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Luke came rushing into the green room of the Top Secret Comedy Club. "Sorry, sorry, I know I'm late. I lost track of time!" he said, throwing his backpack on the nearest chair. "But I brought... curry!" He sang, holding up a plastic bag.
"I'm bloody starving!" He took out all the containers and placed them on the table. "Come on, dig in, there's plenty for all."
Sam looked up from his phone. It wasn't Luke storming in that caught his attention. It was a slightly sweet smell. And he had smelled it before Luke came through the door. It wasn't the curry.
"Be careful not to stain your shirt," he said casually as he sat down at the table.
"Not to worry! I brought a spare!" Luke grinned. "I'm prepared for everything tonight! Got some new cologne, Issey Miyake Intense. Oh, and I brought snacks for during intermission and after the show." He dug into his bag and showed everything he had brought. "Oh, and I found this blanket, it's nice and warm and comfy."
"A blanket?" AJ said, raising an eyebrow.
Luke nodded, holding the blanket close to his chest. "You never know how cold these clubs are. Remember that club in Chelsea last winter? I swear they never turned on the heaters."
While watching Luke, Sam helped himself to a portion of Tikka Masala and counted the signs he had seen in the last few minutes. It would be alright... he hoped.
During intermission
The door to the green room flew open and Luke came in first. Eyes bright and alert. "This is a great show!" he announced, grabbing a bottle of water from the counter. "That audience is amazing!"
"Love their enthusiasm, great suggestions," AJ agreed, leaning against the table.
Tom nodded. "That left section of the audience is covered in our merch," he grinned.
Sam came in last, closing the door behind him. The show was going well, but how the show was going was not his biggest concern at the moment.
He watched Luke chugging the water down. Luke was thirsty. Another sign. He had to bring it up. "Luke..." he said. "Did you bring those heat detectors?"
The atmosphere in the room changed in an instant. You could hear a pin drop.
"What?" Luke said, distracted. "I'm not in heat." He threw a peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. All three were staring at him now. "Guys... come on, I'm fine," he said, slightly uncomfortable.
"That older Alpha on the front row?" AJ asked, looking at Sam.
Sam nodded. "You noticed it too? Couldn't keep his eyes off Luke the entire first half."
"Don't you worry," Luke grinned as he looked into a nearby mirror, running his hand through his hair. Once done, he turned back to his friends and said, a little cockily: "We all know I'm the most attractive out of the four of us."
"If you stand in his sightline, between him and Luke, he moves," Sam said to AJ.
"He probably just fancies me!" Luke shrugged. Sam kept looking at him. "Why do you think I'm in heat?" he gave in.
"Your smell," Sam started, and when Luke opened his mouth, he added, "Don't give me any 'new cologne' bullshit. I can smell your heat approaching. Your appetite at dinner. Thirsty. That blanket. And now that Alpha, who can probably smell you as well!"
Insulted, Luke opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Yes, he had been hungry, he had forgotten to have lunch! And well, that blanket... it was on sale! It was a good deal, and theatres could be cold!
"You are being ridiculous," Luke finally said, determined. He turned to AJ and Tom. "Give me some backup, guys!"
AJ didn't speak, instead he looked at Sam. Tom also looked away.
"Guys?" Luke tried. He didn't want to think like this, but... his friends were turning against him.
After a long pause, Tom said: "You kissed all three of us on stage tonight."
Luke pulled a face. "No, I did not!"
Tom counted on his fingers: "Me, during Change. AJ in that courtroom scene and Sam at the end when he was playing your fiancée."
Luke stared at Tom. Had he really kissed all three of them? Well, maybe he had, but it was good for the scene. He was acting! Improvising! That had nothing to do with his heat. He wasn't in heat. Nor approaching.
"Use a detector, Luke," Sam said. He sounded calm, but Luke could also hear something else in his voice. It wasn't a question. It was a command, an assignment.
"No." He tried to sound equally calm. Equally determined. Resisting any hint of Alpha Sam tried to bring in. But there was a slight waver in his voice. "What are you going to do if I am?"
"It's information," Tom tried to mediate. "Just so we know where we stand."
Aggressively, Luke tossed the bottle of water to the side. It landed on the couch. "Fine! If it'll make you happy!" He marched into the dressing room and returned with the box. He ripped the packaging from one of the Q-tips and shoved it in the solution. "This is going to prove that I am not in heat. And you all look ridiculous," he muttered as he rubbed the swab over his neck gland.
It didn’t take long to change colour.
"There, it’s blue. I'm not in heat," Luke said, holding the Q-tip in front of Sam's face. "I told you so!"
Tom stepped in for a closer look. "It's more lavender, or periwinkle," he said.
"Shut up, Tom!" Luke snapped. He glanced at the swab. And yes, maybe it was slightly more purple-ish than blue, but so what! He was not in full heat!
AJ pulled Sam aside and asked softly: "Can you help him? Would that work, if he's not fully in heat yet? We can delay the second act if needed."
"No time," Sam said in the same soft voice. "If we're lucky it takes me twenty minutes.” His eyes quickly shifted to Luke. “But it can easily take twice as long."
"I can still hear you, you know!" Luke said, waving his arms to grab their attention. "And Sam is not going to 'help' me unless I say so!"
"Heat suppressants?" AJ suggested. "There's a 24/7 pharmacy nearby. I can run over and get some."
Tom shook his head. "Sarah said not to take them in the first year after presenting."
"Well, we need to do something," AJ said to Tom. "An approaching heat with a new Omega. An experienced Alpha on the front row..."
"And we have an experienced Alpha onstage," Sam added. "I'm not going to let anything happen to Luke."
"Can you all stop talking as if I'm not in the room?" Luke interjected.
"As soon as you admit you are approaching a heat, you can join the conversation," Sam argued.
"This is about me, my body. This is also my show and my audience!"
Tom held up his hands. "Look, that Alpha on the front row looks decent. He's at least in his fifties. Experienced. He's not going to jump on stage and assault Luke."
"Right!" Luke said, grateful for Tom's support. "And I promise, I won't jump off the stage and assault him." He let out a sigh. "Let's pretend this never happened, and do the second half as normal. We do a longform, one more guessing game and then go home."
"What do you want to do?" AJ asked Sam, ignoring Luke's remarks.
"We adapt," Sam said simply. "We steer the audience in the second half."
"What?! No!" Luke protested. "We do improv. We are not going to steer. And steer in which direction? Away from my heat?"
"We steer all the time, and tonight we are going to steer away from anything that can trigger you." Sam gave AJ and Tom a look. "Tom, you open. Start with a genre. Pick something like horror, thriller, sci-fi. No romcom, no period drama."
Luke stared at the group, open-mouthed. "What is that for?"
"No more kissing, Luke, no physical contact. Let's do a longform without any kind of romantic relationships."
"You can't do that," Luke shook his head in disbelief. "That's not how we work! Improv is taking the scene where it wants to go."
Tom placed his hand on Luke's shoulders. "It's setting boundaries. We do that more often."
Luke brushed Tom's hands off. "This is not a boundary. This is a restriction!"
Luke let himself fall onto the couch, not looking at his friends anymore. "You all promised me, said to me over and over again: me being an Omega wouldn't change the group."
"It doesn't," AJ said.
"Then what is this?!"
"Trying to make the best of it," Sam said.
A frustrated silence fell over the green room. Then, the door opened and the stage manager looked in. "Guys, ready for the second half?"
Sam, AJ and Tom looked at Luke. Luke looked away from them. He didn't like this one bit. But there was not much he could do about it. It was three against one. And he was still a firm believer of 'the show must go on'. He was a performer first.
Reluctantly, he got up from the couch.
"Give us a moment," Sam said. "We'll be right there."
As soon as the door closed and they were on their own again, AJ said, "Group hug," putting his arms around Sam and Tom, who both held out their hands to Luke.
"Luke..." Tom said, almost pleading.
"I hate you all," Luke said, as he took their hands and let himself be pulled into the hug.
"That's fine," Tom whispered. "You can hate us all you want."
It felt good to be in a group hug. Luke knew the others only wanted what was best for him and the group. They would never hurt him on purpose. But still. This was his body. He had to decide how to handle this, even though he was still relatively new to all of it.
As they left the green room, Luke noticed Sam checking himself in the mirror. He ran his hand through his hair, checked himself from side to side, and then unbuttoned one more button of his shirt, showing more chest than he normally would.
Luke watched him for a second. Honestly. As if the Alpha on the front row was going to be deterred by Sam's chest hair.
"Ready?" he asked.
Back on stage.
They ran onto the small stage and Tom started hyping up the crowd for the next half and the longform.
Luke took his seat on one of the four chairs, hoping he could sit alone, but that hope was clearly in vain. As soon as he sat down, Sam sat down next to him, pulling his chair a little closer. Did he really think he needed to prevent Luke or the Alpha from going after each other? To jump in when needed?
He tried to ignore Sam by looking everywhere except in Sam's general direction.
Without trying to make it too obvious, he glanced toward the man on the front row. This particular Alpha. But as soon as he did, he regretted it. How had he not noticed that before? The man hardly paid any attention to what Tom was saying, his eyes constantly drifted towards Luke.
Tom was right, the man was probably in his fifties, looked decent. Handsome. What some might call a silver fox. He oozed quiet authority. The way the man looked at him, Luke could sense his hunger. And as soon as their eyes met, Luke instinctively looked down. Uneasy, he shifted in his chair.
"Sit still," Sam said, almost inaudibly, without looking at Luke. Sam kept his eyes fixed on Tom, but he seemed to notice everything that was happening around him.
Luke looked down and saw that Sam's fingers were gently stroking Luke's thigh. He realised what Sam was doing. Claiming. Touching him in a way he would if he were Luke's own Alpha.
Sam would be there to help him through his heats, but this was not what they had agreed on. No marking, no mating, no claiming. Mostly at Sam's request!
Through his eyelashes he tried to look at the Alpha on the front row. The Alpha’s eyes seemed fixed on Sam’s hand touching Luke.
Luke wanted to swat Sam's hand away, but before he could--
"Don't," Sam muttered, as if he could read Luke's mind. "Focus on Tom."
Luke wanted to give in, do as Sam asked and get this evening over with. But before he looked at Tom, his eyes were pulled towards the Alpha again. Who smiled directly at him. Luke felt his cheeks heat and abruptly turned his head to Tom.
Tom had finished the warm-up for the second act and was asking for genres. "Pirates!" people called out. "Medical Drama!"
Sam really wanted to go with a longform in the pirate genre. Which was the main reason for Luke to press Tom to choose 'medical drama'. Some banter erupted, the crowd started laughing. It almost felt like a normal second half again.
"We are going with 'The Glass Eye'! It's a medical drama!" Tom yelled.
Luke thought he was doing well. He had opened the play portraying a stereotypical, arrogant doctor. Exactly what he needed after that whole discussion during intermission about his Omega-ness.
He had done what Sam and the others had asked. He had not initiated any romantic relationships, no physical contact, while also following the tropes of a medical drama. He let Sam and Tom take care of the comedy, while he focused on the drama in the improv.
It was going well. The scenes were good, the plot mostly made sense, the characters were fun. It was as if nothing had happened.
But then, at a certain point, Luke stepped off the stage at the end of a scene and heard a loud thud behind him. Something fell to the ground. He looked up and found himself looking straight into the Alpha's eyes. The man had rolled up his sleeves and had one more button open than was necessary.
Luke was too stunned to move. The man flashed Luke another smile and something within Luke awakened. He felt it in his stomach. His brain was going fuzzy.
Suddenly he heard Sam speak on stage, louder than before. Luke grabbed a chair and took a seat on stage. Somehow being on stage felt safer than sitting off it.
He had originally had a plan for his character, but now he couldn't think straight. He let Sam lead the scene and the dialogue for a few moments until he could pull himself back together again.
As Sam talked, Luke tried to reason with himself about how he had let this happen. Why was everyone around him noticing that his heat was approaching, but he couldn't? This was now his third time. Why was this so hard? He was a grown man, for fuck's sake!
For some reason, Sam had decided to turn his character into a therapist halfway through the play. And then he looked at Luke and asked, "How does that make you feel?"
Luke came out of his daze, hovering between his character and himself. "Angry," he answered, agitated.
And then Sam's character talked about the five stages of grief. Although, Sam's character? Or was it Sam? Did he really have to bring this up now? Was there no other way to move the scene forward?
Luke had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from rolling his eyes on stage, or even yelling at Sam. He stared at Sam in anger. The line between him and his own character had started to blur. Yes, his character was angry. But so was Luke!
"Or did you think he tried his best?" Sam's character asked - Sam asked. "Would you marry a man who didn't try his best?"
Luke looked away and rubbed his temples. The blurring line between play and reality was giving him a headache.
"And I am so sorry that this happened to you," Sam's character continued - Sam continued. He placed his hand on Luke's knee. Startled, Luke looked back, and into Sam's sincere eyes. Not the character anymore. Sam.
"I'm so sorry," Sam said.
And with that, all the tension in Luke's shoulders dissolved. He gave Sam a small smile, which Sam took as a sign to continue the scene with something absolutely ludicrous.
AJ and Tom took over for the next scene, giving Luke the chance to take a deep breath. Sam sat at the other side of the stage and they made eye contact. And while not everything was forgotten, Luke was ready to forgive.
As Luke had some time to think, he suddenly came up with a brilliant idea to conclude the story, to wrap all the different plot threads together. That was a spike, but not a heat spike. His creative instincts firing. Without hesitating, he ran back onstage, slightly interrupting the end of AJ and Tom's scene. He would apologise for that later, but for now, he felt the adrenaline rushing through him. And there was only one way to handle it.
The other guys went along with how he wanted to end the story. The audience loved it. Sam came up with a fantastic pun as a final line. And filled with euphoria, Luke yelled "And scene!"
The applause started. Luke ran his hands through his hair. He felt some tiredness, but mostly joy. This second half had taken more out of him than he had realised. But it was good. They had done it.
Luke came back up from the bow and realised he was standing opposite the Alpha on the front row. The Alpha smiled at him, but that pull Luke had felt earlier didn't happen. He didn't return the smile, just shook his head once.
The Alpha looked at Sam, then back at Luke, gave Sam a nod. Then he grabbed his coat from under his seat and started leaving the theatre.
About 10 minutes later
The door to the green room closed behind them.
Nobody said anything. The adrenaline from the show was still there, but fading fast, leaving something quieter in its place.
Luke dropped onto the couch, leaning his head back. His arm over his eyes. Exhausted. But not in a bad way.
Tom was the first to speak. "Luke--"
"Don't," Luke said, eyes still closed.
"I'm going to anyway," Tom said. He sat down in the chair opposite, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "We handled that badly. During intermission. We talked about you like you weren't there and then made a decision without you." He paused. "That wasn't right."
Luke opened one eye. "No," he agreed. "It wasn't."
AJ sat down on the other end of the couch. "We panicked," he said. "That's not an excuse. But it's what happened."
"We're still figuring this out," Tom added. "Same as you."
Luke was quiet. He could feel Sam standing somewhere behind him, not sitting, not pacing. Just there.
"Sam," he said.
"Yeah."
"You're the worst out of all of them."
A beat. "I know."
Luke finally opened both eyes and looked up at Sam. "You decided you knew better than me. About my own body."
"Yes," Sam said. No deflection. No qualification. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Luke let that sit for a second. Then he exhaled slowly. "Okay," he said. "Thank you. That's all I needed."
That was enough for now. Enough to move forward, and they all knew it.
AJ reached over and grabbed a handful of the snacks Luke had brought earlier. "For what it's worth," he said, "your instincts tonight--"
"Were great," Luke said firmly. He sat up slightly. "That's the other thing I want to say. My improviser's instincts were good. Stronger than my Omega instincts. Every time something pulled me off, I found my way back. The scene. The story. The audience." He looked at each of them. "That matters."
"It does," Tom said. And he meant it.
"The Alpha on the front row--" Luke started.
"Handled himself well," Sam said. "Knew what was happening. Chose to leave."
That wasn't what Luke wanted to say, but instead he nodded. "I noticed." With a soft snicker, he gestured to Sam’s shirt. "I also noticed you unbuttoning your shirt before we went back on."
Sam said nothing.
"Very subtle," Luke said dryly.
AJ snorted. Tom groaned and looked at the ceiling.
Sam sat down finally, taking the last empty chair. "It worked, didn't it?"
Luke made a face that was almost a smile. "Don't push it."
The room settled into something comfortable. Outside they could hear the venue emptying, voices in the corridor, the clatter of the bar. Normal sounds. Good sounds.
After a moment, AJ said, "We need a plan."
"Obviously," Luke said.
"A real one," AJ continued. "Not something we improvise on the night." He glanced around the group. "Because this will happen again. Approaching heat, full heat, an Alpha in the audience. Any of the above."
"Or all three at once," Tom said.
Luke pulled the blanket from his bag, the one that had started this whole conversation earlier, and wrapped it around his shoulders. Nobody commented on it this time.
"Heat detectors before every show," Sam said. "Non-negotiable. If we know where Luke is in his cycle, we can make decisions together. In advance."
Luke noted the 'together.' "Fine," he agreed.
"And if there's an Alpha in the audience?" AJ asked.
"We don't change the show," Luke said immediately. "Not the whole show. But…" he paused, acknowledging what he hadn't wanted to earlier, "we can agree on a signal. If one of us spots something, we signal. And we adjust. Together."
"A signal we already use," Tom said practically. "Nothing new we have to explain to anyone."
"The shoulder tap," AJ said. "We use that anyway, like in Freeze Tag.”
Luke nodded. "And if I'm approaching heat and I don't catch it in advance?"
"You trust us to tell you," Sam said. "And we trust you to listen."
Luke looked at him. "That goes both ways."
"Yes," Sam said. "It does."
It wasn't a long conversation. It didn't need to be. They had spent years learning to build things quickly, to find the shape of something in real time, to trust each other in the middle of uncertainty. This was no different.
Luke pulled the blanket tighter.
"Good curry, by the way," AJ said.
"I know," Luke said. "I always bring good curry."
"You were also late," Tom pointed out.
"I was seven minutes late."
"Twelve."
"The curry makes up for it."
Tom considered this. "...Possibly."
Outside, the venue had gone quiet. Somewhere down the corridor, someone turned off a light.
“Shall we do this again?” Tom said.
Luke smiled. Actually smiled. "Let’s do this again."