Work Text:
Last Tuesday, when Jayce was invited to tour the Academy’s newly-refurbished biomedical lab, Sky instructed him open up his hand — and dropped a shivery little creature into his waiting palm. An oncomouse, she explained. A lab mouse genetically modified to carry a carcinogenic gene.
Jayce cupped his hand reflexively, tensely. The mouse nosed against his fingers: fearful, he thought — or maybe just intrigued by the hot, human scent of Jayce’s fingernails. His ears perked forwards. His tail flicked. The rapid flutter of his heartbeat called to mind an engine on the verge of exhaustion.
If the mouse knew anything about the pollution metastasizing in his lymphatic system — the sick gifts of the father — he betrayed nothing in the way of anguish. He snuffled and squirmed with a mild and resigned fussiness. Jayce smoothed the palm of his thumb over the crown of the mouse’s head. His heart soared with tenderness.
It was impossible not to think of Vik.
Take it from a scientist: there is no hidden secret in nature. No truth to tease free. There are only the processes — cultural, technological, psychiatric, therapeutic, pharmacological — through which the body, as a weathered artifact, at last acquires some flailing approximation of that mythic natural status. Homeostasis, equilibrium. Purification, prophylaxis. The extra-somatic means of adaptation for the human organism. Behold, a man!
No one process is ever absolute, is ever a complete act unto itself. All processes must be repeated, again and again and again, indefinitely, infinitely; the result is a lifetime spend chasing away dirt, smoothing down what sticks up, subordinating the wildness that offends against order.
Each and every morning, Jayce swallows a fistful of correctives: Wellbutrin, Lamical, rut blockers. Each and every morning, he rises, stretches, jacks off in the shower, and watches his spunk slither down the drainpipe, along with fifty-seven appalling and illegal thoughts about his underage son’s budding tits. Each and every morning, he towels off, applies cologne to his throat and wrist, smothers himself in skincare, and dresses himself.
He tells himself this: I am a good person. And he believes it, from time to time.
We’ll start right here: late September, cold and unpromising. Tuesday, six in the morning. Toothpaste, black coffee, multivitamins, overnight oats. Pictures on the walls. Appointments on the calendar. Jayce’s mother’s voice in his ear: You look tired, mijo.
He’s just finished packing Vik’s lunch when the boy in question pushes out of his room. Jayce’s bandy-legged, ill-starred omega son. Recently thirteen. Pale like his mom, amber-eyed like his daddy.
With one hand, Viktor braces his weight gingerly against the doorknob, relieving the strain on his right leg. With the other, he pushes his knuckles up into his eyepits. He’s all bleary and sweet, still sooty-eyed with sleep.
His thin, cottony shorts hang a little loosely around his hips. His tank top rides up ever slightly over his belly — and does nothing, it should be added, to conceal the soft, sloping shape of his tits, new and small and perky and perfect.
The day the doctors told Jayce that his son’s life would be a revolving door of hospital visits, Jayce was cool, calm, ready for anything. The day the doctors told him that his little boy would be an omega, he cried. He knew what alphas were like — predators, perverts, despots, creeps. He never wanted his son to feel so helpless. So used.
Hypocrite. If he really gave a shit, he should’ve put a handgun in his mouth right then and there.
Jayce smiles, says, “Morning, baby. Sleep well?”
Vik’s not a baby anymore. Not really. But there’s no rancour in his eyes when they slide up from the floor.
“I slept okay,” he says. Then, with an air of cool assessment, “Better than you, I bet.”
Jayce cocks a brow. “Now, where’s this coming from? I slept like a log.”
“Liar,” Viktor says with a visible relish. “Don’t think I can’t tell. You’ve got that… purplish look under your eyes. Like bruised fruit.”
He gestures towards his father’s face with the flick of a wrist. Jayce winces.
“Alright, alright,” he says, massaging the back of his neck. “I admit it. I had a tough time falling asleep last night.”
“Knew it,” Viktor says, his eyes glittering with mirth even as he places his next words with pity. “Thinking about your research?”
Among other things.
Jayce grimaces. “Pretty much. I get this way from time to time — I’ll be at home, lying in bed, but I still feel like my head’s still stuck in the lab. And then I’m constantly in and out of bed, taking notes, reviewing unprocessed data, redrafting reports…”
Viktor tilts himself against the doorframe. “Seems to be happening more and more lately.”
“You think?”
“Yeah,” Vik says. He reaches out, swipes his hand over Jayce’s shoulder clumsily, as though petting a dog. “I can hear you, sometimes. Pacing the hall. Poor daddy.”
Vik’s hand is small and soft. The scent of his pheromones clings to the undersides of his wrists; milky-sweet, honeylike. Strong today. Stronger every day, really. Probably getting close to his first real heat.
Jayce should call his pediatrician. Should sit down and chat with Vik about it. Embarrass him with medical charts and instructional pamphlets and sound advice, the kind you’d normally get from a mother. Hug him, say, I’m so proud of you. Everything is going to be just fine. You’ll see.
What he wants to do is to grab Vik’s wrist, trap it under the full crush of his grip, and lick a path down the tendon.
Handgun, mouth.
“Poor daddy indeed,” Jayce agrees, wan.
“You ever try sleeping with the TV on? I hear that helps.”
“I’ll try that,” Jayce says, stepping out of Viktor’s reach. “You need help getting dressed, baby?”
Viktor makes a face. “No.”
“Can I make you breakfast?”
“I can make it myself.”
“Course you can. But isn’t everything better when daddy makes it?”
“Maybe so,” Vik says, crossing one calf over the other. “I still want to make it myself.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure, dad.”
“Alright, alright.”
Jayce ruffles Viktor’s hair. Viktor smiles dazedly, obliquely.
“When I can’t sleep,” he tells his father, conspiratorial, “I count sheep.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve seen the flashlight you keep under your pillow. You read under the covers.”
Vik sticks his tongue out, and hobbles back into his bedroom. The door clicks shut.
Jayce stands outside the door a minute longer, listening to the soft thumping sounds within: fabric sliding against fabric, sliding against skin.
The door’s unlocked. If he so pleased, Jayce could barge right in, could wrestle Vik’s naked body down against the bed. Force his legs open. Fuck the sweetness right out of him. Viktor’s trust throbs in his awareness; a prey animal showing his back to a predator.
Handgun, mouth.
Jayce mills back into the kitchen. He hunts his car keys. He tops up his coffee. He does the morning crossword while Viktor (slowly, determinedly) practices frying an egg. He drops Vik off his school. He goes to work.
There are plaques and trophies and newspaper clippings lining the walls of his office. More in the lab. An intern gushes, fumbles through her bag, asks for his autograph. Not to be weird, but you’re kind of my hero?
The oncomouse develops a lymphoid cell tumour, like they all knew he would. The biomedical lab rewards him for his courage with a slice of red apple. The dying thing devours it with gusto.
Saturday night. Jayce lies up in bed, watching the ceiling fan spin. Fatigue crackles at the edges of his brain — but he’s not exactly tired. He feels wired, activated. Agitated, in a word. He can swear he can feel his adrenal medulla releasing epinephrine every 45 minutes, as if on a timetable.
He gets up, pours himself two fingers of whiskey. He posts up on the couch, puts on a cop drama. He’s not sure it helps, exactly — but it doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t fall asleep, but the soft droning of human voices settles something inside of him. Or is that just the whiskey? He refills his tumbler, lets his mind drift. Onscreen, the rough-and-tumble rookie cop proudly displays his badge. The badge is shiny. It’s yellow. It looks fake. It is fake.
The hero-cop draws his pistol, a stone-cold killer with a cowboy’s shooting iron. He puts a bullet in the bad guy’s brain. The bad guy’s body seizes, swoons, hits the pavement. The hero-cop turns, full of intent. His eyes are medium-hard, black with contempt. He kisses the heroine. Tasteful fade to black. Jayce refills his tumbler.
“Can I watch with you?”
At the sound of Viktor’s voice, Jayce nearly jumps. He glances up, sees Viktor tilted timidly against the wall.
Jayce scrubs a hand down his face. “Can’t sleep?”
Viktor’s eyes flick; he sucks at his tongue. “Yeah.”
“Guess that makes two of us, huh? C’mere, sweetheart.”
Jayce pats his lap. Slowly, Viktor ambles across the room and over to the couch. Moving on his knees, he climbs up onto Jayce. He shifts — mindful, perhaps, of the distribution of his weight across his daddy’s thigh. He needn’t bother, really. He hardly weighs a thing.
Vik’s eyes scroll towards the screen. The hero-cop is unloading his clip again. Bang, bang, bang.
“I hate these shows,” he says. “They’re so formulaic.”
“Well, yeah. They’re meant to be. So, you know — you can jump in at any point and never miss a thing,” Jayce says, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Nothing too challenging, nothing too complex. You don’t have to follow a convoluted season arc, or retain multiple interlocking backstories… just the last thirty-odd minutes of tepid investigation. Plus, the protagonists’ motivations are pretty much self-evident: they’re cops. They fight bad guys.”
Vik turns his soft, mordant gaze on Jayce.
“That’s what cops do?” he ventures. “Fight bad guys?”
Jayce half-laughs, half-grimaces. “You’re not supposed to watch this shit with your brain on.”
“You can do that? Turn your brain off?”
“Personally? Not really, no,” Jayce says “But I still try. I hear it’s good for you.” He jerks his chin towards the television set. “S’okay, baby. You can switch to something else, I don’t mind.”
Vik surfs for half a minute, flicking idly through the menus — Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, sitcoms, medical dramas, etcetera. In the end, he settles on an old black-and-white movie. A Hayes Code classic. A private dick gets caught-up in a bad way with a long-legged blonde. The blonde is evil, but a special kind of evil that sometimes rolls over and shows its belly. Her eyes are hot and dark, like a coal seam. Like smoke spewing off Mount Etna.
Jayce strokes Vik’s hip idly. He’s wearing these teeny tiny little shorts, pale pink, cottony-soft. Jayce longs to hook his thumbs into the waistband, drag them down over Vik’s hips. He swallows the urge. Reaches for his whiskey. Swallows that up too.
Vik squirms.
“Um,” his voice cracks, falters. “That —”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing,” he says quickly. Then, a couple minutes later, he seems to rally himself, and says, “That feels nice. What you’re doing with your hand.”
“What, this?” Jayce drags his thumb down Vik’s hipbone. Vik shudders. His hips jerk abruptly.
“Yeah,” he says.
There’s a scent to him, slowly spreading throughout the room. Jayce can all but feel it in his gums. If he sucked his way across Vik’s throat, he’s sure he could taste it in his sweat — the slow-acting work of biology. The chemical crawl towards a first heat.
It’s nice. Real nice.
Jayce goes on rubbing his palm up over Vik’s bare hips, beneath the thin material of his pajamas. Vik’s hips jerk, then still. Then jerk again. Then again, until he’s squirming in place, subtly grinding down into his father’s lap.
Jesus.
“You’re moving a lot,” Jayce hears himself say.
Viktor’s hips still again. The back of his neck is a warm, fleshy pink, as though sunburnt.
“Sorry,” he manages to say — but he doesn’t even know what he’s sorry for, does he?
“It’s okay,” Jayce tells him.
Viktor says nothing. A few minutes pass, Viktor making a deliberate and determined show of watching the screen. But then his hips start up again.
“I’m sorry,” Vik says again, the words just bursting right out of him, like he just can’t help it. “I — I’m being gross. I’m being gross, I know.”
“You’re not gross,” Jayce says neutrally. A beat. Then, as gently as he can manage, he puts in, “Do you feel good?”
Viktor tenses up visibly at that; not at all what Jayce intended. Jayce rubs a soothing hand over the small of his back, murmurs, “Hey. Hey. You’re not in trouble, baby.”
A pause.
“I’m not?”
“Of course not.”
Onscreen, the long-legged femme fatale is pulling off her stockings. Humphrey Bogart regards her drolly.
“I just feel — funny,” Vik says. “And. And it feels good, just to…”
As if to demonstrate, he squirms again, dragging his clothed cunny across his father’s lap.
Jesus fucking Christ. Okay. Okay.
“That’s… that’s perfectly natural,” Jayce finds himself saying, his mouth filling with saliva.
Viktor tosses a glance back at Jayce, bewildered. “Is it?”
“Of course. You know, all omegas like to feel good with alphas.”
“Do they?”
“Of course. Of course, yeah.”
Lightly, Jayce repositions Viktor in his lap to straddle his thigh. Vik purses his lips as he grinds down, kneading his clothed pussy against the hard, muscled planes of Jayce’s body.
“You must think I’m stupid,” Viktor says, forcing the words out from behind grit teeth. “Or — innocent beyond belief. I — I know that — ”
What, that good little boys don’t do this with their daddies? With a casual possessiveness, Jayce cups Viktor’s waist. Lightly, so lightly, he asks, “Know what, baby?”
Viktor flushes hard. Through the barrier of their clothes, Jayce can feel — or least, convincingly imagine — the throbbing heat of his sex.
“Nevermind,” he says.
“No, really,” Jayce presses. “What is it that you know?” The anger surprises him; it swoops through his gut, hot and ugly and hurt, like Viktor had shown Jayce some seed of his nature — then immediately betrayed it. “Tell me. I’d really like to know.”
“It’s nothing.”
Jayce pulls his hands off Viktor’s body, lifting both palms in a conciliatory gesture. He makes his eyes round and sad. “Do you want to stop and go to bed, baby? Is that it?”
“No!” Viktor shakes his head furiously, throat bobbing. “No, daddy, please. I want…” He turns his face away from Jayce. His knees clamp tight around Jayce’s thigh. “Let’s keep watching TV, okay?”
Static buzzes in Jayce’s ears.
“Okay, baby,” he says. “Sure thing.”
He goes on lightly petting Vik’s hips, Vik’s back, Vik’s belly; all the while, Vik rides his thigh. His hips work tentatively first, self-consciously — he doesn’t know what he’s doing, Jayce thinks, or even why he’s doing it, but apparently, he knows just enough to feel ashamed. Poor little darling. Poor little omega. Jayce strokes his knuckles down Vik’s flank, murmuring some idle encouragement.
Who taught him he should be afraid of this, he wonders? His classmates? His teachers? His doctors? Or did Jayce himself nurture this poison, unwittingly, unthinkingly?
The TV drones. Jayce doesn’t hear a thing.
Eventually, after several minutes of tense, furtive grinding, Viktor seems to dispense with whatever complex mental objection was holding him back, and his hips start up again in earnest. Omegan instincts overriding common sense, Jayce supposes. Biology having its own way against the wishes of culture. Or is it the other way around? He thinks of Myrrha, clothed in sweetness: Human concern has made malign laws, and what nature allows, jealous duty forbids.
Arms quivering, Vik braces both hands against the couch, working his clothed pussy against Jayce’s muscled thigh insistently, feverishly. His expression is one of total absorption, total concentration. Soft whimpers fall from his lips as he grinds, uh uh uh.
Gradually, the scent of Viktor’s pheromones suffuses the entire room. It’s never been this rich before. This deep. This — intoxicating. Vik smells like Saigon cinnamon and steamed milk. He smells like he’d go down smooth. In a burst of temporary insanity, Jayce worries that their neighbours will be able to smell it all down the street.
Fingering the hem of Viktor’s top, Jayce says, “Why don't you take your shorts off, sweetheart? I bet it'll feel even better that way.”
Vik pauses. “Um.”
Shit. Too far?
Rushing to cover himself, Jayce says, “You don’t have to.”
“I —” Vik sinks his teeth into his lower lip. “That sounds embarrassing.”
“Forget it,” Jayce says. His cock is fucking rock hard, straining against the fabric of his flannel pajama pants. “Silly suggestion.”
Carefully, Vik turns himself around in Jayce’s lap to face him directly. He studies his father’s face; Jayce studies him right back. There’s something thorny and difficult in his features — like he’s posing Jayce some silent question. His face is red with embarrassment, or pleasure, or both.
“I’m gonna take them off,” Vik whispers, his voice just barely skating on his breath. “But just my shorts, okay?”
Jayce slow-blinks.
He says, “Okay, baby.”
Delicately, he shimmies free of his shorts, kicking them off the edge of the couch. Jayce drinks him as he straightens back up. Smooth, pale skin — skinny hips — innocent white panties, a growing wet spot visible at the front, fabric sticking to the folds of his sensitive cunt —
“There we are,” Jayce says, appraising him warmly. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
Vik’s eyes are bright with nervy elation, like he cannot quite believe his own daring.
“Yes,” he says. He goes right back to humping his daddy’s leg, the damp cotton sticking to Jayce’s pajama trousers. “Hahhh… that feelsh… that feels better...” He wraps his arms around Jayce’s shoulders, shoves his face insistently into the crook of Jayce’s neck. “You smell really good, daddy.”
Like an man, Jayce’s mind supplies. Like an alpha.
“I bet I do.”
“It feels good,” Viktor says, still working his cunt against his daddy’s leg. “It feelsho… it feels really, really good… uhnnn… but also — it’s weird, it’s really weird. I’m really hot down there, daddy. I’m so hot, an’ — an’ itchy. I’m — uh — I’m sorry, daddy. I’m really sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry, baby,” Jayce says, kissing the shell of Vik’s ear. “You’ve just gotta cum, you know? Your pussy wants to cum.”
“My… my pussy wants…”
To hear that word from Viktor’s mouth — is unbelievably arousing.
Jayce takes Vik’s hand in his, guides it down between his thighs, right over the place his little clitty should be. “Touch yourself right here, honey. That’ll help.” His heart surges with a tenderness that borders on mania; he feels completely outside of his own body. While his soul floats somewhere up on the ceiling, he hears the following words in his own voice: “You ever touch yourself like this in bed at night? You ever make yourself cum?”
Clumsy, urgent, Vik strums his fingers against the fabric of his panties. “Daddy, I’m g’na… hahhhhnnn…”
Viktor grips Jayce’s shoulders tight, so tight, squeezing on for dear life. His hips work jerkily, erratically, in tandem with his hand. His panties, now completely and utterly drenched in his juices, dampen the fabric of Jayce’s pajamas.
“Go ahead, baby,” Jayce says in a smiling haze; one hand on Viki’s waist, the other cupping the pert swell of his ass. “Go ahead. Daddy’s right here. Daddy’s got you.”
Vik’s core seizes up. His thighs squeeze together, vice-tight. He crushes himself against Jayce’s body, chasing his scent — the dense, hot, husky scent of an alpha. Provider, protector, father, husband, mate. Vik’s hand is still jammed in between them, still playing with his little boydick as his hips rock.
Deliriously, Jayce counts the layers of fabric separating his cock from Viktor’s cunt. Could Viktor take it? Would he cry? Would he bleed? Would he bounce on it like a whore?
Helpless, pleading, near to tears, Viktor keens into his daddy’s shoulder: “I’mcummingI’mcummingI’mshorryyyI’msorryI’mcummingI’mcummingallovermydaddyI’mcumming…”
No one, Jayce thinks, watching Viktor sweat and shudder his way through his climax, has ever been this beautiful.
Then, a new thought: He was made for me. And I was made for him.
The notion floods his central nervous system with the aggregate potency of 10mg midazolam, administered intravenously. God. How long did he bother fighting this? How much time did he waste in denying it? Suddenly, it all seems so easy, so simple.
Viktor was born for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to be his father’s bride.
Spent, Viktor slumps against Jayce’s front. A string of saliva connects his lips to Jayce’s cotton tee. Poor little darling. Poor little lamb. First he worked himself up, then he worked himself over.
Slowly, amiably, Jayce cards a hand through Viktor’s hair.
“Hey,” Jayce says, sotto. “I’m so proud of you, Vik. You’re so grown-up now, you know that? So grown-up. You’ve made daddy really, really happy tonight.”
Dazedly, Vik blinks up at him. Tears suspended in his lashes. Sweat beading his brow.
“I did?”
“Yeah,” Jayce says. “So happy.”
Viktor tucks his chin against Jayce’s shoulder.
“Ah,” he murmurs. “That’s. Good.” He swallows noisily. Throat bobbing. “I want — I want to make you happy all the time.”
“You already do, baby.”
Vik shakes his head, no. “I can do better. I can be better. I can be — what you need. So don’t go looking for someone else, alright?”
Jayce almost laughs at that — but he stops himself at Viktor’s expression, which is deadly serious.
“Alright, baby,” he says. “I won’t. I promise.”
Jayce shuts off the television, shuts off all the lights. He scoops Viktor up off the couch and into his arms. Viktor hums, secretive and pleased. His scent is mellower now, but no less sweet. Does he know what Jayce knows? A better question, perhaps: how long has he known it?
Jayce carries Vik down he hall. He tucks him into bed, kisses his forehead. Wishes him sweet dreams. Shuts the door.
Three in the morning. Beyond the big bay window, a vast and laughing darkness. The lingering fragrance of Viktor’s preheat permeates everything.
Alone, Jayce staggers down the hallway. He shuts off all the lights. He shoulders into the bathroom. He wrestles his clothes off, turns on the showerhead. He steps under the spray. Jets of blistering-hot water sluice over his back, his shoulders, his haunches. Hair plastered to his skull, Jayce squeezes his eyes shut. Retinal noise flares behind his eyelids.
He replays it over and over in his mind: Viktor orgasming in his lap. The sound of it. The feel of it.
Jayce strips his cock hard and fast, fucking into his fist — and when he spends, it’s with Viktor’s name in his mouth.
When Jayce’s wife died, he feared he would never love again.
Funny. He should’ve prayed it would be so.
Eight in the morning. A low-skied, hazy Sunday. Marble countertops. Paper roses. A wooden crucifix. Rain on a window.
It’s somewhat rare for Viktor to rise before Jayce, but today is one such exception: when Jayce at last manages to drag himself into the kitchen, Viktor’s already there, peering over the cooktop. Jayce braces one hand against the entryway, drinking in the sight of him. Viktor’s wearing his daddy’s apron over a sheer, lacy camisole. A pan of eggs and bacon sizzles peaceably on the burner.
“You’re getting good at that,” Jayce says, watching Viktor prod at his breakfast with a slotted spoon.
“I’d better be,” Viktor says gravely. “I’ve been practicing quite a lot.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“The hardest part of cooking,” Vik goes on, “is all the standing.” He tips his head towards his cane, which is leaned up against the countertop a half-pace away. “But so long as I build in opportunities to take breaks, it’s reasonably tolerable. I’m going to start working on pancakes next, I think. Then some simple weeknight dinners. Spaghetti, casseroles, those sorts of things.”
Jayce half-laughs, says, “Sick of me ordering takeout every other night?”
“No. Well, yes, actually — but that wasn’t my rationale for learning.” Viktor purses his lips, eyes riveted to the pan. The eggs crackle and pop. “You — work hard on my behalf. Lately, I’ve been thinking… it would be nice if I could do something to look after you, too.”
“Like cooking?”
“Like cooking,” Viktor agrees. He chances a glance up at Jayce. “Wouldn’t it be nice? To come home from work and have dinner all taken care of?”
“That… would be pretty ideal, I admit,” Jayce says, warming at the notion. “But, Vik — looking after you is my job, you know? It’s not a debt you have to pay back.”
“I know that,” Viktor says. His eyes slide back towards the cooktop. “I just thought, you know… maybe looking after you could be my job, too.”
Jayce sidles up behind Vik. He reaches over, brings the heat down on the hob. Viktor’s eyes drift back towards his daddy’s face. His look is shy, but questing. His chin bobs minutely. The moment feels — permissive.
Moving on instinct, Jayce reaches down and grabs a handful of Vik’s ass.
“Breakfast is a good place to start,” Jayce says, affecting an air of nonchalance as he kneads Viktor’s ass into his palm. “If you want to learn a couple other simple meals, I’ll help you out. Just while you’re getting started.”
“That —” Viktor twitches, sucks in a breath. “That sounds nice, dad.”
“Doesn’t it?” Jayce muses. “I should teach you your grandmother’s recipe for black bean soup.”
Viktor lets out a disbelieving little laugh. He forces his eyes back towards the cooktop.
“Dad,” he temporizes, watching the edges of his eggs crisp up into a delectable golden-brown. “Daddy. About last night, um.”
Jayce leans in, bringing his nose closer to the nape of Viktor’s neck. Already, the scent here is strong — omegan preheat, heady as brandy.
“What about it?”
Viktor tucks his hair back with one hand; the tip of his ear is bright red. “That movie we were watching was really good,” he says. “Don’t you think?”
Thoughts of Viktor’s body flood Jayce’s mind.
“Yeah. It was.”
“It’s a shame we didn’t finish it.”
“Ah,” Jayce says. “Next time.”
“Next time,” Viktor agrees craftily.
Jayce releases Viktor. Free from his father’s pawing, Viktor quietly readjusts his clothing. His expression teeters somewhere between relief and disappointment.
“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” Jayce says. “If I leave you alone for a few minutes, do you promise not to start a grease fire?”
“I know what I’m doing, dad,” Vik says, tightening his apron.
“Alright, alright. But if anything goes wrong — ”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Viktor sighs, batting Jayce away. “Out. Go wash up.”
Jayce obeys.
To his eternal credit, Viktor does not, in fact, start a grease fire. In fact, he acquits himself rather admirably — and when Jayce returns to the kitchen table wrapped in a towel, the kitchen is clean, the dishes are drying on the rack, and there’s breakfast waiting for him on the table: hot, crispy rashers of bacon, eggs over-easy, buttered toast, and a cup of hot coffee.
“I could get used to this,” Jayce grins, sitting down across from Viktor.
“I’m sure you could,” Viktor agrees, sly. He knocks his ankle against Jayce’s bare calf, watches him rip into his breakfast with a look of obvious pride.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” Vik says some time later, circling the rim of his glass with his forefinger. “A day or two at most.”
Jayce looks up from his plate. “Before what?”
Viktor shrugs. He crunches into his toast.
The first thing Jayce does when he wakes up on Monday morning is call Viki’s school to tell them he won’t be in. Hardly an unusual state of affairs. Even under the best of circumstances, Viktor still calls out at least twice a month. Next, Jayce calls his workplace. He tells them his kid needs him today, that it’s an emergency, that it really won’t wait.
Jayce is, objectively, not doing anything suspicious at all. He hasn’t even technically lied. Still, he feels incandescent with wrongdoing as he sets down the phone. Paranoia gnaws at the edges of his awareness — could his secretary somehow read the guilt in his voice? Did his attempts at breezy nonchalance read as transparently ersatz? Would she call the cops? Were they already on their way?
Fuck, the last time he was this panicked — when was it? The night he stopped using coke? Jayce shoves himself into the bathroom. He trims his beard, brushes his teeth, scrubs his face, scrutinizes himself in the mirror.
It occurs to him then, quite suddenly, that none of this has ever mattered. The four-step skincare routine. The well-kept facial hair. The mindfulness journals, the guided meditations, the therapist with the cableknit sweaters. The overnight oats. The fucking Chobani. The prophylaxis is incomplete; the rituals have failed. Perhaps they were performed in error: hastily, carelessly, rotely, unfeelingly. Or perhaps — and Jayce really, truly hopes this is the case — they were always doomed.
The sick truth: he’s not well. Even sicker: he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t care. He’s just so tired, so tired and so done, and he wants this, and Viktor wants it. How could Jayce even be blamed? It’s Viktor, really, who gave this sickness shape and form and power; Viktor who crossed the line, who jerked off all over him, who took their home and made it (to use his own term) gross.
Jayce has imposed nothing.
God, Jayce prays he at least resembles a human being, if only to the untrained eye — because he doesn’t feel it. He feels transformed, like one of Ovid’s metamorphoses. Actaeon, Arcas, Calchus. Cinyras. Man into beast.
It’s still early. Viktor’s bedroom door is shut tight. Jayce peeks inside; Viktor’s wrapped up in his blankets, cheek crushed against his pillow, fast asleep. Even in sleep, the scent of him is overwhelming delicious: that creamy pre-heat, so very near to turning. A bud set to burst.
Jayce closes the door. Viktor probably won’t be up for another half hour, if he gets up at all. There’s still time.
Jayce goes for a run around the block. He gets back, rinses off, towels off. It feels good to use his body this way. He feels strong, limber. Galvanized. Slowly, gradually, his mood begins to lift. The dread and the shame and the anger melt away, like sugar into coffee; what remains is a kind of boyish giddiness. He gets dressed as though he were going to work. He takes the Wellbutrin, takes the Lamical — but skips his blockers. He wants to reek of himself today. He wants to reek of an alpha.
Seven-fifteen. Jayce knocks on Viki’s door. “You getting up from school soon?”
The soft sounds of stirring from within. Jayce counts to thirty seconds in his head. Then, he knocks again.
“You feeling alright, honey?”
A muffled response. Jayce steeples his fingers against the doorknob. His nostrils flare. His palms sweat. A feeling of doom overtakes him — but it’s a pleasurable kind of doom. A thrill. If he steps inside that room, he will make himself a criminal.
“I’m coming in,” he says, fighting to mask his eagerness.
He pushes into the room — and his nose pricks with the new, wafting scent of an omega in full-blown heat.
At last.
Viktor lies in bed, supine, half-covered. His face is flush; his eyes are glassed. He regards Jayce with a warm, lazy interest. He smells like sex. There’s no other way to say it. He smells like sex incarnate.
“I feel hot,” Viktor says, lowly, sadly. “Hot all over. I think I might have a fever.”
A transparent lie, one he doesn’t even attempt to make plausible.
“Ah,” Jayce says. Some kind of gravity pulls him towards Viktor, further into the room, until his knees touch the mattress. “That’s no good, huh?”
“It hurts,” Viktor says. “It hurts a lot, daddy.”
Jayce eyes travel up Viktor’s legs, to the mass of blankets pooled around his waist. He’s wet. Jayce can’t see it, but he can smell it — he’s wet, he’s wet, he’s soaking wet.
“Should — should I get the thermometer, you think?”
Vik blinks at him tenderly.
“No,” he says. “But maybe you could lie down with me? Cool me down?”
“I, yeah,” Jayce rushes to say, lifting his knee onto the bed, “I can do that.”
He crawls into bed with Viktor, holding him from behind. Their clothes slide against each other, but do nothing to defend against the warmth of each other’s bodies; Viktor is hot in his arms. Hot, and small, and soft.
Jayce presses his nose against the nape of his neck, inches from his scent gland. He inhales. He might as well be huffing some kind of psychoactive neurotoxin. He feels insane.
It occurs to him then that Viktor must be at his peak fertility. And suddenly, it’s all he can think about.
Viktor, pregnant.
In the privacy of his own mind, Jayce imagines it. He imagines smoothing his large, dark hanks over Vik’s taut and ponderous belly. He imagines Vik’s tits swelling with milk. He imagines — the satisfaction of knowing he’s the one who put that baby in him.
Slowly, Jayce slides his hands under Vik’s shirt, over his tummy. Flat — for now. Jayce presses down over Viktor’s womb, lost in the fantasy. Vik shivers.
“It’s nice, right?” Jayce breathes against Vik’s ear. “Cuddling with daddy when you’re not feeling too good?”
Vik tips his head back, further baring his throat. His throat works around a swallow.
“Yes, daddy,” he says. “It’s nice.”
“And it helps the hurt?”
“It helps,” Vik says, “a bit.”
Jayce’s hands slide up over Viktor’s waist, his abdomen, his ribs — until Jayce is cupping Viktor’s tits, one in each hand. Jayce’s cock hardens in his pants as he massages them. They’re not too big, not yet. Only a handful each. Still, they’re nice and plush, good for a squeeze.
“You’ve been growing,” Jayce muses. Viktor squirms in his arms — embarrassed? Delighted?
“Do… they feel nice?”
“Yeah,” Jayce murmurs, flicking a thumb over Viktor’s nipple. “Really nice, baby.”
“Do you think they’ll get bigger?”
Jayce pretends to think about it. “Hm, I don’t know. Let me get a closer look.”
Wordlessly, Jayce guides Viktor down onto his back. Viktor goes down obediently. His eyes are large and dark, like a calf’s. Jayce lifts Viktor’s shirt off over his head; Viktor shimmies free of it. The top is discarded at the foot of the bed, leaving Vik naked from the waist up, his breasts exposed to his father’s wandering eyes.
Jayce crawls on top of Viktor, running a proprietary hand over Viktor’s chest. God, it’s such a relief to touch him like this — with absolute impunity.
He brings his head down, latching onto Viktor’s left tit while groping the right. He suckles, kisses, licks his way around the areola; Viktor mewls in response, his tight clamped tight. His nipples stiffen into hard, pebbly peaks beneath Jayce’s ministrations.
“Yeah, baby,” Jayce breathes, laying kisses in the valley between Viktor’s breasts. “Yeah, these are gonna get bigger.”
“Really?” Viktor’s voice comes out slightly breathless, like he’s been running.
“Uh-huh. They’re gonna get nice and fat for me.”
Viktor writhes against the sheets.
“Daddy,” he whines, kicking free of his blanket. “It’s happening again.”
Jayce smiles against Viktor’s skin. “What’s that?”
“My — my pussy,” Viktor says. “My pussy needs to cum.”
If you pried open Jayce’s skull with an industrial-grade bonesaw and anatomized its contents, you’d find his brainstem has gone completely black with lust.
“Aw, baby,” Jayce says. “You want daddy to help you? You want daddy to make it better?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Spread your legs.”
Viktor obeys, legs falling open against the mattress. Jayce moves down Viktor’s body, hooking his fingers into his shorts — and he pulls them off. Panties next. Jayce resists the urge to growl as he snakes Viktor’s underwear down over his skinny knees, exposing his cunt to the warm, heat-soaked air of Viki’s bedroom.
And then Vik is naked, completely naked, sprawled out like a wet dream beneath his daddy. He’s gorgeous. Pale, soft, speckled here and there with freckles. And his cunt, Jesus Christ: pink, juicy, shiny, already glistening with slick. Begging to be touched.
So Jayce touches it.
“You got the talk in school, right?” he says, dragging his forefinger across Vik’s labia. “About all your parts?” His thumb finds Viktor’s clit. “You know what this is?”
Viktor nods tightly. Jayce smiles.
“That’s your clit,” he goes on. “It feels good, right?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“You play with it sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
"What do you think about when you play with it?"
Vik shakes his head, "Not t-telling."
“Does it feel good if I touch it like this?” Jayce massages it lightly with his thumb. “Or is it better like this?” At that, he switches tactics, stroking around Viktor’s clit, circling it, keeping the stimulation indirect.
“Th— th’ second one,” Viktor says. His legs are trembling. “S’better that way… ohhh… mnghh!”
Jayce works Viki’s clit slowly, methodically. “You’re so wet,” he says, revelling in it, almost awestruck. “You know what that is, Vik? That’s your body’s way of telling you that you need an alpha. Lucky for you, you’ve got one right here. One who loves you more than anything.”
Viktor squeezes his eyes shut.
“I don’t want anybody else loving me,” he says. “Only you.”
“Only me,” Jayce agrees warmly.
Viktor’s hips squirm against the sheets, pushing his hot, virgin cunt into his daddy’s hand. Chasing that sweet friction.
“Don’t stop, daddy,” he all but begs. “I need t-to — to cum, please…”
With one hand, Jayce continues to massage Viki’s clit; with the other, he slips a finger inside Viki’s entrance. Viktor hiccups, clenches down on the intrusion. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he’s started playing with his own tits, toying with his nipples while his daddy fingers him.
Already such a slut.
“I’m gonna make you cum, baby,” Jayce breathes, curling his index inside his son’s cunt, feeling his inner walls constrict around him. “You hear me? I’m gonna make you cum over and over again. With my fingers, with my tongue. And then I’m gonna fuck you, baby.” Viktor moans at that, long and delicious, tossing his head. A jackalope grin spreads across Jayce’s face. “You like that?”
“I — I like it,” Viktor slurs, still tugging at his meager little boytits. Jayce tuts.
“Louder, baby.”
“I like it,” Vik says it again, more clearly this time. His thin, sweet voice filling up the room. “I like — I like the idea of you f-fucking me. I think about it all the time, daddy —”
“Yeah?” Jayce slides a second finger into Vik. “You want the cock that made you? Is that it?”
“I — I do.”
“You want my knot?”
“I do.”
“You wanna be bred up full by your own father?”
“I do, I do, yes, yes, please, ughh, I —” Viktor’s cunt clenches around Jayce’s hand, sucking him in. “I want your babies, daddy, I wan’ — I wanna be your mate, your wife…”
“Fuck, Vik.” Jayce’s voice is ragged, hoarse; His hand speeds up around Viki’s clit. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I’m gonna give you so many babies, okay? I’m gonna give you lots of brothers and sisters to take care of.”
Viktor nods tearfully.
“I’m ready,” he says. “I’m ready.”
Something happens, then. Something Jayce can’t quite explain. Maybe he blacks out for a second, or enters some kind of fucked-up fugue state — because all of a sudden, Vik’s legs are up in the air, and Jayce is driving into him, fucking him on his fingers, and God, the sound of it — it’s obscene, so fucking sloppy and wet — the scent of it —
“I’ll quit my job at the lab,” Jayce promises him feverishly. “We’ll move away. Somewhere out of state, where nobody knows us. Where nobody even cares. I’ll take you out of school, I’ll keep you at home, barefoot and pregnant, tits leaking, cooking and cleaning for me. I swear to fucking God, Vik, you’ll have a baby in you before you turn fourteen. A baby for my baby. Doesn’t that sound so right?”
“Yeshh,” Viktor sobs, tense as a board as his body ratchets closer and closer to his peak. Tears in his eyes, tears on his face, tears darkening the bedspread. “S’what, s’what I was made for, daddy, please, pleasepleaseplease…”
Viktor’s pale feet flex in the air, toes curling. He’s close. Jayce drums at Viktor from the inside, the pace relentless. Just as Jayce’s wrist threatens to cramp, a tremble starts deep in Viktor’s belly. His eyes go wide; his whole body goes taut.
He cums like that. Moaning, squealing, crying, whining. Two fingers buried in his cunt. Slick running down his daddy’s wrist.
He’s everything. He’s perfect.
Jayce leans down, seals his lips to Viktor’s. Viktor kisses him back eagerly, but clumsily; it’s awkward, but it’s also intensely charming. He doesn’t understand how to kiss yet. But that’s alright. He’ll learn. Daddy will teach him.
“Fuck,” Jayce breathes, sliding his fingers out of Viktor. He holds his hand up in front of his face; his forefinger glistens with Viktor’s juices.“Fuck, baby.”
Viktor blinks up at him blearily. The rich scent of his heat thrums in the air.
“I’m still getting used to that,” he says, mellow with post-orgasmic bliss. “Hearing you curse.”
He spreads his legs a little wider, exposing the swollen flush of his pussy. An invitation. Jayce’s cock throbs with need. He’s fairly certain he can feel his arousal frying a hole in his brain, like pixels burning out on a television screen.
“You could ruin my life with this, you know,” Jayce says, staring directly between Viktor’s legs, engrossed. “You could seriously ruin my life.”
“I could, yes,” Viktor agrees mildly. “Are you just realizing this now?”
Jayce drapes an arm over his face and groans. Viktor takes pity on him and lightly pats at his thigh.
“Poor, poor daddy,” he says. “If it helps, I find it very — flattering. The magnitude of what you’re willing to risk for me.”
“Flattering? You find this all flattering?” Jayce lets out a nervy, disbelieving little laugh. “God, Vik. I — I’m pretty positive you shouldn’t be feeling that way. Objectively speaking.”
“No?” Viktor runs a hand over his belly. “Enlighten me, then. How am I meant to feel?”
He gazes up at his father softly, questingly, daringly. Legs open. Sweat beading at his temples. Nipples pinked.
“Nevermind,” Jayce says.
Viktor smiles, victorious.
“Take your clothes off, daddy,” he says. “It’s no fair if I’m the only one who gets to feel good.”
Jayce obeys.
The first time Jayce fucks his own son, it’s a revelation.
His mind goes blessedly blank the moment his head first breaches Viktor’s hole. He groans; Viktor’s legs tighten reflexively around his daddy’s waist. His eyes are wide with erotic peril — deliciously terrified by that first stretch, so much bigger than fingers.
“It’s — it’s not gon’ fit,” he keens.
“It will,” Jayce tells him, and he rocks his hips a half-inch deeper; Viktor wails, pisses himself in fear. Cums from it when Jayce fully seats himself. Then again, then Jayce really starts pounding him into the mattress. Again. Again.
The day passes in a heat-soaked blur. Jayce fucks Vik again the moment his knot goes down. Then again, until Viktor is full-blown sobbing with it. They leave Vik’s bedroom only when it occurs to the both of them that Vik should eat something. In the kitchen, Jayce gets back on his knees and slurps his own spunk out of Vik’s puffy, abused cunt, kissing his thighs, murmuring promises as he goes, I’m gonna mate you, I’m gonna mate you, I’m gonna mate you.
“You’d better,” Vik says, body trembling as Jayce’s tongue laves over his clit. “Or else — I’ll be mad.”
“We can’t have that,” Jayce says.
Jayce leans back on his calves. Wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, he stares up into Viktor’s eyes — own eyes — and finds nothing there but the dumb, lax acceptance of a scruffed kitten.
“If you break your promises,” he says, boneless and doe-eyed and sweet, “I really will rain down hell on you, daddy. I swear it.” A pause; Viktor tosses his head slowly, luxuriating in the sensation of Jayce’s hot breath landing on his oversensitive sex. “You’re a lucky man, you know. Perhaps the very luckiest. Instead of ruining your life, I’m inviting you to completely derail mine.”
Jayce can only agree.
Wednesday, one year later.
Late afternoon. Sun filtering through the treeline. Crowds scudding between the firs. Dirt roads with no names, that don’t show up on any map. NPR crackling over the car radio. War, famine, plague, anguish. Eat wholegrain quinoa. Go see Venice before it sinks. Read Pale Fire before you die. Which you will. Soon. But maybe not too soon if you eat enough quinoa.
Jayce switches off the radio, pulls into the driveway. He grabs his briefcase from the backseat and hauls himself out the car, rolling his stiff shoulders out as he rises to his feet. Truth be told, he’s still adjusting to all this godforsaken driving. On a good day, like today, it’s a fifty minute drive from his new job lecturing at the state university to their new house. If there’s rain or snow or a family of fucking turtles elect to make their crossing, it’s closer to an hour fifteen.
But, hey. If that’s the price he has to pay for privacy, he’ll pay it gladly.
Swinging his keys, Jayce heads up the steps and through the front door. Relief washes through his entire body the moment he steps through the threshold. More than anything else, it’s the scent of this place that he loves. Their home smells of clean laundry, antique wood, baked goods, and omegan satisfaction.
Sometimes, Vik greets him by the door; not today, it seems. Jayce hangs up his coat, toes out of his shoes, and pads through the house in search of his son.
He finds him in a predictable location; in the kitchen, absorbed in a book while something delicious browns in the oven.
God. Jayce’s heart aches at the sight of him.
His son. Recently fourteen. Five months pregnant. Glowing with it.
Viktor lifts his eyes. Jayce feels a soft tug of joy through their mating bond.
“You’re home early,” he says with a visible relish.
“Staff meeting was cancelled,” Jayce grins. Viktor sets his book aside, rising obediently from his seat to greet his mate. Jayce is obsessed with the way he moves now, slowly, ponderously, cupping his rounded belly with one hand as he stands.
Jayce kisses Viktor softly. His hands drift, unsurprisingly, to the curve of Viktor’s stomach.
Some omegas don’t take well to pregnancy; it sickens them, exhausts them, drains them, traps them in bitter and hysterical moods. Blessedly, this has not been the case for them. In fact, Viktor has never looked healthier than he does now. He complains of joint pains and swollen ankles, of course — but the added weight he’s put on is truly wonderful, his appetite up for perhaps the first time in his life. He sleeps better, too: nine hours a night, regular as clockwork.
Jayce sees no reason he shouldn’t always be like this. Year after year. Soft and lush with his daddy’s get. He sees it in his mind’s eye: a baby nursing at Viktor’s breast, another dozing at his hip. A third growing in his belly.
He’s already the perfect mate. Jayce just knows he’s gonna be a perfect mama, too.
“How was today?” Jayce murmurs. He strokes his knuckles over Viktor’s throat, over the faint indentation of his mating claim.
“Pretty good.” Viktor smiles up at him. “I had a little extra energy today, so I put a pie on.”
Jayce lights up at that. “Really?”
“You seemed to enjoy the last one I made.”
“Are you kidding me? It was fantastic. I think I had three slices in one night.”
Jayce’s enthusiasm is apparently infectious; Viktor brightens with obvious pride. “I wanted to use up the rest of the season’s apples. You certainly brought me a ton of them.”
“Homemade apple pie. God.” Jayce hums, nuzzles against his mate. “You’re too good to me, baby.”
“Possibly true,” Viktor says, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “How was work?”
“Not too bad. My postgrads are pretty animated during our seminars — I’m impressed by their enthusiasm.”
“Of course they’d be enthusiastic,” Vik says. “They have a world-renowned genius for a professor. I’m sure they’re all falling over themselves to impress you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would,” Vik says. Then, as Jayce’s hands roam down the underside of his belly, down under his skirt, he adds, “You know, we’ve got another thirty minutes before I need to pull that pie out and get started on dinner.”
“Is that so?” Jayce hums, pushing Viktor’s skirt up around his hips.
“It is,” Viktor says, ears pinked. “If you’d like to — to take advantage.”
“To take advantage,” Jayce repeats, brow cocked. He strokes Viktor’s cuntlips through his panties. Viktor squirms.
“You know that — that I like to be of service to you. At the end of a long day.”
“I could be said,” Jayce says, “to be faintly aware of that.”
Viktor gazes up at his father with all the adoration of a well-kept pet. “You want my mouth, daddy? My tits? My pussy?”
God, what an embarrassment of riches. Jayce can’t help but laugh at that, even as his cock rouses.
“I want you,” Jayce says, helpless with it, laid low with desire. “All of you. Always.”
Viktor's incisors show when he smiles. He parts his lips, lowers the fan of his lashes — a servant and a whore, an angel, a deva, a naiad — and he begins to unbutton his pinafore.