laughing when Dex kissed him. 

He could have heard a bird land on one of the buildings across the lot, but hadn't been able to predict the sudden press of Dex’s mouth against his, greedy and open and giving. In his shock, he bit down at Dex’s lip, and tasted fresh blood. Below him, Dex cried out. 

I’m sorry, he thought to say. But he wasn’t. He liked how it felt, to hurt Dex. He liked the thought of licking against the split in the other man’s lower lip, like it was a piece of burst fruit that he could eat any time he wanted. The thought alone had him bucking against Dex's slit again.

The acrid scent of the pain was quickly replaced by something resinous and smoky - another wave of pleasure-scent. Dex whimpered below him. And then he kissed Matt again. 

“Do that," Dex’s lip smeared blood against Matt's. “Do that again. Bite me. Just like that.” 

And Matt did. Over and over, on Dex’s mouth, his bruised cheek, the length of his jaw, his straining throat, the strong line of his shoulders.

He was still doing it when he pushed inside. 

Dex cried out below him, the tiny signature of his pain-scent spiking in the room.

“Are you ok?” His hand gentled at the curve of Dex’s throat, feeling the pulsing constellation of bruises that he had left there. Did that hurt? 

But he knew that it had. He wouldn’t be so hard, if it hadn’t. 

He felt the shift as Dex’s eyes moved in his skull to meet Matt’s unseeing ones. And then his mouth tipped open. Matt could smell the blood on his teeth. With a sudden muscled pull, his calves tightened around Matt’s waist, forcing Matt’s cock in to the hilt until Matt felt a gush of slick, and something sharp on the air - Dex’s blood, from where he’d torn around Matt. 

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. 

But he wasn’t sorry. And Dex was smiling up at him, warm and strong. And his hips were moving against Matt’s in slow, lazy rolls, fucking Matt and purring in pleasure, though the scent of his own blood was still sharp on the air. And Matt was gone. 

“Why haven’t we done this before?” Matt said, thrusting in again. His hips had found a good angle. He knew, because Dex was starting to cry under him. His tears were salty in the air. They  were enough for Matt to feel the telltale thickening of his base. He’d be popping a knot soon. 

Why hadn’t they done this? It was so good. He really wanted to know. 

“Haven’t we?” Dex said, through tears. 

“No, I don’t think we have,” Matt said. “You’re a virgin remember? Or you were. This is your first heat. Isn’t it?”

He didn’t want to think about Dex having another heat, shared or unshared. Below him, Dex sniffed. 

“I don’t know.” His voice was breathy, heat-drunk and half-delirious. Matt heard Dex's hair rustle against the fabric below them, and leaned down to kiss at the smile lines that he'd felt, before, in the corners of Dex's eyes. “Can feel you inside of me. I think you’ve been there, before.”

“I am inside of you, sweetheart. Right now.”  

Matt punctuated his words with another deep roll of his hips, in that angle that Dex liked, that had Dex leaking slick onto the base of his cock. 

“No, no. You're not listening.” Dex’s hand left the nape of Matt’s neck, where it had been seeking out purchase - for comfort, for stability. His fingers tapped at the side of his face, where Matt could sense tiny hairline fractures in the side of his skull, the orbital bone. They were beautiful. He wanted to know how he could give Dex something like that. Someday.

“I can feel you in there, and, ah - ” Dex gasped at another good thrust from Matt, before his hand moved again, to the wheezy little hole between his teeth. Matt had found that he loved fucking it with his tongue. He liked how the penetration made Dex squeak below him, even more. “And in here.” 

Matt frowned. He felt, instinctually, that they’d known one another for quite a long time, but he couldn’t remember details. In his defense, it was difficult to, with Dex’s wet cunt squeezing so perfectly around him, as if he'd been made to come apart on Matt's cock. 

If he tried very hard, he could remember little flashes, like photo negatives that he had seen as a child, though none of it made much sense. 

Dex on his knees on a tarpaper roof, beautiful and smiling under cold moonlight. Visiting Dex in prison, Dex asking for his help. Dex with his back to Matt in a little efficiency apartment, letting the tension drain from his shoulders as he slid on his headphones. Calling Dex at work from a rooftop, why don't we meet up. Dex in a church, lighting incense. Dex clinging to him, fresh blood pulsing from his side, his scent gland ripe and ready. Snapshots without context or time. Matt, alone this time, turning a medal of the Virgin Mary - a gift from Dex - over and over in his fingers. Feeling the grooves of the text, the folds of the Virgin's cloak, under his sensitive thumbs, and wondering if Dex had felt them, too. 

Maybe Dex was right - maybe they had done this, before. 

He kissed Dex again. It was so perfect, Dex was so perfect, so open, his mouth sweet with blood and the heady spice of myrrh and the taste of his own cunt, from when he’d licked himself off of Matt’s mouth. Always coming up to meet Matt’s kiss halfway, tilting his head to the side to give Matt access to his neck. 

Their combined scents, the evidence of their shared pleasure within of Dex’s heat, bolstered Matt’s senses, widening his perceptions beyond their limits. He loved seeing Dex’s below him, like this, in impossible lines of heat - the entirety of the man’s body, its scars and bruises and bites and lovely muscle - in the painted lines of blood moving under skin and the trembling muscle and the tracing of Matt's breath where it echoed on Dex's body and rebounded back on Matt. So vivid, like an aerial view of the City at night that he had seen as a young boy. Channels of fire in the darkness, with every detail alight and precious and trembling. As if Matt could do anything, as long as he was surrounded by this. As if Dex was the only thing worth Matt’s attention, in this whole world. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Matt said. He treasured the happy keen that came in response. Dex’s little noises, his cries and whines and keens and purrs, really drove him insane. “I’m gonna try something, alright?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Dex said, always obedient, especially when he was fucked out like this. Matt’s palms had barely touched his hips, and Dex was already beginning to turn onto his belly. Matt didn’t even have to say anything. It was always like that, with them. “Do whatever you want. Anything you want.” 

Matt ran a soothing hand along Dex’s side, once he was situated. He liked the way that this position allowed him to appreciate the finely formed line of Dex’s obliques, to run his hand along the exaggerated arch of Dex’s back. It helped that it was comfortable for Dex, too. His cheek nestled so nicely on his folded arms, brushing against the soft bedrolls below them. Matt knew that Dex liked having someone strong holding him down, someone to provide a barrier between himself and the world, someone to point him in the right direction. 

Yeah, he thought, as he knelt between Dex’s spread knees. Dex sighed below him, his hips wriggled back, trying to take Matt in. I can do that. I can be that, for him. 

He pressed back inside the slick heat and smelled another wave of heady incense and felt the arch of Dex’s back deepen as the other man tried to take him further in, and thought that there was almost nothing that he wouldn’t do, for the man below him. 

He could tell that Dex liked the angle from the aborted little cries that Dex was muffling against his forearms, the slick that was leaking onto the front of Matt’s thighs. He leaned forward, buried his palm into the disheveled longer hair above Dex’s nape, and considered forcing Dex’s back up, holding him close against his chest, forcing him to let Matt hear him cry out. But Dex had been so good, and this was his first time - although Matt was no longer sure that they hadn’t made love to one another, after what Dex had said, earlier. He liked the thought of it. That this wasn’t their first time. 

He bottomed out again, felt Dex shiver and flex around him. It had new pressure building in the base of his cock. On the next thrust, he felt the beginning of his knot catch on the opening of Dex’s cunt. Just teasing at it, but not quite ready.  

Matt knew that Dex would need another few rounds before the heat was fully sated, but he’d already become so calm and docile on Matt’s cock. For that, he'd give Dex as much as he could. As much as Dex needed. 

Another thrust. Matt smelled something odd. Honey, cream. 

He felt a flash of cold autumn air. Glass breaking around him. The memory was strange, frightening and distended, as if it had come from the mind of another man. Grief, and fear, and bitter hate, hate for someone that - 

Below him, Dex cried out as Matt’s knot bullied its way inside. The noise brought Matt down to earth. If he did still feel the note of grief in the back of his mind, it disappeared quickly with the squeeze of Dex’s walls around him. 

If there was anything capable of centering Matt, it was Dex’s pain. He found that he needed more of it. 

His fingers tapped along Dex’s side, searching out the familiar line of staples. He pressed down. 

“Fuck!” Dex cried out below him. He was trembling now. “Fuck, fuck, Matt, I’m - “

At the center of the tangle of muscles in Dex’s back, Matt could hear the cogmium spine shift. The cold vertebrae of it were so cool against all the heated skin, the scar tissue. He felt the heat pooling in his cock, and the gradual pulse of Dex’s cunt around him. They were both close. 

His lips met the raised scar tissue, tongued at it as he ground in. He tasted salt and Dex’s perfect omega scent and felt the scar tissue jump against his lips as Dex wailed against the bedrolls, and came around him. 

Matt awoke to the press of scar tissue on his mouth. The unfamiliar room was quiet, just tipping into darkness. In his arms, Dex stirred, his back flexing against Matt’s chest. He was still fragrant with the perfume of heat, and would likely need to go again, before it lifted. Matt could feel the haze clouding his mind, and found that he liked it. 

“Matt?” Dex’s voice was quiet, so quiet. Sleep tousled and still rough from the times that Matt had made him cry. 

There was something so small and tender about the man. Matt found that he never wanted Dex to leave this space. He thought that it would be better, for both of them, if Dex stayed just like this - soft and broken and sleepy, sated from Matt’s knot. 

“Yeah, Dex?” Had he woken Dex? Had Dex had a bad dream? Was the heat returning, would Dex need him soon? Whatever it was, Matt would be there to give of himself. To fix it. To be of service, even in this unfamiliar space. 

Dex lay there, silently, in Matt’s arms. There was a slight tremble in his muscles. Matt tightened his hold around Dex’s side, pulling their bodies flush, and not caring that his arm caught on the sensitive wound there. His lips found the tangled scar that marked the meeting point of metal and flesh. I can hold these jagged pieces together. I can stop him from flying apart. 

Finally, Dex spoke.

“Thanks. Thank you.” His voice was so small. It left a pang in Matt's chest. Sweetheart.

“Dex...”  

Matt’s hand had come to rest on the lower patch of Dex’s stomach, right between the hip bones. He felt a calloused palm cover his own. Just a gentle press. Nothing more was needed. It was just one of the many points where their bodies naturally came together. Connected.

My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.  

Matt smiled, enjoying the heady fragrance where theirs scents had melted into one another - angelica and incense, black pepper and sumac - and the pleasant buzz in the base of his skull. Smiled, and knew that everything would be alright. Somehow.

“Everything that you’ve taken from me, I’ve given happily.”

He felt Dex’s naked shoulders shift in their embrace, felt the other man’s face turn back towards him. Heard the gentle wheeze from the missing tooth and flutter of his soft eyelashes and the wet iron from the places where he’d torn Dex’s lip open and knew, implicitly, what Dex wanted. What he was hungry for. 

Matt leaned forward. Felt eyelashes on his cheek, and a slight hitched breath - smelling of iron and incense, and forgotten, fragrant weeds - against his mouth. And just like that, they were connected. Connected in Dex's soft cry when Matt pressed a palm on the line of pain in his side. In the heady sweetness of his blood on Matt's mouth. In the warmth of their bodies, that knew only that they were compatible, that there was a common line of meaning that felt destined to join them. 

They lay there for some time, in the quiet space that mercy provided.