The Technicality of Teeth

Enough

Steve dropped. Hard. As soon as he climbed into the car with Eddie to travel the ten minutes he'd evidently been from home, he could feel it happening. His tongue got heavier and heavier with each passing second until even the simplest speech was fumbling and strange. At one point he opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a pathetic little wheeze. Eddie just put his hand on Steve's knee and hushed him, reassuring him that everything would be fine soon.

Steve was trying to believe that, even as his body acted on its own, pulling his knee away from the touch of Not Alpha. Even as Steve tried not to notice the way Eddie's frown deepened and his breathing got unsteady. But the problem was that he did flinch, and he did see Eddie's eyes grow misty all over again as a result. So it was hard to believe that things were going to be okay when they were so very very not okay right then. Hard to believe when Steve returned his knee to where it had been Eddie didn't make any moves to touch him again. Hard to believe when they got home and Eddie opened the car door like he usually did but he didn't put a hand on Steve's back. Didn't guide him inside by his elbow. He stayed close, close enough that Steve could feel the warmth of his skin even through his shirt, but offered no comforting touch.

They both knew it would only make things worse.

"Go to bed, Imzadi," he murmured, trying to keep the sadness from his voice and from his scent. Because he was brave and perfect and wonderful and Steve loved him even if that love sent a spike of panic through his nerves. "I'll bring in something for you to eat. I could hear your stomach all the way home." He forced a laugh through his nose but Steve couldn't reciprocate. His feet were heavy and clumsy, he was caught somewhere between panic and sorrow, and all he wanted to do was fall into his nest and cry.

Except, he realized as soon as his head hit the pillow, his nest didn't smell right. Not at all. Not even close. It was lemons and sugar and jasmine and rain. It was apples and cinnamon and violets and vanilla and ylang ylang and roses. It was pack and it was home but it was wanting. It didn't have one whiff of what Steve's biology was screaming more. Not one whiff of smoke or of seawater or of pears.

Steve shuffled the nest around. He reorganized the carefully constructed and maintained structure. He moved and shifted and eventually dug in his searching for the scent that he needed. He burrowed into the sides and then when he reached the structure of the foam framework, he kept digging. Kept digging his fingers and his nails into the sides until he heard the fabric rip and he found the foam interior. Pulled that out too because it was in the way.

Eddie's hands on his shoulders made him wrench away and hiss acid and venom all over until he was cowering in the corner of the nest, now a horrible, awful mess of scent tokens and foam. He carried the sound until it died from lack of air in his lungs and then he pushed it further because he couldn't help it. And Eddie, because he was brave and perfect and wonderful, backed out of the nest and back onto his feet, but didn't leave the room. He only stood with his hands up where Steve could see them and whispered, "hey, hey. It's only me, Imzadi. Only me."

Steve mewled because he wanted to be happy to see him. He wanted Eddie to crawl back into a nest he hadn't had to be invited into for years. He wanted to wrap himself around Eddie and trade acts of tenderness with him. Wanted to clean his stitches and put ice on his swelling eye while Eddie fed him little bits and spoonfuls of the food he'd brought and let whatever it was that held his heart in a vice grip pass, but... his heart just wouldn't slow down. It wouldn't stop thrashing against his ribcage and now the aching in his back and his head made him want to throw up.

"Yeah, I get it," Eddie muttered, and Steve wanted to hiss again. There was no way he could get it. Eddie was blessed to be a Beta. Blessed to never have to fuck with any of the bullshit biology pitfalls that Alphas and Omegas had to deal with. Blessed to live a life free of designation complications.