Chapter Text
I only felt the bed dip and I knew. I knew but he did not understand. I reached out and my palm glided over his smooth back as he got off the bed. I didn’t open my eyes, didn’t want to. I was tired, in every sense of the word. “Is it time already?” I mumbled. I heard a hum in reply.
“I have to get ready.” His voice was sleep-heavy. He was tired too. He came to my side of the bed and kissed my temple. “Get some more sleep, okay?”
Of course. What else I had left to do. I slipped back into slumber without effort. At least, in my dreams, he was with me.
When I awoke next, he was brushing my hair. I hummed to let him know that I was listening but was not going to get up. I knew he was ready; dressed in way too expensive clothes, fingers and wrists adorned with overpriced jewelry. He knew I hated this moment. Hated it when I was to stand at the door while people fussed around him, while he barely got the time to kiss me goodbye, then when he would walk to the elevator, look back at me and smile, his publicist or manager would scold him for not paying attention to the directions they were laying out, then they would leave and I would be left alone in unfamiliar and big hotel rooms, having nothing else to do but wait for him. So no, I did not want to get up or open my eyes. I was tired.
“Your fever seems to have gone,” he said after kissing my forehead. “Call the reception and someone will get you breakfast, okay?” I heard a fond smile in his tone. “Tell them you’re with me.”
“Won’t that be a problem?” I forced my groggy throat to speak.
“Babe, no…” he started but was soon interrupted.
“It will be,” said a female voice.
It jerked me fully awake. I spun my head around to look at her. It was his manager. I had thought we were alone. My shock was then replaced with anger. “I am not comfortable with this,” I told him.
He was silent for a second, eyeing her; he did that a lot. “Karen, I told you to wait outside.”
Karen arches her brow. “Yes, and you were also supposed to be out of this door five minutes ago so nobody is keeping their word.”
I thumped back onto the bed and covered my ear with the comforter. I closed my eyes with every intention of falling back asleep. Or just for this room to be empty. “Please, just… go. I’m fine,” I told him.
“Karen, please,” he said, defeated.
I assumed she left because then Timmy leaned over my shoulder and, lifting the blanket, kissed my ear.
I breathed out. “I don’t care even if they insist on accompanying you to the toilets but I don’t want my privacy invaded like this. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“I know,” he said as though shushing a grumpy child. He brushed my hair again. It almost lulled me back to sleep. But then, “I’ll be back around five.” He kissed my cheek but I turned to look at him. He looked beautiful. Dark blue sweater, I touched it, it was soft like his skin. His hair styled in lush curls in place of his natural rather frizzy bush. His freckles almost concealed. And his lips tinted orange. He looked into my eyes. He had said he loved them. Said he wanted them to be the first thing he saw in the morning. I saw that version of him now as his eyes lit up to see them. He caressed my cheek, unable to leave.
“Do you have interviews with her today?”
He nodded. I looked away. “Don’t look like that. It’s for work. All of it. I promise. Armie, look at me.” I did and he captured my lips. He kissed me as though he meant it. Always. Apologies, confessions – everything in a kiss. I let him glide his tongue into my mouth and caress the insides of my lips. “I really need to leave now. But we’ll have dinner together, okay? I love you.”
I nodded. He kissed my forehead one last time and left.
I could not go back to sleep knowing that in an hour, hundreds of pictures of them together would flood the internet. My alpha with someone else. While the world “aww”d in the comments, I would just stare at them, unblinking. Every press tour took him more and more away from me.
Sure enough, within an hour, there were pictures of them hugging, sitting together and laughing. Even their outfits were matching. The perfect celebrity couple. Beautiful, young people; elegant, tall alpha and his pretty, lithe omega. Their nonchalance, their pretense of not being the regular out couple because they “want private life to remain private” while showing the whole world how perfect and in love they were.
It was all fine. It was worth it. It was for work, as he said. And I was fine.
I watched the sunset over the concretes of the city. By the time Timmy walked up to me from behind, only a streak of pink from that sinking sun was visible in the sky. He sat behind me on the couch and kissed my shoulder, took the book from my hand and checked the title. “You already started a new one?”
I hummed. I had a lot of time these days; finishing a book in less than three days was not hard work. I leaned back and his perfume was a mingle of his own and all the people he had met that day. I nuzzled until I found my favorite spot, the scent gland below his ear where I could always find his own smell, just his. I took a deep breath. He smelled like mine. He chuckled and leaned down to smell me before kissing me.
“Did you have dinner?” he said.
“You said we’d have dinner together.”
“It’s late, I thought you’d… Do you wanna go downstairs? Joe said their restaurant isn’t half bad.”
I sighed. He was advised against taking me out in public, but he wouldn’t tell me that. He didn’t want to hurt me. I was tired of this pretense as well. I didn’t want to fight. I rested my head against his shoulder and kept my eyes closed. “I’m not hungry.”
“You will be. In the middle of the night. And we don’t have much in the room.”
I shrugged in answer. I knew he understood.
“I’m sorry this trip is shitty. I thought we would…”
“You think that every time. You drag me out, and I’m cooped up in hotel rooms.”
He caressed my arms before wrapping his around my middle. “Don’t give me a hard time about this,” he said with his lips pressed against my temple.
“Have I ever?”
“You’re too good to me.”
“I just…”
“Talk to me.”
I thought for a while, composed the right sentence so as not to disturb this tranquility. “I wish you weren’t ashamed of me.”
I heard a sigh leave his mouth. “We’ve been through this, Armie. This is-”
“This is for work, I know. And I support that. I want you to be successful,” I said calmly.
I could hear him think. Whatever he was going to say next, it would be for my sake alone. “I am not ashamed of you. How could I ever be ashamed of you? Have you seen yourself in the mirror?” he forced a chuckle to break the tension.
As a matter of fact, I did see myself in the mirror, more than was healthy. I stood before the mirror every morning and saw an omega trapped in an alpha’s body. I was six foot five inches tall, seven inches above my alpha. I was nine years his senior. I had unmanly blonde hair inherited from my mother, thick facial and chest hair that grew back faster than I could shave them and would shade the bit of skin where laid the mark Timmy left on me. I hated everything about my body. The part that I hated the most was that it chose such an alpha – an alpha whose arms should shield a deserving person and not one whose body barely fitted in his embrace. I hated that I was in love with him. And I felt selfish for whining when he was the one losing.