12. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Rollie
Mmmm. I wake up in my fur to the familiar dim pre-dawn light of my cozy den, utterly content at being surrounded by the combined scents of mate and home. If I didn’t have a full bladder urging me out of bed right this second, I’d snuggle back down next to my mate and put off the need to return to the human world a little while longer.
My inner animal isn’t entirely convinced that I really need to go all the way to the bathroom for that, but I have enough of my human faculties to know better. Even if we already need to wash all the evidence of my heat from the bedding.
My raccoon huffs about silly human sensibilities while my human side twinges with all the complicated human emotions about what might be my only natural heat being undoubtedly over. My raccoon is more practical. Pee first. Feelings after.
I stretch and Seb chirrups a soft protest at being disturbed. I pause, warm all over at knowing he is still snuggled next to me, then ease myself out from under him. He grinds his beak and resettles his feathers with a sound like rustling leaves.
I glance back at him, regretting leaving the warm, dozy comfort of our cuddle nest. Seb tucks his beak behind one wing and continues to sleep. I watch him for a long moment, wishing I could just stay here with him. Stretch out the dwindling moments before we have to get back to reality and all our outside obligations.
It would be easier to let go if I felt more solid in knowing I’d have more of this shared domesticity. Years of getting to watch my mate sleep or join him in the bed or wake him by preening his soft, glossy feathers to look forward to. That’s still up in the air. Still left for us to discuss.
My bladder urges me out of bed though. I shift as I hop out of the bed, landing on my human feet with ease. I dig my phone out of the mess of discarded clothes on the floor, then grab the first clean PJs I find in my drawers to change into. If I get dressed then I have to stay up and deal with what happens next.
There’s so much to sort out though, and part of me wants to cling to the fantasy spell Seb and I wove while I was in heat. A shared future. It’s so tempting to just get back in bed with him, and pretend for a while longer.
No more putting off the hard conversations that we should have had years ago. Now that I’m more lucid, I desperately need a shower. Not that I don’t want to smell like Seb. I do, but my hair being crunchy with cum and slick is a bit much. It will be easier to face the serious conversations looming over us if I don’t smell like he fucked me seven ways from Sunday.
Ugh. I fight back the preemptive grief of knowing exactly the kind of intimacy I stand to lose with Seb if our conversation goes poorly. Not focusing on that now. Not until he’s awake.
For now, I can focus on more practical matters. A shower is just the beginning of the cleanup I need to do after spending fuck knows how long in bed together—I reach to check the date on my phone, except the battery is completely drained.
I snort and shake my head at my priorities with the heat hormones driving my choices. Yeah, charging it didn’t cross my mind once Seb got here. So, phone, shower, and breakfast. Good plan.
I shuffle to the bathroom and plug my cell into the charger by the sink, then adjust the water while I make a mental to do list to keep from dwelling on my growing anxiety over the unknown. Seb’s hair products next to mine make me weepy at the thought of their potential absence. Enough, I am not going there.
I get out a fresh towel and step into the water. How many times have I taken for granted that I can join Seb in here? How much longer will that last if—nope, I’m not borrowing trouble.
I adjust the pressure setting on the shower head down to narrow jets that sting my skin and distract me from my thoughts. It’s only a limited success as I lather up the dregs of the shampoo and make a mental note to pick up more at work. Which reminds me I don’t even know when my next shift is.
Once it’s a reasonable hour, I need to figure out how much work I missed and call Harvey. Not to mention calling my endocrinologist to figure out what the hell happened. I shouldn’t be having a heat. Even with the synthetic inducers Seb and I fooled around with, it took more than the usual dose to get even a fraction of the effects I had with this one.
So something weird and probably not great caused this and I should probably stop taking Seb’s HRT, even if it wasn’t doing fuck knows what to me. I shiver at the icy dread of just how catastrophic of a warning sign the heat could be. Not going there. Borrowing trouble I can’t control is pointless.
So I focus on what I can control. The rough scrape of Seb’s mesh bath sponge thing scouring my skin. A million tiny tasks that I can plan. The fridge probably needs a deep clean and I need a meal plan for the week and a plan to get the time off I might need for medical stuff while not further overburdening my coworkers by making them cover for me again so soon after an unplanned heat leave.
None of that really matters right now. We have a few shifters who are more than happy to pick up extra hours. Harvey isn’t going to be upset that I needed heat leave, the store has always had a generous policy around that.
My static human doctor will probably scold me for going around him to get omega HRT after he told me it might exacerbate my underlying hormonal imbalances that my human HRT is meant to control, but that’s nothing new.
Only now I can’t keep going around his human-centric biases when he ignores that I’m not a static human; there is no treating the human parts of me if he’s ignoring that all of me is a shifter. An omega shifter who feels wrong in my skin without the hormones Seb sacrificed so much to give me.
Fuck. I crank up the heat until the jets of water burn. That’s better. Mostly. Can’t think when the water is searing away my troubles. Just like how Seb buries his despair in pain he can control.
How many times have I stepped into this shower to hold him together after he breaks himself apart? I’ve gotten so used to him being part of the fabric of my life that I’ve accepted a status quo I don’t think I can handle going back to now.
For years, the good times when I’m living my best life with my best friend at my side have been worth supporting Seb through the times when he gives in to his worst impulses. But the good times seem to be getting shorter and further apart and now I’ve had a taste of what it would be like to have him in my bed as a lover rather than the best friend I occasionally share an alpha with.
How many more times can I handle him shoving me away one minute, then coming home to snuggle next to me, smelling of a stranger and hollowed out by the things he does to exorcize his demons?
I don’t dare to let myself believe that we can continue this newfound level of intimacy, but I can’t handle too much more of this dance of total intimacy and retreat with him. Two steps closer before he launches himself into his usual depression spiral of unhealthy coping mechanisms. Never knowing when he’s going to run from what he can’t face and leave me behind with my heart on a platter for him all over again. One way or another, I need to break my part of our toxic cycle.
I love him too much to watch him hurt himself any more. Is he going to punish himself for this beautiful interlude by taking bigger risks? Can I handle standing by and watching him self-destruct and knowing I lit the fuse this time? What choice do I even have in that? Other than walking away before I get a front-row seat to him unraveling?
I turn my face into the hot, high-pressure jets, letting it pelt into me until I can pretend it’s the shower and not my own tears stinging my eyes. Once I start crying, I can’t seem to hold anything back.
Great wracking sobs that flush away all the festering rot of swallowing down my emotions around Seb shake my entire body. I love Seb and watching him hurt himself hurts me. It hurts too much to keep doing it. And I can’t keep waiting to see if he’ll ask for the help he needs on his own.
As much as I love the friendship we’ve built our shared life around, I need to know exactly where I stand with him. With or without the hottest sex marathon of my life that we just shared, I want what we have to be my future. But only if he can commit to it too. Only if he can stop punishing himself for things he couldn’t have ever controlled.
I cry until the hot water washing over me turns tepid. It’s a catharsis I didn’t realize I needed to let go of all the ways that keeping the peace and silencing my own needs has hurt. A release valve on the anger and resentment over him withholding information about the HRT he shared with me.
I needed that. A way to reset my emotions to a place of calm where I can have a conversation with Seb when he’s awake. I’m still scared, and anxious that asking for what I need will result in losing the omega I love, but if I’m that scared of losing him, then maybe he’s never really been mine to lose.
I dry off, get dressed, and leave my phone on the charger so I can focus on making a nice breakfast. Once I turn it on, I know it will bombard me with an unending barrage of notifications and urgent tasks and things outside my den that need to be dealt with.
I’ll get to all of those demands soon, but first I need a hot meal. And I want to have one last taste of the normalcy I’ve loved about living here with Seb; breakfast together.
We can have our big serious conversation with bellies full of hot food and then…well, I’ll worry about how to move forward once I have all the facts. It’s really up to Seb whether I’m doing this with my best friend at my side as my mate or if I need to move on from offering my heart to someone who can’t accept it.
…