Burning with passion for a seemingly impossible goal, Neville realized the lunch crowd was already thinning out. He slowed his steps, taking in the department.
Everything looked normal. Too normal. As if the charged events from earlier had never happened.
Neville gave his head a hard shake. Don't think about it. Don't—
But then he noticed Ethan.
He was standing dead center in the aisle, positioned precisely between Neville's desk and his own station.
Neville's pulse spiked. Why is he standing there? Did he just come from my desk? Was he about to go there? Why? No—stop it. Maybe—maybe I'm just imagining things. He could've just been passing by.
Just as he managed to convince himself, Ethan's head turned. Their gazes locked across the distance.
Neville's breath stuttered. A shiver ran through him, sharp as ice water. He fought the instinct to flinch, to look away like prey.
Ethan's expression didn't change much—but in his eyes, there was a flicker of something. Satisfaction? Amusement? Or maybe he was just reading too much into it again.
Before either could speak, Jake from IT popped up from the desk next to Ethan and grabbed Ethan's shoulders. "Ethan! All done fixing the station, let's go fix yours. This should be running smoothly now—tell me about the problems with yours."
For a fraction of a second, Ethan's jaw tightened. His voice, quiet but edged, slipped out: "Sure."
Get it together, Neville, he muttered under his breath, forcing his feet to move toward his workstation. You're just on edge. Not every shadow holds a knife.
The rest of the lunch break was a blur. Neville snagged a nutrient solution from the break room, hoping the vile taste would shock him back into his normal self.
No luck.
The thing was filling, technically perfect in composition—yet it always managed to taste like nothing and everything awful all at once, leaving him feeling just as hollow as before.
He had barely settled back at his desk when the system flashed and filled his vision with red warnings.
'What—what?' Neville's eyes darted left and right, pulse jumping. He was still unsettled from what happened earlier, and now this? What the hell was going on?
[HOST!] Shelly shrieked, not even bothering to explain as she zipped around, her form blurring from sheer speed and panicked circles.
'Shelly, report. What's happening?' he demanded, his voice uttering a low hiss, forcing her to calm down.
[No, no, no, no—NO!] She stammered with her voice rising with each word. Her form was darting back and forth as she ran frantically as she began scooping what looked like air samples.
'Shelly!' he snapped, desperate for a coherent sentence.
[This isn't—how did they—]
Before he could press further, another holographic screen flashed before him, glaring white text across the air.
[SYSTEM ALERT: FORCED SUSCEPTIBLE PERIOD DETECTED
STATUS: Omega biological systems compromised
TIME: Estimated 2 hours 17 minutes until full heat cycle
WARNING: Suppressant patch effectiveness reduced to 12%]
The words hung in the air, cold and absolute. A strange, unfamiliar heat began to form deep in his belly, a confirmation that the system wasn't lying.
For a moment, Neville just stared. Susceptible period? That's not supposed to happen for another—
[What are you being calm for, host?!] Shelly screeched, practically headbutting his nose, her tiny pink shell vibrating with panic. [This is NOT the time to be calm! If you go into heat here, every alpha in a three-block radius is going to hunt you like a pack of wolves! Forget "getting eaten alive"—you'll get fired for public indecency! Do you even know what happens to omegas who can't regulate their cycles in this industry? They get blacklisted. BLACKLISTED! You'll never be able to work in this city again! NEVER!]
"What?!" The word ripped out of Neville before he could choke it back.
Several coworkers turned their heads and glanced up at him. Neville felt a dozen pairs of eyes on him. He immediately flashed a tight, unconvincing smile that felt more like a grimace. He grabbed his light brain from the desk and shot to his feet.
No—he wasn't walking. He was fleeing.
'Bathroom,' he chanted under his breath, a desperate mantra propelling him forward. 'Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom—'
The walk to the bathroom was a special kind of hell. His body felt wrong as he walked—too warm, too sensitive. It was like being submerged in honey while every nerve was like a live wire. Sparks ran under his skin.
Too tight. Too hot. Too intense.
The fabric of his shirt wasn't just rough; it was unbearable. Each thread scraped against nerve endings like sandpaper—it felt raw and exposed.
And the smells—God, the smells. The smells were the worst part. The office that he thought kind of smelled nice and neutral now felt like a stinky perfume store, where all kinds of smells were present.
Pheromones saturated the air, sharp and distinct. Dozens of different pheromones were slamming into his oversensitive nose one by one like punches straight into his brain.
How did I not notice these smells before? he thought, a wave of nausea rolling over him. It's everywhere. I hate this.
By the time he staggered into the bathroom, he was seconds from collapsing. He fumbled with the 'Maintenance in Progress' sign, his hands shaking as he hung it on the door. The click of the lock was the first moment of real relief he had had in minutes. He used the knob to force himself up and stagger towards the sink.
He gripped the edge of the basin with his trembling fingers. His knuckles turned white, and he forced his head up. Then he saw his reflection in the mirror.
"Oh… fuck. You have got to be kidding me," he cursed under his ragged breathing, the words fogging the glass.
His neck was flushed a deep, mottled red, the color spreading down his collarbones like spilled wine. The skin around his pheromone glands was puffy and inflamed.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
His pupils were blown wide, and a sheen of sweat already slicked his forehead. His shirt was wrinkled, half undone, clinging damply to his overheated skin.
Okay. Don't panic. The thought was a lie. He was already panicking. I can't go back out there. Not like this. They'll smell it on me. Everyone will know.
The thought rang through him clearly. Right. Susceptible period.
He rummages through his memories from his past life. If we're talking about the BL universe, there should be one or two things in common in omegaverse tropes.
The susceptible period was supposed to be a warning flare, the AO body's gentle pre-heat cycle. Heightened sensitivity, accelerated pheromone output, a low-grade fever—these were all normal precursors that gave an omega a solid twelve, even twenty-four, hours to get home, lock the doors, and prepare.
He stared at his flushed, feverish reflection in the mirror. Twelve hours? This wasn't a warning flare. This was a goddamn explosion.
Someone hadn't just hit fast-forward on his biology; they had slammed their fist down on the launch button.
He had read about this countless times—and suffered through thorough and very detailed discussions with his female friend, who treated omegaverse tropes like a research thesis. He could almost hear his old friend Hana's voice, ringing in his ears with painful irony.
"It's basically ovulation on steroids," she had said far too cheerfully for such a mature topic. "The body goes into full-on breeding prep mode. Hormones go crazy, strength plummets, everything gets... juicy."
He would laugh at that. He distinctly remembered laughing.
But then she pouted and added another analogy, "Think of it like being drunk on hormones—except the hangover starts before you even get to the fun part."
At the time, he had brushed it off, dismissed it all with jokes about science and fiction, thinking, That's impossible. Science would never allow something this dramatic to be real.
But now—as a wave of feverish heat washed over him, the hypersensitive nerves that made every texture unbearable, the stench of his own pheromones leaking, spreading, and permeating into this cramped bathroom—it wasn't funny at all.
'Shelly,' he gasped, clumsy fingers fumbling with the system mall interface. 'Suppressants. Patches. Anything—'
A small, rational part of his brain was still trying to fight back. This is wrong. A normal susceptible period shouldn't be this violent.
[Host, forget the mall! You need to change your patch first!] Shelly urged, her voice tight with anxiety. [The one you're wearing is useless now!]
Neville's fingers trembled as he dug a nail under the edge of the patch on his neck. Neville yanked at the patch, peeling it away as fast and as harshly as possible despite the sting.
He hissed, looking at the skin reflected in the mirror. Underneath the patch was raw, flushed, almost blistered skin, almost like a chemical burn.
His stomach sank. That wasn't right.
He glanced at the patch in his hand. The patch itself was discolored, the medicated layer half-dissolved like it had been tampered with.
A cold dread, far worse than the fever, washed over him. Patches don't just... melt. This isn't normal. This—
Tok.
The sound was soft, almost polite, and a knock was heard against the bathroom door.
A low, amused voice cut through the silence.
"Well, now. Isn't this interesting?"