Boltedfruit Archive

A few heads turn when he next walks into class, flour bag in hand (thank you, Eddie, for leaving it—her—at his place the night before after their conversation). Not so many as to worry, but it is different.

He sees nostrils flare.

They’re catching his scent again. Hidden once for barely any time at all, but likely stronger for it. And now he’s off the patches for the next week as per Eddie’s bet.

And he’ll win, too. Steve always wins.

Because Eddie was right when he was in Steve’s room. The pills stop the heat, not the patches. He knows that. Of course he knows that. Why Eddie made a losing bet in the first place is beyond him.

But he’d forgotten how easy they made things. Wearing patches almost made him as unremarkable as any other beta.

The alpha from the library is turned in his direction, practically tracking Steve as he sits. Steve refuses the inherent urge to bare his teeth in warning, knows it will never elicit the same effect as when an alpha shows their fangs and snarls.

Red eyes flash through his mind. He cannot get turned on right now.

Eddie is already sitting, smiling at the flour bag in his arms. He’s already pushed their desks together, so Steve situates their shared burden in the middle, a slightly lopsided monument to their newfound friendship.

“Hello baby girl,” Eddie singsongs quietly, reaching out to pat her on the imaginary head.

Steve sighs. Does not bury his face in his hands because this is so hard and he doesn’t need any added questions. Doesn’t want to be asked if he’s okay.

He’s watching Eddie fawn over the thing when Eddie’s eyes catch his attention. Particularly what’s around them.

“Are you wearing eyeliner?”

Eddie turns, head dipping as he smiles shyly. He shrugs a little. “Yeah, I have a show later. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a head start on my stage presence, if you know what I mean.”

Steve doesn’t really, but seeing Eddie’s already dark eyes lined in black is, unfortunately, kind of a thing Steve is a fan of. He looks good. A little too good.

The musky scent of alpha spikes over the grassy earth unique to Eddie for all of a moment before he turns away. He clears his throat.

“I guess you like the look, huh?”

Steve is confused until he sees a girl casting a funny look his way. He sinks down in his seat, lowering his chin until he can catch his own scent and, jesus.

He smells like arousal. Like omega slick.

He needs to excuse himself so he can run to the bathroom and take care of it. He needs to clean himself up.

He never should have agreed to ditching the patches. This didn’t happen before. Before he became reacquainted with Eddie.

For some reason it’s Eddie’s fault. And Steve doesn’t understand why.

And Steve is frozen in his seat, too embarrassed to even try to stand and make his escape. He doesn’t want to draw anyone else’s attention. He needs to—

“Hey,” Eddie mutters, bumping his pinky against Steve’s clenched fist on the desk. “It’s okay, Stevie. You’re safe with me, remember?”

Eddie’s scent washes over him, seems to double when Steve accepts his words with a clipped nod. Eddie’s hand pokes him until he unballs his fist, then he’s linking their pinkies together. He squeezes, offers a reassuring smile.

Steve relaxes on pure instinct. The touch alone serves to calm him down. If anything, he feels a degree cooler after making contact with Eddie’s skin and isn’t that something.

Eddie’s scent is an added layer; masking his embarrassment, his arousal. It’s a blanket that covers him and says mine.

If Steve was standing, he thinks he’d buckle under the relief.

He doesn’t want to think about Nancy now, of all the times to think about her, but she never gave him this. And for the first time he considers that it wasn’t through any conscious fault of her own.

It’s not oppressive like he thought an alpha’s protection might feel like. It’s the opposite. He feels safe, free. He feels like he can go anywhere and no pushy alpha would look twice at him.

Would it be so bad, if it were real?

He glances at Eddie who’s already watching him. He offers a smaller, more knowing smile, and Steve almost whines.

Steve has the unbearable urge to lean forward the last few inches between them and kiss Eddie.

Would Eddie kiss him back?

He offered to help Steve through his heat, if it came to that. And that wasn’t some small, inane offer. Sharing a heat or a rut meant something. Something big, even if it didn’t end in a mating bond.

But he remembers he’s only thinking like he is because of the weird last couple weeks. It has to be because of some hormone imbalance, probably from stopping the patches, restarting them, and stopping again. He messed with his levels and now his inner omega is just going a little crazy from an alpha’s attention.

Eddie’s smile makes him warm, tingly all over. He can feel his ears burning.

Yeah. Just his hormones.

–

Three days into their bet, the doorbell rings. Steve makes a questioning sound at Robin in the mirror, who’s standing still as Steve helps her with her dress. He zips her up and he can already tell something’s up from her expression.

“What did you do, Buckley?”

The doorbell rings again.

“Could you get that?” she asks, far too sweet for his liking.

When he gets the door open, it’s Eddie there, flour bag in hand.

He gapes for a moment too long. Eddie holds up the bag.

“Say hello to Penelope, Stevie. Is that any way to greet your child after not seeing her all day?”

Steve sighs, taking in the new addition of a pink tutu skirt.

“You bought it a skirt?”

“Say her name,” Eddie says. “Just once. Come on.”

He rolls his eyes. “You bought Penelope a skirt?”

“It was just too cute to pass up.” He covers the side of the bag’s proverbial head and adds in a hush, “Don’t tell her, but I found it in a display for dog costumes.”

“Did you just cover its—god, calm down—her ears?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. What are you doing here?”

“Robin invited me to dinner!”

Ah. So that explains why she hasn’t left the bathroom yet to come say hi.

It also explains the black slacks and black button down. The topmost two buttons are open, revealing the edge of a tattoo.

Steve licks his lips.

Eddie gives him a warm smile, bumps their shoulders as he comes closer.

“I know Robin is super into these two girls of hers, but if you’re uncomfortable with me going, just say the word.”

“No. No, it’s fine. It’s good.”

It’s good?

He wants to smack himself.

Eddie beams, the satisfaction pouring off him in waves.

“Wonderful!”

–

Vickie is mostly absorbed with anything and everything Robin during dinner, but Heather can’t get over the flour bag project. She tells them all about her essay and how she’s challenging gender norms by writing about omegas from an alpha perspective, because she’s an omega herself. Steve starts yawning not long into her rambling.

He gets an elbow jammed into his side for it, Eddie acting none the wiser beside him as he listens attentively. He nods and hums and asks questions when he’s supposed to. Steve wants to go home.

“I just think it’s so archaic, making you all pair up. It’s like Pram is playing matchmaker, right Vickie?”

Vickie hums from her place tucked under Robin’s arm. For once in her life, she’s hitting a home run and Steve is happy for her. Really, he is. But he doesn’t think him being here contributes to her success at all.

If anything, being sandwiched between Eddie and Heather in their roundabout booth as he’s forced to pretend he loves the chicken carbonara he’d ordered is doing Robin the opposite of a favor.

“It is kind of weird, I guess,” Vickie supplies when Robin takes a break from making googly eyes to shove pasta in her mouth. “It’s just a bag of flour. Kind of hard to feel attached to that.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Eddie starts.

Then Steve hisses.

Because he’s stupid. And his hormones are even more stupid. And their flour bag baby—Penelope—is sitting in a slump in the middle of the table. And if she was real, Steve would imagine he’d be pretty pissed if someone told him it was hard to feel attached to his own child.

Because if she was real, and she was actually his and Eddie’s, then it would matter. And it would be easy to feel attached. Because she’d be a piece of each of them. They would have made her. Half Steve and half Eddie, a little bundle of joy. She’d have dark curls and moles that Steve would fret over until they got her to a doctor and gave her the all clear. She would be Steve’s entire world.

So of course his stupid inner omega hisses, like that’s even socially acceptable. His scent rises bitter and mean and protective, and his hindbrain flares, burns the words into his brain, tells him to fight, protect, defend.

And even worse, he blurts out, “Her name is Penelope.”

Vickie’s eyebrows twist up, gives him this pathetic little whimpering look of concern.

Heather mutters a quiet, “Yikes, Vicks. You pissed off mama.”

“Steve, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Steve.” That one’s Robin. And he gets it, he does. Knows he’s fucked up.

He stands before he makes an even bigger fool out of himself, bullies his way past Eddie’s widespread knees out of the booth and goes to find the bathroom.

Steve’s barely splashed water on his face before the door opens again. It’s Eddie. He can smell him.

“I’m not in the mood, Eddie.”

Eddie just huffs.

“Tell me what’s going through your head.”

Steve turns and heads into a stall. He closes the door and slides the bolt home.

He stands there, knowing it’s pointless.

He can smell the concern pouring off Eddie. It fills the bathroom until everything is only Eddie, as if he happened to live here part time. He knows Eddie won’t just leave. It’s inevitable. Might as well get it over with.

Steve unlocks the door and Eddie’s just there when he cracks the door open. “I’m sick of this. I looked insane.”

“Stop calling yourself that. It’s just the project.”

“Homework never made me hiss at anybody before. Except maybe myself for being stupid.”

“Stevie,” Eddie quietly scolds. “Stop.”

“Why? It’s not like it’s hurting anybody.”

Eddie leans against the doorjamb. “You think I like hearing you call yourself stupid? Because I don’t, for the record.”

And, oh.

Eddie continues. “I told them it was just because we had a rough day in class. Said it was an asshole alpha giving everybody trouble.”

“Wonder who that could be.”

“Yeah, I wonder.” Eddie gives him a smile, and Steve knows he’s just trying to cheer him up. “Want to get back to dinner?”

Steve presses his forehead to the stall’s cool wall, letting the temperature calm him down. “Not really.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

A beat of silence passes between them. Then Eddie’s fingers dance light on his wrist where it dangles at his side. Steve makes a questioning sound, looks over to see Eddie offering his neck. He shakes his hair out of the way to reveal pale, unblemished skin.

“Only if you want…You know, for comfort or whatever.”

Steve swallows thickly, mouth suddenly very wet. Eddie is offering Steve his bonding gland, his scent.

It’s something he’s grown to know well in the privacy of his own room. Burrows his face against it when he settles down to sleep, the blanket Eddie had scented pillowed under his head.

The past few nights, he’s never slept better.

And having it offered to him straight from the source…it has him blushing and dry mouthed.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Steve slowly walks into Eddie’s space. Is hyper aware of the sound of his breathing, the way his lashes are dark against his cheeks, the line of his sight falling gentle somewhere out of reach.

He feels Eddie shiver at the first brush of his nose along his skin.

Steve inhales, keenly aware he’s touching Eddie’s bonding gland. He could bite him, and it would mean something almost irrevocable. He makes the mistake of licking his lower lip instead, and accidentally brushes Eddie’s skin with his tongue.

A whine lodges behind his teeth as he presses his lips, flat and chaste against Eddie’s gland. Eddie groans, leans into Steve’s touch, bends his neck to open himself even further.

Hands wind into his shirt, gripping hard. He shudders, and Steve wonders at the feeling of having an alpha beneath his mouth, supplicant.

Then he remembers where they are, what they’re doing.

And with who.

He turns away, sniffing lightly. He rubs his nose, looking only at the wall above the toilet.

“Thanks.”

God, he even sounds wrecked.

He doesn’t expect Eddie to nose at his cheek. It’s brief, a barely there touch. There and gone.

Eddie’s cheeks are dimpled when he meets his eyes.

“Love when you smell like me, Stevie.”

A slow rumble, almost a purr, starts up deep from inside Eddie and Steve feels his body respond like they just exchanged bites.

He melts. Feels Eddie take on his extra weight as he nearly goes limp.

But he stays standing. Because they’re not bonded. They’re not even lovers. They’re friends.

Eddie is the one to clear his throat, stepping away first. The space lets Steve clear his head, but only a little.

“We should get back,” Steve mumbles.

“Yeah, guess we should.”

Neither of them move. Eddie huffs a laugh.

“Can’t leave poor Robin to fend for herself, right?”

Steve takes another moment to gather himself, wants to be able to hold his weight like nothing happened before he leaves the stall. Eddie’s looking elsewhere, but Steve doesn’t miss it.

The barest hint of fangs.

He’s just as affected as I am, Steve thinks.

Then Eddie’s smiling, bright and cheery and so very Eddie that Steve can’t help but smile back.

“Let’s go save her.”