Work Text:
“You want to what?”
Kenta doesn’t so much as flinch at the harshness of the man’s tone or the way his lip curls up in what’s practically a snarl.
“Borrow your son,” he repeats patiently. Then, in an attempt to soothe the temperamental alpha, he adds, “Only for a few weeks.”
Unfortunately for Kenta’s eardrums, the man is far from soothed.
“I already paid your boss for him years ago, this wasn’t part of the deal!” he barks.
“And that’s why we’ll fully compensate you for any loss caused by his temporary absence,” Kenta assures him. The man opens his mouth, clearly to continue protesting, so Kenta quickly stops him in his tracks by planting his briefcase on the table between them and popping it open. “Will this be sufficient for the first week?”
Fortunately and rather unsurprisingly, money turns out to be much more effective than Kenta’s words ever could be. He should’ve known to start with it right off the bat. The man takes one look at the bills stacked inside the briefcase and his snarl recedes into a frown.
He still points an accusatory finger at Kenta. “If anything happens to him-“
“Mr. Tony will fully compensate you for any future monetary losses that may cause.”
Kenta smiles, but it’s deadpan; not quite venomous, but certainly not friendly. It’s a business smile that he’s perfected over the years, one that tends to get him what Tony wants.
The man huffs.
“Fine.”
Jeff doesn’t come to work for a few days. No one seems to notice.
Alan does.
He corners one of his racers or mechanics every few hours to check if any of them have seen or heard from Jeff. After the first few times, he can sense their growing exasperation. On the third day, he tries to approach one of his mechanics innocuously, hands in pockets, smiling pleasantly, and is met with the answer to his question before he can even ask it.
Alan’s not oblivious. He can tell they’re tired of his unusual hovering. But he finds himself asking the same question a few hours later anyway. He can’t help it; something’s wrong, he’s convinced. Jeff is almost as much of a workaholic as he is, there’s no way he’s missing this much work without notifying anyone.
On the fourth day, Alan is at the end of his rope. He comes into work, doesn’t immediately spot Jeff, and has his phone in his hands within seconds to call Charlie. He’s only held out on doing so until now because Charlie and Babe have been busy investigating Kim’s kidnap, but Jeff’s absence is quickly becoming just as pressing.
“Any news on Jeff?” he asks Way passively as he stares down at his phone. Alan isn’t expecting an affirmative at this point, it’s just something to do while he scrolls for Charlie’s contact.
“Mm?” Way hums in question, apparently one of the few people who isn’t sick and tired of Alan’s newly characteristic fretting. “Oh, yeah. I just saw him in the kitchen.”
Alan speaks on autopilot, “Okay, lemme know if–” Then Way’s words actually sink in. “Wait, what?”
Way gives him a blank stare and a shrug that says, so? and Alan doesn’t wait another second to rush over to the kitchen area. He knocks into a workstation in his haste.
It’s worth the bruise.
Way is right; when Alan rounds the corner into the garage kitchen, Jeff is standing over a bowl of ramen, blowing steam off the top.
“Noo! You’re back!”
He doesn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, but judging by the way Jeff raises his eyes from his food and blinks owlishly at him, it probably comes across as one.
“You didn’t get my text?” Jeff sounds genuinely surprised. He frowns as he pulls out his phone, presumably to check, then makes a noise of dismay and returns his attention to Alan. “I’m sorry, Phi, I thought I notified you. The fever must’ve messed with my head.”
Alan’s stomach sinks. The joke he’d been planning on making, about how Jeff couldn’t just skip work because he was Alan’s favourite, immediately dies on his tongue.
“You were sick?” he asks instead, voice gentler than usual, not caring to filter his concern as he steps into Jeff’s space and presses the back of his hand to the omega’s forehead to check for a fever. Jeff lets him. Smiles, even. “What about now? How are you feeling? You don’t seem to have a fever anymore.”
“It was only for a few days,” Jeff assures him. “I’m better now.”
“You’re sure? Because you can take a few more days if–”
Jeff laughs and it’s…
It’s not right.
Alan has heard Jeff laugh before. Not many times, Jeff has only just recently started opening up to him, but Alan could never forget the soft sound of it or the image that’s permanently ingrained in his brain.
He doesn’t laugh like this. Wide, all teeth, squinted eyes.
It’s not unpleasant to see, nothing delights Alan more than Jeff letting him in and showing him a new facet of himself, but it’s certainly unexpected. The typical delight swirls around in his chest and mixes with unease.
But Jeff says, “I’m fine, Phi. I promise,” and Alan has no substantive reason not to believe him. Jeff has no fever and he seems more cheerful than Alan’s ever seen him.
“Alright,” Alan says, although he’s a bit hesitant. He smiles through his concern, ruffles Jeff’s hair, same as he always does, and adds, “It’s good to have you back.”
Jeff returns his smile and nods.
They part ways, go back to work, and things go more or less back to normal after that.
The room is encased in complete darkness. His sense of time is derived entirely from when his meals arrive.
He snaps his teeth when they do.
The first time, he draws blood.
Things stay normal for all of two days.
Jeff is a little strange after his return. Unlike himself.
At first, it’s little things: his laugh is different, he works slower, he doesn’t have the same eating habits.
Then, it’s more drastic things: he’s more smiley, more cheery, more friendly with everyone at X Hunter. And yet he’s somehow also more distant with Alan. Oh, Jeff is perfectly pleasant with him, sure, but his eyes don’t hold the same warmth and depth when they make eye contact. He doesn’t flinch away from Alan’s touch like when he first joined X Hunter, but he also doesn’t lean into it as he’d started to more recently, just before his fever.
The whole thing leaves Alan feeling horribly conflicted.
He doesn’t know if he did something wrong, something to deserve the distance Jeff is placing between them, but also… Jeff doesn’t seem to be doing it on purpose. And beyond that, Alan is worried that if he confronts Jeff about his strange behaviour, Jeff will close himself off to the rest of the team after only just beginning to open up to them.
Besides, how could he possibly initiate that conversation?
I miss how you used to look at me. I miss how you used to know when I was upset and exactly how to comfort me. I miss the almost-something we had.
What they have – had? – is delicate, Alan isn’t sure he can bring it up without shattering it.
So he keeps his mouth shut.
North and Sonic, however, don’t.
A group of them are having lunch together at the garage dining table – which Jeff joined of his own volition, raising more alarm bells in Alan’s head – when one of them casually asks about Jeff’s absence. Jeff informs the group of his fever, everyone around the table makes noises of sympathy and understanding, and that should be the end of the conversation.
Except North nudges Jeff with his elbow, which Jeff allows and Alan maybe stares a second too long at the point of contact. Jeff never allows contact with people other than him or Charlie, and Alan kind of thought maybe that meant something.
Then North says with his characteristic shit-eating grin, “Good thing you came back when you did, I think Alan would’ve sent out the search party if he didn’t see you for another hour.”
And Sonic adds, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was missing his mate,” because apparently, aside from Jeff, Alan employs exclusively traitorous gremlins.
Unable to help himself, Alan catches Jeff’s eye, only to find that he’s already being watched with a calculated expression. As usual with Jeff, he doesn’t know what to make of it.
“I was worried,” he says to North, turning his attention to something he does know how to deal with. “I’m allowed to worry about my employees.”
North and Sonic coo, clearly not buying it.
“Oh yeah?” North taunts. “If we disappeared, you’d harass the mechanics all day every day for our whereabouts until we came back?”
“Not you two,” Alan says, changing his mind. “If you disappeared, I’d send your kidnapper a gift basket.”
“Hey!”
The conversation devolves into an argument, where North gives Sonic big, sad eyes and asks if, in the hypothetical scenario of his disappearance, Sonic would worry sick about North in Alan’s place. It takes the attention off Alan and Jeff, but he can still feel a set of eyes on him and when he glances over, he catches Jeff just before his gaze quickly flits away.
Any semblance of normality disappears after that conversation.
After days of struggling against the rope, his wrists start to burn and his nose twitches at the smell of his own blood.
It hurts, but he’s been through worse.
He ignores the searing pain and struggles harder.
Jeff starts flirting.
Openly and incessantly.
In front of everyone at the garage.
“Phi, did you do something with your hair today?” he asks one morning.
Alan reaches up to touch, which is ridiculous because of course he didn’t do anything different with his hair. Not to go to work.
“No, why? Does it look weird?” he asks, failing to think of another reason that Jeff would bring it up.
But Jeff just hums passively, shuffles a little closer, and raises a hand to delicately push a strand of Alan’s hair to the side. Alan’s breath catches in his throat.
“Not at all,” Jeff says with a soft smile. “It looks nice.”
Their gazes latch onto each other and Jeff’s scent spikes, suddenly flooding Alan’s senses. Jeff has always had excellent control, Alan gets the distinct impression that this isn’t an accident.
It’s all at once mesmerizing, disorienting, and unsettling.
Alan is startled out of his trance by giggles that could only belong to North and Sonic, and it’s easy to autopilot into nagging them about slacking off and prompting them to get back to work.
He leaves the interaction with Jeff assuming it’s an anomaly, a one-time thing.
It isn’t.
“Phi, I’m cold,” Jeff says later, poking his head out of the car he’s working on as Alan passes by.
Alan changes track from where he’d been headed and leans half against the car door, half against the hood, tipping his head down towards Jeff.
“Do you want me to turn down the air conditioning?” he asks.
“I’d be fine with a jacket.”
Jeff stares at him pointedly and Alan thinks he understands.
“You can borrow one of mine?” he offers.
Jeff smiles. Correct answer then.
He says, “Thank you, Phi,” both before and after Alan grabs his jacket for him.
Jeff wears it when he leaves the garage, then throws it on at work several times throughout the week, always with a pointed look in Alan’s direction, intentionally drawing his attention to the act.
When Jeff decides to give it back days later, Alan is unsurprised to find that their scents have mingled together on the piece of clothing. It should satisfy Alan, make him happy. All of it should make Alan happy: Jeff being friendlier with his coworkers, Jeff openly flirting with him, Jeff wanting Alan’s scent on him, Jeff not washing his own scent off the jacket before giving it back, practically daring Alan to wear it as it is, like a claim.
On paper, it all sounds great.
In reality, Alan doesn’t know how to feel about it.
He wants it, he wants Jeff, he really does. But even when Jeff flirts with him, there’s a strange detachment to it that Alan can’t pinpoint.
It feels hollow.
Still, he puts the jacket on the back of his chair and can’t help the deep inhale he takes every time he enters the room or the way his shoulders relax at the familiar scent in his home.
A sharp object would make quick work of this kind of restraints. It would also serve as a good tool to threaten his captors.
He sees light catch on the guard’s belt and the plan practically forms itself.
The thing is that Jeff doesn’t just become more touchy and teasing with Alan. He becomes more touchy and teasing with everyone.
He sits next to Dean when the team eats lunch together, he laughs even at North’s lamest jokes, he tugs at Way’s sleeve when he asks him a question.
Alan isn’t jealous.
Jeff’s sudden change of heart is a good thing, of course it is. Alan is pleased to see him getting along with the rest of the team.
But…
So maybe he starts ensuring his pre-lunch tasks are finished a little early so that he can ensure himself a seat next to Jeff at the dinner table. Maybe he swats North upside the head when he makes an especially ridiculous joke, with no relation to how loud it made Jeff laugh.
Maybe his gaze stays glued to Jeff’s hand when it lands on Way’s arm and his fingers curl into the fabric of Way’s shirt. When it lingers there.
But that’s just because it’s unusual behaviour coming from Jeff; it catches Alan off guard.
If he stops mid-task to stare and the entire world narrows down to that point of contact, across the room from him, that’s also just a result of his surprise, a completely fair and reasonable reaction on his part.
He catches Jeff’s eye and sees a glint in them, the slightest upward quirk of his lips.
Jeff is pleased. Alan isn’t sure what that means.
Dinner comes, but his guards have learned their lesson by now. They drop the bowl of food in front of him, careful not to get any closer than they feel they need to, and immediately turn to leave.
He slams his legs into theirs hard. The guard topples.
The next two minutes are a tussle between them that basically amounts to two grown men rolling around on the ground and ends with his face being aggressively slammed into the tile floor by the guard. After spewing vulgarities at him, they quickly march to the door.
It takes a moment for his vision to unblur and his breathing to steady. For his body to regain its strength.
Once it does, his hand closes around his newly acquired knife, snatched from the guard’s belt during their scuffle.
Five days after Jeff’s return and the first time since, Babe comes to the garage with Charlie in tow.
Alan only knows this because he hears North’s loud, boisterous voice call, “The King of the Hallows and his boyfriend return!” from across the garage and not from actually seeing Babe or Charlie, because as soon as he rounds the corner to greet them too, Jeff appears out of nowhere and drags Alan off in the opposite direction.
Jeff only has time to say, “Phi,” with a shaky voice, then, “I’m not feeling great, do you–” before alarm bells are going off in Alan’s head.
“You’re sick?” The words tumble out of his mouth without thought, voice pitched high with concern.
Jeff never admits when he’s not feeling well; he usually just pretends he’s fine and powers through. For him to not only admit he’s sick, but to actually track Alan down to inform him of the matter, surely means he’s on the brink of death. Alan is reaching a hand towards Jeff’s forehead before the latter can even respond to the redundant question.
Jeff, whose trust Alan has spent months slowly and carefully building, who has come to – Alan thought – enjoy his touch, welcome it, lean into it… flinches away from the contact.
“It’s not… that bad.” Jeff looks distinctly guilty. “I’m not dying or anything, I just think I should go home and rest. If I’m coming down with a fever, I don’t want anyone else to catch it.”
Alan’s thoughts are going a hundred miles a minute in all directions, race cars with no track, no destination or finish line in sight, and it takes him a moment too long to form a response. At the forefront of everything, the mess that is currently his mind, is the flinch playing on loop.
It’s half on autopilot that he says, “Right, of course,” a response that’s easy to conjure up with very little thought because he would never deny any of his employees a sick day. “I’ll drive you home.”
Jeff’s eyelashes flutter as he blinks, clearly caught off guard.
He says, “I appreciate the thought, Phi, but you really don’t have to,” but Alan is already fishing his keys out of his pocket.
“What if you feel faint at the wheel?” he insists. “You could get into an accident.” Jeff hesitates and, before he can protest, which Alan can tell with absolute certainty he will , Alan quickly adds, “Please? For my peace of mind?”
If his eyes go a little wide and pleading, it’s entirely unintentional, but he can’t say he isn’t pleased by the effect it has on Jeff, who drops his eyes to the floor before glancing coyly back up at Alan from beneath his lashes with a soft upturn at the corner of his lips.
The action is unlike Jeff, just as most of his actions have been recently, but it’s a clear indicator that he’s about to give in and that’s what’s most important right now.
Jeff says, “Alright,” confirming Alan’s suspicions and lifting some of the weight off his chest.
Once they pull up in front of Jeff and Charlie’s apartment, Alan offers to escort Jeff to his room in case he starts to feel woozy on the way up, but Jeff politely refuses. Alan has to bite down every instinct in his gut that screams he should insist.
Instead, he turns to the millions of other ways he could help.
“Do you need me to grab you anything?” he asks. “Painkiller? Soup? I didn’t even think to ask where you’re hur–”
“Phi,” Jeff cuts in with a growing smile.
“Look, I know that you’re perfectly capable and you don’t need me to take care of you,” Alan keeps rambling, unable to help himself. “But you don’t take care of yourself and I just worry–”
Without warning, Jeff grabs Alan’s wrist and presses his hand to his own forehead. The action requires him to lean halfway over the console and hover in Alan’s space.
“Feel that?” he says and Alan’s brain short-circuits for a second. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel: the mechanic’s calluses on Jeff’s hand, the firm, unforgiving grip it has around Alan’s wrist, the soft skin of his face that Alan wishes he could trace down to his cheek, his lips, or maybe the heat from all these points of contact. Either way, he nods because Jeff is waiting for a response and Alan is pretty sure that’s the one he wants. Alan would give him anything he wants right now. “No fever. I’m fine, I promise. I just have a bit of a stomach bug, it’ll pass in no time.”
“But…”
“How about this?” Jeff lowers Alan’s hand from his forehead, but doesn’t release it, only slides his own hand down to slot theirs together. “If I need something, I’ll call you.”
Alan doesn’t realize he’s staring at their interlocked hands until Jeff squeezes his hand and hums, prompting him for an answer.
“As long as you promise that you mean that,” he finally says.
Jeff swipes a thumb across Alan’s knuckles and he gets distracted again, even as Jeff says, “I do.”
Then his hand is gone and the passenger door is opening. Alan looks up just in time to see Jeff’s expression before he turns to leave.
The smile on Jeff’s lips makes him feel like he’s fallen into a trap.
Escaping is easy once he cuts through his restraints. He just has to wait for the guard at his door to turn their back.
And then he runs.
He’s spent his whole life running. It’s no surprise that the guard doesn’t manage to catch up to him.
Alan lives and breathes work, the garage being more of a home to him than his actual house, so it’s no surprise that Saturday evening finds him there all by himself, checking his racers’ cars for the upcoming competition. All part of the routine.
Not so routine is the loud banging on the sliding door that echoes throughout the otherwise silent room.
Leaning over the exposed engine of a car in the dimly-lit garage, long past nightfall, Alan looks to the door and blinks, wondering if it’s more likely that he’s imagining things or that some kind of animal is taking its anger out on his door. Rowdy neighbourhood kids, maybe? Surely none of his staff would be here at this hour.
He diligently opens the door to check anyway.
“P’Alan, you’re okay!”
A familiar tuft of jet-black hair is immediately stuck under his nose as Jeff takes a swift three steps directly into his space and Alan is too stunned to react, struck in equal measure by the depth of concern in those auburn eyes and the spike of panicked omega scent abruptly flooding his senses. Jeff grabs his face and angles him in every possible direction, until he’s seemingly satisfied with what he sees.
A million questions come to mind and Alan opens his mouth to ask one – which one, he isn’t sure – but Jeff is faster. He releases Alan’s face, steps to the side, and scans the room around them.
“He’s not here, is he?”
“Who?” Alan asks, despite this easily being one of his least pressing questions. “What’s happening?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“Did you see me?” Jeff asks, nonsensically.
Alan doesn’t know how else to respond. “Is that a trick question or…?”
“I wish,” comes the no-more-enlightening response. “When was the last time you saw me?”
“Yesterday?”
It’s clearly not the answer Jeff wants to hear. He curses under his breath and Alan furrows his brows.
“I knew this would happen,” Jeff mutters, probably more to himself than to Alan, before grabbing Alan’s arm and forcing eye contact. “Phi, listen to me. One of Mr. Tony’s kids has the ability to shapeshift. The me you’ve been interacting with for the past… What’s today? The date?”
“The twenty-fourth,” Alan spits out mechanically, without thought.
“It’s been two weeks then.” Two weeks of what? Alan’s brain fizzles from the overload of wild and seemingly unrelated information. “The me you’ve been interacting with for the past two weeks wasn’t me. Mr. Tony had me locked in a room, he sent the shapeshifter to keep you from suspecting anything. That’s who you saw yesterday.”
All at once, the puzzle pieces click together.
That’s why Jeff has been acting so differently. That’s why he’s been socializing so openly, that’s why he’s been shamelessly flirting with Alan, that’s why he’s been so strange about physical contact. That’s why Jeff hasn’t been Jeff.
But this Jeff gives him a patient, sympathetic smile, drops a hand to squeeze one of Alan’s, and says, gently, “I’m sorry, I should’ve escaped sooner,” and another puzzle piece also clicks.
“You’re not–” My Jeff.
He doesn’t get to finish vocalizing the thought, let alone processing it, before Jeff’s lips are abruptly locking with his.
The first place Jeff goes after escaping Tony’s compound is Babe’s apartment, in the hopes of finding Charlie. He does, thankfully.
Upon informing Charlie and Babe of his kidnap and being informed in turn that he’s somehow shown up for work every day despite the obvious fact that he hasn’t, the second place he goes – this time with Charlie and Babe in tow – is Alan’s concerningly empty house.
The immediate third place is the garage, where they actually end up finding Alan.
It should be a relief, finding him unharmed, in one piece.
It isn’t.
The moment Jeff steps foot in the garage, a man – no, a picture perfect reflection of himself – makes direct eye contact with him above Alan’s shoulder, then proceeds to drag the alpha down into a kiss. Jeff is only frozen long enough for his carbon copy to loop his arms around Alan’s neck and squeeze a noise out of him that Jeff’s buffering brain doesn’t know whether to read as eager or distressed.
He sees red.
There’s noise behind him as he moves, Charlie calling, “Jeff, wait–” but it’s too late.
Before he can think his actions through, he’s wrenching the imposter off of Alan and landing a punch to his nose. The copycat stumbles back a few steps, barely managing not to trip and fall, and Jeff uses the recovery time to step cleanly between the two of them, stance wide in case the shapeshifter gets any bright ideas about returning the favour.
“Jeff?!” he hears Alan blurt out from behind him. “What’s– But he–”
“He’s a shapeshifter,” Jeff snaps, shooting a look over his shoulder that’s practically a glare. “Can’t you tell?”
Alan’s mouth snaps shut and Jeff chooses not to think about what that means. Not now, not while the shapeshifter is still in the room, an imminent danger.
“I’m not the shapeshifter, he is!” Fake Jeff has the nerve to say, pointing a finger at Jeff who’s two seconds away from baring his teeth like a feral alpha. “Come on, Phi, you know me–“
It’s Babe who interferes before things can escalate, catching the shapeshifter from behind and whirling him around until he’s pressed up against the nearest car with his arms held firmly behind his back.
“Save it,” Babe says. “No one’s buying your bullshit.”
“P’Alan–“ The shapeshifter’s plea gets muffled by Babe shoving his face against the car.
Charlie, for his part, doesn’t say a word as he approaches Jeff. He doesn’t need to; all it takes is a grounding hand on Jeff’s arm and a meaningful look for all of the fight to seep out of him. Unfortunately, without the distraction of dealing with the shapeshifter, Jeff’s mind turns to other matters, notably–
“You couldn’t tell?” he demands again, turning on Alan. “You really thought he was me?”
Alan’s mouth drops open, but no words come out. He doesn’t look any more ready to answer the question than the first time Jeff had asked. Almost certainly a yes then. Alan had thought the shapeshifter was him.
Jeff’s mind becomes a warzone.
The prevailing thought in his mind, Does Alan really know me so little that an imposter could replace me for two whole weeks without him noticing? battles with the quieter one of, Would he sound like that if I was actually the one kissing him?
The first thought wins and so does the accompanying anger. He doesn’t wait for Alan to figure out how to form his excuses, one foot out the door before anyone can even protest.
It’s only once he’s out of sight that Alan calls, “Jeff, wait!”
Disappointment coils in his gut when it’s Charlie who follows him out instead.
Alan wants to run after Jeff and talk things out, but Charlie is faster.
He says, “I’ll go after Jeff, you two deal with him,” with a vague gesture towards the imposter Jeff, then takes off running, and Alan hesitates.
The urge to follow, even against Charlie’s advisement, is strong.
But Babe glances between the retreating figures, the squirming shapeshifter in his hold, and Alan, looking a little troubled, and Alan can’t leave him alone with someone who a) might attack him to escape and b) was almost certainly sent by Babe’s abusive adoptive father. His base primal instincts are torn between comforting one pack member and keeping another safe, and it’s the urgency of the latter that wins out.
After shooting one last look towards the still-open garage door with a wistful sigh, Alan forces his attention on the task at hand and moves across the room to grab a chair.
“Bring him over,” he tells Babe as he sets the chair down in the open space smack in the middle of the garage.
It’s a bit difficult to get the shapeshifter into the chair with all of the wriggling he does, but it’s two against one and he’s easily overpowered. Alan finds some nylon rope and carefully ties him down.
Once the shapeshifter is secure, Alan’s first demand comes easily.
“Show your real face.”
Having long given up on trying to struggle his way out of his restraints and escaping, the shapeshifter relaxes his posture into something that is clearly intended to radiate confidence, tilting his head.
“Why?” he drawls and it sounds all kinds of wrong in Jeff’s voice, looks deeply unsettling with the salacious smirk on Jeff’s face. “You sure liked this one five minutes ago.”
Alan hesitates. Babe doesn’t.
“You’re still here,” he practically growls. “Which means you haven’t gotten what you need from us yet. So how about we send you back to Daddy and see how he deals with your failure? Who do you think will be nicer to you, him or us?”
Alan has never personally met Tony, but he knows the stories, has heard them from Babe and has otherwise been able to extrapolate enough from the trauma responses both he and Jeff regularly display. It’s a gamble, but he’s pretty confident that Babe has chosen a winning one.
Luckily, the shapeshifter, as expected, deflates, his playful façade instantly crumbling. His skin bubbles and shifts, as if there are bugs crawling beneath it, molding him into a new shape, and in seconds, the face looking back at them is no longer Jeff’s.
It could be another fake face, Alan is aware, but more than anything, he’s relieved not to be taunted by Jeff’s eyes and voice and expressions that shouldn’t be on his face and lip– reminders of things that he doesn’t have time to think about right now.
His scent is different in this form too and Alan is immediately reminded of the jacket that’s currently tied around his waist, the same one that had once smelled of Jeff. Just one more thing he doesn’t have time to unpack right now.
The interrogation lasts a couple of hours, the shapeshifter – Ritt, the young man eventually informs them – initially unwilling to give anything away. But showing his – presumably – true face leads to revealing his nickname and, once Babe announces that he recognizes it from the list of Tony’s past sons that he and Charlie had found and recites the name of the man who bought him, it opens up the floodgates of admissions.
Ritt tells them everything. Well, everything he knows, at least, which unfortunately isn’t all that much.
Tony kidnapped Jeff, Ritt assumes in order to sell. As Jeff had said, Ritt was sent as a decoy so that no one would get suspicious when Jeff suddenly disappeared. He was only supposed to stay in disguise for four more days; he assumes that’s when Tony planned on selling Jeff.
It’s only after hours of grilling him on urgent matters that Alan finally allows himself to indulge in his most burning question.
“Why did you…” Alan forces himself to get the words out, ignoring Babe’s curious eyes on him. “Try to seduce me?”
As casually as one would speak about the weather, Ritt says, “Because you’re clearly in love with him,” and Alan tenses.
Is he really so obvious that a stranger could immediately recognize it? Does Jeff know? There’s no way he hasn’t assumed after the display from earlier, he chastizes himself.
Not for the first time that night, Alan wishes Jeff had intervened just two seconds later. Then he would’ve seen that the hand Alan had planted on Ritt’s chest had been intended to push him away. Of all the ways for Jeff to figure out his feelings, it has to be some kind of cruel cosmic joke that it would happen the only time Alan has ever wanted to reject him.
“I figured having you wrapped around my finger would make you easier to manipulate,” Ritt continues. “And then, a few hours ago, I got a text from P’Kenta saying that Jeff escaped from Mr. Tony’s compound so I thought that if I got to you first, I could trick you into thinking that I was the real one instead of him. When I saw him, I panicked and kissed you.” At least, he manages to look sheepish and apologetic when he says, “Sorry about that, by the way. I don’t usually throw myself at people like that.”
But he’s right. Alan had been, hadn’t he? Easily manipulated, easily tricked into allowing Ritt to pass as Jeff for two weeks, easily swayed by Jeff’s advances. He’d known something was up, sure, but he hadn’t questioned it. His jacket was still tossed across his chair, filling Alan’s house with their combined scents.
As if he ever had any right. The real Jeff would probably balk at such a display of intimacy between them.
Alan swallows the lump in his throat and wraps up the interrogation with a simple, “Alright, you’re free to go.”
Babe puts up a protest, argues that Ritt is definitely going to report back to Tony and that it’ll compromise them for whatever super-human child sale event he has planned in four days, but Alan immediately shuts him down. The shapeshifter doesn’t have any information to relay and Alan refuses to stoop to Tony’s level, holding people captive on a whim.
Ritt looks hesitant when Alan undoes the rope and he almost feels bad for the kid.
‘Almost’ turns into ‘definitely’ when the shapeshifter shows up on his doorstep the next day, covered in dry blood and large colourful patches of bruising, almost unrecognizable. Alan brings him inside and cleans his wounds without a word, before offering him one of the guest bedrooms for as long as he needs.
That’s what leads Alan to gather his boys the next day for an emergency meeting, informing them of the shapeshifter and requesting that they stay at his place too, until the dust settles on the Tony situation. He wants to be able to keep them safe; keeping them close is the best way.
On the whole, they receive the news relatively well.
Charlie, Babe, and Jeff already know, of course, so it’s only Sonic, North, and Dean who are surprised, but they take it in stride, asking a million questions, prodding Ritt and Jeff in turn. There are a lot of guilty looks passed around.
Way, as usual, is the hardest to get a read on; his gaze tracks the shapeshifter with an assessing stare, but he doesn’t seem particularly shocked by the news.
Luckily, everyone accepts Alan’s request without protest. In fact, after their shock wears down, North and Sonic seem excited by the prospect of a long-term sleepover and free food, and Alan rolls his eyes, but he knows he’s probably radiating relief.
The biggest surprise is that Jeff – who’d only come to the meeting because Charlie had practically dragged him – accepts the offer too.
Alan tells everyone, “I’m letting Ritt stay here too so we’re going to need a codeword in case he tries anything,” and Jeff’s expression goes hard, understandably, but he moves into Alan’s place that same day, just like everyone else in the team. It’s perfect. Or at least, it should be. Living in the same house, navigating the same space, should be the perfect opportunity to talk.
They don’t. Not for lack of Alan trying.
But after explaining what had happened with the shapeshifter, the crew are so excited to have Jeff back and so guilty that they didn’t notice his absence that they refuse to leave him alone. They aren’t even deterred by the stormcloud that follows him around all day.
And so, despite the sense of urgency that increases by the second, Alan lets it sit and waits for the rain to settle.
Given that not even a full twenty-four have passed since he escaped Tony’s grubby clutches once again, it’s not surprising that Jeff is restless into the late hours of the night. Once it becomes clear that he won’t be getting any sleep, he props himself up against the headboard of his bed and picks up a book to pass the time.
Time is a slow stream of sand through an hourglass and Jeff quickly loses track of it. He’s not sure how late it is when he hears the gentle knock on his door, only that he’s made good headway into his book.
He dogears his page and heads to the door, already pretty sure who he’s going to find behind it.
“Hey, Jeff.” The face that greets him isn’t surprising, but the words are. ‘Jeff’, not ‘Noo’. Alan has surely been calling the shapeshifter Noo this whole time, why is it Jeff who’s no longer privy to his own nickname? His jaw clenches involuntarily, but he’s careful to otherwise school his expression. “Can we talk?”
Jeff only crosses his arms, not saying a word or otherwise moving a muscle. He levels Alan with a pointed look.
Go ahead then. Talk.
Alan squirms instead, shooting a quick glance down both ends of the hallway, probably worried that someone’s going to see him standing outside Jeff’s bedroom door in the middle of the night.
“Inside the room, please,” he asks, tone just this side of whiny.
Leaning one shoulder against the doorframe in a show of nonchalance, Jeff reaches for the door and says, “You can say it out here or–”
But Alan doesn’t quite deal with the bluff how Jeff expected and, instead of blurting out hurried explanations and apologies, he ducks under Jeff’s arm and into the room.
“Just hear me out,” he pleads once he’s inside, holding his hands out in a placating motion. “I don’t want things to get uncomfortable at work; I think we should talk about it.”
Work. He’s worried about work. Alan came here to clear things up because of how it might affect his work.
Jeff lets the door click shut, shoots Alan a venomous glare, and beelines to his half-unpacked luggage, not deigning to respond to that. Instead, he busies himself with taking things out of his bag and moving around the room to put them away.
“Look,” Alan tries again, following him around the room and trying to step into his line of sight. Jeff smoothly ducks around him at every turn. “What you saw– It’s not what you think. He kissed me.”
Jeff finally looks at Alan, really properly looks at him for the first time since their reunion at the garage, so that he doesn’t miss which emotion flashes across the alpha’s face when he asks, “So you didn’t want to kiss him? Me?”
Guilt.
Ever since Jeff has known him, Alan has always worn his heart on his sleeve; everything from his faltering gaze to the straight line of his lips and his suddenly stiff shoulders completely gives him away. Jeff doesn’t need to actually hear the answer to his question, he already knows it.
“Well, I…” Alan trails off. Of course he does. He’s a terrible liar and there’s no other way out of this.
Heaving a sigh, Jeff takes pity on him.
“I know he’s the one who kissed you; I was there, I saw it happen.” His simmering anger is smothered, blanketed by a newfound patience as he starts to realize that Alan doesn’t actually understand the problem here. To be sure, he asks, “Is that what you think I’m upset about?”
Alan shifts, clearly uncomfortable with the turn this conversation has taken, despite being the one to initiate it, and that confirms Jeff’s suspicion.
“I know it’s maybe a bit uncomfortable to find out that I…” Alan trails off again but retains eye contact, despite how obvious it is that he wants to look away. “But I promise I would never do anything to you.”
He doesn’t get it. He actually doesn’t get it.
Jeff crumples the shirt he was holding into a ball, tosses it onto the bed, and steps into Alan’s space. He wants to make his point very clear. As crystal.
“I’m not upset that you want to kiss me,” Jeff tells Alan firmly, clearly enunciating the words, staring at him with an intensity that he hopes will convey how much he means them. “I’m upset that you wanted to kiss some random guy just because he looked like me.”
Jeff knows about Alan’s feelings for him; he has for a while now. But this thing between them is so new and Jeff has been so preoccupied with helping Charlie that they haven’t had time to move past the flirting phase.
He had assumed they were on the same page, that the flirting was a display of clearly reciprocated feelings.
But Alan says, “It wasn’t because he looked like you, it was... Look, it’s not like I couldn’t feel that things were off with you, I just… Is it so bad that I wanted to believe it could be true? That I wanted to think you might want to kiss me?” And Jeff abruptly realizes that they are not.
He means to point it out, but when he steps closer to do so–
“Why do you smell like that?” He inhales purposefully this time and yeah, no doubt about it. There’s an omega scent on Alan. Jeff’s own scent, to be precise, except... Not quite. It’s an imitation. Jeff practically snarls, “Is it because of him?”
Alan pales and, with that confirmation, Jeff immediately loses track of the previous conversation.
“Shit, I–” Alan makes quick work of untying the jacket at his waist, the clear culprit, but all the movement does is send the scent wafting through the air. “I’m sorry, I thought the smell was gone, I didn’t think–”
“Why is his scent on you?”
“Not his scent,” Alan says hurriedly, holding his hands out placating, one still tight around the jacket, bringing it closer to Jeff. “Your scent. I wouldn’t have let him put his scent on my clothes if I’d known he wasn’t you.”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. He thought the fake was me.
“That isn’t my scent.” Jeff’s snarl grows more biting by the word. “You should be able to tell the difference.”
“How?” Alan starts to get defensive. “You keep saying that I should’ve known, but it’s not like you’ve ever scented me like he did.”
Like he did.
The words conjure up the carefully-buried memory of the shapeshifter pressing his lips to Alan’s, using Jeff’s own face, and he tears the jacket out of Alan’s hands without much thought, tossing it to the ground with a vengeance.
“You want grounds for comparison? Fine.”
Then, without hesitation, Jeff steps directly into Alan’s space and fists a hand into the collar of his shirt to yank him down. With Alan this close, it’s easy to lean in and brush his cheek against the alpha’s jawline. He dips lower, rubs his cheek back and forth against Alan’s neck, closer to the stronger scent gland.
Closer to where a mate would leave their permanent mark.
Jeff lets his baser instincts – the ones that tell him to mark and claim – take over, indulges himself for just the briefest moment, and licks a stripe across the sensitive spot on Alan’s throat, slow and wet.
Mine.
Alan shivers and pants, and Jeff has to hold him by the chin to keep him from inadvertently curling inwards, to keep him still and open as Jeff continues his ministrations.
He releases his pheromones, lets his scent pour out entirely without restraint, and his nostrils instantly flair with the responding spike in Alan’s scent. Knowing their scents are mixing together and will likely cling to their clothes for days to come soothes something primal inside of him.
By the time he releases the alpha, Alan is clinging to the hem of Jeff’s shirt, leaning half of his weight on him, and gazing down with his pupils blown wide.
“That is what I smell like.” Jeff speaks calmly now, but no less pointedly. “And that’s how I would scent you.”
Alan doesn’t reply. He looks shell-shocked. He probably is shell-shocked.
Only then, with his jealousy soothed and his mind subsequently clearing, does it occur to Jeff that he might’ve taken it a bit too far. He breaks eye contact, clears his throat, and tries to step away.
Alan’s grip on his shirt tightens, drawing Jeff’s eyes back to him, and Jeff watches his throat bob as he swallows thickly. He wants to trace the movement with his teeth.
“The kiss,” Alan says, voice unsteady. Jeff licks his lips, both at the reminder and at the desperation in Alan’s tone. For him alone, not for some shitty copy. “I don’t have a point of comparison for that either.”
He stares at Jeff with glazed eyes.
And well.
Jeff is only human.
Without a word, he places a firm hand on the back of Alan’s neck and uses the leverage to close the space between them.
Jeff has imagined their first kiss a million times. He’d always imagined it would be sweet and tender and soft, maybe a kiss goodnight after a date. Even in his more intense fantasies, when he’d envisioned them kissing in the middle of a fight against Tony’s men, it had been a firm but quick press of lips, the imaginary scenario not allowing for more.
In reality, they have time and this is certainly not the aftermath of some cute little date. Their lips press together and Jeff wastes no time in deepening the kiss.
It turns out to be nothing like he’d imagined, holding none of the delicacy and tentativeness that he expected from both of them; instead, it’s messy and rough and desperate, and Alan’s breath shudders from it.
He’s deliciously pliant under Jeff’s insistence, flexing his fingers, digging them into Jeff’s hips, and Jeff can’t bring himself to slow things down, doesn’t want to. Instead, he bites down on the alpha’s bottom lip, startling a shaky noise out of him, then shamelessly slides their tongues together, barely giving Alan enough time and room to breathe. The kiss is bruising and unrelenting, and Jeff feels like he’s crackling with electricity, like it’s running between them, two live wires.
Once he decides to take mercy on Alan’s lungs and finally disconnects their lips, their bodies are flush together, practically trying to meld. His vice-like grip on the back of Alan’s neck is hard to pry off; Alan tightens his own grip, which has wound itself fully around Jeff’s waist, and lets out a whine when Jeff does.
The sound is enough to have Jeff leaning back in for a second kiss, but before he can, Alan breathes against his lips, “I knew he wasn’t you.”
Jeff pauses, lust-clouded mind slow to recall the topic of their long-forgotten conversation.
“That sounds like a lie when I’m saying it now, with hindsight,” Alan continues, voice low and sincere. “But it’s true. I didn’t know there was such a thing as shapeshifters, I didn’t know he literally wasn’t you, I didn’t think that was physically possible. But I knew something was different, I could tell you weren’t acting like yourself. If I’d known abilities like that existed, I would’ve immediately known he wasn’t you.”
Alan is right; the words are easy to say in retrospect and it sounds too good to be true. And yet, Jeff believes him without a shadow of a doubt. He believes every single word. Even so, he can’t let Alan off the hook without a little more groveling. He’s suffered too much heartache over this not to get his dues.
So he tips his chin up and prompts, “Oh?”
Alan willingly takes the bait.
“Your laugh wasn’t the same,” he says simply.
Jeff snorts and Alan practically glows in response.
“Or your smiles or your frowns,” he continues, bumping their noses together, clearly feeling encouraged by Jeff’s positive reaction. “Or the way you interacted with the team. You found North way too funny. And you weren’t half as much of a workaholic.”
As if Alan has the right to call anyone else a workaholic. Jeff rolls his eyes.
“Okay okay, I get it.”
“You suddenly loved to cook,” Alan drops his voice as if he’s sharing a life-altering secret. “And you were good at it.”
Scoffing, Jeff slides his hand out from behind Alan’s neck and uses it to shove Alan’s face away from him. The effect is minimal with Alan’s arms quickly looping more wholly around Jeff’s waist.
“Get out of my room,” Jeff grumbles. “I changed my mind, I don’t want to sleep with you anymore.”
Alan’s eyes go wide, mouth dropping open, then closing, then opening again soundlessly. He’s speechless for long enough that Jeff starts to squirm in his grip in an attempt to free himself from the increasingly awkward situation.
“Wait, does that mean…” Alan trails off, the thought clearly only half-processed even now.
Jeff gives him the most deadpan look he can muster, which is probably not as much as he would like. He’s exasperated, sure, but also endlessly endeared and he’s sure it shows.
“You’re smart enough to figure it out.” After another moment of shocked silence, wherein Alan does not figure it out and instead continues to buffer, Jeff finally takes pity on the alpha. And himself. “Or we could stand here all night and not have sex if that’s what you–” Prefer.
It’s clearly not what Alan prefers, if the mouth on his and fingers sliding under his shirt are anything to go by.
The team welcomes Ritt into the fold with open arms so it doesn’t take long at all for him to reintegrate. Jeff warms up to him too, slowly but steadily, not surprising Alan in the least; Jeff has always been a softie at heart.
Even Ritt’s tendency to take on a different form every couple of hours stops fazing them after a few days. Quite the opposite, in fact; North and Sonic are a little too eager to have a shapeshifter who’s more than willing to go along with all of their pranks. Pranks which nearly double in volume after Ritt’s integration into their ranks.
That’s why, when Jeff bounds over to Alan, plants both hands onto the kitchen counter, leans over it, and says, “P’Alan, can we have khao soi for dinner?” with a bright smile and batting eyelashes, Alan immediately flicks his forehead.
“Aow!” Ritt complains, covering his forehead as if he even felt the brief contact.
“You’re not even trying anymore.” Alan doesn’t even have to inhale to know the unique omega scent will be off, slightly diluted and lacking the ambrosial quality that Alan has quickly become addicted to. “And you’ll eat whatever I find on sale at the store.”
“But Phiiii!”
With no intention of keeping up the ruse, Ritt’s skin bubbles and shifts back into what Alan has started to recognize as his favoured form. The dramatic pout of his lips is a lot more suited to this face than Jeff’s.
“Those puppy eyes won’t work on me, I’m desensitized,” Alan claims and it’s true. One doesn’t deal with his team on a regular basis without getting used to the classic Big Sad Eyes move. “Try Way instead, you’ll have better luck.”
He means for it to be sarcastic – Way is aloof on a good day – but Ritt perks up and… Well, Alan won’t be the one to deter him. Maybe a puppy on Way’s tail will distract him from Babe.
“When I manage to smuggle a week’s worth of khao soi into the house, just remember that you’re the one who started this,” Ritt says with a grin.
He charges off before Alan can protest. All he can do is heave a fond sigh. Bringing Ritt into the team was clearly a mistake, things were already chaotic enough before. Alan internally mourns the previous peace and quiet of his house.
It’s only when he turns around to grab his coffee from the machine that he spots Jeff smiling at him from around the corner. It’s the real one this time; Alan knows for sure not only because he just watched Ritt practically skip his way out of the room, but also because of the shape of his smile. Soft, reserved, endeared. Impossible to replicate.
“Coffee?” Alan asks, returning the smile.
Jeff nods. “Mm.”
Alan isn’t quite sure why, but a few seconds after he turns to pour the second cup, Jeff wraps his arms around Alan’s middle, an unusually open gesture of physical affection, and he feels like he’s being rewarded for something.
Jeff then plants a lingering kiss on his shoulder and Alan wonders how far he can push this reward, coffee instantly forgotten.