The buzzing stopped. He lay there with the vibrator resting against his thigh, his cock still hard against his stomach, and breathed out.
After a minute he sat up. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and put his feet on the lino. The cold of the floor came up through his soles in a way he was glad of. The toy went through to the bathroom with him. He washed it under the tap with the unscented soap, dried it on a clean flannel, and walked back to the bedroom. The bottom drawer stuck on the runner the way it always did. He lifted it past the warp, put the box back where it lived under the jumper he didn’t wear, and slid the drawer shut.
His mobile lit up on the floor by the bed.
It was Lysander again, sending a photo of a small green lizard on a balcony railing, with a caption:daddy look at this little man!! his name is geoffrey
Colin sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Geoffrey for a long time.
Hello Geoffrey,he typed.Behave yourself for my Lysander.
He set the mobile down on the pillow beside him and lay back on top of the sheet. He’d ring the council in the morning about the heating in the flat.
Chapter Four
A note before this one: Colin’s heat onsets in public, with unbonded alphas nearby. There’s also a brief memory from when he was fourteen that references past abuse experience.
? ? ?
Colinstood in his kitchen at half seven in the morning, gripping the edge of the worktop, and tried to talk himself out of the only option.
Nothing was working. He’d already drunk a pint of cold water at the tap, splashed some of it on the back of his neck, and stripped down to a vest and pyjama bottoms. None of it had shifted the heat under his skin. The sweet smell coming off him had thickened in the closed flat overnight, and even with the kitchen window propped open the air was still cloying.
He couldn’t get on a bus like this. He couldn’t stand on a platform on the Victoria line, or in a carriage of strangers, broadcasting that he was slick and ready for anyone with the inclination to give him a go. The public health clinic he went to was four stops and a fifteen-minute walk away, which under ordinary circumstances was nothing, but today might as well have been located in Brighton.
The only option he had left was to call Stephen.
Colin closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the cupboard door. Stephen was going to fuss. He was going to be overbearing and do his best possessive alpha impression. But his baby was his only option…
He picked his mobile up off the counter and rang his oldest son.
Stephen answered on the second ring. “Daddy? You all right?”
“Morning, love.” Colin kept his voice even. “Bit of a favour to ask. I know it’s a work day.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’swrong. I just need a lift to the clinic, if you can take an hour or so out of work.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Colin braced himself for the onslaught of care that he knew was about to rain down on him.
“Why do you need to go to the clinic? Have you got a temperature? Are you achey? Is it your chest, because you said last winter that cough was nothing and it turned out to be —”
“Stephen.”
“— and there’s that thing going round the office. Half of my department’s been off. I think it’s another COVID variant, they’re saying it’s a sneaky one this time. One that doesn’t show on the lateral flow until day three —”
“Stephen, love.”
“Have you taken your temperature? Have you got paracetamol in? Because I can swing past Boots on the way, it’s no bother, I’d rather you have it than not have it.”
“It’s not COVID.”
“How do you know that, daddy? Have you already taken a test?”
“It’s an omega thing,” he said, knowing his omega son would understand.
“Oh,” Stephen said, quiet now. “Oh, daddy.”
