The Omega Awakened: A M/M Omegaverse Erotic Short Fiction (Omegan Tales Book 1)
Page 11
Jackson sunk down in his seat and threw his head back, moaning dramatically.
“But think,” Ben hurried to say. “That doesn’t mean your relationship isn’t destined to work out. Every relationship takes some navigating. It doesn’t matter if you chose the person or the person was chosen for you. It all takes work, adjustment, compromise. Believe it or not, there are places in this world where you don’t have a choice one way or the other. Your parents choose or your society chooses. Those people get along just fine.”
“But we’re not those people.”
“Apparently we are, because you’re mated to somebody you don’t know. Just considering it: the starting line doesn’t indicate how successful a relationship is gonna, because bonds are like living, growing people. Sometimes they flourish for a lifetime, sometimes they dissolve and there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t panic right now. If you like him, go through the motions and see where it takes you.”
“And what if he doesn’t like me?”
Ben shrugged easily and then leaned back in his seat. “As long as he’s still with you, assume that he likes you enough to stay.”
Jackson wanted to cling to the words so desperately. They were like a small buoy in a sea of incoming troubles. Reassurance was a cold towel against his warm forehead, and it helped him cool down for a minute, just a short reprieve from his tumultuous emotions. As ridiculous as it seemed, Ben had more answers about this than Jackson (which wasn’t saying much), and that alone made Jackson want to trust him.
Still, the adrenaline in Jackson’s body didn’t taper.
Ben waited patiently for more. When it was clear that Jackson wasn’t going to speak again, lost in his thoughts and tilting his head back to stare up at the water-logged ceiling, Ben went back to his work. He took the extra step and rearranged all of Jackson’s books and binders on the table first, situating them in such a way that once Jackson finally sat up and went back to them, he wouldn’t have to struggle to reorient his materials.
The rest of the study session was a waste of time. Jackson reached into his pocket and ran his hands along the warm metal of his phone. It hadn’t vibrated. Micah was still mute.
Ignoring the strong impulse to pull his phone out and confirm that there were no messages, Jackson went back to his school work. He got through it slowly. His mood waxed and waned, and in both states Jackson felt dizzied by his own emotional overload. When it was time to go, he couldn’t confirm that he’d done a good job of any of the assignments.
But hey, he’d done an excellent job of working himself into a total fucking frenzy.
* * *
A strange fever descended quickly.
Somewhere between the hours of two and five in the morning, Jackson rolled over onto his side, forehead speckled with sweat, and he groaned into his pillow. His limbs were heavy and his skin was sensitive to the touch, so he kicked off his blankets and took a deep, heaving breath.
There was a light rustling from the bed across the room, and then Todd groused, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Jackson said automatically, despite feeling anything but.
Mindlessly, the alpha began to pat the bed for his phone, finding it hidden beneath some lump of blankets, and he unlocked it quickly to check his messages. In his inbox was a list of text messages from various people: his mother, his roommate, a random alpha from downstairs who’d heard he was in to games and wanted to play with him sometime. At the top of the list was none other than Micah. Jackson had sent a quick goodnight, just an emoji saddled alongside a ‘gn xx’ and then fallen asleep.
Before he knew what he was doing, Jackson opened it. He began to type something, erased it when the sweat from his fingers fucked up the screen, and then wiped both before trying again. The message was punctual and probably a little bit dramatic, but he didn’t have the mental fortitude to do better.
think m dying
can you come to me
This time, Jackson couldn’t wait for a response. He was too restless to do it. He locked his phone and tossed it over his shoulder, then crawled out of bed. The soles of his feet were so sore, and when they touched the cold, Jackson hissed.
“Dude, you sure you okay?” Todd croaked.
“Yeah. Just peachy,” Jackson lied.
Fine as a peach yesterday, sick as a dog today. It seemed that the timeline for discovering just how often his body could fuck him over was fairly short.
Sweat was starting to pool at the base of his skull, trickling over his skin as rivulets of moisture. Jackson smacked at them in irritation, wiping them and then looking down at the reflection of the sweat on his palms. It had been a long time since Jackson had felt so ill, though he wasn’t sure what kind of illness it was. His stomach didn’t hurt, his head didn’t ache, his body was throbbing a bit, almost as if he’d been working out in his sleep. He did feel feverish, though. His body was running hot and his mind was all over the place. Slipping his feet into his house shoes and then pulling his robe over his shoulders, Jackson went for the bedroom door.
It was almost eerie how dark the hallways were. The silence of sleeping students was almost unsettling. Jackson had never been awake this early, but he’d assumed that the dorm was always abuzz in some manner. Right now, he seemed to be the most restless student in the school, awake at the asscrack hours of the morning and roaming the hallways to get rid of his jitters.
When he made it down to the lobby, it was just as empty as the hallways had been. The couches were all reset, pillows fluffed, lights turned down low so that the desk worker could relax. The windows in the lobby were ceiling to floor, highlighting the beautiful, snow-covered landscape outside. Before moving to campus, when he’d touring the school with his mother, it had been the sheer size of the windows that had convinced him that paying the fee for dorm life was worthwhile. The building itself was comfortably modern. Though the alpha lobbies looked nothing like the lobby at the omega dorm, it was still cozy. All it was missing was a fireplace.
The young woman running the lobby, an alpha that Jackson had seen several times before but whose name evaded him now, stared at him curiously as he shuffled his way to the couch. She didn’t speak, but it was obvious as she watched him move that she wanted to.
Jackson wiggled down into the comfort of the couch and gently wrapped his arms around himself. He was burning up, shivering as the temperature around him went up against the warmth of his skin. It was so obvious that he wasn’t well. The third time his teeth chattered together, the desk worker scrounged up her courage and called softly, “Is everything alright?”
Much like he’d promised earlier, Jackson smiled over at her weakly and said, “Yeah. I’m fine. Just a bit hot, that’s all.”
“Alright. If you need anything, just let me know.”
Jackson nodded in affirmation and then went back to looking out of the window.
From then, the morning seemed to pass in a daze. It felt so dream-like; the snow was falling outside, just little specks of white that clung to the glass windows or otherwise fell onto the mounds of snow already on the ground. It was such a gentle morning. The moon was slowly sinking and the sun was creeping up to take it’s place, casting a gorgeous, orange glow over the entire campus. Jackson mused that perhaps he should’ve been waking up earlier. Micah had told him once, in an offhand conversation about something unimportant, that he’d loved the early mornings. When he could bring himself to do it, he would wake up before the sun had risen just to catch the trails of sunlight as they began to slip through the cracks of the trees.
The snow slowed to a stop. The campus was illuminated. Even the beautiful scenery couldn’t keep Jackson grounded - he felt more disoriented than ever, head lolling side to side against the back of the couch.
“Sir,” the front desk worker said suddenly.
Jackson turned so slowly that he looked unconscious. God, was his body made of stone? It felt like it was calcifying. Why was it so hard to move all of a sudden?
> “Mmm.”
“I know you said you’re alright,” the girl said, leaning over the desk with a frown on her face. Her ponytails were dangling around her shoulders and she looked a lot more serious now that the light was shining properly on her face. “But you’re looking awful bad right now. You want me to call a doctor for you?”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Well, I know you said that. It’s just…”
“Seriously,” Jackson laughed, the sound coming out low and sickly. “I’m alright. I didn’t sleep well, so I’m just… I’m all over the place, I guess.”
It was obvious that the response wasn’t enough. The alpha squinted her eyes and scrutinized him for a long minute. Then she bit her lip and pushed away from the desk, ducking behind the counter. Jackson wasn’t sure what she was doing, but her intentions were made clear as soon as she came back up with a few bottles of water, balancing them in her hands and walking them over to him. She set two of the bottles on the empty couch cushions beside him, and then cracked a bottle open and handed it to him carefully.
“Drink these. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m not,” Jackson said.
“You’re too pale to be saying that with a straight face,” she fired back. “Do you wanna step outside and get some fresh air? If you don’t have your key-card, I can buzz you back in.”
Jackson imagined himself standing outside in the terribly cold weather. He’d already been shivering all morning; occasionally, his teeth clattered so loudly against themselves that it sounded like he was munching on glass. Even though it felt like he was running a fever and that his body was too hot in all the wrong places, he couldn’t imagine himself standing outside and being any more comfortable than he was now. Jackson shook his head ‘no’ in response and then reached into the warm pockets of his robe, looking for his cellphone. It was only after a moment of searching that he realized he’d left it upstairs.
“You know what time it is?”
“It’s 7:30. You got a morning class?”
“About nine or ten,” Jackson grumbled. “So I got a few hours to sleep.”
“You sure you wanna go to that?” the girl asked. She began the trek back to her desk and planted herself in her swivel chair. ” To be honest, I’d suggest going back to your room and sleeping it off, whatever it is. A day or two of self-care can only do you good.”
“Can’t miss class,” Jackson told her. “My rut’s coming up.”
“Maybe that’s what it is. Can’t really smell it, but,” the alpha shrugged her shoulders, “stranger things have happened, right? Probably just a hormonal thing.”
Of course it would be. The thought had crossed Jackson’s mind a few times already. This was likely another glitch. He’d been going through rut for years. It had never caused him to feel as piss poor as he did right now. Considering how little admiration he had for his rut, that was saying something.
“Just let me know if you change your mind and want me to call anyone for you, okay? I don’t want you passing out on my watch.”
Jackson didn’t really want to go up to his room, though he knew it was the best thing to do, quarantining himself until he could find out what was going on.
Twenty minutes. That’s all he needed. Just a small buffer period to gather the strength necessary to get up off of the comfortable, plush cushions of the couch. The thought of walking instead of keeping his ass planted in his seat made him want to yank his hair out. He didn’t want to move, body heavy and sluggish. Though his pants legs were sticking to his skin, and the inside of his robe was damp from sweat, he assumed it was still more comfortable to stay right here than to get up and move back to his room.
When he eventually gathered the strength, it was only because the first pair of students stumbled into the lobby and flinched at the sight of him. Two young alphas, perhaps freshman, and they tilted their noses in his direction and sniffed the air loudly. One of them gasped and quickly covered their nose. The other coughed and sputtered, and then fixed Jackson with a pained, almost pitying look.
Jackson wouldn’t be able to explain how he’d managed it with his lethargy, but he shot up off of the couch the second they reacted. His brain rattled around his skull like a bag of marbles. It felt like the secondary symptoms were starting. The jitters and shivering was nothing to the budding migraine that sat at the back of his neck.
It all hurt. It wasn’t just a headache or a body ache. It was a bone-deep sort of discomfort that felt ten times worse than whatever Jackson had experienced before. He’d always gotten sick as a kid, could remember one specific bout with the flu in which his mother had swaddled him in blankets and forced water down his throat for a week. His temperature had gotten so out of whack, climbing dangerously high, that she’d made ice baths for him. He could remember shivering and crying out, the pinpricks from the temperature of the water and the ice cubes bumping into his skin, and his vision swimming.
Somehow, that experience was still eons more comfortable than whatever was going on with him now.
Jackson moved through the lobby slowly and he dragged his feet the entire way back to the hall. Going up the stairs was a chore; the slow trickle of students who were passing him along the way each looked as if they wanted to stop and help him, though they ultimately adjusted the straps of their bags and carried on toward their destinations without so much as a word.
Todd still hadn’t left by the time he nudged open their bedroom door and skulked back in.
“Dude, you forgot your keys,” Todd said quietly, “and your phone’s been going off like crazy. Where the hell were you?”
“Downstairs,” Jackson answered. His words lacked any semblance of strength. He kicked off his house shoes and crawled back into bed, moving pillows and blankets to get to his phone in the process. Once he’d coddled himself among the linens, he unlocked the phone to tackle his missed alerts. Todd had been right to forewarn him; he’d missed a series of messages and phone calls, all from one person.
Micah.
Fuck.
What’s going on?
Why would you be dying? Is that a joke?
Are you sick?
Jackson…
Hey. Please answer me as soon as you get these.
Then, after twenty minutes of no response, the omega had called. It went back and forth - time signatures on the calls and messages alternating for almost an hour.
Jackson couldn’t imagine Micah being frantic about anything outside of his heat. Maybe it was a testament to how little Jackson understood about him, but the omega had seemed so docile and so quiet, logical enough to work through his inconveniences without throwing a fuss. With the way he’d been messaging, it seemed that Jackson had struck a nerve.
It was with a sick sense of satisfaction that Jackson purred under the attention.
He hated that he’d done it. As soon as the burst of endorphins rushed through him, he tried to shut them down. It was a special kind of dickish for him to revel in Micah’s panic. To be contented by his omega’s distress - that wasn’t a thing he wanted to be known for. He’d heard about those type of alphas and he’d never wanted to become one.
Jackson
Seriously. Jackson.
Did you fall back asleep? Please answer
Missed Call: 6:58 A.M.
I’ll give it an hour
Just let me know you’re ok
please tell me you’re okay
Jackson continued to scroll, watching as the messages became more and more agitated.
It was baffling. The messages themselves didn’t read like Micah at all. It wasn’t that Jackson had so much context to go off of - the only Micah he really knew was the one that had emerged from the heat room with him, mated and content. But he remembered the man who had sat at the front of the classroom all semester, quiet and introspective, level-headed, calm. Jackson hadn’t imagined that man. Somewhere beneath the haze of compulsion, that person still had to exist.
When he reached the final message, Jackson sighed loudly.
I’m coming to you.
“I didn’t know if it was okay to check your phone,” Todd interrupted smoothly. “I thought maybe you’d gone to the bathroom so I just left it alone. Then I fell back asleep. The buzzing kept waking me up.”
“Sorry,” Jackson said. “I should have taken it downstairs with me, but I forgot.”
“Yeah,” Todd groused. “Hey, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” Jackson said, knowing that only one other person had really had the chance to ask that morning. Still, even two people fussing over him was two people too many. “I’m just tired, you don’t need to worry too much.”
“Man, I wouldn’t, but your scent is really off. And you woke up at, like, three or something this morning. I’ve been living with you all semester and you’ve never done that before. Did something happen?”
“Lots of stuff happened,” Jackson said. “I’m not sure which one would be making me feel like this, though.”
It was strange. With the confirmation from Todd that his scent was off, Jackson considered that he might actually be coming down with something bad. The thought of taking time out off of school for some run of the mill illness when his rut was soon approaching sounded like a nightmare. On top of that, he’d never been sick during his rut. Rut already felt like an illness. He couldn’t imagine having the flu on top of it.