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redamancy

A soft knock at the bedroom door interrupts the quiet ballad Eddie picks off the strings of his guitar, and he drags his attention away from the instrument, nervously scenting the air before he even thinks about standing up. While Joyce promised that Nancy would stay in Jonathan's bedroom after she'd picked up the scent of Eddie's coming rut, he has not a single reason to believe she might have come to rip off his balls.

Not that it's her fault, and he gets that. Jonathan's pregnancy makes this awkward and difficult for all of them. An alpha usually becomes more protective and defensive when their omega is pregnant, and the situation that has led to all of them living together only naturally pushes the stressors that much higher for all of them. Eddie doesn't even want to be here right now, even though the bedroom smells like Will, a comfort in and of itself. What he wants to do is bolt, get some fresh air. Maybe even go back to the trailer.

He scents the air with timid twitches of his nose, frowning when he picks up the unmistakably sweet and fresh aroma of apple pie slipping beneath the door. There is absolutely no way in hell that Will is on the other side of the door, given that Eddie told Joyce to make it abundantly clear that Will didn't have to come home early.

But of course he had. Eddie sighs and squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head a little as he stands to deposit his guitar into the desk chair he'd just been sitting in. He shouldn't have had Joyce call Will at all. "You know, I told your mom you didn't have to come home."

"Are you saying you don't want me here?" The question comes so quickly that it seems almost automatic, and Eddie nearly trips over his feet in his sudden haste to get to the door, because what the hell does Will mean to ask something like that?

He fumbles with the door handle, reminding himself that he has to unlock it before he wrenches the entire thing open and risks busting the lock and the hinges. Right now, in pre-rut, he could do just that, he thinks. "Since when do I not want you with me? But you were hanging out with your friends. You don't need to come home just for me."

"You're my alpha, Eddie." Will sighs plaintively at him, and Eddie bites back a snort. "Of course I came home to be with you. Besides, rut can sneak up on you if you aren't careful."

"Who told you that?" Finally, Eddie manages to twist the lock. He pulls the door open as quickly as he can, not wanting to let his scent seep into the rest of the house any more than it already has. Especially when Nancy is just down the hall with Jonathan.

Will stands on the other side of the door in the same clothes he'd worn when he left the house; a simple navy sweater and a pair of khaki pants, his hair a little ruffled, likely from the bike ride home. When his nose twitches slightly, his pupils visibly dilate, the black eating up a small ring of the rich hazel of his irises. "That doesn't smell like pre-rut."

"If you think I'm supposed to smell less intense right now, you are in for a rude awakening, baby." Eddie takes a step back into the room to let Will inside, closing the door behind him quickly and twisting the lock once again, just for safety. "Wayne always had to leave the trailer when I went into rut because it's pretty intense. Hope it's not, like, bad to you or anything. Not that you seem all that bothered by my usual scent."

Instead of answering him, Will kicks his sneakers off in front of the closet and shrugs out of his sweater; his shirt tries to come with it for a second, revealing the dip in his spine before Will yanks it back into place. "I'm just saying that you smell like you're a lot closer than you were letting on on the phone. You can be honest with me, you know."

"I am being honest. Do you have any idea how good you smell normally? You're probably going to knock me dead when you go into heat." Eddie leans his back against the door, arms folded over his chest, drumming his fingers on his bicep as he considers the room.