Getting Better // SaneGiyuu 🌻

Chapter 9

(Hello, everyone! I want to thank you for all the positive feedback. I love you all and I can't thank you enough for 4K reads! Please enjoy this chapter I've been procrastinating on for my entire spring break! I love you guys <333)

Everything was so unbearably hot.

Rengoku's insides churned with pain and sweltering heat, his head throbbing like hell. He didn't even need a mirror to know that his face was absolutely wrecked. His entire body was tingling unpleasantly.

Giyuu was sitting cross-legged in his nest, leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. Rengoku always thought he looked exhausted, so it wouldn't surprise him too much if he was asleep. He didn't quite know what to make of him. He was relatively quiet and he'd only really ever interacted with him because of Sanemi. He knew that he was an omega, and a pretty sizable part of him that he likes to pretend doesn't exist is jealous that he doesn't feel the need to hide it.

He sighed and leaned back into the mound of pillows. His head felt like it was about to explode, both from the effects of the heat-suppressants and the Tengen fiasco. Personally, he didn't think he could've been any more obvious. Sure, he'd never outright said it, but it's not exactly like he was subtle about it. At most, Tengen probably just assumed that they were very close, very affectionate friends. Rengoku felt like that was the worst part.

His stomach gurgled with nausea. He'd hardly eaten, as he'd almost rather go hungry than go into the kitchen while his father was awake. That damned man pretty much inhabited the place, going back and forth from drowning his sorrows in front of the television and scouring the cabinets for MORE alcohol. He'd been different before his wife had died. She'd been weak ever since he was born, and Senjuro's birth took a large toll on her. Rengoku knew better than anyone that his father harbored some deep form of resentment towards him and his brother for her death. He didn't think there was anything they could do that would possibly change his mind; his father never had healthy coping mechanisms and he wasn't known to be persuaded once his mind was set on something.

He felt like he was suffocating. He hated being cooped up in a room for hours on end like this, burning up and half-delirious, but if there's one thing Tengen was catching on to, it was his scent. It wasn't a coincidence, Rengoku knew that much. He'd always had strong control over his pheromones, and the scent blockers made him near impossible to detect. His self control was beginning to slip when it came to Tengen, and apparently that had gradually bled into all the other annoying aspects of his life.

He sat straight up, and looked around for his pills. He should be good to safely take another dosage now, and he could do with a breath of fresh air. The air in his room felt stale, thick with his own pheromones. But what could he do, open a window and alert every person within a quarter mile that he was in heat? He shook his head to himself and grabbed his heat suppressants out of his drawer, as well as his strongest scent blockers and a few high-grade scent patches for good measure. He gently took the used patches off of the glands on his neck and found that they were completely soaked. Giyuu was awake by now, staring at him with that blank look.

"Do you want to go get something to eat with me?"

Giyuu hummed. "Yeah, I already missed the rest of my classes. Are you sure you're feeling well enough to go out?"

He took off his hoodie and searched around the room for something that was decent and didn't reek of sweet omega pheromones. He probably had a few dozen hoodies more of Tengen's hoodies that he hadn't drowned in his own peachy scent. He pulled a fluffy gray one off of a hanger in his closet and over his head.

"Mm, yeah." It wasn't entirely a lie; Rengoku was certainly feeling better, but he wasn't entirely out of the woods yet. His heats tended to last for two or three days longer, but he wouldn't fever like he had at the start until sometime near the end of his heat.