Archive of Our Own

Naturally, it was on a day that Frank was scheduled to work a double that Shen leaned in with a perplexed look on his face during shift handoff, sniffed the air around them a bit, scenting him in a polite, professional sort of way before frowning and saying:

“You good, man? You smell sort of weird.”

Frank gave his pits a discreet sniff, trying to remember if he had put on deodorant that morning. He got a whiff of Old Spice and scent-blocker, and was about to offer Shen a snarky retort about coffee breath when he caught it, low and buried underneath all the rest:

Heat sweat.

The horror must have shown on his face fucking immediately, because Shen’s eyes got wide and his face got a little white.

“No kidding,” he breathed. “Okay—fuck, um, what’s the protocol for this? Should I get Dana—or, or Robby?”

“Don’t fucking get Robby,” Frank said immediately, probably a little too sharp. Shen raised his hands in surrender before quickly bringing one palm to cover his nose and mouth, because—

God, holy shit—how had he not noticed this in the shower this morning? The smell was getting worse. Frank scrubbed at his face with his hands, freaking out a bit.

“You gotta calm down, dude. You're stressing out and your scent is spiking,” Shen said, muffled only slightly behind his palm. There was a half-restrained sort of growl in the undertone of his voice that Frank managed to catch, and he tried his best not to flinch at it. Alpha instinct response. Shen’s body was reacting to an omega in distress, even as he fought to leash himself under the shroud of professional restraint. A minor danger signal pinged out in the back of Frank's mind. “Just take a deep breath and chill out before the whole hospital—”

“I know,” Frank snarled, turning to face away, leaning his forehead on the cool metal of the locker and taking a deep, deliberate breath. “I’ve got it. I’ve got it under control,” he muttered, half to himself.

Shen backed up another step, his sneaker squeaking on the glossy floor. “Do you have your suppressants in there? Or I can go grab some from the Pharm desk—”

“I can’t,” Frank gritted out, squeezing his eyes shut as he struggled to keep his breathing even. “I can’t take more than what I’ve been prescribed.”

“It’s fine, Langdon,” Shen said, clearly not getting it. “I’m sure Dana has an emergency stash somewhere that’ll get you through today. I mean, I’m glad I caught it. But you should definitely call your doctor and have him up your dose, because clearly you’ve got—”

“Shen.” Frank slammed the side of his fist into the locker door, shaking the metal a bit, and he heard Shen’s teeth clack together as he snapped his jaw shut. Frank exhaled through his nose sharply, turning his head to meet his eye before speaking very deliberately. Shen was staring at him, definitely bracing a bit.

Jesus. Did he already look that feral? Frank spoke slowly, enunciated clearly.

“I cannot take medication that I haven’t been prescribed.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“Fuck,” Shen said.

“Yeah,” Frank answered, dropping the back of his skull against the lockers and staring up at the ceiling, wishing some sort of god would come strike him down, here and now.

“Alright, uh,” Shen said, bringing a hand to his forehead. “I can, um, get you a room, maybe? And then you can try to do a telehealth appointment? And, uh, if they can call your prescription into the desk here, then we can have someone in Pharm rush it and maybe someone can run it to you? That—that should be fine, right, I mean—”

Frank was already shaking his head. “No way,” he said. “No fucking way am I risking that. And what, have a heat here? In the fucking hospital? Like I haven’t already humiliated myself enough in this place, Christ.”

Shen looked more stressed than Frank had ever seen him. “No one’s gonna judge you for this, man, I mean—we’re doctors, we’ve seen it all, right?”

Frank scoffed weakly, covering his face again. “I have to go home,” he said behind his hands. “I need—” He thought rapidly, his brain whirring. What did he need? “I need to text Abby and let her know she has to pick up the kids today. And then I have to go home. I can’t cover this shift.”

“Don’t worry about the shift,” Shen said quickly. “I’ll call Crus in. He’s overdue for a double, anyway. Are you gonna be able to drive? How fast do these things usually come on, for you?”

“No idea,” Frank admitted, punching his code into his locker and pulling out the backpack he had shoved in there mere moments ago. “Haven’t had one since med school.”

“Jesus,” Shen said under his breath, sounding sympathetic and a little bit awed. “What the hell do you think happened, then?”

Frank swallowed hard. “I’ve got no fucking clue,” he lied.

Shen watched him back up a few steps, his eyes wary. He opened his mouth like he still wanted to protest, brows pulled in with concern.

“I’ll shoot you a text when I get home,” Frank cut in before he could say anything. “Thanks for looking out, man.”

The unfortunate truth was, Frank did have a clue about what could have caused his heat suppressants to fail.

Her name was Melissa King, and Frank felt a little bad blaming this on her but honestly, it was almost certainly her fault. If she didn’t smell so fucking good, this never would have happened to him. He couldn’t even really be mad about it, because, well, it was Mel. He didn’t know how to be mad at her.

He’d noticed it right away, of course, the smell thing, as soon as Robby had introduced her—the pleasant, neutral scent of beta and then the immediate sharp undercurrent of something really, really delicious, like a ripe strawberry that he wanted to dig his teeth into so badly that his mouth began watering. He had to cover his nose with his fist after that, wondering if a fan had caught her hair weird or something, because why the fuck could he smell her from all the way across the room?

At first he wasn’t really sure why no one else had mentioned it, why Dana hadn’t subtly poked her in the ribs and reminded her to reapply her scent blocker, why the patients in chairs weren’t in an absolute frenzy every time she was alone in a room with them. It took him about an hour or two into the shift to come to the somewhat-harrowing conclusion that—shit. Goddamnit. She only smelled like that to him.

It was bizarre. Unexplainable, almost. Most of the betas in the ED didn’t even bother with scent-blocker most days, and hardly anyone even noticed. The relative scent-neutrality applied the opposite way, too—while they weren’t totally nose-blind, betas tended to pick up on far less nuance, their sense of smell far duller than their alpha and omega counterparts. That was sort of their whole point, biologically: to exist as a comfortable neutral gear somewhere in between both of the extremes. It was why Mel could tank a blood and bile soaked trauma bay and barely blink an eye, while Frank and Shen and a few of the alpha nurses on staff had to breathe through their mouths all day long.

To almost everyone else on shift, Mel smelled unremarkable. Forgettable in all the usual ways that betas were built to be forgettable. To Frank, she smelled like a singularly perplexing anomaly.

When he came back to PTMC, he’d been a little bit more braced for it, having spent the last ten months quietly downplaying the significance of it in his head. So what, she smelled good? Lots of people smelled good. It was usually in like, a subtler, freshly-washed-clothes sort of way, not in the sort of way where he wanted to lean over the charge desk and take a fucking bite out of them, but—whatever. This wasn’t that different.

And then he walked back through the doors of the ED and the smell of ripe strawberries hit him like a freight train running straight into his olfactory receptors and Frank thought to himself: fuuuuccckkkk.

It was worse than he had remembered. Or maybe the benzos had been distracting him, dulling the intensity of it a little or something because, what the hell? How was anyone supposed to concentrate around this?

But hey, Frank was nothing if not an absolute master at compartmentalization, at pushing shit down, so he gave himself a quick five minute pep talk in the bathroom, stared down his reflection in the mirror and muttered: pull it the fuck together, Langdon. He breathed mostly through his mouth when he was around her, which came with its own set of problems (he could taste her in his throat), kept a strict buffer of no skin-to-skin contact, and didn’t let himself stare. (Much.)

He made it through the shift. And the one after that, and the one after that.

It got easier, or maybe he got more used to it. Every once in a while she’d turn her head too fast and her braid would swing in the air and he’d have to suppress a full-body shudder as a fresh pulse of her scent wafted over him, but other than that, he was pretty sure he was pulling it off.

It had been fine—managable—when it had been contained only to the hospital. Work, only, when everyone was so stressed out and sexless in their black uniform scrubs and tennis shoes that it was a lot easier to pretend like she wasn’t having some huge, omnipresent effect on him.

The out-of-the-hospital-friendship with her started to blossom right around the same time his marriage started to really rip apart at the seams (unrelated, he told himself when he was lying on the couch at night, unrelated, unrelated, unrelated). It was that—late nights in her apartment watching movies; smelling her first thing in the morning as she got in his car to drive to work with her hair still wet from the shower; the scent of her lingering on his clothes at night, taunting him—those were the things that drove him to the madness he found himself in now. Heat-struck, his fingers clenched around the wheel as he skidded through stop signs on his way to his newly-leased apartment.

His phone was buzzing in the cupholder as he drove, text messages from Abby, from Shen, asking what was going on, if he was good, if he had made it home yet. He ignored them, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and worrying his lip as he waited for the light to turn.

He had no parking at his new place (an idiotic choice, really, given how late he usually got home from work), and he was so anxious and out of it that he screwed up the parallel parking job twice, only managing it on the third try, when there was a line of cars honking behind him and he was still a foot away from the curb. Good enough, he figured, grabbing his backpack from the passenger seat as he locked his car up. If someone clipped his mirror off while he was sticking out like this, he’d deal with it later. That was sort of the least of his worries, right now.

There was an audience to his misery as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, curious passerbys craning their necks to see what all the noise was about, wrinkling their noses and tittering behind their hands about the dumbass in the 2013 Honda CR-V that had botched the parallel parking job so spectacularly.

“That your first time or somethin’?” Some dude standing by the parking meter tried to joke with him.

“Fuck off,” Frank spat, knee-jerk.

“Whoa,” the guy replied, eyebrows shooting up.

Frank rolled his eyes, swinging his backpack up over his shoulder as he brushed past the stranger without thinking about it. He was too focused on the three-block walk to his apartment to consider how the movement of his arm would bare his neck open, how it would shoot a fresh flash of his scent out into the air.

“Whoa.” Frank heard again, different tone this time, just before a hand clamped down on his shoulder, stiff and firm and unyielding. “You need help, buddy?”

Frank gulped, and when he turned the guy’s eyes had gone dark, pupils blown, scent spiked—oppressive, in your face, Alpha. Frank did some quick calculus in his head as he looked at the over-six-foot man who was now up in his personal space, trying to figure out if he could take him.

He ripped his shoulder out from under the guy’s hand with a snarl. “Not your fucking buddy, pal.”

Frank turned his body away, walking off with long strides, hoping to throw the dude off and just leave him in the dust, but luck was apparently not on his side today. He could hear the footsteps on the pavement behind him; he could smell the trailing scent of the stranger, menacing the air around him in a way that made him want to gag. Frank knew that there was a heavy dose of adrenaline pumping through his veins now, pushing his own scent out further, hastening his approaching heat minute by minute.

He needed to be back in his apartment, deadbolt closed, now.

“Hey, I’m trying to be helpful here, asshole,” the guy said, voice low with a growl to it. He felt another touch—to his forearm this time, fingers around his bare arm, a wrist pressed against his, scenting him. Openly, possessively, in a way that was so obviously intentional and so deeply uncalled-for that it made Frank yank back, breaths coming hard.

“What the fuck?” he said, pushing the man off him with both palms. The alpha stumbled back onto the ground, clearly disoriented, his instincts feeding off of Frank’s scent and driving him to do insane shit, like scenting strangers in broad daylight on the public sidewalk.

“You can’t be walking around smelling like that,” the stranger said, rising to his feet. He brought his wrist up to his mouth and inhaled as he did it, his mouth running over the spot where their two scents had mixed together, looking even more crazed by it.

Christ. Frank was really going to have to fight this guy, wasn’t he?

He was about to get ready for it, bracing his stance and preparing to shuck his backpack onto the ground when he heard a soft voice behind him and the scent of strawberries cut through his haze of panic.

“Frank?” Mel’s voice was full of concern, her eyes wide as she stood a few feet behind him, her keys in one hand, the other hand tucked behind her back like she was hiding something there. “Is everything, um, okay?”

The alpha’s eyes narrowed. “He yours?” he grunted at her, not even bothering to look at Frank as he did it.

Mel went still at the question, and he watched as her head twitched into a confused tilt, her mouth beginning to form the word no. Frank jumped in quickly.

“Yeah,” he said, backing up a few paces until he stood next to her, until her scent wrapped around him like a blanket. “Hers.”

He heard Mel make a small squeak, which made him cringe internally, but he had learned a long time ago that the quickest way to deal with alphas like this was to show them that someone else had already staked a claim.

“You should take him home, then,” the guy said, in a tone that still sounded vaguely threatening. “It’s not safe for him to be out like this, you know?”

Frank kept his mouth shut this time, pressing his lips together tightly to hold in another stream of curses. Mel looked at Frank, then over at the stranger, then back at Frank again, clearly confused, nervous, at a loss for what to do. He tilted his head in a go on type of motion, praying that she caught on quick.

“Oh,” Mel said, clearing her throat and straightening up, as if her five-foot-four frame could somehow become more intimidating if she only had better posture. “Yes, he’s, uh—we’re fine. I’ve got it under control, now, thank you.”

Thank you? Frank thought. Not the direction that he would have gone in, precisely, but the asshole was walking away now, apparently mollified, so what the hell did he know, he guessed.

“Are you okay?” Mel whispered, her eyes running up and down his body as she stepped away from him a bit, her nose wrinkling. “You smell, um—”

“I know,” Frank said, mortified, not sure how this could get any worse. “I know how I smell, Mel, can you just—” He sighed, swallowing down the last of his withering pride. “Just walk with me to my apartment, okay?”

She nodded aggressively, bobble-head like, and when she pulled her hand from behind her back he saw that she had been holding onto a can of pepper spray—a specific alpha-branded type, long range, the shit they carried at the hospital. She caught him looking at it and flushed, tucking it back into her tote bag.

“I bought it,” she said quickly. “I didn’t take it from work, if that’s—if that’s what you were—”

“Hardly my place to say anything if you had,” he said, somehow managing to still feel charmed by her, even through the fog of latent panic, the hormones, the humiliation he could feel brewing in his stomach at the situation he had now found himself in. “Not to sound ungrateful, but why are you here?”

She gave him a confused look, walking quickly to keep pace with him on the sidewalk. “We talked yesterday, remember? After our run?”

Frank remembered a lot of things about yesterday, but inviting her to his apartment at eight a.m. was not one of them. She must have seen something in his expression, because she continued: “I told you I would come by once or twice today and walk Toby. Because of your double?”

“Yeah,” he said as the exchange came back to him, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. “Shit, Toby, I forgot about him.” What the hell was he going to do with the dog while he was in heat? Was he even going to be lucid enough to get up and feed him? “I, uh—I might need a bigger favor, actually.”

“Okay,” Mel agreed, without even hearing what it was first. “Whatever you need, Frank.” They had made it to his apartment building and Frank let them in, scanning his key fob on the door and holding it open for her.

How much longer did he have, until he was fully in it, heat-drunk and incomprehensible? A few hours, maybe? Already he could hear his pulse in his own ears, blood pumping hard, the air tasting thick around him.

“Can you take him for a bit? Toby, I mean.”

“Definitely,” Mel said. “For, um, how long, do you think?”

She was trying her hardest to be respectful, he could tell. “I don’t know how long, I don’t—” He sighed. “I didn’t really plan this.” He hung his head, fumbling with his keys in his hand as he tried to find the one for the front door.

“It’s okay,” Mel said, reaching out to touch him gently on the upper back. “Hey, it’s fine. I’ll watch him for as long as you need.” Frank’s shoulders slumped, and her touch became slightly firmer. “I can help you pack his stuff up, if you’d like? And then if you need anything else, um—bottles of water, medicine, food, whatever, I can—I can go run out and get that stuff for you, too? I don’t have plans today.”

Frank wanted to cry, sort of. “You—you shouldn’t have to take care of me, Mel. This is my own fault, I should’ve—I’ve been putting off doctor’s appointments, and—”

The hand on his back rubbed circles, soothing. “We take care of each other though, right?” And then, quieter, “Please let me help, Frank.”

He let out a breath, conceding to her. “Okay,” he said, even though he knew it was probably a bad idea, even though she was probably the one person on the planet that needed to be as far as possible from him during this whole ordeal, for his own sanity’s sake. “I could use the help, yeah.”

He looked back to find her smiling at him gently, encouragingly, and he gave her a tentative one back before finally reaching down with his key to unlock the door, pushing it open.

The scent hit him straight to the face, so thick he started coughing, choking on it, and he slammed the door closed again as fast as he could, thinking please don’t let her smell it, please don’t let her smell it.

“Frank,” Mel said, clearly startled. “Frank, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Mel, you can’t—” Another wheezing breath. The scent-memory lingered in the hall, probably too faint for a beta like her to pick up on but strong enough that he could feel it in his whole body, down his arms, behind his eyes. “You can’t go in there.”

“Why?” Mel said, her hands fluttering in the air around him like she wanted to provide comfort but wasn’t sure how. “Why, what’s in there? Does something smell? You know, I have a much weaker sense of smell than you, maybe I can go in and clean it out while you—”

“No,” Frank said quickly, dread pulsing in his veins at the mere idea of it. Don’t let her find it, a voice inside his head warned, primal and desperate. Don’t let her take it. Frank slapped a hand to the wall, pushing himself up so that he was no longer doubled-over, eyes watering. “No, I’ll go in. Just, um, wait in the hall, maybe? While I clean.”

“But… I was just in there last night. It won’t bother me if it’s messy, Frank, I—”

“Mel, please.” He wasn’t above begging her at this point, knowing that if he let her walk through the door he’d be sacrificing every last drop of his dignity, anyway.

“Um, okay,” she said in a small voice, slinking back and pressing herself against the far wall, staring over at him with pink cheeks. “I can wait here, that’s fine.”

“Thank you,” he exhaled as he turned back to the door, holding his breath this time as he opened it the tiniest amount, just enough to slip inside and close it behind him quickly.

Reluctantly, Frank turned his head and focused his gaze. There, draped along the arm of his couch, was the culprit—the source of the scent and (he was realizing) the more-than-likely inciting object of his unplanned heat-trigger. He had tossed it there that morning at five a.m., sated and ready for a shower.

It was a sports bra. Utilitarian, black, a little worn on the straps. It was dirty also, covered in sweat as well as some other… fluids.

Mel had left it there accidentally, he was pretty certain, after they had gone on a run together. That was a new thing that they were doing, running together. Frank was actually going to have to put a stop to it soon, probably, because it was driving him insane: the smell of her when she worked up a sweat, the sound of her heavy breaths next to him as she tried to keep up with him, insisting that he push her harder, get their mile time down.

It definitely wasn’t good for him to be this hard, this often. Bad for his heart or something, maybe.

But yeah, the sports bra. That had been an accident, he was at least ninety percent sure. He had found it on the floor of his bathroom, half-sticking out from under the sink like it had slid there, where you maybe wouldn’t see it if you weren’t looking for it. Frank didn’t need to look for it, because he could smell it. The sweat-drenched material reeked of her—strawberries and musk and all the tiny little intricacies of her particular set of pheromones that he couldn’t quite articulate into words, the bits that made it so Mel, the bits that made him feel so wild.

He should have washed it. He should have picked it up and tossed it in his laundry basket; he should have turned around and left the bathroom; he should have put his hand over his nose and mouth and thrown it out the window, for Christ’s sake.

But Frank was an idiot, and sort of a pervert, and so he didn’t do any of those things, and now here he was, standing in his apartment, about to start an unplanned heat, staring at a sweat, saliva, and semen-stained sports bra while its unsuspecting owner waited outside his door. Wondering how the fuck he had managed to convince himself last night and this morning that jerking off four times in under twelve hours was somehow a normal human reaction to finding your coworker’s sweaty sports bra on your bathroom floor and not, you know, a pretty obvious sign that you needed to call your doctor and up your heat suppressant dosage.

He held his breath as he walked towards the couch, his mouth pressed tightly shut as if he could keep the heat at bay by sheer force. One finger hooked under the bra strap, and Frank swallowed down a breath as he walked quickly to his bedroom. He dropped the obscene-smelling thing on the floor of his closet and dumped a load of dirty laundry over it before finally sucking in a ragged gasp of air.

He could still smell it, somehow—the heady scent of both of them, her sweat and his sex, every dirty dream and sick fantasy he’d ever had come to life. His cock (which had miraculously remained mostly dormant up until this point, the arousal reactions of his heat dampened by the fear and panic) sprang to life almost immediately. Frank hissed, shifting around in his scrubs so it wasn’t as obvious.

He shut the bedroom door behind him and prayed it would muffle the scent enough that Mel wouldn’t catch it, that she wouldn’t poke her head into his doorway and immediately stare at him in abject horror.

He shoved down some latent anxiety and made his way back to the front door. “Done,” he said, trying to sound casual. “You can come in, now.”

She stepped back from the wall and followed him inside, peering around curiously.

“Toby’s asleep in his bed by the window,” he said, to distract her. “I can help you grab his stuff and write down some feeding instructions, just—give me a second. I have a pen here somewhere—”

“Frank.” Mel’s voice was hesitant. When he looked up, she was standing with her hands clasped in front of her, color rising in her cheeks. He stopped what he was doing. His throat went dry at the way she was looking at him, eyes wide and a little pleading.

“...Yeah?” His voice came out pitched up, slightly breathless.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking a half step closer. “It’s—I know it’s not polite to ask this but—” She chewed her lip. He stared, openly. “Can I…” She trailed off, took a breath, and squeezed her eyes shut like she was steeling herself. “CanIpleasescentyou?”

Her words took a moment to land, and once they did, Frank found himself incapable of doing anything other than gape at her. Was he having heat visions? That could happen, sometimes, when it got bad, but—this early on? He blinked a few times in rapid succession, half-expecting her to dissolve in thin air like a hallucination.

“It’s just that you smell like him,” the Mel-vision continued on, face blazing now, hands twisted together so tightly that it had to be hurting her. “The alph—the man from the street. I wasn’t sure if you could tell or not, because of um, the other stuff you have going on, but I think he scented you, and you don’t smell right. So you can say no, obviously, but then I think you should probably shower, or change, or something—”

“Yes.” The word punched out of him. “Yes, fuck, Mel, scent me. Please.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised, like she hadn’t actually expected him to agree. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He stepped up to her and presented his wrists, vein-side up. It was an intensely intimate move, one that would have probably mortified him if he hadn’t been halfway delirious and practically reeling from her offer. “Do it. I want you to do it.”

Her mouth parted as she looked down at his wrists, then back up at him, checking for something—lucidity, maybe, some sort of confirmation that he was still him, and not some heat-driven lunatic. Whatever she found in there seemed to be enough, because with her next breath she unwound her hands and reached for him, her fingers ghosting over the backs of his palms. Frank sucked in a breath through his teeth. Her fingers closed around his wrist, chill against skin that was already overheating.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured as she stared down at his hands, sounding a bit amazed by it.

“Mel.” His voice cracked. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. “Do it, please.”

“Sorry,” she said one last time before pulling his wrists up to the sides of her neck, at the soft spot just under her ears, and pressing them in tight.

“Oh, Christ.”

She made a soothing noise in her throat, holding him in place as he began to shake. Her thumbs swiped back and forth across the bone in his wrist. “My scent isn’t as strong as an alpha’s,” she said as she stared up at him. “So it might just take an extra minute or two, to—”

“Let me do you, too,” he demanded, too far gone now to care about how desperate he was coming across.

Her chin tilted up; she made a soft surprised sound. “Oh, um—why would you—why would you do that?” she stammered, moving to pull his wrists away. He resisted her, keeping them there.

“Mm, ‘cause I want to.” He felt inarticulate, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Can I?”

“O-okay.” Mel dropped her hands down, a slight shake to them that he tried not to think too deeply about. “If that would make you feel better?”

Somewhere, hiding in the recesses of his consciousness, there was a logical part of his mind screaming at him. Telling him to stop acting like an animal, to have some decency and restraint, to fucking let go of her. But that part was dying out, losing the battle against his baser instincts with every additional breath of her scent. She flipped her wrists open just like he had, presenting them to him.

He ignored the gesture and yanked her fully against his body instead.

She let loose a yelp, her arms flying up as she collided with his chest, as he wrapped himself around her, crushing her against him and nuzzling the side of his head against hers.

There was an immediate sort of relief that hit him the moment he took his first unadulterated pull of her scent. An oh, thank fucking god gut-punch that sent him plummeting straight into a really hazy headspace, blissed-out and dreamlike.

“Frank,” she gasped as he huffed hot breaths of air into her neck, burying his nose into where her scent was most concentrated and inhaling deeply. “Frank, oh my gosh, this is—”

“Mel.” He drew her name out long, lost in her already. Their scents had intermingled, one on top of the other, and the result was making his mouth water. He reached up and tugged the collar of her t-shirt to the side, exposing a flash of collarbone, then smelled that skin too—it was as ripe as the rest of her. He pressed his tongue to it.

“Frank!” she squeaked, much more urgently this time, reaching up to push on his shoulders.

“Yeah, Mel, baby,” he muttered back, dazed. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been fully hard, only that his body was now aching. He could feel his chest flushed, desire tugging at the base of his stomach. He stepped closer into her and she stumbled back—one, two steps until she was pressed against the wall, and he slapped a hand up to steady himself.

“Okay, I think—” Mel warbled as he started to suck at her pulse. “I think maybe that’s good now, I think I smell like you.”

He hummed at her mindlessly, his hips pressing in and chasing friction as he leaned forward, mouthing at the juncture of where her neck met her shoulder. She made another shocked sound as she felt him, rubbing against her lower stomach. He groaned into her ear and reached down to grope at her ass, pulling her harder against him.

She said his name again and he ignored her, dragging his teeth along her neck.

Then, suddenly—a sharp pain at his skull.

Frank hissed through his teeth as his head jerked back, as Mel buried her hands in his hair at the root and tugged with all the force she could muster. “Sorry!” He heard her say as she did it. The sensation was acute, and the haze of his heat cleared momentarily. Frank panted at the ceiling, trying to remember where the fuck he was.

“Your heat—” Mel began, and it was all she managed to get out before he dropped her, scrambling back until he hit the far wall.

“Oh fuck,” he said, wide-eyed with horror. “Oh my god.”

“It’s okay!” Mel insisted far too quickly, pitching forward like she intended to move in to comfort him.

“Stop.” His voice came out strangled, fingers scrabbling against the drywall for something to grip onto. “Don’t come any closer to me.”

She flinched and curled in on herself, hands coming up to her chest to grasp at one another. They stood at opposite ends of the room, both breathing hard, watching each other like animals that were about to bolt. Her eyes seemed to flit everywhere at once, but refused to ever meet his directly.

He looked down at her and felt his stomach lurch, his throat close up. She was fucking ravished—glasses knocked crooked, checks and neck mottled red where his scruff had scraped her raw, the collar of her t-shirt hanging loose around her neck where he’d apparently pulled hard enough to warp the elastic. The room smelled like the two of them, thick like honey.

The self-loathing hit acute and total, sharp enough around the edges to burn through everything else. For one brief, clarifying moment, he felt fully himself.

“I think I might be sick,” he muttered, shoving off the wall and rushing into the kitchen. He made it to the sink just in time to hunch over it, inadvertently knocking an empty coffee mug off the counter and shattering it on the tile. The nausea hit abruptly—Frank dry-heaved into the empty basin, nothing coming up.

“Ugh.” He ran the tap once it had passed, tilting his head to the side so he could drink from it directly, rinsing his mouth out.

“Are you okay?” Her voice came from the other side of the apartment, thin. He gripped at the edge of the sink and shut the water off without answering.

No, he thought. I’m not okay.

“You need to go,” he said. “Take Toby, his leash is hanging by the door and—just buy whatever you need for him. I’ll pay you back.”

“I—I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. He knew that if he turned around and looked at her, he would find her crying, so he didn’t look. He wasn’t sure he’d survive it. “I should have known better, Frank, I should never have asked to—”

“Don’t do that,” he choked out.

“Do—do what?”

“Apologize. Make excuses for me, whatever. This is—this is my fault.”

“It’s not,” she insisted, her voice firmer than before. “It’s your heat. You couldn’t help it.”

He scoffed at that, the tired old excuse that he despised. Not my fault. It’s biology. You can’t hold me accountable for what I did, how I acted, who I hurt.

“Fuck the heat,” he said, turning around to face her, even though it gave him a headrush just to look at her. “It shouldn’t matter. I hurt you, Mel.”

Her eyes were wet and puffy, her mouth was pressed together like she was holding back a sob. “No,” she argued, shaking her head. “No you didn’t.”

“Your fucking neck is red. Your shirt’s all messed up, you’re crying, and—”

“I have sensitive skin. And it’s an old shirt, anyway, so—”

“Mel!”

He had never raised his voice at her before—never even come close. He watched her flinch at him, could see a flicker of fear flash through her expression and it made him strangely relieved, made him think, good, yes, be afraid of me.

“If you stay here,” he said between gritted teeth, forcing himself to hold her eyes, to go slow, “I am not going to be able to control myself.” His skin itched. He felt like he was about to start crawling up the walls. “If you stay here, I am going to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.” He paused for emphasis, making sure it landed. “Please don’t let me hurt you, Mel.”

She brought her hands up to her face and swiped at her cheeks roughly. “Okay,” she said shakily, voice small. “I’ll go. I can go. Just give me two minutes.”

Frank nodded stiffly, relief coursing through him as he slumped back against the counter, dropping his head back so his neck stretched out long. He stared at the ceiling and counted out every second of her allotted two minutes, holding his breath for as much of it as he could bear.

He heard the scrabbling of his dog’s nails against the hardwoods as she roused him and put the leash on. He heard the flip of the lock as she pulled his door open. He waited for it to shut, but the room stayed silent—she was lingering. Her two minutes were up.

“Promise me that you’ll call.” Frank’s jaw tightened. “If you need anything. You’ll call me.”

He’d promise just about anything to get her out of his door. “Yeah, Mel,” he lied up to the water stains in his ceiling. “I’ll call you.”

She stepped through the threshold—he heard it.

“Bye, Frank,” she said, soft and sad, before the door swung shut.

Frank crossed the apartment in less than ten strides, flipping the lock shut behind her. He fell back against the door with a breath, sliding down to the floor and folding in on himself. His head dropped between his legs as he shook, melting down into a mess on his own welcome mat.

Despite what they made it look like in shitty made-for-TV Hallmark movies and porn, there was nothing romantic or alluring or even particularly sexy about being an omega in heat. Mostly, it was painful and exhausting and sort of gross, not terribly dissimilar to the first few days of withdrawal. Frank sweated through bedsheets, he oscillated between fever and chills, he spent more than half the day in a fetal position, shaking his way through the stomach cramps that came in debilitating waves. There was a lot more jerking off during heat than there had been during withdrawal, but—yeah. It was reminiscent.

There was a reason why ninety percent of omegas were on suppressants, after all.

It probably went without saying, but Frank hated being an omega. He hated it more than any other thing about himself, probably. Some days, he hated it more than his genetic predisposition to addiction, even.

(To be clear, he didn’t want to be an alpha either. He just wanted to be less of a fucking freak.)

Seventy percent of the population were betas: scent-neutral, heat-free, rut-free. They had normal, human urges; their hormones didn’t periodically hijack the judgement receptors in their brain and turn them into deranged brutes that needed to be medicated and monitored. They behaved reasonably. They wanted things normally.

Of the remaining thirty percent, alphas outnumbered omegas two to one. Most omegas were female. And though they didn’t have specific stats about this, as far as he knew, all of the other male ones Frank’d met hadn’t been particularly interested in women.

(He had checked on that last bit himself once, in college, just to be sure. He had been nineteen and horny and convinced that he needed to rule out the possibility that he could do at least one thing the normal way. They got as far as taking each other’s pants off before Frank chickened out, practically running out of the dorm room half-dressed, throwing a guilty, sheepish, sorry, dude, not for me, over his shoulder as he went.)

He was an outlier in every available category. Omega, male, straight.

The heats weren’t even about the sex, despite what every idiot with a daytime talk show seemed to think. They were about procreation, pure and simple.

When Frank was in heat, he was basically a walking, talking pregnancy scare. Sex with an omega in heat came with a pretty much one hundred percent conception rate, even when using modern forms of birth control—pills and IUDs and implants.

From a medical standpoint it was actually quite fascinating. Female omegas were relatively straightforward, as ovulation occurred as a natural part of the heat itself. It was with the male omegas where things got interesting—ovulation-triggering hormones within the semen, more potent than anything the prescription drug companies could manage to cook up in a lab. Better than aromatase inhibitors, better than hormone injections, better than hCG trigger shots.

In fact, if he were to come into a test tube right now, someone on the internet would probably buy it for about twenty grand or so. Maybe a little more if they knew that he was a doctor. (Maybe a little less if they knew that he was also an addict.)

Frank knew this better than most people. He had treated dozens of other omegas or their partners that had come through the ED complaining of nausea or cramping or fatigue and when he would ask, any chance you could be pregnant, they would shake their heads adamantly and say, no, definitely not. And he would nod but order the bloodwork anyway and sure enough—hCG readings off the charts, even if it had only been a day or two since the heat. So high there was never any sense in denying it: Positive. Pregnant. Every time.

There was something about that moment that always got under his skin, watching over and over again as people discovered that their bodies had made decisions without them.

Most people assumed that his kids had been from heats. They weren’t, to be clear—Tanner had been the result of just some good old-fashioned unprotected drunk sex, and Penny—well, Penny had been a bit of a pain, actually. It had taken about nine months of actively trying to get pregnant before they’d gotten that positive test back, and the fights that he and Abby’d had with one another in that period had been brutal.

(“Do you have any idea how hard it is? All of the shit that I have to do—the prenatal vitamins, the diet and exercise, the caffeine, the alcohol, everything that has to be on hold for me while we try to make this happen?”

“We said a year, Abby. We said twelve months, and then if it hadn’t happened by then, I would—”

“It’s clearly not happening, Frank.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being dramatic? Please, tell me more about how I’m being dramatic, when you’re the one that could end this whole thing in two days if you just stopped taking your medication for—”

“I told you I would do it, didn’t I? I told you that if it didn’t work, I would do it. Even though I don’t fucking want to. But I guess it doesn’t matter what I want, even though it should be my choice, because I’m the one that has to deal with the physical consequences of—”’

“Oh, the physical consequences, huh? A two-day long heat, how terrible that must be for you.”

“Abby—”

“How about nine months of growing another human being in your fucking body, Frank? How about a sixteen-hour-long labor? How is that for physical consequences?”)

He remembered thinking, somewhere in the middle of that period, that this was maybe the closest he’d ever come to feeling normal, trying for a baby the boring way, the way betas did it, with period tracking apps and digital hormone monitors and fertility-friendly lube. And then, of course, he hadn’t even been able to do that right, not for nine whole months, and he remembered circling the drain of self-hatred and cynicism for more than half a year and telling himself: of course. Of course it wasn’t working. Nothing about him worked the way it was supposed to.

Abby hadn’t really been wrong, exactly. There was a discussion to be had there, probably, about sacrifices and bodily autonomy and active consent, but Frank kept thinking about how at the end of the day, Abby’s body got to do something extraordinary; she got to grow new life; she got to serve a real purpose with her sacrifice. Frank, on the other hand, he got what? To glitch out and turn into some sort of sex freak for a few days, then wake up sweaty and dehydrated and ashamed?

He hated the loss of control. He hated the fear and panic leading up to it, wondering what sort of weird, fucked-up shit he would say, what he’d want done to him, what he’d ask for—then the shame and guilt that always followed. He hated feeling like he had no choice—that anyone could burst into the room mid-heat and he would pounce on them like an animal, like he couldn’t help himself.

And that was the word, the one that always left a bad taste in his mouth: Animal.

The heats; the pills. They weren’t that different, really. They were cravings, failures of his willpower, evidence that there was some other, baser part of him living inside and occasionally calling the shots. A feral thing that slept dormant while he ran codes and signed off on prescriptions and went grocery shopping like a real person who had their shit together. He had built a life of normalcy for himself, then he’d torn it apart with benzos, then he’d built it back up again, sturdier this time. A single bad heat could bring the whole thing crashing down in one afternoon.

Frank laid, trembling, in a heap of blankets and pillows that he had dragged down onto the floor of his bedroom by the air conditioning vent. Mel’s sports bra sat crumpled up into a still-wet ball next to him, having long since lost any trace of her scent.

How long had it been? A day? Two? Three?

He had slept a little, he thought, towards the beginning. He remembered getting up to eat, at one point, and maybe shower? And there were at least two crushed plastic water bottles on the floor by his bed.

It didn’t really make sense. He should be coming down from it, now. But he felt just as out of it as he did those first few hours. He could tell from the feel of his skin and the sheen of sweat on his body that he was still running a high fever, and the cramps had not abated, running through him in clenching intermittent waves.

The most worrying part was that he hadn’t come in probably about six hours. The heat obviously wasn’t over, he knew that much, but the release, the orgasms, the part that was supposed to provide a short reprieve from the other symptoms—that part had stopped, abruptly.

Frank specialized in emergency medicine, not endocrinology, but even he knew that something was wrong.

He forced himself up out of the nest of blankets on his floor, dragging his way into the bathroom on unsteady feet. A bottle of Midol sat on the counter; he unscrewed the top and popped four in his mouth, dry swallowing them along with an Ambien that his doctor had prescribed him a few months back that he rarely ever used.

He collapsed back into his makeshift bed on the ground and closed his eyes. Somewhere in the fog of it all, he thought to himself: this is what you get. This is what happens when you let yourself get too greedy.

The next time Frank woke up, it was because he had been drenched in ice cold water.

“I’m sorry!” Someone was saying in the background as he gasped in ragged, terrified breaths, shooting straight upright as his head swam. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“W-what the f-f-fuck?” he stammered as he blinked freezing droplets out of his eyes, teeth chattering.

“You weren’t waking up and I—I wasn’t sure what else to do, I’m so sorry Frank.”

The first of his senses to return to him in any meaningful way was smell, and that’s how he knew he was fucked, because the person that was standing in front of him and apologizing, holding onto the silver popcorn bowl from his kitchen, letting it drip down water onto his hardwoods, was Mel.

“What are you doing here?” he asked all in one breath, horrified.

He was naked, he remembered. Modesty preserved under several layers of soaking wet blanket, yes, but still. He was naked, and based off of the way that his erection had not flagged one bit despite being doused with ice water, he was still in heat.

“It’s been four days,” she whispered, like she knew how much of a betrayal this was. “Someone had to check on you. If I didn’t come, then Robby was going to.”

“Then you should have sent Robby,” he snapped, a blunt rejection.

He had fully expected her to flinch away at that, to close in on herself and stammer out more apologies, but instead her mouth flattened out into a hard line. “I’m just trying to help,” she said, fixing him with an unfamiliar look that could really only be described as a glare.

“By dumping water on my head?”

Her expression twitched downwards, turning more scowl-like. She set the bowl down on the ground and picked up the backpack at her feet, pulling out a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. “I’m taking your vitals,” she said flatly.

He twitched back violently as she made a move to approach. “Don’t come any closer to me.”

She huffed like he was being very annoying and unreasonable. “I have to get closer to you, Frank. I’m going to have to touch you, actually, in order to do my exam—”

His cock jumped at just the thought of it. “No, you can’t, Mel. You can’t.”

She ignored him, approaching anyway. Frank clutched the wet blankets up all the way to his chin, terrified to even look at her. “Please,” he whispered, last-ditch.

She seemed to soften considerably, but did not stop. “You’re okay,” she promised him as her hand closed in at his wrist.

He gasped at the feel of her, fingers cold and soothing on his hot skin. He was still running warmer than her, even after an involuntary ice-bath. You’re okay, it’s okay, she kept saying as she took his arm, pulling it away from his chest so it stretched out long in front of him.

She slipped the blood pressure cuff on, her fingers moving over his forearm and up his bicep like a soothing balm as she positioned it on him. She stayed close—too close—as she inflated the cuff, the pressure squeezing around his arm until it released, her eyes growing wider as she watched the numbers on the dial.

“What is it?” he asked, voice harsh.

No answer, her brow furrowed as she brought her palm up to his forehead to feel it. He swatted her away rudely. “Mel, what’s my blood pressure?” he asked again, tearing at the cuff on his arm.

“Stop it,” she said sternly. “Sit still. If you don’t cooperate, it’ll just take longer.”

She was glaring at him again. He glared back this time. “I’m a doctor too, you know. I deserve to know my own—”

“One-seventy over one-ten,” she answered, clipped and professional. She pulled a digital thermometer out of her bag and held it up to his forehead. She was wearing scent blocker. A lot of it, probably, based off of the astringent odor in the room. It didn’t really matter. He could still smell her underneath the bitter, chemical tang—strawberries and summer and sweetness.

“A hundred and three,” she said, just as the thermometer beeped. “When was the last time you drank water?”

“Well I was napping,” he snarked at her.

Her eyes narrowed. “You were passed out, Frank. I tried waking you up for almost ten minutes. You barely even responded to the sternum rub.”

“I took a sleeping pill.”

“Something’s wrong,” she said definitively. “Move the blanket down, I want to listen to your heart.”

“No,” he said, clutching the blankets up even higher, to the base of his neck.

Mel sighed. “Frank.”

“Just—” he flung his wrist back out to her, offering it up as a substitute. “Take my pulse instead, here.” It wasn’t the same, exactly, but it seemed a fair compromise.

She huffed and pulled his wrist out to her, a little roughly he thought, pressing her fingers in at his radial pulse, in the same spot where she had scented him not too long ago. Frank’s whole body started to shake.

As she closed her eyes her face grew focused, her tongue poking out between her teeth. Frank stared at the pink tip of it, trying to imagine what it would feel like for her to lick the inside of his mouth. “Your heart is racing,” she murmured.

“Someone poured a bowl of ice water on my head.” (That wasn’t what made his heart rate spike. To tell the truth, the cold water was starting to feel good, now.)

Mel leaned back, releasing his wrist and crossing her arms over her chest tightly. It made her breasts push up a little under her t-shirt, and Frank grimaced and stared at the wall behind her while his groin pounded. “I think we need to go to the hospital,” she said, shifting to stuff the medical equipment back into her bag.

“What?” Frank recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

“Frank, please,” she implored, catching his eyes and drawing her brows together, making that sad-puppy face that he was weak for. “I just want to help. You need to have a blood panel run, and someone needs to check the rest of your vitals. You probably need IV fluids, too, if that’s the only water you’ve had in four days.” She gestured at the pitiful collection of empty water bottles littering the ground next to him.

“Mel.” He said her name stiff and quick, trying to make it sound like a dismissal. The shock of the ice water had started to wear off. Her scent hung in the air around him, the blocker doing very little to mask it, and the drag of the blankets against his cock was beginning to feel mildly excruciating.

Mel shuffled a little closer. “I’m—I’m concerned,” Her hand dropped down and covered his ankle, wrapping her fingers around him over the blanket and squeezing tightly. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“I’m in heat,” he said. “These are heat symptoms.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “That’s not true. I mean—yes, it is, but not like this. The symptoms shouldn’t be this severe, your body should be calming down after every orgasm.”

And ah, there it was—her answer. Frank knew he must have made a very pained face at that statement, because her head tilted to the side far too observantly.

“When was the last time you had an orgasm?” she asked.

He shrugged helplessly.

“That’s not good,” she said, the concern in her voice spiking. “That’s really not good, Frank. It should be every couple of hours, at least.”

“I know that, thank you.”

“Why haven’t you been—” She made a vaguely obscene gesture with her hand that made him want to die.

“I’ve obviously been fucking doing that, Mel, Jesus.”

“Please don’t curse at me.”

“Sorry,” he said right away, covering his face with both hands. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

There was a heavy silence in the air for a few seconds as Frank hid behind his hands. He wondered if this was how it all ended for him—laying on his bedroom floor with his dick hard, not even able to jerk himself off correctly. With Mel watching over him, her stethoscope hanging around her neck like some sort of goddess of medicine and temptation, dropped into his life as retribution for his many sins.

“I think you should try again,” she said suddenly.

Frank choked, his hands flying off his face so he could stare at her. “Excuse me?”

“Try, um—” She was blushing. “Pleasuring yourself.”

Frank squeezed his eyes shut. “Please don’t say it like that, oh my god.”

“Okay,” she said. “Um, stimulating yourself? I think you should try to orgasm again, Frank.”

“Mel, I’m not going to jerk off with you standing right there.” What they were doing—sitting and talking—was already testing the very edges of his restraint. If he touched his dick right now, he’d lose it.

“I can stand outside the door,” she said, as if that made any fucking sense at all. “And wait for you to call me back in.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he decided, voice flat.

“Alright, then we’ll go to the hospital,” she said breezily, wrapping the blood pressure cuff up into a tight coil as she stood back up, looming over him. “Those are your options.”

Frank swallowed on nothing. He was starting to realize that she sort of held all the cards, here.

“It will be very clinical,” she promised, as if she had registered his resolve beginning to crumble before her eyes. “I will be nothing but professional about it, I promise.”

She said it like she really thought it was true. Like she had no doubts about her ability to stand on the other side of his bedroom door and feel totally neutral and detached about the fact that he was just on the other side of it, his hand shoved under the blankets, furiously trying to get himself off.

He wondered how she’d feel if she knew that two days ago he’d had her contact photo pulled up on his phone, zoomed in close so he could see the color of her eyes, the mole on her cheek, the shape of her lips as he pictured her riding him. That he’d had her fucking sports bra shoved in his mouth, or wrapped around his cock.

There would be nothing fucking clinical about what would be happening on this side of his bedroom door, that was for damn sure.

“Let’s give it a try,” she said, deciding for them. “How long does it normally take you?”

He made a mortified noise, throwing his head back. “I’m not answering that.”

“Twenty minutes, then,” she said, which was almost laughably too long, even under his usual circumstances. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

The door to his bedroom clicked shut, and Frank tossed the blankets off with a frustrated, overwhelmed exhale. He had begun to sweat again as the chill from the ice water wore off, and the heat had concentrated at the most obvious midpoint—his hips, his groin, his pelvis, all up and down his cock. The cold air bit at him, making him hiss and arch upwards.

Twenty minutes. Generous. If it had been his patient, with the vitals Mel had read out to him, he probably would have only given them five.

He wrapped his hand around his cock and immediately felt his heart rate skyrocket like he was running a marathon—one-forty or one-fifty bpm, easy. He breathed in and out through his teeth as he began to move his hand, trying to focus exclusively on the feel of it instead of falling into fantasies.

And it felt good; of course it felt good. But it was a scary kind of good—uncontrollable and tight, the muscles in his thighs and stomach tensed up and quivering, pleasure so white-hot that it edged its way right into pain territory. He was on the brink of an orgasm in less than three minutes.

He sucked in a few greedy lungfuls of air, tasting Mel’s scent on his tongue, down the back of his throat, certain that would do the trick. It did not. His orgasm hovered just out of reach, the wave cresting but never breaking, just as it had been doing for the past several hours of his misery.

A long whine escaped him, coming from deep somewhere in his chest as he dropped his hand back down, panting at the ceiling.

There was a knock at the door. “Frank?” Mel said, clearly listening in. His cock twitched at the sound of her voice, sending another agonizing wave of pain-pleasure through him. “Did it work?”

“Give me a minute,” he called back, strangled. “I’m not—” he stammered, gripping himself by the base of his shaft again. “It’s not—I need another minute.”

“Okay,” she said very evenly. “Let me know if you need anything.”

I need you to come in here and sit on this, his brain shot back very rudely, and he pressed his lips together so hard that they probably turned white.

He had really been hoping to avoid this—using the damn sports bra again, what with Mel standing ten feet away and all. But at this point, his brain chemistry had apparently wired itself around her inextricably, and he wasn’t certain that he’d ever be able to get off again without the taste of her in his mouth.

He shoved his hand into the pile of pillows, digging around until he unearthed it.

He wasn’t sure that it could reasonably be described as a bra, anymore. It was really nothing more than a scrap of fabric, hanging apart in a useless, totally non-functional way, torn in several different places by what he assumed were his teeth, though he had no recollection of it. It was stiff, and disgusting, and almost all of her scent was gone from it by now. He held it to his face anyway, trying not to think about it too hard.

His hips jerked up into the air at the first concentrated hit of her faded sweat-scent, and he picked up speed with his hand, hoping to chase the orgasm through, get this whole thing over with. He knew he was making noises, now, uncontrollable, and he could only hope that they were muffled enough behind the fabric and the door that Mel couldn’t hear him.

He bit down on the strap of the bra, imagining it was her skin beneath his teeth instead, that he was pressing her down into his pile of blankets and marking her, mating her, making her his.

A groan dragged out of him, low and pained as he ground his teeth together. The throbbing in his lower abdomen had grown sharp, like a thick strand of galvanized wire that had been pulled so tightly it was about to snap in half and strike him right in the face. He was sort of getting there, he could feel it, but the pain kept pulling him back out of it, kept tearing him out of his fantasy and back into the present, where he was alone in his mess of a bedroom with his own hand.

He pushed through, holding his breath as he focused in on all the visions of Mel that had worked for him before: down on her knees with his cock in her mouth, writhing underneath of him as he drove into her, staring down the length of her body as he buried his head between her legs.

His head spun. His quads shook. His forearm screamed.

Mel, he begged her in his head. Mel, honey, please.

Frank, the Mel-vision said back, although it came out sounding weird for some reason, less of a moan and more of a question, more like: Frank?

Come on, he encouraged her, in a pant. He wasn’t sure what he was encouraging, exactly, his mind flitting through lurid apparitions too quickly to settle on one entirely. Come on.

Are you… sure? she asked him, which was odd, but he was too fever-high and heat-drunk to notice it, so he just said:

Yeah, I’m fucking sure, yeah.

The door swung open. He heard a high-pitched yelp. “Oh!”

Frank gasped, crumpling the bra up in his fist tightly and shoving his hand under the blankets. “What the f—” he rasped as he made eye contact with Mel, who looked almost as startled as he felt. “What are you—”

“You—you told me to come in!”

“No I didn’t!” His cock pulsed heavy in his hand. “Why would I have done that?”

Her eyes drifted down his body like she couldn’t help it, and he watched as she fixated on his erection, a bright red blush growing over the tops of her cheeks. It jumped a bit under her attention, and it was only then that he realized he was still holding onto it, obscenely. He unclenched his fist and spread his palm out instead, a futile attempt to cover himself and regain some amount of modesty.

(Who was he kidding? There was precome smeared all over his hand, saturating the hairs of his stomach.)

“Mel,” he choked out. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t done.”

He watched her throat move as she swallowed, still staring down at his crotch, which was kind of rude of her, actually. Shouldn’t she look away, at least? “It’s not working,” she murmured, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“It was,” he argued, probably lying to himself. “It’s gonna work, just give me another—”

“You’re so…” Her voice sounded far-off. Her eyes flicked up, finally looking at him. “You’re so red, Frank.”

Was she talking about his face or his cock? It could be either; it was certainly true about both.

“I’m fine,” he tried to tell her, even though it was obviously a lie. His fever was almost certainly reaching dangerous temperatures. He was dehydrated and dizzy, and probably not long off from passing out again. He either needed to come, or be medically sedated, and Mel knew it too.

She took another step towards him, her mouth pulled to one side in a set, determined expression that he recognized—the kind she got before she was about to do something difficult, like reduce a dislocated shoulder or put in a chest tube. He made a split second decision borne out of panic.

“Take me to the hospital,” he said quickly, finally having the sense to reach over and sweep the blanket back over his lower half. “I’ll go. I’ll go willingly.”

She shook her head. “You’ll lose consciousness before I even get you out of the apartment,” she said, correct as usual. “I won’t be able to carry you down the stairs. Give me one second.”

She spun on her heels and walked out of the room. Another intense wave of pain coursed through his body, so visceral that his back arched up off the ground for a moment, a groan punching out of him.

“What?” she asked breathlessly as she rushed back in, holding her backpack again. “What is it, what hurts?”

“Burning,” he ground out, just barely resisting the urge to claw at his skin, abandoning the idea of lying to her. “Feels like burning.”

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, she was there, kneeling down onto the blankets next to him and pressing the end of a stethoscope onto his bare chest. He gasped at the sensation of cold metal on his skin, twisting his fingers into the fabric below them so as not to reach out.

She shushed him. “Be quiet please. And stay still. I’m trying to hear your heart.”

He squirmed underneath her, aching. “Mel, I can’t.”

“Please,” she said, and there was something very desperate in her voice this time, something like she might be on the verge of tears. “Please, Frank, I don’t know how to help you; you need to tell me how to—to—” she choked off, ripping the stethoscope out of her ears and tossing it to the side.

She pressed her hands to his chest, palms flat, skin to skin. “Tell me I can help you?”

He sucked in a breath that made his whole chest rattle.

The feel of her—of just her hands—was unlike anything he had ever felt before, beyond euphoric. “I know I’m not—” she was murmuring self-consciously. “I know that you don’t really want me like this. But maybe you could close your eyes and pretend it’s someone else? I—I wouldn’t mind.” Her hands moved back and forth across his chest sort of mindlessly as she spoke, like petting him was calming her down somehow.

“Mel,” he tried, one last attempt. “What are you—”

Her hand inched lower. He made a strangled, desperate noise as she brought the blankets further down his stomach, revealing abdominal muscles that were twitching in anticipation.

When she looked up at him, her lips were wet and bitten. “I don’t know that I’m very good at this,” she said. “So just, um, tell me if I do something you don’t like okay?”

And then she brought her palm up to her mouth and licked it in three long stripes and he almost fucking passed out. He was pretty certain that he did pass out, briefly, when she took that same hand and plunged it below the blankets, groping around a bit until she got ahold of his cock, wrapping around the white-hot skin of it.

His hips jumped up as he thrust into her instinctually, bucking her arm up in a way that was probably way too rough, jerking her whole shoulder back.

“Whoa,” she said, losing her grip as she fell backwards off her knees.

“Ugn, god,” was all he could manage back, a sound like he’d been punched straight in the gut. The pain-pleasure feeling was back, a thousand times worse than before.

“Okay, hold on a second, I think I need to recalibrate,” she told him in a nervous-sounding voice. She shifted up on her knees for a moment so that she could lift a leg, swinging it over him and settling her weight down over his knees, straddling the blankets. “Is this okay?”

“Touch me.” The plea scraped out of him. He was well past his ability to deny her now, completely under her thrall. “Your hand, Mel.”

“Right,” she said, like she was remembering what they were doing. “It might be, um, easier if I can see what I’m—?”

He threw the blankets off of himself with an impatient huff, then grabbed her spit-soaked hand and pressed it to his erection. “I like it fast,” he rasped at her, wrapping his hand over hers and pumping it twice in demonstration. “Tight like this. Please, Mel.”

She made a soft sound as she stared down at his hand around hers, the head of his cock leaking out precome through the tip, dripping over their fists. He probably could have let her know that the spit wouldn’t be necessary. Things got pretty wet during heat.

He guided her into a steady pace a few more times until he felt like she had it, and then he let go so that he could hold onto her hips instead, gripping at the flesh he could feel there through the thick fabric of her jeans.

“Is this gonna work?” she asked as he screwed his eyes shut. “Do you think you’ll be able to? Like this?”

“Nng,” he grunted back inarticulately. “I don’t know—maybe, I—fuck, I wish you had taken off that fucking scent blocker.” He kept trying to take in gulps of her scent and getting bits of bitter chemical down his throat instead.

“You wanna,” she started, her rhythm faltering a bit. “You wanna scent me again, maybe?” She pitched forward a bit, dropping a hand by his head so she could bear her neck to him. “You can.”

It was a reckless move, one that she probably should’ve known better than to do—present her neck out to an omega in the middle of heat. He wanted to fucking bite her. If he’d been in his right mind, he might’ve scolded her for it.

But he wasn’t in his right mind, so instead he just snarled, “come here,” and scruffed her by the back of the neck, yanking her down until his mouth met the skin of her throat, until he could sniff out the exact spot she had sprayed the extra-strength medical grade scent blocker so he could lick it straight off, sucking at the skin until it was all gone, until the only thing he could taste anymore was Mel, Mel, Mel.

Do it, the voice in his head goaded as he dragged his teeth over the tense cords of her neck, bite her, hard. She’ll let you. He pressed in, succumbing just a little, feeling her skin give, feeling his mind slip further into a place that was driven only by instinct and wild, animalistic lust. He planted his feet on the ground so he could thrust up into her hand a bit, his bent knees brushing up against her a bit.

Frank heard her say his name, drawn out into three full syllables, like Fr-a-ank, and he felt her hips roll down onto him in a stuttering sort of way, like she hadn’t really meant to do it, the fabric of her jeans dragging over his bare, sweaty thigh. They both froze, his teeth at her throat.

“Sorry,” she whispered, her hand loosening around him. “I didn’t mean to—”

He detached from her throat with a wet pop, studying her. Her pupils were blown; her cheeks were red; her chest was heaving. He sniffed the air again, and suddenly something new hung in the air with them, no longer hidden behind the oppressive curtain of the scent blocker. It was musky and sweet, the same fresh strawberries that he was used to but with a different edge this time, something that twinged at the back of his esophagus and made his jaw clench.

“You’re wet.” It came out of his mouth sounding flat, almost like an accusation.

Her eyes were huge and caught. “I—No, I—”

“Don’t lie,” he growled. “I can smell you. Don’t lie to me.”

She had that look on her face again, the one like she was maybe about to cry. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, as close to an admission of guilt as he was probably going to get.

“Fuck.”

He released her hips with a sudden, fierce urgency, fingers grasping for the button of her jeans. She made a shocked sound and looked down, watching him fumble.

“Get these off,” he gasped wetly. “Off, now.” He tore at the fabric artlessly, his fine motor skills long since gone. The top button popped; he dragged the zipper of her fly down roughly, trying to tug the pants down by their belt loops.

“Wait, hold—” She released his erection, lifting off of him and sliding further down his legs until he could no longer quite reach her. He made a very pathetic noise as she slipped out of his fingers. “Frank, what are you doing?”

“I’m taking your pants off.” What was confusing about this to her? If he was going to fuck her, her pants needed to be off.

She was breathing hard. She reached up to touch the spot on her neck that he had been about to gnaw at, and he watched a full body shudder go through her as she felt the wet skin, the small but noticeable indents of his teeth. “You’re—you’re not lucid enough for that.”

“Don’t care,” he said, trying to sit up so he could grab her again. She pushed him back down with her hand and he made an exasperated noise at her. “Mel, I don’t care. Do it anyway.”

“Look at me, please.”

Frank heaved a very painful breath and stopped pawing at her to look. Her cheeks were blotchy and red in places, the blush spreading out unevenly. Her braid was smooshed-up and fuzzy—had he pulled at it? He must have pulled at it. Her pants were—ugh, god, her pants were unbuttoned and unzipped. He could see the very top of her underwear, which were cotton, lilac, with little fucking hearts on them for Christ’s sake.

“I’m looking, baby.”

She shuddered again.

“We—we shouldn’t have sex,” she said, although it sounded almost like a question this time, like he could maybe wear her down about it if he kept trying. “Unless you really, really need to.”

“Mel,” he started to whine, but she held up a hand. It was trembling slightly, he noticed.

“I’m serious, Frank. Think about it. What if—what if the condom breaks, you know? During?”

Condom? Frank thought. What fucking condom? Who said anything about a condom?

“I don’t have condoms.”

“Oh.” Her gaze slid away, an embarrassed and vaguely guilty look in her eye. “I, um—brought some with me.”

He released a short breath at that news. There was a sick sort of implication to her statement that Frank didn’t want to think about too closely—Mel taking the bus over to his apartment, her bag full of medical supplies to help him. Condoms stashed away in a side pocket somewhere, just in case he—what? Couldn’t help himself? Just in case he—

Jesus.

In the back of his mind, self-loathing and alarm pricked again, cutting through the haze of lust. Be a person, he reminded himself.

“I won’t go inside.” He swallowed as he made the concession, even as every cell in his body screamed at him. “You can keep your underwear on if you want, just—please come up here. I need to feel you without the jeans on, I need to—smell you, I think, if this is going to work.”

There was something sort of dazed about her expression, like maybe she was feeling a little bit of what he was—the drunken recklessness in him that was making him beg her for it.

“Underwear on?” she said again, like a question.

“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding so hard it felt like his neck was going to snap. “Sure. Whatever you want. Yes.”

She stood, her legs wobbly and baby-deer-like, knees knocking in as she very carefully shimmied her hips, rolling down the denim and pulling off each pant leg. The jeans landed on the floor in a heap and she snapped her legs shut, pressing them together tightly and pulling at the hem of her t-shirt, trying to cover herself.

He reached out and gripped at the backs of her thighs until she took a few teetering steps towards him, until she was close enough that he could press his forehead onto her lower stomach. She made a small yipping noise as he bunched her shirt fabric up with his hands, just high enough for him to press the tip of his nose against the top band of her underwear and take heavy, open-mouthed breaths.

Her hand dropped to his head, running her fingers through his hair in a way that made him feel like he was about to start shaking uncontrollably. “It’s okay,” she soothed him, voice loose. “You’re okay.”

He could see a wet spot on her underwear, a darkened portion of fabric where her arousal had seeped through. His eyes glazed over and he tilted forward mindlessly, angling his chin out so he could put his mouth on it.

“Oh!” Mel stopped him, tugging him back by the hair, making him keen. “Oh, no, not that,” she stammered. “We didn’t—we didn’t say that.”

“Baby,” he slurred up at her, mouth embarrassingly wet, drooling. “Baby, your smell—”

“I’m just going to sit down, alright?” she interrupted, widening her stance a bit so she could hover directly over his lap. She was still holding onto his hair, gripping him like they were the reins to a horse. “I’m gonna sit down, like we talked about.”

She pried his hands off her thighs, then lowered in one swift movement, no real warm up, settling her weight down into his lap. He spasmed, clutching at her arms, her back, fingers twisting in her t-shirt.

“Oh god,” he said roughly. “Oh my god, Mel, oh my god.”

She was so wet. He could feel her through the fabric.

Her hips moved; she grinded forward against him and they both made broken-off noises. He grabbed onto her hips hard and thrusted up, pushing her down at the same time, the movement jerky and not at all effective, making his cock jab up against her inner thigh in a way that didn’t feel that good.

“Shit,” he cursed.

“Hold on,” she said, tucking her legs underneath her so she was on her knees. “I can do this part, okay? Just hold on a second.”

His head felt spinny, dizzy, like all the blood in his body was in his cock right now, like there was barely enough left for the rest of his organs to function correctly—the brain, the limbs, the heart. “I’m normally—” he panted. “Better. Better at this.”

Mel released a small laugh, one that sounded only slightly delirious. “Okay. I believe you, Frank.”

She rolled her hips again, getting the angle just right this time. His precome had mixed with her arousal, giving the cotton a slippery glide. She did it again and he gasped loudly, his head falling back.

“Does it—” Another smooth grind against him; her words caught in her throat. “Does it feel good?” Her voice was so low, he thought. Raspy. He hadn’t even known that he liked that, in a partner, until her. He wanted to try to make her scream, just to hear what she sounded like afterwards.

“Mm,” he told her, a noise that was supposed to be a yes. “Feels like… ‘m gonna die.”

“You’re not,” she promised him, tucking her face into his neck where his scent glands were. “You’re not going to die, because I’m going to take care of you.”

That sentiment ripped a moan out of him, sharp and loud.

“Oh, do you like that?” she asked into his neck, catching on quickly. “I’m going to take care of you, Frank.” She pressed her open mouth into the spot beneath his ear where Abby’s faded bite mark was, white dots of scarred skin that faded with every passing month. “Better than—” she mouthed at the bite, “better than she did.”

He made a strange noise, a short sort of cry. He really wanted to look at her, but his eyes had gone sort of unfocused, the room around him mostly a blur.

Her teeth scraped at the same time that her underwear slipped, the head of his cock catching on the middle band of fabric, sliding underneath and pushing through her with no barrier this time, just silky wetness and the tiniest bit of delicious friction as skin met skin. He choked.

He couldn’t tell if she had noticed, because she didn’t break her rhythm at all, just kept moving against him, her head bowed down so that he couldn’t quite see her expression, only her forehead and the divot that formed between her brows when she was deep in concentration.

“Mel,” he gritted out, trying to warn her, but then her hips twitched again and the tip of his cock slipped inside her the tiniest bit. Frank saw stars. He was pretty certain that by this point, his pain and pleasure receptor centers, the nerve endings in his body, were permanently fried. He couldn’t tell what he was feeling anymore, whether the searing sensation he was experiencing meant that he was about to come, or about to black out. “I think it’s—I might be—”

“It’s working?” she asked, lifting her head up at him. “Okay, okay, um—what else can I—? What do you need me to—?”

“Bite me.”

Her hips stuttered, her pace slipping. “F-Frank—”

He reached up with his hands and slipped them over the back of her neck, pulling her head back down to where he wanted her. “Where hers was,” he directed. “Come on, come on, come on, Mel, please, do it.”

She whined into his throat, and he felt the noise reverberate through him. “Not—not like this.” She smeared her mouth up to his ear, clamping down on the lobe with her teeth. The slide between them was getting wetter. He wondered if it was mostly him, or mostly her.

He pulled at her again with his hands, trying to move her back to where he wanted her, but she resisted him. The noise that came out of him then was one that would have embarrassed him, had he been even slightly coherent—something like the sound that a wounded animal would make, a whiny sob. He might have been crying, because his face felt wet.

Yours, was all he could think. I’m yours. Make me yours.

She wrested his hands off the back of her neck, pinning them down onto the blankets by his side. He wasn’t sure how she managed it, he was normally much stronger than her, but every part of his body that wasn’t his dick felt limp and sort of floppy, incapable of doing anything but lying there for her.

“Oh, Frank,” she said as she sat up and looked at him, eyes dark and pleading. He wasn’t inside her but he could feel her clench down anyway, her body contracting at the sight of him writhing, helpless and pathetic underneath of her. “Don’t cry, please. You’re doing so well, don’t cry. We’re almost done.”

She brought a hand up to wipe at his face with her fingers, her breaths coming out in little huffs as she moved her hips, straining from all her effort. She dragged her hand across his mouth, making her way to the other cheek, but he opened wide for her, catching two fingers between his teeth before she could get there.

She tried to pull them away but a warning growl rose in his chest and he closed his lips around them. “You–you want these?” she asked, staring at his mouth. He nodded, dazed, feeling drool slip down the side of his mouth. “Okay, good job. Thank—mm, gosh—thank you for telling me.”

He pressed his tongue into the pads of her fingers as she praised him, licking his own tears off of her, tasting the saltiness there, tasting her skin, tasting—tasting—something else. Frank closed his eyes for a second to focus on it, making sure he hadn’t imagined it, but—there it was again.

Musky, sweet, strawberry. She tasted like the smell in the room. She tasted like sex. She tasted like she had been touching herself.

When? he thought, reeling. Earlier? Outside the door? When he was—?

His eyes rolled back in his head and he couldn’t help himself—he bared his neck for her again, silently begging for a mating bite.

Hers, hers, hers, hers, hers.

“I can’t,” she told him, sounding almost as desperate and heartbroken as he felt. She touched the side of his face with the hand he wasn’t still sucking on. “Not that. Something else,” she begged, her voice scratchy. “Pick something else.”

There were about a million things Frank wanted from her in that moment, in every moment. But his brain was fried, he felt practically nonverbal, and the only thing he could manage to eke out at that point was a single, choked-out word, muffled behind her hand, his tongue garbled by her fingers:

“Kiss.”

Her brows creased and drew up in an almost plaintive way, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose with the force of her nod. It was ridiculously hot that she was still wearing them.

“Okay, yes. Yes to kiss,” she murmured down at him softly. “You can have a kiss.”

He was briefly worried that she might try to take her fingers out of his mouth, but it was like she could read his mind, like he could think some half-formed thought and she would receive it—immediately, clearly.

She shifted her fingers to the side, tucking them into the soft inside skin of his cheek, making room for herself so that she could lean down and press her lips into his open, wet mouth. He moaned at the contact, breathing her in like oxygen as his cock began to pound in time with his pulse, rapid.

“That’s it,” she whispered, clinging to him with her thighs, gently nipping at his upper lip, slowly stroking the inside of his mouth with her fingers. “I’ve got you.”

Something burst inside him—a bubble that had grown to the size of his whole body, filling him, smooshing him all together from the inside out before exploding in a sudden, terrifying moment of relief. He felt every muscle contract; he felt his heels dig into the twist of sheets as he arched his body upwards, as he broke into many little pieces under her hands.

Mel carried him through it, pressing herself against him, breathing into his mouth, mumbling broken little encouragements, practically nonsensical. He was clutching her hard—too hard, probably, fingers digging into whatever skin he could find.

It was death, he assumed. Or an orgasm. Either felt equally likely. If it was a death, it was an excruciating one. If it was an orgasm, it was the best of his life, possibly.

Just as quickly as it came on, it was over. And by over, Frank meant over.

The room went dark. The scary pain-pleasure, the fever, the euphoria, the full-body pounding—it was all gone, and he was floating. Frank released a breath, finally. He felt his muscles go lax.

He thought to himself: well, of all the ways to die—

“Frank.” Mel’s voice was sharp. Distantly, he could feel someone shaking him, gripping him by the shoulders and tussling him around. “Frank, wake up. Open your eyes.” A snapping noise close to his ear, followed by two wet fingers on his carotid, shaky. They pressed very hard, and held there for a moment. Then: a deep sigh that he felt on his face. “Okay. Oh, gosh. Okay; you’re okay.”

The fingers moved away. “It’s alright,” she whispered this time, sounding like she was talking mostly to herself as she brushed sweat-soaked strands of hair back off his forehead. “Take your time.”

“Mm,” he tried to respond, leaning into her touch. He felt sluggish, muddy. Like he had just run a marathon and then held his breath underwater for too long. Nails dragged along his scalp, scritching at him, and he realized then that he was purring, his whole chest rumbling.

“Does that feel better?” Mel asked, holding the back of her hand up to his forehead. “I think your temperature is going down.”

He felt a pressure lift off of him as she moved away, his hands temporarily losing grip of her. There was a needy, whining noise, and it took him a second to register that it was coming from him.

He dragged her back down to him by the hips, and she landed with a grunt.

“Stay.”

He barely recognized his own voice. It sounded like someone had taken rusty knives to his throat, dragging down the length of his esophagus and mauling at his vocal cords.

“Right,” Mel said loosely. “Stay. I’ll stay.” There was a pause, and he felt her wriggle around a bit on top of him. “Can I—do you need water, though, maybe, or—”

“Mel,” he rumbled bossily. “Stay.”

He felt her deflate at this—sinking down on top of him, her hands falling back down to his chest. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry. I’ll wait.”

He kept his eyes closed as he took a few deliberate, deep breaths, in through his nose, out through his mouth, until they didn’t feel like they were making his whole chest cave in, until he felt like he had a bit more oxygen in his brain.

He opened his eyes.

Mel sat on top of him, flush-faced, chewing on her lip as she gazed down. Her hair was coming out of her braid. He could see hickies, big and bright and red, covering her neck and collarbone. He didn’t look down yet—couldn’t—but he could feel the mess he’d made, the one that she was still sitting in. A biologically improbable amount of come—half a heat’s worth, give or take.

She squirmed, inadvertently sliding herself up against his oversensitive cock. Frank hissed and pushed her down a few inches, sitting her on the tops of his thighs instead. He took a moment to mentally brace himself before propping up on his forearms and looking down.

“Oh, god,” he croaked.

Mel made a breathy noise like she was trying to force a laugh, twisting her fingers into the hem of her t-shirt, pulling it down to cover herself. “Yeah, um. I guess a condom was probably a silly idea anyway, huh?”

“Mel, fuck.” He sat all the way up and pulled her hands away, grabbing the end of the shirt and tugging it up roughly, to just above her bellybutton, giving himself a better view. She squeaked when he did it.

“Did any get inside?”

“W-what?”

“Inside you, Mel, did any of my come get inside you?”

“I-I don’t think so, I—”

Her legs twitched like she meant to close them and he put one hand down to her inner thigh quickly, stopping her before she could. She was sticky and wet there, too. He had gotten everywhere. (Something gross and primitive inside him wanted to purr with pleasure at that. And yeah, his fucking cock twitched, because of course the fuck it did, but the logical, sane parts of his brain had turned back on, so he managed to ignore it.)

“You don’t think?” he clarified frantically. “Or you know?”

“I don’t—” She shook her head back and forth quickly. “I mean I wasn’t really—”

Frank’s head dropped back briefly; he looked up at the ceiling. “Okay—shit. Okay, Mel, honey, it’s alright, just—stand up.” He slipped both palms under her so he could lift, grabbing her by the backs of her thighs. “Stand up, take those off.” He pulled at the side of her underwear.

Mel scrambled to her feet, taking a few backpedalling steps away from him and wrapping her arms around herself. “What do you mean—”

“Mel, don’t—” He reached out again as he saw her about to clamp her legs together, and she flinched violently at the movement, which made him flinch back too.

“You’re mad at me,” she whispered, not a question.

“I’m not,” he answered, forcing a gentle tone in his voice. “Baby, I’m not, but you need to take those off.” He gestured again at her underwear. “I promise not to touch you anymore, or—or look, even, if that’s what you’re worried about. But—” He swallowed hard and met her eye. “They’re soaked, honey. The longer you keep them on, the more likely it is that some of my—”

She bent down and tore them off of her, stepping through the leg of each and kicking them towards his pile of blankets. Her hands returned to the hem of her t-shirt, twisting and pulling at it in a mostly-failed attempt at modesty.

Frank closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth.

“I can go out and buy some levonorgestrel,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear her. “Just—just in case, you know, even though I really think it’s—”

“Plan B, Mel?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice even. “It won’t work. You know it won’t.”

They had disclaimers, on the terms and conditions. In the long blanket-sized leaflet of patient information that the drug company was legally required to include with every box of levonorgestrel there were several paragraphs about heat-based sexual encounters, and the reduced effectiveness of the drug. It was untested territory, mostly, because they didn’t really want to post the results. It was more profitable to let people think that maybe it did something.

“It might,” she said, sounding intensely distraught, like she knew it wasn’t true. “It might work. Maybe I should. Just in case?”

Frank’s heart was pounding again, but it was in an anxious, human way this time. He heard her shuffle a bit, sliding backwards on his hardwoods, getting further away from him. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and looked at her. He could tell that she was trying not to cry, which made it the second time in a week that he'd upset her to the point of tears. The self-loathing that had been successfully smothered by all of the sex and hormones reared its ugly head again.

Frank dragged one of the crumpled, damp blankets over himself and tried to push himself up to stand. He moved too fast and the immediate headrush almost took him down; he ended up mostly braced against the side of the bed, trying not to topple over and pass out. “I’m sorry.” His voice was still gravelly as he clutched the blanket around himself with one fist. “Don’t cry, please, you’re—you’re killing me, Mel, just—”

She made a soft noise and shrank away even further.

“Let me get you some clothes,” he stumbled out, trying to change gears. There were a thousand things he should say to her right now, the woman that had very likely just saved his life, the woman that might be carrying his kid. But his tongue felt too thick in his mouth to bumble through any of them properly, so he clenched his jaw shut tight and dug through a pile of clean laundry on the floor, instead. “Here.” He held out a pair of sweatpants. She took them without meeting his eyes.

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” she mumbled, already slinking towards the hall.

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded like an idiot. “Sure. Take whatever—anything you need.”

She wouldn’t look at him, but she wouldn’t turn her back to him either. Slowly, like a tracked animal, she backed out of the room, clutching the sweatpants to her chest and swiping her backpack off the floor along the way. Frank watched her go, uselessly, wondering if it was possible to hate himself any more than he did in this moment, here, right now.

The bathroom door clicked shut, and whatever adrenaline had been keeping his body upright seemed to get sucked out of the room with her. His knees buckled and he managed to catch himself on the edge of the dresser, vision blurring. The fever had broken, and reality had returned with a thick vengeance.

Water, his body demanded, the need suddenly urgent, perilous. The last few days he had been half-knocked out, running on nothing but his own hindbrain. The room reeked of sex and sweat and stale air under the smell of her, and it turned his stomach a bit.

He had forgotten it was like this, after the heat died off. The disgust rushing in all at once, the sudden light-headedness of dehydration and hunger undercut only by revulsion at how he had acted. He caught his reflection in the dark window and couldn’t hold in a wince. Sunken eyes, lips cracked and a little bloody, hair matted to his forehead like he’d been dragged somewhere by his feet.

Christ.

Not exactly the face of a guy who you’d want to sit down and have a calm, rational conversation with. Definitely not the sort of responsible adult man that a woman would look at and say: wow! I cannot wait to be carrying his child!

He ran a palm over his face, silently cursing at himself to pull it the fuck together, at least a little bit, for her. Mel deserved to not have to walk back in and see him like this.

He began rehearsing a speech as he bent down to ball up the ruined pile of sheets and blankets.

I’ll take care of you, it went. Whatever happens—baby or no baby, you can count on me. I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess. Into my mess. You shouldn’t have to deal with this shit, but I promise you that we will figure it out. And—fuck, thank you, also, for saving my—

He heard the water shut off down the hall and he started rushing a bit. He bent down too fast, going for a pair of clean boxers and a t-shirt and nearly blacking out in the process. He stayed crouched on the floor for a second longer than he had meant to, one hand braced against the mattress as he waited for the room to stop spinning.

When he made it back up he couldn’t help but cringe down at how disgusting he still was, covered in sweat and come, but he figured at least he would be clothed this time, when she returned. He’d be clothed, and he’d have something useful to say to her, something that wasn’t just some garbled-out half apologies that did her no good.

He kicked the blanket pile into the far corner of his room. He sat down on the edge of the bed—no, fuck, scratch that. He stood back up. He wiped his sweaty palms off on his boxers as he waited and—what the fuck, why was he just wearing boxers? He dug through the laundry on the floor again and put on the first pair of pants he found—scrubs, ridiculous, but better than being in his goddamn underwear in front of her, probably.

Then he waited. Two minutes. Three minutes. Five.

His raw throat screamed at him when he tried to clear it, mouth so dry it hurt. He shifted his weight between both legs, running the speech again: I’m going to take care of you, okay Mel?

It was probably a full ten minutes before he finally gave up and walked himself towards the closed bathroom door.

“Mel?” His voice scraped on the way out. He knocked softly at the door. “Sweetheart, you okay? You need anything?”

Silence on the other side. Cautiously, Frank turned the door handle.

The room was empty inside. On the closed lid of his toilet, she had placed his sweatpants, folded up in a neat square. The front door, when he went to go check it, was unlocked.

She was gone.

“The hell are you doing back here, Langdon?” Abbot sounded half-weary, half-exasperated, and one-hundred-percent like he already knew the answer to his own question.

Frank shrugged, his backpack hanging off one shoulder, forcing an innocent look on his face. “I realized there was something in one of my charts I might’ve missed. Figured I’d just pop in for a second and—”

Abbot stepped in front of him, blocking the view of the floor with his body. “Nice try.”

Frank shoulders drooped. He hadn’t anticipated just how slippery Mel could be when she put her mind to it. He was starting to suspect she had some sort of help, because there was no way she’d dodged him at every single shift handover for seven straight days—not when he’d waited at the lockers for a good thirty minutes past clock-out, every time.

He’d had nothing but radio silence all week from her, broken only by their one frighteningly professional text exchange earlier that day. So, driven to near-insanity, he did what any rational person would do in his situation and—yeah, okay, he sort of stalked her a little.

Just a little.

All he did was wait in his car in the employee lot for a while, parked strategically by the entrance, watching for a short blonde with hunched shoulders and a bit of a mouse-like scurry to her step. He knew better than to corner her in a dark, empty parking garage like an absolute freak, thanks.

(He waited an appropriate amount of minutes before getting out of his car and following her inside. Like a gentleman.)

Frank had been pretty sure he was playing the whole thing off cool. But there must have been something vaguely unhinged about his aura as he slunk back into the ED that evening, because Abbot clocked his entire pathetic operation in about four seconds flat.

“Dude,” Frank tried.

“Uh-uh.” Abbot shook his head, pointing at the exit. “Your shift’s over. You’ve got no business being within fifty feet of my ED right now.”

“Five minutes,” he begged, not above it. There wasn’t much Frank felt above anymore, after the week he’d had.

“No.” Abbot was terse and resolute as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Go home, Langdon.”

Frank cringed. A familiar refrain, in the mouth of yet another attending—Robby’s voice echoed in his head like a hammer to the skull.

Go home, Langdon.

He swallowed down a lump in his throat, opened his mouth to argue his case (he had points lined up, rehearsed in the car), but Abbot had already turned, walking towards the charge desk where Lena was calling for him, a more pressing crisis on the line. Dismissed.

Fine. (Goddamnit.) Fine. He’d go. He turned and skulked back out through the double doors, past the stairwell, his tail between his legs.

He smelled her before he saw her: strawberries, ripe, mouthwatering.

Mel was halfway out of the supply closet, juggling six unopened bottles of ultrasound gel in one arm as she tried to push the door closed with her foot. She looked gaunt, a little pale. Her braid was frizzing apart, the way it usually only did around hour twelve or thirteen into the shift. He could see the dark circles under her eyes from fifteen feet away.

She kicked the toe of her sneaker against the rubber doorstop, trying to flip it up while balancing the weight of the door against her shoulder.

“C’mon,” he heard her mutter, trying to unlodge it from the glossy floor. “Just—” A huff. “Please—” A pained grunt. “Move!”

She slammed her foot into it hard, and the doorstop flipped up suddenly. The heavy metal door released onto her shoulder, its whole weight dropping on her and jerking her forward, bottles of ultrasound gel clattering onto the floor. Mel made a pained, high-pitched noise, rubbing her shoulder as she bent down to her knees to pick her supplies back up.

Frank dropped his backpack to the floor and crossed the room in three long strides.

Mel’s head was tucked down, chasing the rogue bottles on her hands and knees on the dirty ED floor and muttering to herself quietly. She didn’t notice him getting down there with her, sinking down to the floor to help, until they both reached for the same bottle and their fingers touched.

She went rigid, staring at his hand under hers.

“Mel,” Frank whispered.

She shot to her feet faster than he could even blink, snatching the bottle out of his hand, stepping over him towards the doors.

“Hey, wait—” He stood, wrapping his hand around her bicep. “Wait a second, hold on—”

A sneaker squeaked on the stairwell behind them and they both froze, realizing at the same time where they were standing—out in the open, in plain sight of anyone coming down the stairs. The steps retreated, heading away from them. She let out a small breath.

“Mel, please. We need to talk,” he said, low into her ear, still holding on tightly to her arm.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were a little bloodshot. “We’re at work,” she shot back, shaky.

He pressed his lips into a thin line and cast a single glance over at the supply closet door.

“What are you—”

She didn’t finish her sentence before he’d hauled her inside, easing her back against one of the tall metal racks of gauze, letting the door fall shut behind him. He let go of her to pull the light on, and she blinked at the sudden brightness, crushing the bottles of gel to her chest like a protective shield.

She opened her mouth to say something but he held up both hands, flattening himself against the back of the door, putting as much distance between them as the closet allowed. An obvious surrender. “Five minutes,” he told her. “And then I’ll go. I promise.”

Mel closed her mouth again without saying anything, continuing to simply stare at him. It was as much permission as he was likely to get, he figured.

“I’ve been a fucking idiot,” he blurted out. “That’s obviously, you know, nothing particularly new, but this time it was… it was unforgivable.”

Her face twisted up. “What do you—”

“I just—” he interrupted, running an anxious hand through his hair. “I just wanna say some things. Okay? I’m gonna say the things I should’ve said last week, in the order I should have said them.” His voice was slightly croaky; he paused for a moment to clear it. She still looked like she wanted to protest, but he was getting a very now-or-never sort of feeling, like if he didn’t make his case in that very moment she’d never hear it, so he rushed his speech out before she could cut in again.

“Thank you,” he started. “For helping me. For not listening to me. For taking care of me. For—for putting up with me and I guess for saving my life, too, probably.”

“Please, Frank, this is really—”

“Hold on, I’ve got more.”

Her jaw clicked shut.

“I’m sorry that you got dragged into all of this,” he said next, shakier. “And sorry for—acting the way I did, making you feel like you had to—” He stopped, blinking hard a few times. “You getting hurt was the last thing I ever wanted, Mel, please believe that.”

“Frank,” she whispered.

“Last part,” he pleaded. “Last part and then I’ll let you go, I promise.”

He could hear his own pulse in his ears. “I need you to know that whatever happens,” he caught her eye, held it, “I’m gonna be there. Whatever the lab results come back with, whatever you decide to do. I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

She was already shaking her head, fast enough that frizzy strands of hair were escaping from her braid and curling around her face.

“No?” His voice cracked again on the word. “Why no, honey? No to what, what are you saying no to?”

Her mouth twisted, her expression one of misery. “Mel,” he said. “Talk to me.”

“You told me not to come,” she murmured. “You asked me to stay away and I didn’t listen and now you’re stuck with me in this—” Her voice broke. “In this situation. You’re gonna hate me,” she sniffled. “You should.”

“Jesus. C’mere, give me these.” He took the bottles from her hands and shoved them haphazardly onto the shelves behind her, some of them dropping and rolling onto the floor. He ignored them. “Fuck, Mel, I could never hate you. Never.”

She let him pull her in, his hand cupping the back of her head, his wrist resting against the gland at her neck. She was shaking, and he could feel her crying against the collar of his shirt before he could hear it.

“I knew,” Mel whispered into his neck, a miserable confession. “I knew, Frank. When it was happening—when I—when you—” Her hands scrunched at his back.

“Just say it,” he told her, petting down the back of her head. “Don’t be embarrassed, baby, just say it. It’s just me.”

She breathed out onto his neck and peeled herself away. “I could have moved away,” she admitted. “When you—finished. I knew I should’ve, I knew the—I knew the risks. I remember thinking—” She cut off, shaking her head slightly. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I didn’t move. I didn’t move and it wasn’t an accident, Frank. I—I wanted it.”

Wanted it, he repeated in his head. Wanted, wanted, wanted—

“What?” he asked sharply, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, Frank, I—”

“No, wait, just—what did you want?” he repeated, and the urgency he spoke with made the words come out gruff. Her cheeks were very red, and she tried to look away but he gripped her by the shoulders, squeezed tightly until she blinked up at him again, startled. “You wanted—a baby, Mel? You wanted… my baby?”

She nodded, a quick, guilty jerk of her chin, holding his eye contact as her brows drew in. “I wanted you.” Her fingers dug into his back through his shirt. “I didn’t even—oh, gosh. I wasn’t even thinking about a baby, not really. I just… wanted there to be something that meant you couldn’t leave me.”

She let go of him, snaking her arms away so she could wrap them around her own torso instead. “So please don’t apologize to me. I’m the one that needs to be apologizing.”

The blood was racing through his body so fast he thought his heart was maybe about to explode. “You wanna keep me?” Frank asked, voice rough. “That’s what you want?”

Her face shifted rapidly as she tried to keep up with him: guilt to confusion to trepidation to guilt again, her eyes flitting back and forth between his.

“I—”

Frank stepped forward and backed her all the way up against the metal shelves. He bent down a little then tilted his head back, opening his throat up for her, right in her face. “So keep me, then,” he said, brusque. She released a stunned breath, and he felt it hit the soft, vulnerable skin of his neck. “Bite me.”

“Frank,” she breathed. “You can’t mean—”

“I can,” he said, stepping even closer to her, crowding her in. “I do. Bite me, Mel.”

She made a broken noise, and her hands came up to touch his face, trying to press him away. “I might not even be pregnant.”

“I don’t care. Bite me anyway.”

“Frank.”

“Mel.”

She pushed again. “You don’t—you don’t really want this. You feel like you have to because of the heat, but—please don’t do this just to make me feel better. It won’t—it won’t help.”

He let her shove him back just far enough that he could look at her, covering the sides of her face with his palms and holding her still. “Stop it,” he said. “What are you even saying? I want this, Melissa. I’ve been wanting this for much longer than my fucking heat, Christ.”

She tried to shake her head, stubborn.

“Listen to me,” he insisted, gripping her face tight. “That heat—that was because of you, Mel. Have you really not figured that out yet?”

Her eyes got wide. “W-wha—”

“You left your bra at my house. After our run.”

“I did?”

“Yes. On my bathroom floor. Covered in sweat.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding confused. “That’s, um—gross, sorry.”

If he wasn’t so keyed up, he might have laughed. “Gross?” he repeated. “I don’t want to tell you what I did to it after I found it, if you think that’s gross.”

He could feel her face get hot under his hands, and he did not miss the way her pupils dilated, the way her scent spiked sharper and riper. He swiped his thumb under her eye, brushing the mole there. “Do you like that?” he asked, sort of amazed, sort of giddy at how her breath was hitching. “You wanna know what I think about at night, Mel? You wanna hear about what your scent does to me, every time you walk into my car in the morning? I’ll tell you.”

She’s just like me, he thought, a quiet thrill running through him. She likes this, too.

“Frank, what are you saying?” she asked, voice breathy and a little pouty. “Please be very clear. No more jokes.” He did laugh that time, loving how bossy she got, wondering if she got like that every time, hoping she did.

“I’m saying that I want you so badly I ripped through my suppressants, okay? I’m saying you left your dirty sports bra at my house and it drove me so insane that I went into heat. I’m already fucking yours, baby. So stop thinking about it, and just—uggnh.”

His sentence was cut off with a moan that was far, far too loud for the hospital supply closet fifteen feet from the ED doors, but he was incapable of holding it in, not when Mel was leaning forward, licking the skin on his neck and digging her incisors in deep. She slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle him as she flexed her jaw to make sure the bite took and he made another choked-off sound.

He felt it in his neck but he also felt it everywhere else: down his spine, tingling the tips of his fingers, tugging at the base of his stomach. He wanted to hold her to his throat until he bled out. He wanted to fuck her against the supply racks with her teeth still in his neck.

When she released him she did so with a wet gasp, blood and saliva running down her chin, and Frank stared openly. He reached up to touch the bite and was amazed when it didn’t hurt at all, the wound radiating nothing but pleasure. His mind felt hazy. From blood loss and—submission, maybe, something primal inside of him pounding alive at the thought of the new wound there, keeping him, marking him, scarring him, hers.

“Do me,” she rasped, wiping some of his blood off her face with the back of her hand.

He swayed, hanging onto her arms and dropping his forehead to her shoulder.

“Frank,” she said again, low and throaty. “Do me now, please.” She twisted her fingers into his hair and yanked him a little, arching back so she could press him into her neck, high up, right under her ear. Frank moaned into her skin, mouthing sloppily at her.

She shushed him, petting the spot where she had pulled. “Hard, please, okay? So it stays.”

“Baby,” he said harshly. “You’re not a—the bite won’t—it’ll go away, you know—” She was a beta, he was trying to remind her through his haze. Mating bites weren’t necessary. They weren’t commonplace. They usually didn’t take.

He could feel her shake her head, pressing him in even closer, her nails digging into his scalp. “Not if you do it hard enough,” she argued. “Just try. I want one, too. Try.”

He gasped into her throat, sucking her scent in, feeling the fresh bite at his neck pound in time with his pulse.

Mate, his body purred at him. My mate.

He brought his hands up to the back of her head, dug his fingers into her neat braid so he could angle her head back.

“Here?” he whispered, resting his teeth at the spot that she had bared for him. “Where everyone can see it?” He licked her, and her body jerked underneath him.

“Yes,” she hissed between her teeth. “Yes, yes, right there.”

“They’re gonna know,” he warned her, his lips smashed up against her pulse. “When you walk back out there. They’re gonna see it. They’re gonna smell it.” He rested his canines against her skin, letting her feel him there.

“Yes,” she repeated. “That’s what I want.”

He dragged his hand down from her head so he could press into her stomach, flattening his palm out wide just above the band of her scrub pants. He let himself imagine, for a single, heart-pounding moment, what she would look like swollen and round and carrying his child.

“Frank, please.”

He slipped the hand under her scrub top and touched her skin, then pulled in one last breath before finally, mercifully, he bit down. Her flesh gave under his teeth and Frank moaned at the same time she did, the metallic taste of blood touching his tongue, smearing across his open mouth.

“Harder,” she instructed, clawing at the back of his head.

He made a strangled, low throat noise before twisting his jaw a bit, dragging the wound open wider and deeper. She cried out a little, and for half a beat he retracted, worried he had hurt her, but she grabbed at him and kept him there, the scent of her desperation thrumming through the air so thick in the room that it almost choked him.

He’d never wanted anything the way he wanted her.

The primal side of him was singing, instructing him to clamp down even harder, to dig his blunt fingertips into her belly, to squeeze his eyes shut as he tore greedily at her skin. She owned him, and now he would own her, too. If she wasn’t pregnant yet, he hoped she’d let him fuck a baby into her soon.

When he finally retracted she stumbled backwards a little, and he wrapped an arm around her to catch her before she fell down. The movement pressed her up against the shelves with his leg slotted in between hers, and they were both wrapped up in one another so tightly that it was hard to tell where she ended, and he began. Her head lolled back and he supported it, his mouth hanging open, feeling her blood drip down his jaw, hot and sticky.

“You’re mine now,” he rasped, resting his forehead against the tip of her chin as she panted at the ceiling. “Keeping you.” He looked down at her neck through glazed-over eyes, down at the angry, open wound in the shape of his teeth. A trickle of blood spilled out, slowly dripping down the collar of her shirt. “Fuck, baby, I love the way that looks.”

Mel made a small noise, her hips twitching on his thigh.

He gasped raggedly and pressed his leg up harder. She whimpered in response, weak, her eyes fluttering, half-spent. “Yeah?” he encouraged in a pitched-up voice. “That feel good?”

“Please,” she begged him quietly, one more time.

“Yeah, I’ve got you, Mel. Grind on it. C’mon, honey, just—” His hands dropped down to her waist to help her, guiding her into a short, stuttered rhythm, flexing his quad muscle as she moved against it. “Oh fuck, yes.”

He was fairly certain that she hadn’t actually come, last week. It was one of the many things that had haunted him nonstop for the past seven days—that he’d had Mel King in his bedroom, that she’d been so wet that he swore he could still sort of smell it, even though he’d washed all the sheets and opened up all the windows and aired the room out and—he’d fucking botched it. Hadn’t even gotten her off.

He was going to right that wrong, preferably immediately.

He pushed her up further against the racks to give himself some leverage, knocking a couple bins of PPE onto the floor in the process. She made a small, squeaky sound, slapping a hand out to try to push a precariously teetering bin back on the shelf. “Ignore it,” he told her roughly, leaning in so he could breathe against the bite on her neck, huff in her scent straight from the source. “Use my thigh, that’s it.” More of her blood smudged onto his lips as he spoke into her skin.

“Frank,” she said in a low scratchy voice, drawing his attention back up to her. She clung to the back of his head with one hand and reached up to touch his face with the other, wiping a spot of blood off with her thumb. He chased her with his mouth, wrapping his lips around the digit, sucking it clean. Her breath and hips both faltered as he nipped at the pad of her thumb, and she ripped the finger away.

He was behaving like an animal again, but for once, he didn’t care.

“Kiss,” she demanded in a stern pant, then grabbed him by the hair with both hands and on an inhale pressed their wet, bloody mouths together. She tasted like blood, and saliva, and every divine thing he’d never had the imagination to dream up fully. He palmed at her neck blindly until he felt his whole hand cover the mating bite, staunching the bleeding with the heel, wanting to be covered in her. She breathed harshly into his mouth and he felt her grope around a bit, trying to mimic him. He whined when she found it, her small palm wrapping around his neck, and she hummed back at him soothingly, which only made him shudder even harder, made him realize, god, I’d really let this woman do fucking anything to me.

Do anything to me, Mel.

The orgasm that she had on his leg a few moments later didn’t seem quite as magnificent as the one she'd given him last week, when he was pretty certain he had died and then been subsequently resurrected by her hand, but it was better than nothing, he figured. Frank pulled back far enough to watch her as it happened, sensing it in the sudden jerkiness of her movements, the small, shaky noises she was making into his mouth. He studied, rapt and panting, as her head tipped back against the shelves, as her fingers clenched around the side of his neck, as she closed her eyes behind her glasses and pressed her lips together to hold back a noise. The next time they did this he’d bring her somewhere private, soundproof, and he’d eat her out until she screamed.

“Jesus,” he rumbled, scrambling to catch her as she went semi-limp, all of her muscles relaxing at once. He leaned his forehead against her sternum, feeling her chest rise and fall in heavy breaths. “Jesus fucking Christ, Mel.”

They stayed like that for another moment, her hand still on his bite, until both their chests stopped heaving so much, until he began to realize that he probably needed to put her down soon because he was crouched over her sort of weird and his back was screaming. He picked his head up to find her already looking at him, peering at him with her mouth parted, a small smile on her lips.

“Hi,” she said.

He laughed deliriously. “God, you’re hot.” The sentiment spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it, and she giggled back at him.

They righted themselves: He pulled his leg out from between hers and set her down gently by the waist. She lifted her palm off his neck and more blood oozed out underneath. Frank still felt mildly unsteady; his nostrils still burned with the sharpened edge of both of their scents. He didn’t let go of her all the way, yet.

“I can’t believe I have eleven more hours of this shift left,” Mel said despairingly as she hung off his shoulders, dropping her head back against the shelf.

Frank blinked, managing to remember where he was for a second. Right. Work. Christ.

A fresh drop of blood slipped down her neck, and he swiped at it with his finger before it stained the collar of her scrub top.

“Here,” he said, reaching into the bin above his head for gauze and alcohol wipes. “Let me disinfect this.”

His fingers trembled slightly as he fumbled with the supplies. He could feel her too, starting to shake a bit underneath him. The adrenaline was wearing off for both of them, the reality of their impulsivity settling in: mating bites in a dark closet outside the ED, half an hour into her shift. He pressed the alcohol wipe to the torn skin of her neck and she hissed through her teeth.

“Sorry,” he whispered, then squinted in the dim lighting as he meticulously cleaned off the skin, wiping away the blood. He was very careful with her hair as he taped the gauze down, making sure to brush it all out of the way with his fingers first so none of it got caught. “There.” He glanced at her. “Your turn.”

She fished a new wipe out of the bin, and when she touched his neck his eyes fluttered shut. She worked on him as she did with every patient, soft and careful, narrating every step, even though her hands still had a tremor, even though her voice sounded unsteady. Okay I’m going to disinfect the wound with alcohol now, Frank, this might sting, sorry, I’m sorry, almost done, hold on just let me—okay perfect, you’re doing great last step now, just need to secure the bandage, just—

“Mel.” He felt her jolt, her hands jumping as she fumbled to rip open the gauze packet.

“Hm?” She hummed, not looking up at him, voice high and loose. Outside the room he could hear the noises from the ED again—the swing of the heavy double doors, voices passing by on their way down the stairs, the distant beeping of a monitor alarm. Twenty minutes ago, he and Mel hadn’t talked in a week. Now they were mated.

He grabbed her wobbly hand, stopping her as she was taping down the gauze and holding her there, against his collarbone. “You okay?”

Her fingers twitched and curled around his, and he noticed that her eyes looked a little glassy. “I’m scared,” she said quietly. “About—the other thing. About what it means if I get the test results back later and I’m—” She swallowed. “Pregnant. But I’m also sort of scared of what’ll happen if I’m not, too.”

“Honey.”

“I’m serious, Frank. We didn’t talk about this, really, we just—” She gestured at his neck, then at hers. “We just did it. Like,” she pitched her voice down, dramatic, “Animals. You don’t think that’s crazy?”

The word didn’t hit him like it normally did, and Frank felt like telling her that no, actually, this was the first time he had felt at all normal in a long, long while. That it was like he could suddenly breathe again, that the beast-like thing that lived inside of him and drove him mad was finally sated, curled away in the back of his mind, comforted by the knowledge that Melissa King had decided to keep him.

“It’s a little crazy,” he said, instead of admitting all that. “But… I don’t regret it.” She blinked rapidly a few times, looking unconvinced. “I meant it, Mel, what I said earlier. I knew what I was doing here. I wanted this. That’s not just—the bond talking, or whatever.”

She looked at him hard. “You’re sure?” He blew out a quick breath of air, taking the alcohol wipe out of her clenched-up fist and using it to clean the blood off her chin, out of the corners of her mouth. She tilted into his touch.

“Listen,” he began as he did it. “I know that this is weird and confusing and—and probably scary, I guess, too. Seeing me go fucking crazy last week and now… this. But Mel—” He gripped her chin between his index finger and thumb, held her face and made her look at him.

“Every version of me wants you,” he said. “Even the bad ones.”

Her brows drew in and she pursed her lips, giving him a look that seemed mildly reproachful. “There are no bad versions of you,” she said. “There’s just you.” She traced a finger across his brow, and he fought the urge to let his eyes close at the soft sensation of it. “You don’t scare me, Frank. I’ve only ever been afraid of losing you.”

He did close his eyes then, vaguely overwhelmed by her honesty and by the sentiment itself. A small part of him still didn’t want to believe her, still resisted the notion that he was worthy of her unconditional anything. The bite on his neck pulsed, and Frank swallowed down the last watered-down dregs of his own cynicism.

“Okay,” he said, and that was it.

Mel stepped into him, tucking her face against his chest, wrapping her arms around him in an almost-too-tight hug. It took him a second to return it, still reeling a bit from her quiet earnestness. When he did—resting his cheek against the top of her head, hands running down her back—he felt her let out a breath and go slack against his chest. She said his name again, muffled into his shirt. She had to go back into the ED soon, but for now, he got to hold her.

The animal part of him purred in contentment, beckoned him to hold her tighter. This time, Frank didn’t fight it.