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.
? ? ?
Colin stood 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’s wrong. 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.”
“It’s early,” Colin said. “Four weeks early. So I want to get checked. That’s all.”
“I’m coming now. I’ll grab Ryland’s car.”
“Sorry, love. I know how busy you are at work these days.”
“Daddy, please. That doesn’t matter…” Stephen’s voice had gone low and careful. “Have you got your bag packed? The one you do up for emergencies?”
“It’s by the door.”
“Good. That’s good. You’re probably not going to need it, but it’s good to have. Now, you sit down somewhere cool, all right? Don’t open the front door for anyone. I’ll be there in forty minutes, and I’ll text when I’m pulling up so you don’t have to come down till I’m there.”
“All right, love. Promise me you’ll drive carefully. No rushing.”
Stephen hung up without making the promise.
? ? ?
Stephen was at the door in thirty-six minutes, which meant he’d done a speed run on the Westway. Colin would have words with him about it later, when he could string a sentence together.
His baby had come up the stairs two at a time. Colin heard him before he saw him, heard the quick heavy tread on the concrete, and then Stephen was at the door with Ryland’s car keys in one fist and the other already reaching out before Colin had finished turning the latch.
“Daddy.”
“I’m all right, love.”
“You’re not. Come here.”
Stephen got an arm round him before Colin could decide whether to protest. The size of his son still caught him out, even after a decade of him being grown. Colin let himself be tucked into his side because the alternative was standing on his own feet, which wasn’t going as well as he’d have liked.
“Bag’s by the door.”
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it, daddy, just lean on me.”
The stairwell smelled of someone’s frying breakfast, and Colin kept his head down as Stephen took him out of the building and into the car. Stephen’s hand stayed at the small of his back the whole way.
The clinic was on a stretch of road between a bookies and a halal butcher, with a blue NHS sign over the door. Stephen parked on a double yellow and was round on Colin’s side of the car before Colin had got the seatbelt off.
“I can walk, love.”
“I know you can.” Stephen’s hand came under Colin’s elbow anyway.
The waiting room was full. The automatic doors slid open, and Colin immediately clocked the two alphas in the row of plastic chairs by the window whose heads popped up before he’d cleared the threshold.
Colin’s stomach turned over.
It didn’t matter that he was forty, or that there was more grey threading through the brown hair at his temples. He was a male omega in pre-heat in a public room, and his body was going about its business of advertising the fact to anyone in the postcode with a nose. He kept his eyes on the floor.
It was almost funny. He hadn’t been touched in twenty-six years.
The NHS had stitched him up neat after the twins, and the midwife herself had said so in a cheerful Midlands burble he could still hear.
All sutured up nicely, my love. He was, by any measure that mattered to an alpha, near enough untouched.
He’d probably still feel good around a cock.
The thought arrived and made him want to put his head through the nearest window.
Stephen had gone very still beside him. His hand had tightened on Colin’s elbow, and the other had come up to Colin’s face, palm cupping his cheek and turning him away from the room.
“Look at me, daddy.”
Colin looked at his son. Stephen’s thumb stroked along his cheekbone, and then his fingers were smoothing the hair back from Colin’s temple with a tenderness that was going to undo Colin entirely if he let it.
“I’m all right,” Colin said.
“I know you are.” His baby kept his hand where it was, his body angled between Colin and the rest of the waiting room.
“Colin?”
The voice came from behind the reception desk.
Colin turned his head and there was Molly, who’d been on the front desk at this clinic for as long as Colin had been coming to it, her glasses on a beaded chain round her neck and her cardigan the same washed-out lavender it had been the last time he’d seen her.
“Come round, my love. Come round here.”
She’d already lifted the flap of the counter. Stephen steered Colin through, and Molly was waiting on the other side with her hand out, brisk and unflustered.
“Through here, the both of you. We’ll get you sat down somewhere quiet and I’ll fetch Dr Fuller.”
She took them down the short corridor behind the desk and opened the door to the staffroom.
Inside there was a kettle, a row of mugs on a tray, a battered two-seater sofa pushed against one wall, and a window propped open onto the back alley where someone’s wheelie bins were lined up against the brick.
“Sit yourself down, Colin love. I’ll bring you a glass of water.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Colin sat down on the sofa, and Stephen settled beside him close enough that their thighs touched. Colin let his head fall back against the cool wall, closed his eyes, and breathed.
Dr Fuller came to them. That on its own told Colin more than he wanted to know.
Clearly Molly’s description of his state had alarmed her enough to bump Colin up the list. She was a brisk woman in her fifties with grey-blonde hair pulled back into a clip, and she had been Colin’s GP at this clinic for the better part of a decade.
She didn’t, as a rule, leave her examination room. Patients went to her. Today she came down the corridor with a nurse at her elbow and a small kit bag in one hand. Colin tracked her arrival with his eyes shut and his head against the wall.
She came through the door, and her nostrils flared and her mouth set into a thin line. “Right,” she said. “Let’s have a look at you, Colin.”
She crossed to the sofa and crouched in front of him, and laid the back of her hand against his forehead.
Her palm was cool against his skin, and Colin made a small noise in the back of his throat at the relief it brought him.
She didn’t comment. She turned her head a fraction towards the nurse and spoke in a low even tone Colin couldn’t make out.
The nurse went out of the room.
“Colin.” Dr Fuller’s hand came away from his forehead and settled on his wrist, two fingers at his pulse. “When did this start?”
“Last night.”
“What time, do you think?”
“Couldn’t say. Late. Eleven, maybe later.”
“And how were you feeling last night? Talk me through it.”
Colin opened his eyes and tried not to lean into his son any further than he already was. He’d ended up curled on his side along the length of the sofa, his cheek against Stephen’s shoulder, his knees drawn up. He didn’t remember moving at all.
“I felt warm,” Colin said. “I couldn’t sleep, and I thought it was a problem with the radiator.”
“Were you producing slick?”
He swallowed. “A bit. Nothing like today, though.”
“Any cramping?”
“Yes. They’re really bad.”
“How far off are you from your next heat?”
“Four weeks. I keep a calendar.”
Dr Fuller’s mouth tightened. She let go of his wrist and took her stethoscope out of her bag.
Stephen shifted beside Colin to give her room.
Her hand came up to the side of his neck, placed two fingers there, then she had the cold disc of the stethoscope under the collar of his vest as she listened to his heartbeat.
“Daddy’s all right, isn’t he?” Stephen asked quietly, over the top of Colin’s head.
“He’s going to be,” Dr Fuller said. She straightened, and looked at Colin. “You’ve gone over. You’re in heat now. You went from nothing to full heat in under twelve hours, and that’s not something we’re going to be able to manage out of a staffroom.”
Colin nodded weakly against Stephen’s shoulder.
“I’m going to send you up to St Mary’s. They’ve got a secure heat ward and they’ll get you settled in a private room with proper monitoring. This is a health emergency, my love. The speed of the onset on its own warrants admission, never mind the rest.”
“Doctor…” Stephen’s voice was hoarse.
“He’ll be all right, Stephen. He’s going to be fine. But I want him somewhere they can put a line in if they need to, and he needs to be somewhere the door locks.” She squeezed Colin’s knee, and then stood. “Ambulance is already on its way.”