“What’s wrong?”

It takes Rei a long while. Nagisa eyes him the whole time, waiting, but with each passing second what’s about to be said already echoes in his mind before any word is uttered.

“My parents found a… mate for me,” Rei finally tells Nagisa, and looks at the floor, adding nothing. Nothing else needs to be said. Rei has no reason to reject a good, respectable mate, his parents clearly would not allow him to be pursuing a relationship with a whore over anyone else, and neither would...people, in general.

Employers, people who know him. It makes absolute sense. It’s a rock all over whatever Nagisa was daring to plan for them, but some nights he did think this would happen.

Still he does wait a few moments, hoping actually, although nothing else comes from Rei’s lips.

Of course: no buts, no intentions of rejecting such a choice, and why should he?

“And you accepted,” he says, lifting up a little as his body moves away. “Good for you. Did you see you would get a partner eventually?”

There’s suddenly no time. They talked about this possibility, so why is it so surprising?
He rolls off the bed quickly, escaping Rei’s hands as he already tries to keep him close.

But it just won’t happen, not while Nagisa is already locking himself away, disappearing behind a vacuous look when Rei calls him.

“We’re done, aren’t we?”

“Nagisa-kun-” Rei’s voice sounds muffled as he gets the sheets off his body while getting up.

“Good luck. My job is done. I did teach you how sex would feel, right?”

Nagisa’s voice comes out with no shaking, almost no variations in its sound.

“Nagisa, don’t…”

“Listen, don’t worry, okay? I’m not in love with you or anything, so you don’t need to be sad or anything. So go, I’m not angry or anything. You should probably not be around people like me since you have a fiancée, right?”

Good. Mouthing those words in practice, during the nights when Rei was wrapped around him, that paid off at least.

Rei’s body stills for a few seconds, not expecting any of those words.

“You’re not?”

He hesitates.

“Of course I’m not. I’m an omega prostitute and if I was to fall in love with any guy sticking his dick in me I would be in love with… a billion different men. Not really possible,” Nagisa says quietly, while his guts squeeze inside of him and a familiar cold wraps itself around him, but almost in some sort of welcome back, while he picks up his clothes and starts getting dressed again. “You’re not special, Ryuugazaki-san.”

A long silence answers back, and Nagisa only hears the sounds of steps. His heart picks up its beating, and he slides a hand in his hoodie’s front pocket before turning around. He knows about the risks. Not that there is any right now, but it’s a good excuse.

“I’m sorry, Nagisa-kun…”

Nagisa does not look at his face. He just shakes his head, while quietly sliding away.

“For what?” He replies, cautious.

“I’m sorry that you’re hurt.” Rei’s voice comes soft, almost sounding like a whisper. “I didn’t plan this.”

Finally Nagisa does look up, at his face - Rei does not look like someone who ever held the way he felt back from showing up, around Nagisa. He does not look like it now either. Crushed is the quickest word, and Nagisa has to look while Rei’s warm hands cup around his cheeks. Rei’s lips press together and tremble a little as maybe he searches for something that sounds right, his cheeks are flush with pink, but Nagisa escapes his gaze after getting a glimpse of the sympathy inside of them.

Melting would be so easy. It would be the easieast thing, to let himself disappear in a hug, to let Rei hold him and to try and comfort him. But if he did, the way back would fade. There would be none anymore, and there is nothing ahead either.

That’s when Rei’s lips press against his, and Nagisa immediately takes a step back, tries to struggle free while Rei’s arms wrap around him and they are so warm and solid and secure, his mouth tasting so familiar, the air around him taking on a scent that reminds him of home, safety.

But he’s not allowed to have room in that scene anymore.

So he gets his hand out of his pocket, and presses a pointy blade against Rei’s stomach. Not hard, but Rei definitely feels it.

“Get away from me,” Nagisa spells out slowly, glad that the tremble in his voice could be mistaken for fear.

Of course Rei would never hurt him. Of course he’s not one of those people. But this is his plan, and it’s the most effective one he could think of.

“Nagisa, what are you doing?”

He presses the pointy end of his knife a bit harder against Rei’s body.

“I said- get away from me.”

“You are not seriously scared I could do something to you,” Rei mutters, with an incredulous voice.

Nagisa does not look at him, his eyes sliding down between their bodies.

“I have heard of enough omegas being forced to bond and then beaten up. I’m not taking my chances with anyone, and why should you be any different for you?”

He feels Rei’s eyes staring down at him, his hands holding Nagisa’s face for a few more seconds, before letting his fingers slide along Nagisa’s neck, quietly lowering his arms and pressing his lips together.

“I see.”

Nagisa keeps his eyes on the knife pressed against the alpha’s stomach - his gaze won’t go back up to meet Rei’s. He just keeps looking down, while sliding the knife back in his pocket, and takes a step back.

“I really am sorry,” Rei adds, doing the same, and picks up his own clothes, getting dressed in turn.

That’s when Nagisa’s body moves on its own, his legs taking him out in the nightly cold on the small, narrow balcony, to look down at the suburban alley the hotel faces. The air is so cold, icy even - it invades his lungs and makes his insides freeze, his cheeks turn red, his lips wobble, but he won’t move, nor turn back. The cold feels better than the warmth inside that room. He can also sense Rei’s eyes still darting to him, but he grasps on the railing, eyes pinned on a garbage bin on the street, until the sound of the room’s door slamming shut reaches him outside. That’s when he lifts his gaze, looking at the frozen clouds his breath produces, and stays out there shivering a few more seconds. Then, after he turns around and makes sure Rei is not in the room anymore, before he can see his figure down on the street, he gets inside again, shivering with the uncomfortable warmth that wraps around him again, although his insides still seem icy, his ribcage a hall echoing with dull heartbeats and nothing more.

He did not feel the headache coming, nor the fatigue making his limbs unbearably heavy.

He has not been scared of the cold for a while now. The cold kept him safe, prevented any unnecessary warmth making him weak and breakable. The cold always allowed him to act warm too, without needing to really be. It was solid behind his masks, and as long as he could keep himself warm enough to not freeze completely, with shallow friendships and acts of kindness towards strangers, the cold could not really reach him.

But now it spreads from his liver, surges through his veins and pumps in his heart, it floods his lungs and his intestines, it makes his throat clench as if to try and keep the warmth inside of him.

He curls up on the bed, hiding under the sheets, touching the mattress for any trace of warmth left. There is a faint scent of alpha pheromones left behind. Nagisa sniffles, shivers, and then slowly wraps his arms around the pillow, pressing his face on it with a quiet sigh.

His body feels too small as his eyes droop into closing. Small and weak, tired. And his heart thumps louder and louder with each second, but his body stills, frozen like that of a small animal of prey - he always was.

What an idiot. He should have accepted long ago that omegas just do not have a place in the arms of rich alphas with prestigious families, and he did not even realize how dangerous Rei was until he was already free-falling through the sky. It was exciting, it made his breaths cut in his lungs, it was fun and unlike anything else. It was a risk, and now his body will refuse to stand up again, not for tonight anyway.

All he does all night is curl up under those sweaty sheets, inhaling every bit of their smell, hoping maybe to take the scent away with him, and with it the memories that now keep flashing like I-told-you-sos from his mind.

Rei sits back in his car, looking down at the steering wheel with his head pounding and his hands sitting cold on his lap.

Of course it would end. Of course it would end this way. And he did not expect such a calm reaction from Nagisa, all in all.

He swallows, with a painful throb in his head.

He definitely expected it.

And it’s not fair. He does not know Nagisa all that well, but if there is one thing he learnt about him is that he’s not built to be on his own. He’s an omega, and that condition is socially contradictory to the idea of long-lasting company for most of them.

He never admitted it, but being alone seems like the worst kind of punishment he could get - it’s a punishment for existing, it seems. It’s not what he deserves.

Rei sits there on the car seat, engine still off, with the air conditioning turning the cockpit gradually warmer.

But all he senses is his fingers turning numb. He clenches his fist, thinking of what’s ahead - a future with someone he does not even know yet, someone who could be completely dull, boring, and oh-so serious.

That’s how he was, just a few months ago, before meeting Nagisa and getting drinks together at a mundane party. He also knew nothing about that man, but his smile was so warm and bright and, for someone born from ice, a spark of warmth seemed so attractive, so welcoming. Maybe Nagisa did not mean to lure him in, or maybe the way he lured Rei in made it the only way he was allowed to exist.

But now Rei tasted him, memorized his scent, the smoothness of his skin and his body’s shape; the things he became used to became the things he wanted to have every day with him.

It’s not gone yet, a dangerous voice in his mind whispers, subtle.

It’s not possible, he reasons. If he decided to reject a perfectly respectable party in favor of an omega - and a prostitute on top of that - things would get so much difficult than they need to be. He was allowed to mess around with whores while he had no designated partner, but now it would be so… inconvenient.

And then a vision comes to him. Life as a cycle, unbreakable habits repeating themselves, a neverending play without pause or rest. Or even repetitive, boring rehearsals with dull lines repeating themselves over and over until the acting becomes perfect or completely disastrous, until the memories and lost fragments slip to the surface and the life he wanted becomes a bitter regret to blame on a woman who is not guilty of anything. He sees it all clearly, while rubbing his hands together.

But how could things be different? He looks up to the window of the hotel room, sighing.

Nagisa never said there was love between them, but he seemed to light up whenever he saw Rei coming in; he seemed to relax completely whenever Rei touched or kissed him. It all happened so fast both were left with their head spinning, but it made them crash into something bigger than expected. Nagisa just expected fun and money, Rei just wanted company, someone to talk to, someone to teach him about bodies and what to expect from them.

What they got was a bond. It was what they needed, it was not what they should have had.

He leans his head back, closing his eyes. He never expected to be faced with a decision this tough any time soon. Both futures ahead of him mean pain in some way, both promise joy in another, and usually he does face forks with thinking of third ways, but right now there is none in sight. If he gave up on both those futures, he would end up… wishing he’d picked one.

It takes him a few days to think, but nothing aids him towards reaching a decision. There are millions of prostitutes and there are millions of alpha women he could marry. He’s put off that choice for a very long time, and he never needed to think it through honestly. He never let anyone decide for him either, but being with Nagisa would seem too big a challenge for them and for him. He wonders whether he kept it up so long because of some thrill, because Nagisa’s life seemed exciting and mysterious, because he knew he could go back ot his own any moment. He thinks hard about the warmth Nagisa gave him, a kind of warmth that he never got from anyone before. He associates it with the sweet scent of cookies right out of the oven for some reason. It makes his chest tingle softly. Running his fingertips along Nagisa’s naked skin made his heart pump blood so hard he thought it would give him cardiac arrest.

(‘You’re blushing so much,’ Nagisa would say with a pleased, cheeky glimmer in his eyes.)

“Mother,” he says while she grooms the dog.

“Yes?” Her eyes turn to him and there’s already impatience in them. She seems to already know what the topic will be.

Rei hums, shifting his weigh from one foot to the other - only as a child did he ever hesitate like this, and she notices it immediately. Her head tilts.

“You don’t want to marry Hiroko-san, do you?” She says for him, and when he looks at her she does not look too disappointed.

“I… how?” Rei’s voice comes out croaky, as he blinks his eyes completely taken aback.

“We know you’ve been seeing another person, child, you don’t need to pretend anymore.”

And she goes back to grooming the long-haired little dog that looks at him with a toothy grin.

Rei’s eyes blow wide as he grows rigid and swallows with his guts churning violently all of a sudden.

“W-what…?”

“Rei, we never told you that you had to do what we want you to. If you want to be with him, there is no reason to force you otherwise. Your brother is married to an alpha lady anyway, he’ll carry our name.”

It all seems so simple, too simple, there must be a but somewhere around here. There has to be, if he learnt something from life is that no concession is given for free.

“Do you even… know who he is?” Rei asks, in a low tone.

“Yes,” she says, and then looks straight at him. “That’s why, if you were to choose a life with him, you would have to keep it to yourself. I’m not giving you a blessing, but I don’t like you torturing yourself.”

Rei looks down at his feet, biting his lip.

“Or he would have to change his, ah, career path,” she adds, with a little sarcastic smile.

Rei’s lips twist and he holds a protest back, but he presses his lips together. This conversation went above and beyond anything he could have expected, it gave him a way out. There’s no way he’d argue now.

“So is it… really okay?”

She looks up at him again, raising a brow.

“Oh, I don’t approve, not at all. I don’t like the idea of this… person ruining your future, but if ruining it is what you want to do there is nothing I could do to prevent you from doing it, is there? So if you want him, just go get him. You don’t need my approval to do that, and you never needed my approval to do anything.”

Rei’s head starts spinning a little, and he takes a step back. Nagisa could never ruin his life, Nagisa is what made it enjoyable for the first time in many, many years. But he would not say that, he has a feeling his mother would either not understand or dismiss the concept as ‘idealism’.

But it’s attractive, the idea of waking up in the morning with Nagisa curled up against his chest and lazily combing his fingers through strands of soft, fluffy hair, and maybe it’s not a very deep reason for wanting to ditch the life he knows. It’s very simple, but it’s a vision he desperately needs to reach for, one his heart is aching for. And from it bloom thousands of other visions and fantasies, that guide him into turning his back to his mother and rushing out gradually faster and faster, until he’s alone in his mansion’s parking lot with his phone in his hands.

He’s not ready to hear Nagisa’s voice, or for whatever he’ll say, but he still composes a brief message to him.

‘I’m calling the wedding off. Can I come to you?’

It’s cold and he shivers, but somehow standing there in the middle of an empty private parking lot, staring down at his phone’s screen, feels right.

And it takes forever before his phone vibrates.

‘Come to my place.’

It’s cold and dry and he could almost hear the strain in Nagisa’s voice, but it’s something.

He grabs his car’s keys and holds onto them for a bit like a lifesaver, before his guts give a particularly violent twist and compel him into moving.

As the road rolls under the car, warmth and excitement spread boiling all throughout his veins, under his skin, mixing in his insides. He’s got money and a good job, connections, good friends, and it can be done. It can be done, and he won’t be the first.

And it could all be so wrong, it could not have a good ending, but he’s doing it. And there’s no way back, but right now he looks ahead, and for once there are no thoughts slipping through the cracks of his mind.

It’s scary and exciting, and it seems time is suddenly rushing twice as fast, but when the small apartment’s door inches open and he receives a very skeptic, defensive look from the other side, he sighs before letting himself in. He never saw it from the inside - Nagisa never let him - but it looks sort of quaint and peaceful. No clutter, nothing out of the ordinary. The only special thing is the person standing in front of him, looking somewhat completely different in another setting.

“Let’s try.”

Nagisa takes a step to the side with a sigh, pushing his own hair back, and gestures to the couch while he heads to the small kitchen.

“Tea?” He offers, not looking at Rei, but his voice sounds a bit softer than last time they talked. An opening, maybe.

Rei sits down, looking around with an odd sense of anticipation. He’s here and he took a decision - might as well go ahead and stick with it.

“Yes, I’ll have one,” he replies, and scratches his head. “Listen, I did a lot of thinking.”

“Me too.”

“I thought… I really like being with you. I want to keep seeing you.”

Nagisa hums, not sounding at all surprised.

“And why should what you want mean I have to comply?” He replies, firm. “What makes you think I would want to be… in a relationship with you?”

Nagisa still does not look at him.

“You’re giving me a chance, aren’t you? As long as you don’t point a knife at me again, I think I can reasonably assume you don’t hate me being here.”

Nagisa keeps quiet for a bit, bringing a hand to his throat.

“Of course I don’t. I just thought it was a little too easy, how you just went along with what your parents wanted. You didn’t really have a resolve, did you?”

It’s a challenge, and it only makes Rei’s blood pump harder.

“I do now,” he says with a firm tone in his voice. “I had a conversation with my mother that… gave me another perspective. I was an idiot.”

Nagisa sighs, but it sounds like relief.

“That’s how things are, it doesn’t mean you’re an idiot.”

“I don’t like how things are. So… so fuck it, you know?”

Finally Nagisa turns around to look at him, with surprise painted all over his face and a long silence.

“Sorry, I didn’t think you were capable of cursing.”

“It sounded right,” Rei says defensively, with red spreading across his cheeks.

Another long silence settles between them, until the kettle begins boiling and Nagisa pours tea for both, and they sit next to each other gently blowing on the hot beverage while diving into complex thoughts, undoing the knots in their thoughts.

“So… are you taking me on a date or what?” Nagisa says, finally talking with his teacup between his hands. “It’s not all alright, by the way. I just want to know if you really want me. Because you know… I can deal with being on my own. I can’t deal with being made fun of.”

Rei meets his gaze and finally nods, inching closer.

“Of course. I mean… I don’t really have plans, but I know I don’t want a random person with me. I want to be with you more. It’s not much of an answer, but it’s something I want.”

Nagisa hums, nodding absent-mindedly, and pauses for a bit while sipping his tea.

“That’s good with me, for now,” he finally replies. “Just promise me you won’t try and bond before I’m telling you I want you to. And… I don’t want to depend on you. So if I have to keep doing what I do, that’s what I’ll keep doing. I want to make my own money and support myself, is that okay with you?”

Rei bites his lip, blushing with inevitable jealousy, but finally nods and looks at the tea moving quietly on his cup. He did tell himself there would be hurdles and choosing Nagisa would be tougher.

“Yes, it’s good.”

After a few moments, Nagisa’s warm hand grabs his, and his head leans on Rei’s shoulder while somehow still being able to sip his tea.

“Okay. Date at home then. I don’t feel like going out right now,” he mutters lazily, and nuzzles his head against Rei’s shoulder just like a cat would. Rei sets down his cup, and wraps his arms around the smaller man’s frame, as he senses him slowly relax.

“Sounds good,” he says, as his heart beats a little bit softer.