BAY #2
"Sorry guys, thanks for the offer, but I gotta go…"
I weave through the crowd, leave the club, and return to my hotel room.
Yeah, this lifestyle definitely isn’t for me.
In the evenings I text Alex or we talk on videocalls.
The next days go by the same way, we travel with The Days, we play intros, and then there are parties I don’t attend, even though the guys from my band sure don’t skip them, and they’re not always in great shape the next morning.
After a few times of struggling to wake them up for rehearsal, the atmosphere between us gets tense.
It finally blows up into an argument, with only Malik on my side because he’s the most responsible of them.
I call them out for partying instead of focusing on why we’re here and trying to make a good impression, and I find out I’m stiff and boring and don’t understand what networking is, and that I should be doing it if I want a career instead of hiding like some prude in my room.
So the atmosphere between us is poisoned.
Malik is the only one who seems to get where I’m coming from, and he tries to cut back on partying, but the rest of them don’t give up even one night until the end of the tour.
After the first week, during intro performances it’s basically just me and Malik, because the rest of the guys are useless, so we pick songs with simple backing tracks and play as a duo.
All of this only convinces me that a band is always a liability.
Five days before the end of the tour, I get a message from Alex saying he won his chess tournament. He sends me a short video and then a voice message.
"You won’t believe it, Bay… today for the first time I sensed someone else’s Allure.
I think my glands matured. Throughout the whole tournament I kept feeling like everyone smelled awful.
I didn’t understand what was going on, and then when I got my award there was no doubt, an alpha and an omega congratulated me, their scents were really strong and completely different, it wasn’t perfume. I think this is it…!"
I listen to the message several times, realizing that maybe I have something similar to tell him, because for the last week I’ve been subtly sensing the scent of my bandmates, of the tech crew, of the fans we signed autographs for, partly blaming it on the fact that I never had such close contact with big groups of people before, and also on the fact that my bandmates weren’t exactly the cleanest.
I hesitate to tell him, deciding to wait a few days to test it and be sure.
The next day after the concert there’s a short meet-and-greet with fans in one of the hotel buildings, The Days sign their albums, and there are photos and merch with us too, and plenty of people want our signatures.
That’s when I start focusing on the scents of other people, learning to differentiate them, studying their personal notes.
And yeah, something is definitely happening, alphas don’t smell attractive to me, a lot of them actually stink, omegas smell much nicer but I still feel a kind of pushback, but the biggest thing is that I can’t sense any unique note from betas at all, just cosmetics or regular sweat or, at most, something super vague.
The difference is striking to me. Of course I still can’t catch the scent of every alpha or omega, some of them use suppressants, especially the staff, but something is shifting. There’s definitely a change.
The last three days of the tour are an explosion of smells.
They hit me from every direction and most people reek to me.
I feel like wearing nose plugs because it’s so overwhelming.
I remember reading about this once, how the first days of gland activation can be almost traumatic, the sensory overload so intense it can lead to headaches, nausea, and dizziness.
I send Alex a text.
"I think we really are synced, because I’ve started smelling things too and it’s almost too much. Honestly, I get why so many people use suppressants…"
Alex replies with a row of exclamation points.
"I can’t wait to scent you… Grapefruit!"
I stare at that message, feeling a strange twist in my stomach. I really hope everything will be okay.
On the last night before the return trip I can’t sleep. I toss around, stare at the ceiling, and my whole body feels tense, like it’s bracing itself for something difficult.
In the morning I take a long shower and rinse off every trace of product. I don’t even use body wash. I scrub my skin with a sponge because I don’t want anything interfering with my scent.
Then we say goodbye to The Days. They thank me for joining the tour, but I know they also have plenty of complaints about the band, and I don’t blame them. The goodbye is short.
A car picks us up around nine, and I know that by one I’ll be home.
Where Alex is waiting for me.
Every hour feels endless. I have my journal with me, the pink one, and when no one is looking I write an abstract poem.
‘Scent of you’
Your red lips in a shade of sin
Strawberries in the forest grass
You call to me through your silky skin
Whispers of wind in a mountain pass
Your hair glowing, purple brass
Your neck sun kissed and pristine
Fingers playing on the bass
Pale and golden, sweet like gin
Swirling slowly down the glass
Nothing can come between
Us.
I keep the tone abstract and fleeting, like a musical impression drifting through my head the way my longing for Alex keeps rising.
Then I stare out the window, not listening to the guys, who are already thinking about the colleges they got into. Most of them chose music programs.
Malik is the only one who isn’t planning on going. His brother runs a club and Malik wants to play there.
He knows he has a future waiting for him.
At one point Decan leans in and says, "I think your glands really matured. I can smell your Allure. It’s kind of like grapefruit."
I freeze and stare at him. "Grapefruit?"
How could Alex have guessed that?
"Yeah, something like that."
"I think we’re somewhere between low and half, you and me." He winks.
But I ignore that. Compatibility between low and half is common, the so called neutral baseline.
I bite my lip and fall into thought. I can’t wait for Alex to discover he wasn’t wrong, that he really sensed it. It’s one more sign that we might be TM. I let myself think it again, a little braver this time.
We finally reach the city and drive along the street beside the campus, the one that leads to the neighborhood where my and Alex’s house stands.
We stop and I grab my instruments. I say goodbye to Malik, and to the other guys I just lift a hand. I doubt we’ll ever see each other again.
I push open the gate and follow the path to the door, enter the code and step inside.
And it hits me.
The house is filled with a horrible, choking smell that almost makes me gag.
I step in and hear Alex’s footsteps thundering down from the second floor.
I close the door behind me while fighting waves of nausea.
What is happening, where is this smell coming from?
It’s like some heavy chemical blend, something between powder and a biting detergent, and it’s literally hard for me to breathe, to take a deeper breath, the scent is so sharp and stinging.
"What the hell," I choke out.
Alex stops two steps away from me, and with the shift of his body and the movement of air another wave of that awful smell hits me, that biting detergent stench like half a chemical plant venting straight into this house.
"What the fuck…"
There’s a grimace of disgust on Alex’s face.
"What is that stench?" he asks, his lips trembling.
"What stench?" I ask, but a part of me already understands what just happened.
"That metallic, bitter reek…"
We stare at each other, and understanding forces its way into our minds, slow and unwanted, both of us fighting it until it finally settles on us in the very same moment.
"Are we incompatible?"
Alex’s whisper sounds louder than if he had screamed it at the top of his lungs.
My head spins.
"That’s impossible," I groan. "We are… we are perfect," I whisper as my knees give out beneath me, and I drop to the floor, Alex doing the same.
It feels like life drains out of me in that moment.
"For fuck’s sake, impossible, how is this possible? I’ve smelled plenty of incompatibles before, but this scent… it’s unbearable."
"It’s like the smell of death and blood and metal all mixed together…"
I press my hands to my face.
"Suppressants, Alex, we’ll have to use strong suppressants…"
I look at him and he’s deathly pale, tears starting to run down his cheeks.
"But how… what the hell, this is unreal, how can this be true, tell me how!"
We’re both crying, tears falling one after another, and I can barely see Alex’s shape, he’s dissolving in front of me.
Being incompatible isn’t just an ugly smell. It means lack of acceptance from society and families, it’s grounds for divorce, it’s a massive risk of genetic defects in any children.
Incompatibles simply aren’t meant to be together, their relationships always end in a breakup, everyone knows this and no one questions it. There are no exceptions.
Alex slowly crawls toward me, dragging himself forward on hands and knees, reaching out his small hand toward mine.
"Suppressants," he whispers. "We’ll survive this, Bay. I’m not giving you up, we’ll take suppressants."
I reach out wanting to take his hand, wanting that gesture of connection.
But the moment our skin touches, we both experience something like an epileptic shock.
We’re literally thrown apart!
We tremble like we’ve been electrocuted.
"What the hell," I groan, pulling myself off the floor where I landed. Alex fell too, but in disbelief he reaches out again, and I reach out again.
But I refuse to give up. This time I go even further and pull my T-shirt off.
Alex seems to understand. He pulls his T-shirt off as well, his face tense.
We need to find out if it’s about skin-to-skin contact.
When our clothes hit the floor, I throw myself toward him and pull him into my arms, our bodies pressing together.
I immediately regret it.
Pain shoots through my body, even more horrible, intense, and blinding.
It throws me back nearly six feet, as if his skin is charged with a million electric needles.
When it was just his hand and we were still clothed, it felt like bee stings piercing into our palms, but now it’s like a hornet’s nest pressed against our chests…
"Oh my Fate, oh my Fate," I whisper because I understand that suppressants won’t help us.
It's too much.
Too much…
Then… I pass out. Shock and pain swallow me whole.
When I regain consciousness I’m still lying on the floor beside Alex.
It’s already dim, but he’s awake, and that horrible smell still hangs in the air around me.
Alex is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.
His phone lies beside him, the screen glowing faintly in the half-light.
He sees my eyes open and glances at me. His eyes are swollen and red.
"I read about cases like ours," he says in a voice I hardly recognize, like it’s coming from a deep grave.
"It’s very rare and described in medical literature as Reversed True Mates. Extreme incompatibility cases, you could say the far end of the spectrum. As if the genetic clock turned one click too far."
Reversed True Mate. The fuck! The highest level of incompatibility?
I don’t say it out loud. I can’t.
My mind is blank, a black void opening wider and wider with every word he speaks, hungry, ready to swallow and tear me apart.
"For people like us there is no chance to have children, and no chance to touch each other with bare skin, even with suppressants. Our touch will hurt us. According to these articles we’ll start to hate each other."
I’m still silent, my throat feels caught in an iron ring.
It feels like the floor beneath me is collapsing.
I’m falling into the void, falling into darkness.
Everything Alex gave me for four years, everything that kept me afloat, his energy, his sweetness, his perfection, it is all being taken from me now, and I keep falling, lower and lower, knowing that at the bottom there is only being shattered into nothingness.
"There is no chance for us, Bay… no chance," he says.
"Stop. Don’t say that, there has to be some chance."
Alex pushes his phone toward me, but I don’t take it.
"I don’t accept this, I refuse to accept it, I will never accept this, Alex," I say with a breaking voice.
"You don’t understand. Our case is the worst. We’re not simply incompatible, we are complete opposites. Our bodies will never match."
"Don’t say that," I whisper. "Don’t say it out loud. It hurts."
And again I lose consciousness because I cannot accept this reality, my mind pushes away from it like a drunk man pushing off walls, staggering, falling, hitting the ground again.
When I wake again we’re still lying the same way, but it’s even darker. Alex is quiet, unmoving.
But this time understanding rises inside me.
I finally reach that state, as if while I was unconscious my mind carved tunnels, processed everything, formed the truth I was afraid to say. It’s the end.
It’s simply the end.
I know what I will have to do, there is only one path for me.
I sit up. I see my backpack lying nearby, my pink diary about Alex sticking out of it.
I pull it out and something inside me surges.
Four years in love with the perfect boy, and Fate just erased them.
It gave everything and then took everything back.
In a sudden wave of anger I grab the edge of the diary and rip it apart, tearing it into pieces. I don’t know why, I take it out on it because it represents the years that are now dissolving into nothing. I tear it, shred it, throw it on the floor.
Alex curls in on himself but says nothing. He’s pale and quiet.
I stand and go to the closet where I already brought most of my things, take them out and pack them into suitcases.
Alex still lies on the floor, motionless.
I place the suitcases by the door.
I open my phone and make a transfer.
"This house belongs to you now, Alex. All the money I earned on this tour and the previous concerts, I just transferred it to you."
Alex is still silent, saying nothing, and I have the feeling he’s on the edge of passing out again just like I did earlier.
"Goodbye."
The worst word imaginable. It cuts me in half, guts me out.
I force it out like a groan, and I leave the house with my suitcases.
Silence is the only thing that sees me off.