Chapter Text
The twiggy Quint wasn't as new anymore as people thought. He could find his way easily around the Ministry and a few of the Siblings and Sisters even looked forward to seeing him in the halls. But there was one place that Phantom studiously avoided unless he absolutely had to.
The infamous infirmary.
It wasn't that medical stuff freaked him out—far from it. Any and all of it fascinated him. There was just a certain someone who unsettled him and made him as nervous as a newly weaned kit being anywhere near the Ministry's infirmary.
Omega.
Phantom had heard stories. He'd known about the ancient Ghouls ever since Swiss had tugged him aside one night early on to tell him tales of the old ones. To the newly-summoned Quintessence Ghoul they had seemed like dangerous beasts to be feared; callous guardians of the blackened past that prowled the halls looking for victims to spirit away, never to be seen again.
But he really needed Aether's help. His horns were growing in and it was itchy and painful and he didn't know where else to turn. So his unsteady legs brought him one nervous step at a time to the infirmary's doors. He pushed the door open with a shaky breath and stepped over the threshold.
"Aether?"
"He's not here right now. But maybe I can be of some assistance?" A deep soothing voice came from a desk to his right. Phantom quivered, glancing around the room with its piles of paperwork and its clean sterile smell. There was an examination table in one corner with fresh paper and a few implements.
Phantom knew that Omega and Aether shared an office. The rest of the infirmary was crammed with an operating theater, a few medical beds, and various other hospital-y things. But the rhythm guitarist had gone straight to Aether's office, on the off chance that his favorite Quint would be there—and hoping that his least-favorite would be out for the day.
"O-Omega." Phantom's eyes scanned the older Quint, sitting at his desk in grey scrubs, his white hair falling in a tousled mane down his strong shoulders.
"It's Phantom, right? Aether's told me all about you. Our youngest Quint."
"Yeah… I just, well…"
"No need to be nervous. Take a seat on the table and tell me what seems to be the trouble." Omega stood and tugged on a pair of gloves from a box on his desk as Phantom boosted himself up onto the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath his fingers, his legs dangling off the edge.
"It's my horns. They just suddenly started hurting." Phantom rubbed the pad of his tail self-consciously as Omega stepped closer to him. He flinched as the larger Ghoul reached up to examine his head.
"Not to worry. Just tell me if anything hurts too much, okay? How long ago did they start hurting?" Omega's voice was gentle, soothing; nothing Phantom had imagined him to sound like. He felt his breath catch as Omega lingered above him, those gloved hands feeling around the base of his horns, shifting the black and white strands of his hair away from the tender protrusions.
The younger Quint could sense the crackle in the air between them. This magnetic pull of his own weak magic responding to Omega's deep, powerful one. He felt soothed and alert all at once. It felt like the air right before a dangerous thunderstorm.
"About a week I guess-sss!" Phantom hissed in discomfort, a pain that was there and gone in an instant.
"Sorry, Phant. But I think I know what the problem is. How often do you wash?"
"Wash? You mean like bathe?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know," Phantom's tail was in his hands again, rubbing the pad like a worry stone. "Maybe, once a week?"
"Ah. I think if you bathed just a few more times a week instead, the dryness around the base of your horns would lessen and not be as painful or itchy as they continue to grow in." Omega's diagnosis was straightforward and clinical. He was being purely professional.
"Let's give it three weeks and you can come back and we'll see if things have progressed from there, okay?" Omega stripped off his gloves and tossed them in a waiting trashcan. Phantom swallowed hard, suddenly mesmerized by the larger Ghoul's large hands, those prominent knuckles.
"Okay." The Quint tried not to rub at the places where Omega had touched him, still feeling that prickle against his skin as the larger Ghoul moved away, writing something down on the legal pad at his desk. He tore it off and handed it to Phantom. It was a date, three weeks from now; a little reminder for the muddle-headed rhythm guitarist as he saw himself out of the infirmary office.
Phantom wandered back to his room, pinning the torn off sheet to his bulletin board. He flopped on his bed and rolled over, fingering the base of his horns and groaning into his pillow. The way Omega had spoken to him, that deep, gentle timbre. The way the older Quint's fingers—even gloved—had touched his head, careful and curious. The memory stirred Phantom's blood in his veins, trying not to let his mind wander to dirtier things.
Maybe Omega wasn't as scary as he'd first thought. Maybe there was something there that had been simmering inside the younger Quint's heart all along. Some secret singing in his core; a tug like their souls were longing to be connected to one another.
He'd felt it initially with Aether, an older and wiser Quint than himself. And now, the same thing was happening with Omega. The oldest and most powerful of any Quintessence Ghoul he'd ever encountered. Phantom felt like no matter what Omega had been like, he would have eventually found himself in the older Quint's arms one way or another. This feeling, this connection was a destiny that he couldn't hope to run from, even if he'd wanted to.