"Fuck." I tip my head back and groan. "I hate those things. They make everything taste like cardboard."
"Better than announcing to the entire team that you're in love every time she walks by."
"I'm not in—" My scent spikes again. Quentin raises an eyebrow. "Okay, fine. Blockers. Cardboard taste. Worth it."
iris
AWeekLater
The coffee cup is doing most of the heavy lifting today. Practice is in full swing, the team running drills in the February cold while I sit on the aluminum bleachers with my clipboard and my laptop and a cup of black coffee that I haven't actually sipped from in twenty minutes.
It's pressed against my face instead, the steam curling up past my nose, because every time Milo laughs on the field or Quentin makes a tackle, my scent warms and sweetens and broadcasts exactly what I'm thinking about to anyone with a functioning nose.
Which, on a football field full of Alphas and Betas, is everyone.
So the coffee stays close. A scent shield disguised as a caffeine habit. Nobody questions it. The team bookkeeper who drinks too much coffee is a far less interesting story than the coach'sdaughter, who can't stop her scent from going soft every time the Vark twins come within fifty feet of her.
Milo catches my eye from the field, his helmet tucked under his arm, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He grins at me, and I have to look down at my clipboard and pretend to be deeply invested in equipment costs before my face gives me away. My pen marks a number I'll have to erase later because I wrote a seven where a four should be.
Quentin doesn't look at me the entire practice. That's how I know he's aware of exactly where I'm sitting. When he lines up for the next rep, his position shifts just slightly, angling him toward my section of the bleachers. Subtle enough that no one else would catch it. I catch it.
The week since the auction has been the strangest of my life. I thought my attraction to the twins would fizzle out like all my relationships do but it hasn’t.
Everything has been really,reallygood. For the first time in a while, ordinary moments suddenly have depth to them because you're sharing them with people who see you. Not the version you've constructed, not the role you're filling, but the messy, complicated, sandal-wearing reality underneath.
Milo sent me a photo during his anatomy lecture three days ago. His textbook, open to a diagram of the skeletal system, with a heart drawn around it in red pen and the caption "thinking of Q." I laughed so hard in the middle of the library that the girl at the next table shushed me. Quentin's response, when Milo forwarded it, was a single period. No words. Just a dot. Milo interpreted this as "profound emotional acknowledgment." Quentin said it was a typo. It was not a typo.
Two nights ago, a study session at my apartment turned into Quentin quizzing himself on the bones of the hand while I sketched at the kitchen table. Milo was sprawled in my nest withhis own textbook, providing increasingly wrong answers to every question Quentin asked out loud.
"Metacarpals," Quentin said.
"Bless you," Milo replied.
"That's not—"
"Gesundheit."
Quentin threw a pillow at him. Milo caught it, tucked it behind his head, and continued reading upside down with his feet against the wall. I drew both of them while they argued about whether the hyoid bone counted as part of the skull. It doesn't. Milo was very committed to his position that it should.
Yesterday, between second and third period, I pulled Milo into an empty classroom by the front of his jacket. His back hit the door, his hands finding my hips immediately, his head tipping back against the wood. "Someone's going to catch us," he whispered, his scent already going sweet, his fingers tightening on my waist.
Those moments, the stolen ones, they're what I think about when I'm sitting here pretending to care about cleat budgets. The private architecture of a relationship that nobody knows exists, built in text threads and late nights and empty classrooms, all of it invisible to the people around us.
The whistle blows, signaling a water break, and the team disperses toward the sideline. I keep my eyes on my laptop, typing numbers that may or may not be accurate, the coffee cup positioned strategically at my side.
A shadow falls across my screen.
"Hey, Iris." Chad's voice carries a particular blend of confidence and entitlement that makes my skin crawl. He drops onto the bleacher beside me, close enough that his knee almost touches mine. A water bottle dangles from his hand, the Alpha breathing hard from the drill, his sandy hair dark with sweat and still somehow shellacked into place.
"Chad." I don't look up from my screen. I haven’t had to deal with Chad or Kevin personally since the auction but there’s been a lot of glaring and huffing. They puff out their chests like fucking birds trying a mating dance and constantly pick on Milo during drills.
Milo thinks it’s funny. Quentin looks like he’s going to blow a fuse but neither he nor I can do anything about it unless we want to reveal that the auction night stemmed into more.
"So." He takes a long drink, making me wait, like the pause is supposed to build anticipation. "How was your charity date? With the Vark twins?" He clicks his tongue as he takes another swig. "Must've been interesting. A Beta and an Omega. Together. On a date with an Alpha." He’s asked the question before and I pushed it off but mostly because I’ve made it a point not to stay in one place.
I’ve let down my guard lately. "It was fine. Thanks for asking."
"Justfine?" He leans closer. "Because I noticed you all left together after the auction. Seemed like more than fine."
