For The Beta I Fell For (bl)

Small, Black Box

The morning light spilled across Layle's sheets like milk turned sour. Underneath it both him and Harry, only one slept soundly.

Layle woke first.

He reached for his phone before his mind could ask why. The message was still there—sent, not seen. No reply. Unread. And dead.

He stared a second longer, thumb hovering over the screen, as if waiting would make the blue ticks bloom.
They never did.

Layle checked it once again before getting in his car.
Again at noon, after his last lecture.
Again that night, when the apartment lights buzzed like flies and the silence of the message buzzed louder.

The next day, nothing.
Then the day after. This time he followed with a question mark. The mark left questioning itself.

He had a thought, then a belief after those three days of patience and anticipation that it was a prank. he didn't know why would anyone want to prank him like that and for what reason, but this seemed it.

"A fucking prank," he told himself aloud that night, brushing his teeth, the foam clinging like guilt to his lips. He didn't know who would bother to string him along. Some bitter trick by someone who knew his name but not his temper.

Someone who envied him, or probably from Keith's side of the wound.

But it had to be a prank.

What else could it be?

So he let it be

So he moved on.

—————

The fourth day after message, the world reminded him it still spun.

Harry's voice floated through his kitchen, playful and insistent.

"You're not backing out, right?"

Layle didn't even look up from buttoning his shirt. "Why would I?"

That evening, he brought Harry to meet his family. After nagging from both sides.

His mother checked her hair three times before opening the door. His father didn't say much—just looked Harry over like an item in a store and grunted a welcome.

His sister Lily was glowing, hands on her belly and face flushed, she might be having another boy. Danny hiding behind her. She said Harry looked smaller in person. Her husband, Matt, offered a polite handshake. His grip was too tight.

Dinner was loud with small talk. Harry laughed at all the right things. Layle sat with one hand on Harry's chair, fingers ghosting over the curve of it, never quite moving far.

His hand never reached under the table, never touched Harry's thigh comforting his worry. Harry sat to his right, no one told him who used to sit there.

When they were about to leave, Layle's father called the alpha aside.

The talk was short, quiet. Layle didn't repeat it.
But Harry sensed something.
He'd been accepted.

—————

The next morning at campus, the whisper began.
"I think Layle's dating now."
"That omega—Harry, right? He's kinda hot."

The rumor moved through halls like pheromones—pleasant or rancid, but always fast, always gone.

Keith leaned against a courtyard wall, a book in his hand, pages still clean. Under his collar, his blouse, the cuts of that danned night still itched, hidden beneath a skin of sanitizers. The bruises hadn't faded yet.