The Scent of Love

Chapter 13

It’s been… long enough, since they fought, that Beth has given up. It doesn’t really matter, in the long run, that Sean can’t give her what she needs. It’s just sad that they were so… so compatible, and yet, too different to make anything work between them. Anything other than the occasional friendly gesture, and really great s*x. 

She doesn’t think about it too often, anymore. She doesn’t work directly with him anyway, now that she’s in a show at the theatre across town from where he works. She dreads the day he gets pulled as a sub to play opposite her. There’s no way she could keep it together, switching violently between showing him exactly how she feels about him in character, and then completely detaching offstage. Possibly twice in one day. She’d die. 

Beth doesn’t realize how long it’s been until the itch starts. Her muscles ache, her skin feels too tight for her body, and she just wants to sleep for a year— but her womb aches, too, and she knows it’s not the flu. 

So she does the only thing she can rationally think of: she calls Josh. 

He gets to her apartment in record time, bringing lots of protein bars and pre-cut fruit, a six pack of Powerade, some dark chocolate and cranberry juice. Beth watches him in her kitchen from her spot on the couch, curled in a ball in her comforter and doped up on ibuprofen. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Josh insists, coming to sit with her. His words don’t carry the Alpha weight she needs, but she nods anyway. “I promise it’ll be okay.” He tugs on her blanket until she falls sideways, her head in his lap. He doesn’t smell like an Alpha, and the annoying Omega voice whines at her. She ignores it. 

Her heat comes slower this time, a heavier progression of her symptoms that takes forever. They watch Pride and Prejudice, and she dozes in and out for a bit, missing sections of the movie, but too tired to be upset. 

“Go ahead and sleep,” Josh tells her after a little while, as Lizzy Bennett turns Mr. Darcy down in the rain. “We’ll deal with everything when you wake up.”

It’s not her Alpha’s command, but she’s too exhausted not to obey. The movie still plays off and on in her head, accompanied by distant male voices. She knows them, she’s sure of it, but she’s only really getting bits and pieces. 

“Hey. No, it’s not... I know her passcode, duh… She needs you. How can you not want to help your Omega?” There’s something particularly loud from the other voice that she can’t make out. “Well fine, I guess it’s good that I’m here… well, she smells like garbage to me, because I’m an Omega… hey, buddy, your posturing is useless on me. I don’t want to see her through this, and I don’t think she wants me to, either, but at least I showed up.” 

She hears a growl, and it sounds so close, so real, so very much like her Alpha, that she finds herself surfacing from sleep. The voices must have been a dream, she realizes, as the only thing she can hear now is the movie. Everything’s still thick and heavy, the world too foggy to see clearly. “Josh?”

“I’m here.”

Her eyes feel heavy and dry. She shifts, trying to get comfortable, but her muscles are too tight, her skin too itchy. “I want my Alpha,” she says. It doesn’t matter what she wants, but she says it anyway. 

“I know, Kiddo. I’m working on it.”

Silly of him to think he could help her, in that respect. In any respect, right now. Beth sighs and closes her eyes again, and this time, sleep takes her out like the tide. 

***

It’s not too bad. 

It’s awful, actually, but it’s familiar, a routine ingrained in her body. No Alpha input means her body will try to tear itself apart, but she’s done this before. Muscle memory will take care of most of this, she reminds herself, and Josh will pick up the slack when he can. 

She wakes up nauseous and hot, like the flu but infinitely worse. Her core is clenching around hot air, her blood simmering insistently under her itching skin. 

“Josh?” Her voice is hoarse from disuse. This is already going swell. 

“I’m here.”

Her stomach rolls, and she groans. “Gonna throw up,” she manages. The whole room is dim and blurry, even with her eyes open— or she thinks they’re open. Who knows?

“Trash can’s beside you.” 

It takes monumental effort to sit up, like pushing herself through a mountain of blankets instead of just her comforter. Eventually, despite her churning stomach, she ends up mostly vertical, the trash can between her knees. 

“I’ve got ibuprofen when you’re ready,” he says. 

Beth looks up and finds him right in front of her Powerade in one hand and four red pills in the other. He’s still somewhat blurry. “Thanks.”  

It’s a waiting game, really; her stomach settles, then rolls, then settles again, until she feels like she can stay sitting up without vomiting all over the floor. Her womb pulses and aches, desperate, but she ignores it. The ibuprofen goes down like glass against her tense throat. 

“You know, you can get prescription strength ibuprofen,” Josh tells her. 

“You can,” Beth snaps. “I’m a girl. The medical industry thinks I’m faking all of my symptoms.” Her stomach gives one more feeble wave of nausea, but it’s not as bad as before. “It’s sad, really,” she continues, setting aside the trash can and then slowly getting to her feet. “If it weren’t for the hormonal aura screaming at Alphas to come f**k me, I could honestly work like this.”

“Maybe as a dresser, you could have,” Josh says. “Not performing. You’d be a mess.” 

“God,” Beth says, arching her back. It refuses to relax. “It’s such a lame excuse to miss work. No one wanted to get me pregnant so I had to put myself in a coma.”  She snorts at her own words, though the humor of them seems lost on Josh. “Anyway. I’m gonna eat one of those protein bars.”

“So when the ibuprofen kicks in,” Josh says, following her into the kitchen, “what happens?” 

“It’s like having a soft heat, but with the flu,” Beth explains. She opens the protein bar and sighs, wishing that she had real, hot food, that she wouldn’t have to defrost and cook herself, or that wouldn’t come out of a can. “Porn and a good vibrator will do, but it’s nice to have someone here to touch base with, in between.” 

“I think we can do a little better than that.”

Josh, as it turns out, has enough stamina that she doesn’t need to resort to toys and Alpha porn all that often. When he gets tired, he switches to his hands, and even that way he’s good enough to keep the fever somewhat at bay. He keeps her fairly level, and when the heat dies down every few hours, he keeps her fed. She sleeps sometimes, a half an hour at a time, and sometimes he does too. He does pass out around eleven on the first night, and she disappears into her bedroom to take care of herself. It’s somehow both nauseating and comforting, the familiar sense of abandonment, the sneaking thoughts of not good enough and terrible, needy, useless Omega. The urge to text Sean becomes so overwhelming that she ends up throwing her phone into her closet at one point. It brings her dangerously close to crying, but she powers through anyway. 

“Thank you,” she says to Josh halfway through the second day, as he hands her a plate of fruit and two protein bars. “For this, but also, for coming here. I really appreciate it.”

“I wish I could stay for the next three days,” he tells her. 

“I don’t,” she tells him. Maybe too honestly, because his face falls, until she continues. “It’s… ugly, when an Omega doesn’t have an Alpha during a hard heat. Which you’ve never had, because you didn’t try to suppress yourself to death.”

“I have better suppressants, too,” he reminds her. “Because I’m a guy, and the medical industry pities me.”

“But us poor females have to power through it.” Beth rolls her eyes. “Whatever, right?” 

Josh drops down beside her on the couch and wraps his arm around her shoulders. “It’ll get better,” he says. “Your doctor will give you the all clear soon enough, and then you can get the good suppressants and only have soft heats.” 

“God bless,” she says, trying to wolf down her food before the next wave. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to call anyone?” He asks. The third time, since yesterday. “Maybe Blake?”

“Maybe absolutely not,” Beth says. Blake may be an Alpha, but he’s exceptionally stupid. A pretty boy, but dense as a brick. Definitely not the kind of Alpha she can depend on for a hard heat. “I’d rather just do it myself.”

“No heat apps?”

“God, no. Not again.” Not if Sean could potentially see her posting an ad for her heat. 

Josh watches her eat for a moment. “What will you do?” 

“Cry and throw up, mostly,” she says. “Wear out the batteries on my vibrator, and lay on the bathroom floor in abject misery.” Josh’s expression is one of pure horror. “One time I took sleeping pills to get through it, but my heat hangover was so bad I decided it wasn’t worth it.”

“That’s awful,” he says. 

“That’s life,” Beth replies, and finishes her food.